Danvers was the night-secretary tonight – in charge of the Academy and a bewildering number of keys, which he hoped were all unnecessary because of the ring of gargoyles surrounding the compound.

Securing the place against the gargoyles was another matter. Danvers hadn't slept much the first night they'd been put in place. He hadn't been able to stop himself creeping to the window and watching the still shapes, which had been lithe and steaming only a few hours before.

He didn't have any particular reason to distrust them. In fact, he had seen them working their strange magic to keep intruders out. At least five men had tried to force their way into the grounds in the past few days, and it was quite comical to watch them pawing at the air between the statues, like men suddenly confronted by an invisible wall.

He felt a pang of conscience and corrected himself – that was, it would not be comical if they weren't disreputable fellows who were endeavouring to do Elsie harm. But, since they were, it was.

In any case, he was obsessively careful as he locked up the Academy, circling the building at least three times and rattling every door handle he could find. 

He was on his third circuit when he noticed a woman standing between the gargoyle statues and – crucially – not pushing at the air as though she was struggling with an invisible barrier. She had black hair but, jumpy as he was, Danvers couldn't mistake her for Miss Syal's ghost. She was too well-built and round-faced for that. And she had fingernails, which ruled out the possibility that she was simply a slave-girl he hadn't met. She was wearing a long, shapeless coat – a man's coat, Danvers would have said – and examining the gargoyle-statues with interest.

He approached her cautiously, trying to decide whether she had passed the invisible barrier, or whether it was still in front of her – but the invisible barrier being invisible, it was rather difficult to be sure.

"Good evening?" he hazarded.

The woman looked up, gave him a curt little nod, and resumed her inspection of the statues.

"Um," said Danvers. "If I might enquire... How did you get past those gargoyles?"

"What, these?" She gave the nearest statue a cheerful slap on the rump. "There's gaps between 'em."

"Yes, but you – you have fingernails..." He stopped and tried to pull himself together. "Did someone invite you?"

"Don't get invited to many places, as a rule. I generally just go where I please. Are you Mr Danvers?"

"At your service," said Danvers. "But you appear to have the advantage of me, Miss...?"

"I want to ask you about the man 'oo runs this place," she said, waving away the social niceties.

"Mr Cade?"

"Is that what they call 'im? Kind to the girls, is 'e? The pretty ones, at least?"

Danvers bridled. "What are you implying?"

The woman gave him a closed-lipped smile. He couldn't decide if it was kind or contemptuous. "You could 'ave a guess if you're feeling up to it," she suggested. 

Danvers tried to collect himself. He was reminded of Violet – not just because of the sharp, painted nails, but because this woman seemed to enjoy outraging him so much. There was the same flavour of bitterness too, but this woman was somehow happier about it.

"I assure you," he said, "Mr Cade treats the girls with perfect propriety."

"Suppose I don't know what that means?"

"It means he cares for them like a father."

"I've known some pretty improper fathers."

"I daresay," said Danvers, and then stopped himself. This woman was making him discourteous. It wasn't like him to be rude, even when he encountered rudeness. Besides, if she had indeed known some improper fathers then she deserved his pity, rather than his derision. It was just difficult to pity that smile.

"I know what 'e's done," she went on. "S'a matter of public record, aint it? And I read like the bloody blazes, I'm telling you. But I don't know why 'e did it, or the manner in which it was done."

"Why is it important?" said Danvers – and then rephrased, trying to be more sensitive. "That is, why does it concern you?"

"Because I've been appointed 'is executioner," said the woman. "Not a job I asked for, but one I could get to like." For just a moment, her cheerful, Cheshire grin deserted her. "I wonder if she knew that when she gave it to me..."

Danvers hastily removed his hat. "Miss Mathilde? But where have you been all this time?"

"Xanadu," she said, with a glance into the shadows behind her. "Any chance of a tea while you answer my questions? Oh, and my friend will 'ave – what will you 'ave, Inspector? You strike me as more of a coffee man."

Danvers looked back at the wall of statues, his heart sinking. It was Inspector Hastings, plain-clothed but always a policeman. And, for some reason, this broke Danvers's fragile grip on composure. He let out a faint, foreboding groan.

He had never liked Inspector Hastings – although he seemed to be an honourable man who did his job with care and attention. The fact that he had never liked him had always been something of a mystery to Danvers, but now he realized the reason, with all the force of a runaway train. He was afraid of him. He was afraid of the man's anger – and not just because angry men made the world so cruel and unpredictable. He was afraid that one day he would find Inspector Hastings's anger in his own heart, and then he didn't know what he would do. 

The Inspector couldn't get past the gargoyles, of course. The look on his face left Danvers in no doubt that he was here with hostile intent. But Miss Mathilde was as quick-witted as he had been led to believe, because she said, "I'm inviting 'im in. I think I can do that, yes? Interesting magic, by the way. I look forward to meeting its architect."

***

Anna stabbed wildly, seizing a fistful of Jack's hair and hacking at his throat, his chest, even trying to tear off his ear with her teeth. He knew it was Anna because those creamy white curls had dropped over his eyes. She couldn't pierce his skin, of course, but it still hurt – almost enough for Jack to take his eyes off the master's retreating back.

And he didn't know what to do. Had it been anyone else, he would have broken their grip by breaking their fingers, but she was one of his girls – he couldn't hurt her. But, oh god, he was getting away, and there would never be another chance like this!

"Anna," he gasped. Her knees were squeezing his ribs with surprising strength. "Anna, please-"

"No!" she screamed. "No! He's holy and godly, and we're nothing – we're nothing!"

Jack lurched backwards and slammed her back into the wall, but not hard enough. She clung on with the tenacity of delirium, and all the while the master's footfalls were dying away.

He gave up and ran after him, with Anna still spitting and struggling on his back – down a staircase and into another velvet-and-leather room, where a door was just swinging closed at the other end.

"I won't let you hurt him!" Anna shrieked. "He's the only one who ever understood!"

She dropped the knife and started raking at Jack's eyes. And as his vision blurred red, a serene, dislocated part of him thought, That's interesting – my eyes aren't covered with skin, so maybe she can damage me there. It certainly felt as though she could.

He tried to grope his way to the door, but all this senses were filling up with red now. He could taste blood in his mouth, for the first time in months.

"Anna, please – he's getting away from me!"

His ears were ringing with her shrieks, but also with a desperation that was building up past the point where he could hold it back. Any second now, he was going to kill her. He could already see it happening in his head. He would break her fingers, slam his elbow into her stomach, and hurl her against the wall. She wouldn't survive it. She was as thin as the rest of them, despite her demented strength.

He was halfway through imagining this grisly scene when her screams stopped, and she dropped off his back like a leech that had had its fill.

Jack turned round, dreading what he would see, wondering if he'd been imagining it so vividly that he'd really done it.

But the Anglo-Indian girl was standing there, holding a marble bust in her hands – a heavy marble bust, now he came to focus on it.

Seeing his look of horror, she said, "Don't worry. I knows 'ow to knock 'em out so's they wake up again. One o' the tricks of the trade, you might say."

But Jack was already running for the door. He called back an incoherent "Thank you", and he thought he added, "Please look after her", but he was never completely sure.

In the next room, he hurtled into one of the livered footmen, all stealth forgotten, sending the contents of his tray flying.

Please God, let me catch him, he thought. I'll never ask you for anything again. There won't be time, the French girl's coming – just let me catch this bastard before she gets me.

Lord Elsmere was in the hall when Jack dived for his legs and sent his face smacking into the marble. And, with all the strength left in his body, he refrained from kicking or stamping on him until he'd managed to drag him by his starched collar to the cellar door – at which point he threw him down the steps.

Everything had been muted up above, unless you counted Anna's shrieks, but here there was a blissful cacophony – groans and echoes and thuds on the uncarpeted stairs. 

Lord Elsmere had barely landed when Jack drove his boot into the man's nose, stomped on his fingers and kicked him in the crotch. The resulting crunches, curses and grunts were better than a symphony – better than anything Orpheus could have come up with, with a lyre or a piano.

He paused to catch his breath, straining to hear what Lord Elsmere was calling him through broken teeth. Possibly a plebeian.

But the man couldn't have been as injured as he looked, because he rolled away and drew a revolver out of his jacket. He fired it once – maybe twice. There was too much roaring in Jack's ears to be sure. One of the bullets must have hit the oil lamp by the stairs, because all the light was suddenly sucked out of the cellar. 

Jack kicked into the dark and heard the revolver skitter away across the floor. Didn't the idiot know this was the abode of Bacchus? It was tooth and claw down here, not fancy firing mechanisms.

He had wanted to say something – he'd wanted to make the bastard understand just what he'd done and why he was being punished. But now all words deserted him. There was only the thumping of his heart and the hissing of his breath between his teeth. 

He remembered approaching Alice Darwin in the mortuary with just this kind of dark, incoherent excitement – and, as though fate was remembering it too, exactly the same thing happened now as had happened then. The master's hand swung out of the shadows with something dark and shining at the end of it, and Jack felt the sharp, rippling shock of a bottle being smashed over his head.

Stars exploded behind his eyes, but he clenched his teeth and clung to consciousness, groping around in the dark for fleeing legs, coat-tails, anything. His girls were here, and there was nowhere to run to, but there had been a gun, hadn't there? Even ten angry, spitting slave-girls weren't much use against a gun.

He could hear running footsteps – but, thank god, not in the direction of the stairs. Cursing, Jack blinked wine out of his eyes and groped around in the broken glass for the gun. Please, please, please let it be here. Let him think he's safe. Let him turn around to taunt me.

And incredibly – insanely – he did. From a long way away – the other end of the cellar by the sound of it – came the clipped, whining tones of the peerage.

"Good God, they told me you were a soldier – a brilliant tactician! How I could have believed she'd see fit to share her whereabouts with you, I'll never know. You're just here for the women, aren't you? Two dowdy matrons and an overgrown schoolgirl. Good heavens, what a prize!"

For the first time in minutes, Jack's fingers closed around something that wasn't sharp. He smiled into the darkness.

"She's playing a larger game," Lord Elsmere went on. "A game that actually stands a chance of succeeding, while you chase around after petticoats like a sailor on shore-leave! You're so blind!"

Nope, thought Jack. Not quite. 

There was a little light at the other end of the cellar. He could see it reflected in Lord Elsmere's shiny shoes – two dull gleams weaving about as the bastard paced this way and that in agitation. It would be enough. Jack took careful aim and fired. 

The gleams went out as suddenly as the oil lamp. Lord Elsmere had dropped to his knees, maybe. Jack heard the man's screams rebounding off the walls and battering his eardrums. It was painful, but he didn't want to cover his ears. He didn't want to miss a second of it. 

He hoped – oh, how he hoped – that Lord Elsmere wouldn't black out from the pain. But he couldn't lose consciousness now, surely. Fear had to be keeping his head up. From his prone position on the floor, he must have been able to see Jack's girls. 

Come when you hear the screams, Jack had said. And come quickly, because I'm not sure how long I'll be able to hold myself back. 

Now his girls were peeling out of the shadows, drawn to Lord Elsmere's screams like moths to a candle-flame. And glory be – one of them was even carrying a lantern. 

They were naked except for the black ribbons twisted around their fingers and forearms, but that was full battle-gear for a Charlotte Grey. They moved without a trace of self-consciousness.

With his breath coming in ragged gasps, Lord Elsmere clung to scorn – the last refuge of the well-bred Englishman.

"I see," he said, still addressing Jack, though he dragged himself round to face the slave-girls. "Too cowardly to dispatch me on your own, aren't you? You're going to let them do it. Hell hath no fury, eh?"

"Well, you'll find out," said Jack. "Won't you?"

***

They tore him limb from limb. One image that he would always treasure was one of the master's arms sticking out of the wine-rack, among dusty bottles of vintage port.

When it was over, Jack kissed every one of his girls on their sticky, red foreheads. He wanted to call them his angels – he wanted to say they'd done magnificently – but he knew he was pushing his luck just by kissing them. One or two had drawn their heads back with an affronted hissing sound. They were in a good enough mood to permit physical contact, just this once, but accepting the patronizing praises of a man, letting him call them his anything, would be another matter.

Ginniver was the only one he spoke to, although she looked just as fierce, sinewy and blood-stained as the others. He leaned down so only she could hear him and whispered, "I think things will work out with that greengrocer. Now you've got it out of your system."