The Doom Bell struck through Barry, as it had ever since he was fourteen, with a sense of fierce loss and fiercer potential. He spent a few minutes talking with the town elders, many of whom insisted on teasing Klaus about appointing them to the town council, then left them to explain to the recovering tourists why there was a dragon rampaging through the streets exhorting them all to REJOICE.

He grinned a little wryly at Klaus once they were on their way back up to Castle Wulfenbach. "You're getting used to it, aren't you."

"The Doom Bell? It's been a while since I last heard it, actually, but I remembered it well enough to brace myself."

"Well, it would have had to be several years, yes." The Doom Bell didn't ring unless the Heterodyne was there. "But you might be the first person who doesn't live here to actually stay upright."

"Is Agatha going to have to develop a tolerance for it? Or do Heterodynes have some sort of natural immunity?" Klaus's fascination with the quirks of various Spark bloodlines - and the Heterodynes had more than most - was familiar.

Barry contemplated the question for a moment before determining that he didn't actually have sufficient evidence. "I'm not sure. Maybe a little of both. It rings for births, so it's one of the first things most of us feel." Not hear. It was sound, of course, but it wasn't mostly sound. "But we never seem to be as strongly shaken by it - physically or otherwise - as people who've lived here for decades. I suppose we'll find out. It'll ring again when she's announced."

"And she wasn't born in Mechanicsburg," finished Klaus.

"Exactly." Barry paused. "I have no idea how to warn her about it."

Klaus considered that. "I really have no idea either."

"I suppose it'll fit in somehow with the giant biting clank face and the chapel full of skulls." Sometimes Barry seriously wondered why they had tourists at all. Then he remembered that first, he and Bill were heroes, and second, the Heterodynes were not uniquely morbid, just unusually spectacular about it. "But it doesn't really feel to me much like anybody outside the bloodline describes it."

"And you don't know whether Agatha will feel what you feel or what the rest of us feel. At least the giant biting clank face is easier to describe." He shook his head. "One advantage of enrolling Agatha in the school is that she won't grow up thinking that sort of thing is normal." He was smiling slightly, probably remembering surreal conversations with Bill and Barry at a time when they were new to living outside Mechanicsburg.

"No, she'll have an entirely new set of strange things to classify as normal," said Barry. More wholesome, though. "I do think it'll be good for her. She'll have more of a chance to make friends, for one thing." In her admittedly limited visits so far, Barry was pretty sure she was already making friends with nearly the entire student body.

So it was a bit of a surprise when they arrived at the school to find Agatha fuming at a table by herself, scowling and swinging her feet angrily. There were several groups of other students in the room, mostly huddled over books, but their attention all seemed to be somewhat furtively on Agatha. Von Pinn greeted them and then looked at Agatha, whose feet stilled very briefly before she gave the leg of her chair a defiant kick.

Barry raised his eyebrows. "What happened here?" he asked, before thinking that possibly he should have let Klaus ask that, since it was his school. Oh well.

"I am not sure," said Von Pinn. "I arrived to find most of my students backing away from Miss Agatha. It doesn't seem as if she actually did anything to them, and they haven't been able to explain what she said to frighten them either. Apparently that they'd be sorry, but it's hardly unusual for them to say such things to each other."

"I take it she didn't explain it any more clearly?" Barry asked, and Von Pinn shook her head. Agatha's temper was fierce enough that he had lain awake nights hoping it was all her own and not actually an adult Spark's - he suspected, now, that traveling largely in isolation had allowed his imagination to run away with him sometimes - but why would Agatha be terrorising the other students?

"I said I would make them sorry," Agatha said distinctly, her small hands curling into fists on the table.

Oh boy. Barry walked over to the low table and crouched down to catch her eye. "For what?"

"For being mean to my friend!" Agatha burst out. "They ought to be sorry! You taught me better than that and I didn't even know anybody and they're older!"

Barry paused, suddenly even less sure than before how to proceed. On the one hand, terrifying the other students was not a good habit to get into; on the other, this actually sounded like a pretty good reason. He was - somewhat academically - aware that children could be as cruel to each other as adults could, but he wasn't really sure how good Agatha's evaluations would be at this point. "I could do with a little more information," he said. "What did they do, and what did you do?"

"I told you, I said I'd make them sorry." Agatha's eyes flashed. "You should make them tell. They tried to tell me it was how things were supposed to go!"

Barry eyed her for a moment. That was a suspiciously familiar justification. "How things were supposed to go. Anybody else want to explain, then?" he said, consciously trying to keep his voice mild.

Gil, who had been doing a pretty good job of fading into the background, stepped forward when none of the other students seemed inclined to. "Um. They stole my book." He looked embarrassed, either at having the other students dislike him or at not being able to defend himself. "I usually just do something else 'til they get bored and put it down somewhere, but Agatha got mad." He grinned, briefly, at the memory, eyes bright with admiration. "It's not her fault, she was trying to help."

Barry glanced around the room. Only a few students met his eyes; some looked defiant, while others went red in the face. "My mother spent a lot of time teaching Bill and me that it was wrong to take other people's things just because they weren't your own people and you could," he said, conversationally, and ostensibly to Gil. "I'm glad to hear Agatha's got the idea already."

Von Pinn walked over and put a hand on Agatha's shoulder. "In future you should tell me and I will see to frightening those who deserve it." Klaus, perhaps not wanting to show interest in Gil or perhaps feeling the students had now been sufficiently terrorised for the day, kept quiet.

"Thank you, Madame Von Pinn," Agatha said politely, although she cast Gil an uncertain glance as if to suggest that if this worked, it shouldn't still be happening.

"You can also try asking for it back, and losing your temper only if they refuse," Barry began, then glanced at Von Pinn. "Not that I mean to suggest undermining your teacher's authority, of course, but still, you might be surprised how often asking is effective if you do it right." Agatha looked interested. With a faint sense of triumph, he noted that she wasn't the only one.

The ensuing discussion was actually rather refreshing, even if Barry was a little rusty on having that sort of argument. The students were spirited in question and debate, once they warmed up to it, and to Barry's secret glee, Klaus eventually joined in too. (He said something about acknowledging the elephant in the room. Barry reminded himself that really was conspicuous in most rooms. Castle Heterodyne was unusual in many ways, among which decorating with various sizes of preserved mammoth was really one of the least.)

"I think that went well," he said to Klaus, after Von Pinn had at last tactfully suggested that the children had other lessons to consider, as well as meals. It was pretty much the politest way he'd ever been ejected from area or conversation.

"They are here to learn political theory," Klaus said, sounding amused.

Barry grinned at him. "And now you have proof it's taking."

"Hsst. Gil." It wasn't normally easy to have a private conversation in the school, but the construction of the new teaching lab and the expanded sleeping quarters was loud enough that Agatha's whisper was nearly lost even as she plopped down next to him, looking very serious for a four-year-old. "Wanna visit Castle Heterodyne?"

Gil looked down at her, wide eyed. "Really? I've never even been on the ground."

Agatha squirmed slightly. "Uncle Barry says I have to go there and get bit."

That sounded alarming. Why would Barry Heterodyne want something to bite her? "By what?"

She folded up, wrapping her arms around her knees. "The Castle. It needs blood to make sure I'm really a Heterodyne."

"Oh." Gil put an arm around her shoulders. "That sounds scary."

Agatha leaned into him. "He says he was too young to remember when it bit him," she said a bit grumpily, "which isn't very helpful. But it does it to all the babies and doesn't maim them permanently."

"That's... good? I'm glad Castle Wulfenbach doesn't bite people. I'll stay with you while it does it if I'm allowed."

"Thanks. I asked if I could bring a friend. He said yes but he looked kind of funny." She was quiet for a moment, curled very small against his side. "Gil, I think my family might be really weird."

"Your father and uncle are heroes, though," said Gil. "I don't think heroes can be weird."

"Yeah, but before that they built a talking castle that bites people. Uncle Barry says a lot of their history isn't very good."

Gil settled back to think about this for a moment. "I guess at least you know some of your family are good? No one knows anything about mine, so they could all be really bad." Although they probably hadn't built biting Castles. Gil doubted more than one family would think of that.

"I know you're good," Agatha said firmly. "...Maybe a little too nice sometimes." This last part was mumbled, and possibly in reference to his alarm at the suggestion of booby-trapping his notebooks so people wouldn't steal them (at least not more than once). "But... not anything at all?"

Gil shook his head and looked at his knees. "Don't tell the others," he said, not bothering to ask her to promise or even wait for her to agree. By now he trusted her to keep his secrets. "But I don't really remember things too well. Before, um, half of a year ago?" He wasn't really sure exactly when his memories cut off, and there was a time before that where he had misty shreds of them, of someone he sometimes thought was the Baron looking after him. But surely he didn't take care of the orphans he found personally. "Before then I don't remember much at all."

"Ohh." Agatha wormed an arm around his waist. "That's... weird. That's older than I still am." That was a weird thought. "So... everything you remember is the school?"

Gil nodded. "I've been learning fast to catch up."

"You're really smart."

Gil smiled, he was proud of how well he was doing at keeping up. Even if the entire point was for no one to appreciate his efforts. "Thanks."

"It's getting harder to remember... stuff before Uncle Barry," Agatha said, as if chewing over a problem, "but it doesn't sound like the same phenomenon at all." Sometimes you could really tell Agatha had learned to talk from a full-blown Spark. "Maybe you got really sick?"

"Maybe? I don't remember feeling sick." But then he didn't remember much at all. "Are there diseases that cause that kind of memory loss?"

"Bad fevers maybe...?" Agatha sounded doubtful. "Or Lethean brain worms? I wasn't really s'posed to listen when people asked Uncle Barry medical questions, I think. He gave me loud things to play with sometimes."

"I hope it's not brain worms, those sound really bad."

"I don't really think you have brain worms. They'd have come out your nose by now."

Gil clapped a hand over his nose automatically before lowering it with a sheepish smile. "Erk," he said and then laughed.

She grinned up at him for a second. "So I think you're okay." She leaned forward and picked up an adjustable wrench, fiddling with it for a minute, then said, "What about your name?"

"I don't know. Do you think it's a real one?" asked Gil.

"Oh. You think the Baron might have made it up?"

"I don't know," Gil repeated. "I guess I thought if he knew enough to know my name he would have told me?"

Agatha frowned. "Um. Would he... know you don't know?"

Gil turned it over. "I guess I didn't tell him I didn't." Somehow he'd just assumed the Baron would know. He seemed like he'd know everything. "Do you think I should ask him?"

"Probably? Then if he knows anything at all he can tell you. ...I think he's nice. Uncle Barry likes him. I think he's coming to Castle Heterodyne with us."

"I'll... think about it," said Gil.

He thought about it a lot, over the next few days. It wasn't that he thought Agatha was wrong about the Baron being nice, exactly. It was just, he decided, that the Baron was really intimidating, which was maybe something Agatha just didn't notice. And of course the Baron liked her. She was his best friend's daughter, or niece, depending on which one you meant.

And he wasn't sure he'd like what he found out.

But he wanted to know.

When he asked Madame Von Pinn about going to Castle Heterodyne, she said she would have to ask the Baron, and Gil took a deep breath and made himself say, before he could stop and think about it again, "May I do it?"

She looked at him in surprise and said, "Yes, you may."

He was expecting to have to wait, but she took him to the Baron's study only a few minutes later and rapped on the open door. "I know you're there," the Baron began, looking up from his desk, and then stopped, his eyes resting on Gil. "...You, I didn't expect. I beg your pardon."

Gil wasn't sure what to think about that. "It's... okay?" he ventured in confusion, then felt silly because it wasn't as if there had actually been any reason for an apology and he felt like he'd said the wrong line or something. Baron Wulfenbach's mouth flexed in the beginning of a smile, but there wasn't any amusement in his eyes, and Gil couldn't decide if he was being laughed at or reassured or what.

"Do you want me to stay?" asked Madame Von Pinn.

She was talking to Gil, not the Baron, and they both waited for an answer. Gil swallowed and said, "No, thank you," and she returned to the school, leaving him facing Baron Wulfenbach across a study that seemed enormous and a desk that seemed bigger still, which made no physical sense. Gil blinked hard and told himself not to be nervous. It didn't help. He reminded himself that the earliest memories he'd been able to scrape up (at least, he thought they were earliest) seemed to have Baron Wulfenbach in them, and he hadn't been afraid of him then. He'd been afraid but the Baron had made him feel better. He thought. He just wished he had any idea what had been going on at the time. There was an awful lot of detail missing, like fuzzy bits of dream.

"Come and sit down," said Baron Wulfenbach. He came out from behind his desk and took one of the two chairs in front of it. Gil swallowed and started walking; the study wasn't really that big, and clambering up into the other big leather chair was easier than navigating the girders. And squishier. The Baron leaned forward, arms folded loosely on his knees. "What did you want to talk about?" He sounded... friendly. Almost. Not easy, like with Barry Heterodyne, but like he was trying to be.

Gil took a deep breath. The first question really shouldn't be scary, especially since if the answer was yes he'd be travelling with the Baron anyway. "Agatha asked if I wanted to come with her to Castle Heterodyne when it bites her. Um, when it confirms she's really a Heterodyne. Her uncle said she could invite somebody. May I please?"

The Baron sat back, hands curling suddenly around the ends of his chair's armrests. "I should probably have been expecting that one," he murmured. "Did she explain to you that Castle Heterodyne is intelligent and very dangerous?"

"She said it was going to bite her," Gil repeated. Did that count? "I've heard some stories. But it's hers and Barry Heterodyne's, isn't it? I wouldn't think they'd let it hurt people."

"I don't think so either," the Baron said. "I will give my permission. But I want to make sure you know to be careful."

Gil nodded earnestly. "I'm always careful."

The Baron rubbed the bridge of his nose. "Regardless of whether it's at something you're supposed to be doing."

Gil froze, not sure how to answer that.

After a moment, the Baron eyed him and smiled just a little. "Never mind. You're not in trouble for anything. Was that all?"

Gil breathed again and, one more time, rushed the words out to keep them from getting tangled up in worry and hesitation. "No, Herr Baron, I had another question." He had to stop and swallow, then, but the Baron waited and looked like he was paying attention, still smiling a little bit. "Please. Herr Baron. Do you know anything about my family?" The Baron's smile went away entirely, and Gil's stomach lurched and twisted, but he added desperately, "I don't remember very much. Agatha said maybe you didn't know that and hadn't thought to tell me. I just wondered if... if you had any more information. Sir."

"Gil..." The Baron leaned forward again, and Gil swallowed, feeling a little ill and shaky at the serious look on his face. The Baron set a large, heavy hand on Gil's shoulder, very gently, and closed his eyes for a few seconds as he slowly inhaled. Then he opened them again, looking even more serious, and said quietly, "I'm sorry, Gil. There's nothing more I can tell you."

The fear went away, and Gil suddenly felt tired all over instead. And maybe like crying, but he was old enough he shouldn't be doing that so much anyway. And it wasn't as if the Baron had said anything on purpose to hurt. So it was silly. But his eyes still felt hot. "Thank you, Herr Baron," he said dully. "That was everything." He slid out of the chair, out from under the hand on his shoulder, and felt light and chilly when it was gone. The Baron's hand settled on his own knee. Gil bowed a little bit and it curled into a fist.

"You're very welcome. I'm sorry I couldn't be more help."

Gil swallowed and thought he should probably say something else, but he couldn't think of what and there was the kind of lump in his throat that didn't move when he tried to swallow it, so he just went back to the school. By the time he got back to Agatha, he could talk enough to say he was coming with her, and when she hugged him and Sleipnir looked jealous he could smile.