Edinburgh, 1870: 

Edinburgh was a city wedded to the darkness, in more ways than one. It wasn't just the labyrinth of grey-stone streets and passageways, full of dark corners you could duck into if you didn't want to be seen. It was the line of black railings dividing the everyday Edinburgh from its twin, the Demon Republic, and all the tantalizing possibilities that place held.

True, you didn't see much of the new-breeds on the other side. Occasionally, an elegant lady or a man in a top hat would stalk across the cobbles, but Jack had never seen them breathe fire, or sprout wings, or pick a fight with one of the hapless humans on the other side of the rails.

Still, there was something. The entire city was on edge. A tang of gunpowder lay over the salt smell of the harbour. 

He felt as though he'd come to a city on the precipice of civilization – which, for Jack, was like being on the precipice of a fantasy. The idea that people might stop being polite and civilized at any moment. New-breeds – his own people – just on the other side of those rails. And, for the first time ever, Baby Jane wasn't dogging his heels, pouting and wheedling and caressing, dissolving his soul one inch at a time.

It was too good to be true. Surely that bright, civilized world was just behind him, waiting to swoop down and tie his arms behind his back.

He knew Baby Jane wouldn't take the insults he'd offered her lying down. Surely she'd be after him any day now, dragging Henry and perhaps a couple of policemen in tow? Could she force him to marry her? Was that legal? Decency laws were always biased in favour of the man, but money and influence would have to count for something. Baby Jane had both of those in spades – in wheelbarrows, even. And every penny Jack earned belonged to the Tilneys, because they had paid for his education. He was nothing on his own.

So he played his concerts as if he only had a few days left to live. He poured in all the nervous energy engendered in him by Edinburgh's dark streets. He powered through the sheet music and then kicked away his stool, bowing before the last bars had died away – before the stunned audience could even work out it was over. 

Then the applause would wash over him, and he'd straighten up, still panting, and glower at them – at the city that was so beautiful it was going to be the last beauty he'd ever see.

For some reason, this made them clap even harder.

And then he would give himself over to the adoring crowds – let them shower him with gifts and kisses, drag him to bars and opium-dens. He attacked it all with the same angry enthusiasm with which he attacked his piano, drinking his new friends under the table, suggesting a different bar, or a champagne breakfast at six o'clock in the morning.

He had been playing and drinking as if his life depended on it for three nights when suddenly everything changed.

It was after midnight. He was half-walking and half-staggering down Princes Street, trying to make his way back to his hotel, when he passed the face that had filled his nightmares for the last ten years.

Jack sobered up instantly. He stopped dead on the pavement, his back ramrod straight. He couldn't believe it. It had been ten years, and yet the cat-faced man looked exactly the same – just as handsome, symmetrical, pearlescently pretty. It was as though he'd just stepped out of that night in Camden, the fogs of London still clinging to his back.

Jack swivelled on his heel and searched for the man over the heads of the crowd. Part of him wanted to run, but the other parts were screaming at him not to waste this chance. This was his only lead in ten years – his only hint of the dark-haired girl from St. Michael's. Would she still be with him? Would she even be alive?

But no, she had to be alive. He would have felt something if she'd died. The darkness would have stopped calling to him every damn second. He would have stopped working on his perpetually unfinished song.

Princes Street had seemed wide enough a second ago, but now it was suddenly thronged with obstacles – barrows and donkey-carts, porters and flower-girls – everything doing its best to trip him up or slow him down.

Jack jostled and shoved and swore as he made his way back up the street, trying to keep the cat-faced man in sight. He wasn't particularly tall, but he carried himself differently from every other pedestrian. Jack couldn't decide whether it was striding or gliding. He moved with a kind of graceful assurance that made people melt out of his way.

Jack was so intent on keeping the back of his head in view that he didn't see the railings until they came up against his chest. Some kind of gate had swung shut behind the cat-faced man. And as he looked down, fumbling for the latch that would let him through, another man loomed into view.

This one had to be a guard, because the moonlight was glinting off his helmet.

"Can I help you, laddie?"

Jack could hardly take him in. He raised a shaky hand to point out the cat-faced man, whose back was fast disappearing across the square.

"Who – who is that? The man who just came in here?"

"He's one of us," said the guard.

Jack suddenly realized where he was, and what the railings meant. Maybe he hadn't been as sober as he'd thought.

He straightened up, trying not to let the desperation leak into his voice. "I'm one of you," he protested. "I'm a new-breed. My father was descended from demons on both sides."

"Oh, aye? Have you got any paperwork? A letter of introduction? A useful or interesting demonic symptom?" The guard was talking in a fake-friendly voice that was probably only a whisker away from violence. He was waiting to see what Jack would do.

Jack took a deep breath and lowered his hand from the latch. "I can..." he started, but he had no idea how to finish. He didn't get sick very much. Lots of the things he had been through ought to have killed him. He could play the piano like a steam-powered demon. But none of those things seemed particularly likely to impress this man. "Look, can you at least tell me his name?"

The guard sucked in a breath through his teeth, as if he was marvelling at Jack's audacity. "He's called 'the boss', Sonnie. You'd better learn that if you want to stay alive in this city. On either side of the rails."

***

Jack didn't go back to his hotel room. Terror and excitement had bled him sober, and he needed another drink. He went back to the pub in which he had left his sycophantic new admirers and let their praise wash over him, his mind racing.

How could he get into the demon republic? Could he watch out for the cat-faced man and waylay him when he next crossed the railings? But how could he do that? He was only slightly less helpless now than he had been as an eight-year-old.

Besides, Henry and Jane were coming – either to ruin him, prosecute him, or force him into marriage. He didn't think they'd care about the plight of a woman from Camden who had disappeared ten years ago, and who he couldn't even prove was still alive.

His freedom was draining away every second – and with it, the freedom of the dark-haired girl.

The next whisky and soda made Jack angry. And the one after that made him fatalistic – so much so that, when Henry Tilney walked into the pub with a face of deep, civilized, London solemnity, Jack knew it had all come to an end, and wasn't in the least surprised.

He let Henry drag him out of the pub by his lapels – explaining to his adoring crowd that they were old friends and there was no need to call the police, although Henry did nothing to corroborate this statement. In fact, he snorted at the phrase 'old friends' and punched Jack in the face before they'd even cleared the doorway.

It knocked him off balance, and not just literally. He had never seen Henry use violence before, against anyone. He had expected to be reprimanded – he had expected to hear words like 'deplorable' and 'disgrace' – but he hadn't expected Henry to hit him.

Still, he waved his new friends back into their seats, and closed the door behind him. The noise from the bar was shut out instantly, and somehow he sensed that their concern had disappeared just as fast.

"You've been talking to Baby Jane, haven't you?" he said to Henry, flexing his wounded jaw.

Henry grabbed him by his lapels again and started dragging him up the street. All Edinburgh streets seemed to be on an almost vertical incline, but Henry's teeth were clenched with determination, and he had managed to drag him quite a long way before it occurred to Jack to co-operate.

"Did she tell you what she did to my mother?" he added, without much hope. "Did she tell you about the letter?"

"She's dead," said Henry, without unclenching his teeth.

Jack's foot hit a cobblestone and he staggered. Henry didn't let go of his lapels.

"She's-?"

"Dead," said Henry. "And the baby."

"And the – I'm sorry, what's happening?"

"Is it so surprising?" Henry snapped. "Didn't you tell her to get down to Harley Street? Didn't you say you wouldn't marry her, or acknowledge your child, so she'd better have it taken care of?"

Jack was still stuck on his opening sentence. "She's dead?"

Henry grabbed at extra handful of his shirt and slammed him up against the nearest wall. Up close, he smelled of whisky – another thing Jack had never associated him with.

"You told her to have the baby aborted, and she did," he said, in a deathly, alcoholic whisper. "She contracted dysentery from her wounds and died last night. And, while she was dying, she told me everything you said."

"No, no, no, no, no," said Jack, in a voice that sounded much too high-pitched, even in his head. "That's not – it was what she did to my mother. She told you about the letter, didn't she? I was just trying to teach her a lesson-"

"Oh, well, lesson learned!" said Henry, spluttering in his face. "What a world-class educator you are! You bastard!"

"Henry, I didn't-"

Henry punched him again.

"No, listen," said Jack, holding up a hand to stem the tide of fists. God, why did he sound so much like a child who'd been caught raiding the larder? This was all a mistake – it couldn't be real, any of it.

"Listen, Henry," he said, trying to shake his head clear. "I thought she'd go to the continent before it became obvious, have the baby in some nunnery, and put it about that she was taking the waters in Baden-Baden or..."

"Oh, how noble of you," said Henry. "To just abandon the child without having any designs on the life of its mother."

"My mother begged her for help," said Jack, his voice hardening. "And all she could do was tell her to get down to Harley Street."

"She was seventeen!" Henry spat.

"She's the same woman now!"

"No, she's not. She's dead."

There was a silence, while Jack tried to take this in. No more Baby Jane. No more of that snide, shiny face – the hair with all its ribbons – the constant, petulant caresses when he was trying to play the piano. How could she be dead? She had always got what she wanted out of every encounter they'd ever had. She had seemed inexhaustible.

"You'll give me the satisfaction of a gentleman," said Henry, who had obviously been collecting himself during the lull. "Even if it's the only gentlemanlike thing you've ever done in your life."

"What are you-?"

But Henry pulled out two pistols and put an end to all speculation. Jack supposed he should have known. Once people like Henry started using words like 'gentleman' and 'satisfaction', there could only be one thing on their minds.

"Henry, don't be stupid," he said, finally feeling the pain in his jaw. It came hand-in-hand with the realization that Jane was dead, and cut through the haze of alcohol like a saw. He was horribly awake now. "I'd kill you."

"We'll see."

"You've been drinking."

"Not enough to suffer your impertinence."

"Think of your actress-"

But this was the wrong thing to say to calm him down. "I am thinking of her!" he shouted. "I wouldn't be here if I wasn't thinking of her. She's going to marry a man of honour, not a coward."

"Henry, it doesn't work that way," said Jack, through clenched teeth. "I'm sorry, but it doesn't. Justice doesn't improve your aim, and honour doesn't make you bullet-proof! You've never fought before in your life, and I'd kill you."

"And why should you care if you do?"

Jack tried to think of an answer to this that wouldn't make him sound even more stupid. The words 'because you're all that's left of my mother' were definitely out.

"Henry," he said, trying to block out the pain in his jaw. "It was an accident. You're a good man. I don't want to hurt you."

"Right now," said Henry, in another of those deathly whispers. "I'm not going to give you a chance to run away. I don't need a second, and neither do you. This quarrel dies with us."

Jack passed a hand over his eyes. He was starting to feel angry. "You know, there's a reason duels are fought at dawn. You need to be able to see what you're shooting at."

"There's enough moonlight," said Henry, with a toss of his head that was strikingly – painfully – like Baby Jane.

"There's also the question of the police," Jack went on doggedly. "Duelling is against the law."

For the first time, Henry smiled. He motioned to the top of the street, where the pavement gave way to bare, grassy hillside. At that point, a line of black railings, with a gate at its centre, stretched across the road, barring the way onwards. On top of the gate was a sign that read 'Now entering Hell on Earth'.

They had come to the edge of Pandemonium.

"Law," he said, "is largely a matter of whose land you're standing on."

For the first time, Jack began to wonder if he might not win this duel. For a drunken rich boy who'd never had to fight for anything in his life, Henry was being awfully clever.