The latest cousin of Tarvek's to arrive was Lyuba van Bulen, a tall girl of almost fourteen with the same vivid red hair, whose eyes went very wide when Anevka brought her around and introduced her to Agatha. "I thought you were a rumour," she blurted.

Agatha blinked at her. "You didn't think I was real?"

Lyuba looked rather sheepish. "It just seemed so unlikely."

"She's been publicly known for almost a year now," said Anevka, lips thinning as if her cousin was embarrassing her.

"A lot of things are publicly known about the Heterodynes that aren't so," Lyuba shot back. "And my father has an odd sense of humour. It's not as if I've had much opportunity for independent verification!"

"It must be very frustrating not to be able to believe what your relatives tell you," Agatha said, trying to be polite, and they both looked at her pityingly. It stung, and Agatha tried not to grind her teeth.

"It must be very strange if you can," said Lyuba. She sounded wistful enough that Agatha forgave her a little bit.

"Uncle Barry is very reliable," she said. "The Castle does like to say strange things, though."

Lyuba looked slightly confused by this. Anevka towed them over to Seffie and Sleipnir to discuss clothes - one of Sleipnir's friends from home had sent her several articles on textile development a few days ago, which Tarvek had immediately borrowed, and Anevka explained that one of the Sparks involved had van Bulen as a patron.

Agatha was trying to pay attention to what they said about clothing design, mostly because Tarvek would be interested if he weren't busy, when a beegle tried to run up her back. "Oof!"

She pitched forward into Seffie, who caught her automatically and addressed the beegle imperiously. "Down. Down! Where did you come from?"

"The Lord Heterodyne had some with him," Lyuba said, regarding it warily.

"I think this one's pretty young," said Agatha, turning around. The beegle buzzed her wings and put her nose in Agatha's face, and Agatha put her arms around the fuzzy thorax. "She won't listen to you if her training isn't finished and she probably wouldn't have snuck in here if it was."

"I shouldn't think your uncle would take untrained animals out in public," said Lyuba, sounding rather shocked. "Or that he'd want them listening to other people."

"It depends on what they're supposed to listen to." Tweedle had come over, probably drawn by the presence of something dog-like. "If they're only meant to fight wasps, they don't need to be able to jump on people who are telling them to stop."

"They're not mean," said Agatha, putting her hand on the beegle's mandible. The beegle wiggled a little and tried to comb her hair with a forelimb. "The young ones go out for practice. I want to go find her some honey or something."

The other girls didn't come; Tweedle followed her to the kitchen and got down the sugarcane juice while Agatha was hauling a stool over. Agatha sighed. "I wanted to pick something," she pointed out. And she'd suggested honey.

Tweedle frowned at the juice. "She won't drink this?"

"Of course she will." The beegle was already trying to investigate the juice, so Agatha took it from him and poured some in a saucer, then handed him the jug. The beegle tried to run up him, this time, and Tweedle hastily sealed it and put it away, then leaned against the counter as the beegle joined Agatha on the floor and began licking away at the saucer.

"I thought that one was full-size. Is she really still a puppy?"

"They don't start as puppies," Agatha said. "She used to be a larva. And then a pupa."

Tweedle wrinkled his nose. "That doesn't sound like much fun."

"The larvae are cute. Don't you like caterpillars?" They weren't very caterpillar-like, really. They were white and a bit squishy and you shouldn't pick them up. Puppies probably were more fun.

"I guess they're okay." Tweedle tried petting the beegle and looked startled when the proboscis came out to lick him. Agatha giggled at him a little. "So how's Lyuba doing in the contest for your favour?"

Agatha blinked. "She's okay..."

"Oh, don't look at me like that, we all know Cousin Tarvek's got it sewn up, especially now that you know he's the Storm King. If I say winning you over would be a coup for somebody I assure you it's strictly metaphorical."

"I don't see what his being Storm King has to do with it," Agatha said. "He's nice."

"He's clever," Tweedle said, as if this were a contradiction. "I don't think any of us were that careful that young. It even impresses Seffie."

"He's nice even when he isn't careful," said Agatha. "Even if he overthinks stuff sometimes."

Tweedle snorted. "You tell him that, he probably doesn't believe there's any such thing."

The beegle sipped the plate clean and started investigating the rest of the students' kitchen. Agatha tipped her head back without getting up off the floor. "You all act like it's so much work to make friends," she said. "Maybe you'd have more fun if you just tried actually liking people and stopped worrying about it so much."

"Maybe you have that luxury," he said, scowling. "Everybody knows they'd better like you no matter what."

"I'm not going to do anything to them if they don't!" Agatha said indignantly.

"You wouldn't have to," he snapped. "Just not do anything for them, fifteen years down the road. If they can make you like them or think they need you, they're set."

Agatha stood up. "Tarvek might make it sound like he thinks friends are all about politics," she said, "but I think he's really happy when he's with us."

"He ought to be," said Tweedle. "Look what it got him."

"You don't have to be jealous," Agatha said, feeling furious and sorry for him at the same time and very muddled. "You should just-" He should try being nice to people, but he was sometimes, and the frustrating thing about Tarvek's cousins and sister and sometimes even Tarvek was that they did make it sound like being nice to people was something you did mostly to get them to do what you wanted later. "Stay here and look after the beegle. Here girl, play with Tweedle."

"Wha-" Tweedle caught the beegle automatically as she jumped up and buzzed across the room to him. (Uncle Barry was working on scaling up their ability to fly, and had gone over all their dragon notes in the process.)

Agatha left him in the kitchen, relieved when he didn't follow her, and went to find Gil and Tarvek. She knew they really liked her, even if they were busy a lot lately. They were side-by-side in Gil's room poring over a notebook, and she flopped down next to them. "So whatcha doing?"

They exchanged a slightly worried look. "Studying how not to be assassinated," said Gil.

"Oh." Agatha looked at the notebook. The page did have an awful lot of poisons on it. "You don't think people will be happy about Tarvek being the Storm King?"

"Some people will be," said Tarvek. "Some won't. My family's probably not going to try anything, which is good, since there's a lot of them here now. But there's always somebody." He glanced at Gil. "And some people will try mostly out of spite. I don't want anybody hurting Gil to get to me. Or my regent for that matter."

"Oh. That would be horrible." Nobody should hurt them. Ever.

"I don't think anybody's going to think assassinating you is useful," Tarvek said, chewing on his pencil. "The last thing anybody with political sense wants is to get you and your uncle really mad, and somebody without political sense would probably be either pretty straightforward or really hard to predict."

"You're really reassuring," said Agatha, and Tarvek looked sheepish. She scooted over to hug him. "I don't feel like studying poisons right now but I'm glad you two aren't arguing again."

"Well," said Gil, "not very much, anyway."

She really was glad, but she didn't really want to think about assassins, either. "Tarvek, could I take Sleipnir her papers back? I think she'd like them to show Lyuba."

"Oh! Sure. They're in my nightstand. Mind the trapped lock."

"I know. The spikes should be at a 45-degree angle this time, right?"

Tarvek nodded, and Agatha went to retrieve Sleipnir's textile articles and drop them off with her, prompting squeals of delight and several invitations to stay and discuss them. She said she was tired, which was true, and went to her room for a nap only to discover she wasn't really sleepy. She was just tired on the inside and restless on the outside and she wanted to talk to somebody who... who really knew what they were talking about and hadn't learned how to treat people from somebody like Prince Aaronev. And a hug.

Agatha got up and put on her shoes, which she'd kicked across the room in frustration earlier, and stopped to think. Uncle Barry had stopped in to hug and kiss her quickly before Lyuba even got there, and said he was sorry not to stay longer but he was heading out again this evening. But Lilith and Adam weren't going anywhere, although Adam might be in the forge still.

She left her room again. Tweedle's bears were chirping a song she didn't know and the beegle had found Zoing, who was letting her try to groom him and feeding her sugar cubes out of the hoard in his coatsleeves. Agatha smiled and answered everybody who smiled or waved or called to her on her way out, mostly because it would bother them if she didn't, and was very relieved when she finally got to Lilith's door and knocked.

It slid open and Lilith looked down at her almost immediately. "Agatha! Come in. It's been a while since you visited."

"I've been very distracted lately," Agatha said solemnly, following her in, "and I got to see you more in the labs but now I wanted to talk to you so-" She stopped at the doorway to Lilith's sitting room, which had Baron Wulfenbach in it. Lilith sat down on the sofa, across from him, before looking back. "Am I interrupting?" Agatha added. She hadn't thought Lilith might be busy with another friend.

"You're very welcome to join us," Lilith said, and Agatha ran across and jumped onto the sofa with her, landing half in her lap and all the way there when Lilith caught her and pulled her in. "What did you want to talk about?"

Agatha wriggled into a comfortable spot, head on Lilith's shoulder. "Tarvek's cousins, kind of."

"What are they doing?" Baron Wulfenbach asked sharply, sitting up. Agatha and Lilith both looked at him in surprise, and he frowned. "If you want privacy, I can go, but if they're causing trouble in the school, that's something I should address."

"You don't need to go away," Agatha objected. "You were visiting first anyway."

He sat back and picked up his coffee, still looking alert. "Very well. What about Tarvek's cousins?"

"They're not doing anything bad, exactly," Agatha admitted, snuggling back down. "But when they're almost relaxed, some of them say the same kinds of things Tarvek does, about pretending to like people because it's useful and they might do you favours later and..." She turned her face to hide against Lilith's shoulder. "I don't know what to think about people anymore sometimes. Because I guess Prince Aaronev and the Geisterdamen really were like that."

"Oh, Agatha." Lilith squeezed her a little tighter. "...Some people are like that, yes. Not everybody. And not everyone who's been taught to think that way is actually malicious."

Agatha sighed and sat up a little. "He didn't say it was malicious. Just that it was what everybody really did."

"He?" Lilith frowned. "...Tarvek?"

"Tweedle. Tarvek thinks it's normal but he really does care, even if Prince Aaronev told him to pretend to." A thought struck her. "Everybody thinks he's supposed to marry me, do you think I should?"

Lilith cleared her throat. "I think you should wait until you're older and then decide whether you want to."

"That does sound like a reasonable approach," said Agatha, and glanced over in concern as Baron Wulfenbach coughed suddenly. He shook his head and sipped at his coffee again. "But about the other people," she added, "how do you tell?"

Lilith looked sympathetic. "It's hard when you don't feel you know whom you can trust, isn't it?"

"That's what Uncle Barry said," Agatha told her, sighing again, "but we didn't really talk about how to figure it out. Anyway, I know who I really trust, but I don't know how to decide about other people."

"Can I ask who you really trust?" the Baron asked, glancing at Lilith as if she might tell him off for interrupting.

"Uncle Barry and you two and Adam," Agatha said immediately, "and Gil and Tarvek and Aunt Donna," whom she'd kind of started thinking of as her aunt even though she wasn't married to Uncle Barry yet. "Madame Otilia - and the other teachers, I guess - and Theo... and Sleipnir and Z and Nick and a lot of the other kids are mostly nice even if they used to pick on Gil too much. Most everybody from Mechanicsburg, but not about as many things, because Uncle Barry says it's like with Castle Heterodyne where even if it likes me it doesn't always have very good judgement. And sometimes the Castle is really kind of a jerk." She stopped for a minute, feeling she'd forgotten somebody. "Oh, and Aunt Gertrude. I don't know her very well though."

The Baron looked at her. "I wish I had faith in nearly as many people."

That wasn't very encouraging, even if she guessed Mechanicsburg only counted secondhand for him. "But you know a lot of people I don't."

"Yes," he said doubtfully. "But I'm not friends with most of them."

"I'm not exactly friends with everybody in Mechanicsburg," said Agatha, "but we're supposed to look after each other anyway." She bit her lip for a second. "Who do you trust?"

"Barry," he said, promptly. "Adam and Lilith. Dr Sun. Boris. Possibly Gertrude and Donna, I don't know them that well but they seem sensible."

"You act like you trust Gertrude," Lilith murmured.

"I thought you trusted Madame Otilia," said Agatha. "And what about Gil?" And her and Tarvek and Theo? But especially Gil.

"Otilia is Tarvek's now," said Klaus. "As the Jägers are Barry's. It's not as simple as trusting or not trusting them. And, yes, I trust Gil. Although children are a little different."

Agatha shifted to sit back against Lilith and remembered to nudge her shoes off before drawing her heels up onto Lilith's knee. "You mostly don't trust people who are loyal to somebody else first?" she asked slowly.

"Not completely. It becomes a matter of trusting them conditionally on trusting that person. You know that if something happened to change that, they wouldn't be on your side." He ran a hand through his hair. "I suppose I'm sounding like Tarvek's relatives now? Politics does that, I'm afraid."

"A little. I was mostly thinking you sounded like Tarvek."

"Is that better?" he asked.

"Of course." Didn't he talk to Tarvek? "He doesn't make it sound like nothing's ever real."

"Good for him," Lilith said firmly. When Agatha turned so she could see her, Lilith was still looking at Baron Wulfenbach, but she looked down at Agatha after a second. "Some of them may think they're being helpful by telling you that people imitating good things, and good feelings, means there aren't any real ones. But they are wrong." She pursed her lips. "And some of them might be warning you to try to keep you from trusting people they see as rivals."

Agatha sighed. "This is complicated."

"Yes, I'm afraid it can be," said Lilith. "It's even more complicated because while some people will betray you, a lot of people learn to be trustworthy by being trusted." She looked at Baron Wulfenbach again, eyebrows going up a little. "Klaus is better at doing that for people than he makes it sound, actually."

The Baron shook his head slightly. "That's different again. Giving people what they want, seeing that their best interests coincide with yours. A lot of people can be trusted if you're their best hope of protection." He looked at Agatha and sighed. "I don't mean to make it sound so bleak. As I said, I don't trust many people completely, but the ones I do I would trust with anything. It's very much real."

Agatha looked between them. That... didn't exactly sound bleak. It sounded somewhere between how Tarvek and Uncle Barry talked sometimes, where you tried to make things better for people and you did hope they'd be nice back - and to other people - but it wasn't the only reason. It sounded like Lilith thought of it as a chance to help people be better and it made Baron Wulfenbach sad because sometimes they didn't have a lot of other options to start off with. "You're pickier than Lilith and Uncle Barry about what counts, aren't you? I don't think you'd've counted the Castle if you were me."

"Not even a little bit," he said.

Agatha shrugged. "I know it really likes me and doesn't want me to die," she said. "I don't think it's very sensible at all though sometimes. How did you decide?"

He frowned. "I'm not sure," he said, sounding annoyed at finding himself without a logical reason. "I suppose...people I could go to, no matter what had happened."

"Most of Klaus's list is people he's known a very long time," Lilith said, dropping a kiss on the top of Agatha's head. "I'm not sure he made a specific decision to trust us so much as we liked being around each other and it grew over time. There wasn't that much risk at stake, to begin with."

The Baron choked on his coffee. "Seriously?" he said, when he'd stopped spluttering. "We are talking about a couple of Heterodynes."

"You know they were never going to-" Lilith began indignantly, then stopped and covered her eyes with one hand. "No, I'm sorry, naturally you didn't know that at the time."

"This is another of those complicated parts, isn't it," said Agatha.

The Baron smiled, suddenly looking oddly younger. "Not really. I just liked them enough to take a chance," he said.

Agatha smiled back at him. Lilith sounded like she was smiling when she said, "It is worth taking a chance on people sometimes. Which you might - if you're not being picky," she added, definitely teasing them a little, "call a sort of experimental trust. Although if you have the option, it's good to have somebody else you trust to keep an eye on things when you do that." She turned Agatha to face her and arched her eyebrows. "Which is one of several reasons it's a good idea for people to know where you are."

Agatha squirmed a little. "I haven't really gone sneaking around anywhere lately." Not since the vault. Obviously trying to hide from Prince Aaronev didn't count, especially since she hadn't really managed to be very sneaky at all. "And the Jägers usually knew before that anyway. But we're being good."

Lilith ruffled her hair. "I know. But we want you to understand why. It isn't arbitrary." A wry glance over Agatha at Baron Wulfenbach. "We've all had some alarming experiences losing track of each other, too."

"Uncle Barry said." Agatha settled down against her again. "It's not like I thought you wanted us to be bored."

"My school is not that dull," the Baron muttered.

Agatha tried not to giggle. It would probably be rude. "But the rest of the Castle is interesting, and the finished parts for people to live in don't sound the same. But everything's been really interesting since we broke through anyway."

"Don't sound the same?" said the Baron, raising his eyebrows. "The hum of the engines?"

"Yes! And the way they made everything vibrate differently," Agatha said, sitting up. "I really liked it. It felt kind of like Uncle Barry really. I can do that myself anyway now, but it's different from feeling it from outside."

The Baron's lips twitched and then he said, "Interesting. I wonder if it's a Heterodyne quirk, or simply an association with a caretaker? Maybe I should ask Barry what he thinks of my airship engines."

"I like the different frequencies coming through things, but they are really loud up close," said Agatha.

"You were definitely not meant to be hearing them from that close," he said.

"I know," Agatha said with a sigh. "But they were really neat anyway." They'd probably be even better now, and she could shut out some of the noise! "Will you let me see them with permission sometime?"

"Yes, as long as you find an adult to take you there," he said.

Yes! "I was hoping you would, since you should be able to explain them even better than Gil."

"I am somewhat older than Gil," said the Baron. "You may have to wait a while if you want me to show you. I'm usually busy at present."

"I know," she said. "Maybe I'll ask somebody else first. But I'd really like it when you have time."

"You should invite Gil," Lilith said, sounding like she wanted to laugh. "And Tarvek and Zoing, of course."

"Yeah! They'd really like it too." Well... Tarvek would think the engines were interesting. She wasn't sure how much fun he'd actually have with the Baron.

Baron Wulfenbach eyed them both dubiously. "Well, Gil would."

"Tarvek would like the engines," said Agatha. "I wish you two were getting along better."

"So do I," said the Baron.

"It might help with that to spend time talking about something that isn't making you both miserable," said Lilith.

"I'm not sure there's anything he'd be happy to discuss with me," said the Baron. "But I'll bear that in mind."

Agatha kind of wanted to argue with that, but she couldn't really. "He's still scared of you," she said. "I'm trying to talk him out of it."

"Thank you for that."

"You're welcome." Agatha leaned back again. Lilith was solid and comfortable. "I'm not sure he really thinks he should pretend to like people or he'd try to do it with you. But I don't know how to tell if somebody's pretending that, either," she added wistfully. "Is that complicated too?" Did everything have to be?

Lilith hugged her close. "People are complicated. I know you're not going to like to hear this, but it takes practice. It can't be as simple as listing a set of rules, because people could try to imitate those. But honestly? Most of the time, it's probably worth believing. Liking you doesn't necessarily make them reliable in every way - you know that from Castle Heterodyne already." Agatha nodded at that. "You probably will get enough experience with flattery to learn to recognise it over time, but you're a very sweet girl and most people will probably either stop at being civil, or act as if they like you because they really do."

"If it helps," Baron Wulfenbach said wryly, "you're difficult not to like."

Agatha looked over at him, startled and not sure if she should feel hurt. "Were you trying?"

He spread his hands, looking like he was trying not to smile, which Agatha thought was usually a little silly. "Not with you, particularly," he said. "But before I met them, I was expecting your father and uncle to be simultaneously very charismatic and very dangerous to be around. I actually intended to avoid them."

"That didn't work very well, huh."

He definitely looked amused, even if he still wasn't quite smiling. "Not at all. They were... a little apologetic about people being frightened of them. I think they were getting a bit tired of it by that point, but still determined to talk to everyone who so much as made eye contact."

"And you did?" Agatha prompted, as if Theo were telling the story. She should ask Uncle Barry what happened later, too.

"Yes. And they turned out to be-" He gestured as if he might be able to find the right word in the air someplace. "Not just charming but considerate. And perhaps a little lonely at that moment. If I'd avoided them then, I might never have got a word in edgewise; by a week later they were surrounded half the time."

"I bet they'd have talked to you anyway. I try to talk to everybody some."

"He helped us find a place to stay," Lilith began, only for Baron Wulfenbach to start laughing. Agatha tried to figure out how in the world this was funny.

"I tried," the Baron said, seeing her confusion. "Only to discover someone had accidentally damaged the building where I was staying and it was not exactly livable."

"Barry suggested they could all help repair it," Lilith took up the story, "but the landlord was understandably a bit frustrated and said he'd rather abandon the place altogether and use the insurance to buy a house somewhere quieter than deal with Sparky amateur architects. So Bill asked if he'd like to sell it instead."

"Ooh," said Agatha, twisting around. "Did he make it talk?"

Lilith blinked down at her. "What? -Oh. No, he didn't give it a personality like Castle Heterodyne."

"I didn't think it would be exactly like," Agatha said.

"Hah. No, it wouldn't have been. But Castle Heterodyne is in something of a unique situation. Even if Bill had known exactly how to repeat the effect, I'm not sure it would have worked on a smaller lot and without the same kind of power supply."

"Maybe, maybe not," said Baron Wulfenbach, sounding interested. "It's been clearly demonstrated lately that enormous size isn't strictly necessary for a mechanical brain - well, except perhaps-"

"-When you're making it out of bricks?" Lilith asked with a grin.

He grinned back a bit wryly. "That would make it tricky." He looked at Agatha. "Although they did opt to rebuild with room for everyone who'd previously been staying there, and with that many Sparks in one house, Bill said once or twice that he could see why Faustus decided the Castle needed a personality."

She giggled. "To keep an eye on them when they had impractical ideas?"

"It happens to every Spark now and then," the Baron said. "We've tried to steer you away from a few, but despite your lack of experience, you and your friends have been unusually sensible."

Agatha smiled at him, pleased. "I don't know if we were really trying to be."

Baron Wulfenbach rubbed a hand over his mouth. "Even more impressive," he said.

"Klaus," Lilith said, laughing.

"I'm not joking!"

Agatha grinned and wriggled back against Lilith. This was good. Happy and comfortable with grown-ups who definitely really did like each other, even if Baron Wulfenbach did a lot of politics. Although there was something that would make it better. "Lilith? May I make some hot cocoa?"

Lilith set her on the floor and stood up to go to the kitchen with her. "Certainly. Klaus, do you want more coffee?"

He glanced into the mug a bit wistfully. "I should probably go-"

Lilith raised an eyebrow. "Mm. Appointment? No, then you wouldn't say probably."

He sighed. "No, but there's always something."

Agatha stopped in the kitchen doorway to watch them. Lilith said, "You're probably right - you should go make some time for Gil."

The Baron eyed her. "Not exactly what I meant."

Lilith smiled at him in a way that pretty much said, yes, but it's what you should have meant.

"He was studying poisons with Tarvek when I left," Agatha volunteered.

Baron Wulfenbach gave her a slightly startled look. "Perhaps I'd better not interrupt."

"Klaus!" said Lilith. "Really?" She scooped Agatha up and said, not quite in her ear, "It's important to do things you should do even when you'd rather not, but some people are not very good at figuring out when something they want to do is also something they should do."

"I think you might be telling the wrong person that," Agatha told her.

Lilith smiled at her. "Well, you might need to know it eventually too."

The Baron followed them into the kitchen to leave his mug in the sink. "Thank you for the advice, Lilith," he said a little drily. "Agatha..." He stopped and gave her a long look. "Listen to your uncle about how to judge people's intentions, not Tarvek's cousins," he said finally. "Memorable as the occasional mistake might be, I'm not sure he actually makes nearly as many."

"Okay." Agatha leaned out of Lilith's arms for a hug. He stepped into range looking like he thought she might fall, even though Lilith would never drop her. No wonder he and Uncle Barry worried about their going across high places, if he got worried about this. "You too, okay?"

He stepped back looking like he might laugh again, around the eyes. "I'll keep that in mind."