Earlier that night, the small bower where Ashton chose as a meeting place had been used for a private party, one interrupted by the closing of the Gardens due to the bombing. The tables and chairs were still set up, as the staff had obviously had more important things to do than clean. Even the refreshment table was still in place, its crystal bowl of iced champagne punch and plates of lobster patties, small sandwiches, and tiny cakes going to waste. Empty plates, used glasses, and discarded serviettes scattered the white linen of the tablecloth.

"Please, sit down," he invited. Margarethe, gesturing to a chair at his right even as he took the place at one end of the oblong table for himself. It wasn't by accident that he claimed the head of the table, and he knew well that the position of power it implied was only emphasized by his physical size. "You must be exhausted after your ordeal."

"I am indeed, Mr. Ashton, and I would very much prefer to be having this conversation tomorrow, after the chance for rest and a proper meal."

Tansy Winthrop moved to pull out the seat for her; she intercepted the security woman with a glance and one of the men stepped forward to assist her instead.

"And you, Miss Winthrop, should be having those injuries seen to instead of wasting your time here."

"I have a job to do, ma'am."

"Exactly. A job. Not some medieval knight's loyal service to a sworn liege. The Schnee family may be surrounded by pomp and circumstance, but I'm not so delusional as to think of myself as a divinely inspired monarch. Go."

Winthrop's eyes flicked towards Ashton. Undoubtedly, Margarethe's little speech was actually full on point. Winthrop wanted to stay because it was a job for her; she most likely had things to report to Ashton that she believed would be worth money.

Maybe that was true, but now was definitely not the time to address the issue. He'd have to collect her report later and hope it wasn't something that he needed immediately.

"She's right, Miss Winthrop," he said. "I appreciate your concern for Miss Schnee, but we have plenty of Dust Company security on hand now. Make your report to Captain Azul while you're waiting your turn for treatment if you think there's something we need to know right away."

"Yes, sir."

Shoulders slumped, she headed for the nearest exit. Strauss and his two costumed associates stood back from the table, while the two bodyguards Ashton had brought with him stood a few feet behind the director.

"Now, Miss Schnee, we need to talk about what happened tonight. I understand from those I've already spoken with that your grand-niece was here and fully enmeshed in what happened. I trust that you're not going to maintain that this was a coincidence?"

He did not mention what she'd said about putting this off for another day. Not only did he need the information as fast as possible, he truly did not want to waste the additional time it would take if he gave her the time to rest, clear her mind, and think up all manner of obfuscations to put him off.

"Mr. Ashton, I do not care for your tone."

"And I do not care for finding myself in a situation where the girl I have been entrusted to find and keep out of trouble is apparently engaging in fights with mass murderers. Whatever Weiss Schnee has gotten herself involved with, it is obviously more than just industrial espionage, and trying to account for her petty willfulness is keeping this company from making a meaningful response and putting people at risk! I mean to have answers."

"In which case, don't you think that you're missing someone from this little tete-a-tete?"

Everyone's heads swiveled towards the sound of the voice, which had come from up and to Ashton's left, and they saw and heard a rustling in one of the trees that overhung the edge of the bower. Somewhat clumsily, owing to her only having the full use of one arm, a figure swung out of the branches and dropped to the ground. She reached up and yanked off her mask and red wig, revealing herself as Weiss Schnee.

"I'm sorry for the theatrical entrance, but we've been dodging the police, Garnet's men, and Dust Company security all night and we needed to talk to the two of you, not spend our time getting past flunkies."

"Weiss!" Ashton barked, the shock of her sudden appearance driving out any polite veneer he'd have otherwise attempted before he could even try to put it into place. "Do you know how much trouble you've caused?"

"I know how much trouble I've been caused, Mr. Ashton, most recently ending with that." She pointed dramatically in the direction of the Pavilion. "I understand that you and I got off to a bad start on this business, but right now we need to put that aside and work together for the good of the company."

"You're telling me that what just happened here was all part of whatever it is you've involved yourself with since the theft of your father's papers. The first theft," he couldn't resist adding.

"I am, and I'm willing to name names: Dr. Edward Hyde, formerly known as Dr. Henry Jekyll, currently the head—director, president, chairman of the board, I'm not sure of his specific title—of Pandora Development, Ltd., a Schnee Dust Company subsidiary. I'll go one step further and add that Mitchell Garnet, who's supposed to be protecting the Schnee home and family, is actually working for Hyde."

"You're insane if you think that Mr. Garnet had anything to do with that!" Strauss interjected, also waving a hand towards the Pavilion as Weiss had a moment ago.

"Strauss!" Ashton said.

"I'm sorry, sir, but I'm tired of hearing these fantasies—"

"Mr. Strauss's intemperate language aside, Miss Schnee, I think his point is well-taken. You will need strong evidence to implicate Mr. Garnet in something this horrific."

"I'm not trying to implicate him in the bombing. Garnet had a plan of his own, to trap me by having Strauss here, and his team of security men ready to spot me, possibly bring me home by force, possibly follow me to see where I was staying and who my associates were. In other words, the normal kind of scheme that you'd expect from someone in his position. The bombing was carried out by a group who call themselves the creatures of Grimm. Since this is the third attempt they've made on my life, at this point I'm morally certain that they work for Edward Hyde."

"That is barely more palatable. To suggest that the head of a Dust Company subsidiary would hire killers to murder a member of the Schnee family sounds more like a fantasy than a responsible claim."

"Why?"

Ashton was momentarily taken aback.

"How can you even ask that? The idea of an employee murdering his superiors? Where is the gain? It can't be a question of personal issues since you barely know the man, if I understand correctly."

"It's not knowing the man that's at issue. The problem is his work and what he's been doing with the Dust Company's investment in him. You've seen the aftermath of what happened today, so you know that someone is out there. I'm sure by now that you've collected witness statements, possibly even from Aunt Margarethe and Mr. Strauss and his men, of how Blake and I fought those masked assassins as we escaped the building. And I know that before this you were already suspicious of internal conflict within the company. You talked to Gertrud, so you know where I went two nights ago, so I'm sure that you're already asking questions about Pandora Development and Hyde, and I also know that you're suspicious that Garnet isn't reporting the whole truth to you, which of course he isn't."

She leaned forward, bracing her hands on the back of one of the chairs, clearly putting more weight on her left, though. Apparently, she'd been injured during the night's events.

"So please tell me, is there any reason that you're not willing to accept what I'm saying, other than the fact that I'm the one saying it?"

He pressed his hands flat on the table, starting to push himself up.

"Now, see here—"

"No, you see, Mr. Ashton. I am tired of these games between us. I am the heiress of the Schnee family and the owner of a one-quarter share in your employer. You are the director of all Dust Company operations in the British Isles and its secondary regions. There is a man who has, under our noses, used our resources to commit acts of scientific monstrosity and is now directly or indirectly responsible for the injuries at deaths at Saulbridge, at the former Jekyll house, and here tonight. We both have a duty to stop him, before he hurts and more people and before he brings the company any more shame and disrepute." She smiled bitterly at him. "Even my father wouldn't want any of this becoming public, if only for what it would do to the share value and its impact on our power base."

"You keep making those claims, Miss Schnee, but I have yet to see any evidence or hear any specifics."

"That's exactly my point. You have power and resources under your control that I don't have access to, but I have information that you need to direct those resources. If we work together, then we can stop Hyde and resolve this. If we don't, then a lot of innocent people will die and Hyde will get away with everything."

He gave her a long, measuring look. There was good sense in what she was saying. But she was also still Weiss Schnee, the pampered child of the family, barely a handful of days into her majority. The girl who'd, after the initial incident, had tried to assume control over everything happening around her without so much as a by-your-leave or any respect for the structures her father had put in place to run the Dust Company.

Had she really learned since then, in just these few days?

A better question: does it matter?

A cynical thought, that. But whatever else, it was obvious that Weiss did have information Ashton lacked and the Dust Company did have a situation on its hands that needed to be handled. There would be negative publicity from this incident, publicity that would be fanned by the Dust Company's business rivals and by its opponents in Parliament and in the press. And if it could ever be publicly traced to one of Schnee's own subsidiaries, that would redouble—to say nothing of the impact of a scandal that involved attempting to murder Weiss Schnee to cover up.

He gestured towards the chair she was leaning against.

"Why don't you sit down? We've obviously got a lot to talk about."

It was her turn to give him that long look, weighing his words. Maybe that was a sign that she had grown.

"All right," she said after about twenty seconds, and sat down, clearly trying hard to not show too much relief at getting off her feet.

"So what is it that you know?" Ashton asked.

"There are actually two people who can better explain things, so far as what Hyde is doing. Aunt Margarethe told me most of what I know about the company's structure, and as far as what Hyde's actually been doing, while I've seen some of it for myself I've learned a lot more from someone else, whom I'd like to bring in."

Margarethe spoke up for the first time since Weiss's appearance.

"Do you mean the Blake who was with you in the Pavilion?"

Weiss nodded once, crisply.

"Yes, I do. I found her at Saulbridge Sanitarium the evening that I met with Hyde, and helped her to get away from him. That's when I found out that we were really on the same side. She has a lot more that she can offer directly about what Hyde has been doing."

"And you want to bring her here," Ashton concluded.

"She can make my point better than I can, but these extra security have to go. We just got out of two ambushes, Strauss's and the Grimm's, and we don't need a third."

"I'm not leaving Mr. Ashton and Miss Schnee alone with the two of you," Strauss shot back.

Weiss's eyebrows twitched, like she was trying to arch one and failing.

"After all that's happened, are you actually suggesting that I would try to attack Mr. Ashton or my own aunt?"

"Your friend's not exactly innocent of using violence when she has to, as your own face shows, or the two men I have laid up getting medical treatment from the alley fight, or the fact that she had a knife to Winthrop's back just a couple of hours ago—and that's giving her a pass for those two assassins she killed in there while you two were getting out."

Weiss's lip curled, but she suppressed whatever sharp response she was seemingly going to give. Whatever else was happening, she was genuinely making an effort at keeping things civil.

"You can stay, since you already know at least some of what's happening. The other men need to go."

"I'm not so full of myself as to claim I can handle the two of you alone. Probably not even just her."

Ashton raised a hand from the table, and Strauss fell silent at once.

"I think that we need to extend good faith at this point. No one is seriously claiming that Weiss is making threats against us."

Strauss glowered.

"Fine. You two, go."

The two others in Lincoln green, together with Ashton's own escort, headed for the nearest exit at once. Ashton wished he could have sent Strauss as well, because he knew that the team leader was smart enough to immediately and go fetch a support group and surround the bower so as to trap Weiss and this "Blake" if the need arose.

Just because he was willing to listen didn't mean that he had to go along with everything on Weiss's agenda.

As soon as the security men were gone, a dark-haired woman in a black cat costume dropped into the clearing. She came from a different tree than Weiss had and made no noise while doing so.

"Blake Belladonna, this is Ezekiel Ashton, executive director of Schnee Dust Company operations in Britain. You already know my aunt Margarethe Schnee and Jonathan Strauss, of course."

"It is still nice to be formally presented," Margarethe said.

"Unfortunately, this is hardly a situation that calls for politeness," Ashton said. "Therefore, Miss Belladonna, if you could tell us what your interest in this matter is, I would appreciate it."

She glanced at Weiss—obviously the decision to talk to Ashton was not without trepidation—and then turned back to him.

"I'm one of a group of people who were used as test subjects for experimental scientific procedures by two Schnee Dust Company scientists, Emile Moreau and Henry Jekyll, and their staff, at a facility on Ellespoint Island. We were subjected to vivisection, experimental grafting surgery, radical drug therapy, and forced physical mutation in the pursuit of some scientific goal that was never explained."

She said it very matter-of-factly, almost as if it had been rehearsed—which it probably had, if they'd planned to approach Ashton.

That didn't make it untrue.

"You appreciate that I cannot simply accept these allegations without some kind of proof."

"Of course. Your man Strauss, there, already knows some of it."

She reached up and took off the costume headpiece with its felt-covered triangular ears and tossed it on the table.

Then she wiggled the slightly smaller ears that had been hidden underneath.

"Bloody hell," Strauss whispered. "I thought…I thought my mind was playing tricks on me."

Ashton just stared at her. It wasn't that the cat ears were somehow horrific or grotesque; it was more that his mind was struggling for context, unable to properly process what he was seeing.

"I'm one of the most human-looking of their experiments. With a hat or a hair ribbon, no one would think I'm anything different than the rest of you. Most of us aren't that lucky," she added. "The only places we'd fit in would be a fancy-dress ball or a carnival sideshow."

He was fixated on her eyes. He hadn't noticed it before, but now it was obvious, the way her amber irises cast back the bower's faint illumination, gleaming in the dark just like a cat's.

"My God," Margarethe whispered.

Weiss reached out to Belladonna and squeezed her hand. Ashton supposed it couldn't have been easy to convince her to come forward. The heiress had evidently learned to be convincing—or perhaps it was just a mark of how desperate their situation had become, with Hyde's assassins after them.

"You said, 'we'?" he asked. "There are more like you?" He knew how fatuous a question it was as soon as it left his lips, but it still needed to be asked, to be put into words.

"There are dozens of us, all created by Moreau and Jekyll—and dozens more corpses left behind from their failures."

"I've seen them," Weiss added at once, cutting off anyone's attempt to question the story before the thought could even form. "The Faunus are everything she says. Our scientists built a whole race of people with the characteristics of animals in this laboratory. And then, when their test subjects, their victims rebelled against them, they rallied their forces, rebuilt their operation, and started again."

"When I broke into the Schnee manor, I was looking for records, for what had happened to the people and the research that Moreau and Jekyll had controlled," Blake said. "That's what led me to Pandora Development, to Saulbridge Sanitarium and Edward Hyde."

"And when I broke into Father's safe, I found those same records, which is why I went there. Only, Hyde had captured Blake. He and Garnet had her chained up in his laboratory."

"You caused the fire?"

"No, Blake's friends attacked the place and tried to rescue her, but Hyde had laid a trap, expecting it. There was a running battle between his thugs and the Faunus."

"I see."

And he did see. He'd had the corroboration of this part already, from when he'd talked to Gertrud and heard how she and Saulbridge's staff had been slipped out of the building by a secret tunnel—so any observer wouldn't notice that the place was being evacuated of innocent bystanders. Indeed, the story about the revolt of the Faunus on Ellespoint Island went a long way towards explaining why Saulbridge even had a secret escape tunnel in the first place.

"So this is why you've stayed away for the past two days," he concluded. "You found out what Hyde—you said earlier that he was the Jekyll Miss Belladonna mentioned, under another name?—was doing and you stayed away…what, to help gather evidence?"

"I knew that Garnet was working with Hyde from meeting him at Saulbridge. The place had burned down. He was in a position to lie, to conceal evidence, to cover up his crimes in a half-dozen ways. I was sure at that point that you wouldn't believe any wild stories from me, not without proof and especially not if Garnet was standing there contradicting me. Admit it, without something like tonight's bombing you'd have dismissed me out of hand."

"And we had no intention of revealing ourselves to you unless we had no choice; the risk was too great," Blake said. "It still is; it's just that we're out of options."

Ashton sucked in his breath. The pulse of temper that had risen up when Weiss had said he wouldn't believe her was hard to ignore.

"Could you blame me?" he shot back. "How did you end up at Saulbridge, anyway? Your father put me in charge of investigating the break-in. You were told to leave it be, but not only didn't you do that, you broke into his safe yourself and stole company records! Even if you'd never be prosecuted, you still committed an act of industrial espionage, an actual crime. Did you expect me to respect that?"

"If you hadn't treated me like a little girl instead of an adult woman from the beginning, I wouldn't have had to! The only reason Father involved himself at all was that you didn't want to work for me, so you went to him to get new orders that you liked better!"

"And why shouldn't I have? You had no idea what you were doing, just hurt pride because your face got slashed!"

"No idea what I was doing? I found her while you were chasing your tail!"

"Strauss and his men were watching for her when you blundered in with your little trap, or don't you remember who got you safely home before the police showed up?"

"Stop it, both of you!"

And they did, both turning in shock towards Blake.

"Arguing like this doesn't do anything. And you're both right, anyway. Ashton, you know you didn't give Weiss a chance; you resented how she started giving you orders right from the start and so you did whatever you could to ignore her or put her in her place. And you, Weiss, you know that you didn't even try to work with him or treat him with the respect he was due as a company executive who'd earned his position; you just gave him orders like he was the third footman!

"The truth is, you both acted out of pride, and got on your high horses with each other, and then you both got that pride hurt when the other one didn't kowtow to you. So just admit it, apologize, and move on, already. There are more important things at stake!"

Weiss looked abashed at once at Blake's speech, and because of it Ashton began to feel the same. The heiress let out a long sigh.

"I'm sorry, Blake. I shouldn't have let myself get carried away again." She looked up at Ashton and said, "And she's right. I did treat you like a servant and started barking orders. I shouldn't have done that."

"And I should have treated you like a Schnee and the owner of a quarter of the company I work for, instead of a bratty child. Obviously, that isn't what you are."

She smiled at him.

"So we can work together on this?"

"And clean up our own house before the police and the British government do it for us," he agreed.

"Much better," Blake said. She dropped into a chair, folded her arms across her chest, and looked generally smug.

"There's something I'm curious about," Ashton said. "When you were listing the reasons why you didn't come back after Saulbridge burned, you said that I wouldn't believe you, but you never said anything about suspecting I was involved. This Pandora is a Schnee subsidiary, and Garnet was there helping Hyde, so why didn't you think I was actively involved?"

"Because Pandora was being hidden from you. The records in my father's safe showed that its oversight was being run out of Vienna."

Ashton felt his eyebrows shoot up.

"Vienna? You're serious?"

"I am. You didn't have any direct control or oversight over Pandora or its resources. You wouldn't even be getting reports on them as part of your duties."

"That doesn't make sense, though. Even if Pandora was being controlled from Vienna, how would it be possible to exercise any effective oversight from there? All of the Dust Company's support mechanisms in Britain are under my official authority."

Weiss nodded.

"That was the point, to make Pandora as independent an entity as they could manage."

"This couldn't have been done just by Hyde. He wouldn't have had the authority. He'd need to have had control on an executive level in Vienna to make those arrangements."

"More than that, when you consider that Pandora was only created after the initial Moreau-Jekyll project failed."

"And by 'failed,'" Blake said, "she means that we, the surviving test subjects, rebelled against our captors, fought our way to freedom, and destroyed everything we could lay hands on. Unfortunately, Jekyll survived, although badly injured, to be reborn as Hyde. Only now, instead of being a cold, callous man motivated by money, he seems to have become as driven by the project itself as Moreau was."

"Before we were interrupted by Strauss and then by the bombing, Aunt Margarethe told me how when Pandora was created, the Dust Company's investment included the transfer of the assets from the Moreau-Jekyll project, moving everything there to not only prepare Pandora to continue the work but also get the matter out from under your eye. Hyde couldn't afford to have you looking at cleaning up the original disaster while he was trying to continue the project."

"But what was the point of it all?" Ashton wanted to know. He gestured at Blake. "Why combine the traits of humans and animals like that? If the Dust Company backed him not once but twice, and with a catastrophic disaster between times, there must have been more to it than pure scientific research."

Weiss looked at Blake, something unknown passing between them in that shared gaze.

"I think that I have some idea, but ultimately, I'd just be guessing. I think it'd be better if we let the explanation come from someone who's actually been involved."

Ashton turned expectantly to Blake, but Weiss looked the other way, to her left.

"Why don't you tell us what your pet scientists are trying to achieve, Aunt Margarethe?"