My hand stiffens around my cider. Is he saying he doesn’t know anything about my dad? Or is he just testing me? “I don’t want twenty-year-old information,” I say, not sure what the protocol is here. I feel like this is the conversational equivalent of tumbling down a mountain, hitting trees as I go.

“Fill ’er up,” he says to the bartender, lifting his glass, and he turns away from me without another word.

I wait, but he doesn’t show any sign that he’s going to continue. “So that’s it?” I say. “You’re just going to stop talking to me?”

“Precisely,” he says without looking in my direction.

I glance at Ash, who’s laughing and gesturing while he tells a story. Meanwhile, I’m one sentence into my ask and I’ve already been told no. And for the life of me, I can’t think of a smooth or cunning way to convince Angus to help me. But then again, I’m not sure cunning would even work with him. So I change tactics once again. “Why?”

He pauses for a moment, looking at me like I just said something strange. “Because you’re green and sloppy.”

“That doesn’t mean I don’t have information to trade,” I say, and my head feels a little odd, like I’m not getting enough air.

“Not interested,” he says.

Damn it all. No one would shut me down so completely unless they actually knew something.

I take another big gulp of cider and gather my resolve. “Look, I don’t know what the right thing to say here is.”

He turns toward me, looking at me like I’m saying wild things, but I know that at the very least, I have his attention.

“I’ve never tried to trade for information before,” I say hurriedly, “so I don’t know how it works. And maybe I am sloppy, but you’ll deeply regret it if you dismiss me on that point alone.”

He rolls his whisky around in his mouth like he’s trying to make a decision. He stares at me for such a long time that sweat beads at my temples. “So tell me,” he finally says, “what could a young girl, whom I’ve never seen in society, possibly tell me that I don’t already know?”

By his tone, I get the sense that it’s his business to know what no one else does, that it’s a mark of pride.

“What do you know about Christopher?” I ask again.

“That’s not how this works,” he says. “You’re going to tell me what it is that you know, and if I think it’s worth a trade, I’ll reciprocate. If not, you’ll get nothing.”