He had expected something mystical to happen when they crossed the threshold into Pandemonium. He had even half-hoped that the air would solidify around Henry and push him out again, since he didn't have a trace of demon blood in his veins.

But it was just a gate with a melodramatic sign to warn off intruders. If the sinister inhabitants of Pandemonium knew that two strangers had just entered their territory, there was no indication of it. The grassy hills on the other side of the railings were deserted. Now and then you could hear a sheep-bell, but there was no sign of a human, or even a part-human, anywhere.

He had no plan for getting out of this. Henry was walking behind him, occasionally jabbing one of the pistols into his back. And, even if Jack managed to knock him over the head and run away, he would come back. Once Henry got a noble ideal into his head, there was no dislodging it. He had to kill Henry or be killed.

And, at the moment, he wasn't sure which of those ideas he preferred. Henry was infuriating – and it would be nice to hurt the spoilt brat who'd had all his mother's love and affection while he'd had to manage with William's fists.

But it wouldn't work. He had always told himself there was a line between avenging his mother and disgusting her. He had always told himself that she would understand him burning the houses and destroying the reputations of her tormentors, provided he didn't actually kill.

But he'd killed already, hadn't he? Jane was dead. It had gone too far now. He would never be able to look his mother in the face. There was no point trying for redemption. And the only thing he wanted, other than redemption, was the dark-haired girl from St Michael's Church. He had been so close to finding her. Why in God's name hadn't Henry been able to wait until he'd found her?

Henry grabbed his shoulder, still pressing the pistol into his back, and pulled him to a halt when they reached the level ground at the top of the hill. Beneath them, the Edinburgh streets stretched away in spirals – so dark and mysterious and reminiscent of the black-haired girl that Jack could have cried.

"Now you take this and walk twenty paces away from me," said Henry, pressing one of the pistols into his hand. "I'll tell you when to turn."

"I thought we were both supposed to turn our backs and walk away from each other."

"Well, of the two of us, I'm the only one who has a sense of honour, so I'm the one who will not be turning my back."

Jack didn't argue. It was literally unthinkable that Henry would shoot him in the back. He took the pistol and turned around, but he didn't start walking.

"Henry, I never meant for this to happen..."

"Twenty paces," said Henry, his voice hard.

"And Jane left my mother to marry the devil," he murmured. It was easier to say this with his back turned, although he wasn't sure he could keep the wobble out of his voice. "He was literally the devil. She would have lived through the childbirth without him knocking her around – I know it. We could have been together." He tightened his hand around the pistol. "Jane didn't even tell you she'd asked for help. Aren't you the tiniest bit angry with her?"

"That's my own affair," Henry snapped. "Besides, from what I understand tonight, Jane did her a favour. Imagine that bright, lovely, idealistic woman having to raise a child like you."

Jack ran his tongue over his teeth, trying to pretend that hadn't stung. "Twenty paces?" he said at last.

"Start walking."

Jack moved forward slowly, wondering if some kind of plan was going to occur to him at the last moment.

At least he wasn't pained by the thought of what he might be leaving behind. He didn't want anything anymore – not his adoring fans, not his piano, not even a final drink. And perhaps the dark-haired girl was dead anyway. The cat-faced man didn't seem like the most stable of protectors.

Except that she wasn't dead. He'd felt closer to her here than he had anywhere else – as though the city was her. Oh god, why couldn't Henry have waited? He just wanted to see her again.

"Now turn."

He didn't know – he never knew – whether it was these thoughts that made him raise the pistol. Perhaps it was pure instinct. Perhaps he just wanted to live. Perhaps, even more than that, he just wanted to kill somebody.

He couldn't have said what happened first. Everything was simultaneous: the noise, the smoke, the pain – even the act of pulling the trigger. There was a sort of whip-crack that dropped him to his knees, clutching his stomach, while darkness spread from between his fingers like treacle, and the horrible tide of realization caught up.

But he couldn't see Henry. Henry was certainly not standing over him triumphantly, ready to fire another shot.

Jack staggered in the direction from which the shot had come. The only sound was the hissing of his breath between his teeth, because the effort it took to haul himself across that hilltop was enormous.

And then he almost stumbled over Henry, because the leaves had half-buried him already.

Had he blacked out after the whip-crack? Had they been here for hours, quietly bleeding, while the dead leaves piled up?

Because Henry was bleeding too – or, at any rate, there was a lot of sticky, shiny blackness on his collar and among the leaves. But he didn't have any of Jack's animation. There was no breath hissing through his teeth.

"Oh fuck," Jack rasped. "Oh fuck."

He gave Henry a prod with his elbow or his knees – he couldn't tell which, because he couldn't tell whether he was standing up or lying down. But there was no making him any less dead. It was not a state you could negotiate with.

And, meanwhile, the blackness spilled between his fingers like the sands of an hourglass, ticking away his life one grain at a time.

***

That was when it all turned around. Ellini had found him staggering half-dead over the Edinburgh hills, and the world had just ignited.

He had a new home, new friends, a new career, a new purpose – all of it following on from the deaths of Henry and Baby Jane, as if the universe was rewarding him for it.

Sometimes it felt as though he really had died that night. He had passed from one life to another. Henry and Baby Jane belonged to the old Jack – they were his problem. The new Jack didn't have to think about them anymore.

But he did think about them. Not every night, granted, because you had to keep your wits about you, with a man like Robin as your teacher. But sometimes – most often, for some reason, when he was with Ellini – he remembered what he was owed, and his perpetual optimism faltered.

Her constant reading and determined solitude were one thing, but what made her really impossible was her refusal to take care of herself. It would never occur to her to go to bed, for example. She scampered about barefoot until exhaustion kicked her legs out from under her, and that was where she slept – wherever she fell.

Jack had found her in almost every room of the palace – curled up under the piano, or on a shelf in the pantry. Once he came back from combat-training to find her skirts hanging over the doorway which led into the barracks. He looked up to see one sooty, bare foot dangling over the edge of the roof above.

Jack sighed and looked for a way up. He wasn't afraid of heights, but he was afraid of Ellini and heights, which made the journey up to the slates quite laborious. Lots of things that didn't scare him had taken on a new, terrifying dimension since he'd fallen in love. It had dawned on him – probably as a result of thinking about Baby Jane, and all the things he was owed – that the world could do some pretty heinous things to him if it managed to get hold of this girl.

And she was in danger already – without a vengeful world getting involved – just from her day-to-day life. Just from her personality. It might have been a corpse with a snapped neck he'd found, rather than a curtain of petticoats over the doorway.

And yet, when he finally managed to clamber up beside her, she was sleeping quite peacefully, with only the gutter between her and a grisly death on the pavement below.

He watched her gloomily for a moment, his chin cradled in his palm.

"Cricket," he said, when he could be reasonably sure he wasn't going to shout.

Her eyelids fluttered for a moment, and then she sat up so suddenly that he had to grab her shoulders for fear that they'd both fall.

"It's me," he hissed. "It's Jack! Sit still!"

The panic subsided – which he was still a bit resentful of, even now. Oh, she couldn't possibly be scared of Jack, could she? He couldn't possibly molest her. He was just a boy, wasn't he? Probably didn't even know what molesting people was for.

He wasn't complaining. He knew it was preferable to the alternative. It just got on his nerves sometimes.

At any rate, she calmed down when she recognized him, and put a hand over her mouth to stifle a giggle. "Oh Jack – I'm sorry-"

"Cricket, is there something wrong with your bed?"

She blinked at him. "I don't think so-"

"You wouldn't know, would you?"

She stared at him for a moment, trying to work out why he was so annoyed.

Jack gave up. "Listen, little cricket, can you do me a favour and not sleep on the roof?"

"But I always sleep up here."

"I'm sure you do," said Jack, picking a piece of lichen off her skirt. "I'm sure you're quite an expert. But I have to sleep too, and I can't do that if I'm worrying about you breaking your neck every five minutes."

Ellini didn't bother to stifle the giggle this time. "Just once would be enough!"

"Well, exactly."

"All right," she said, straightening her face with some difficulty. "I'll try."

"You won't try," said Jack firmly. "You'll succeed. There's a very nice bedroom just off the pantry, with your clothes hanging in the wardrobe and everything."

A look of panic passed over her face, and he saw – as if he'd been there – all the nights when she had lain in that bed, waiting for sleep, reliving the deaths of her family members. He knew – as if she'd told him – how impossible it was to stop that endless playback, unless you read or talked or scampered about to the point of exhaustion and slept wherever you dropped.

Jack let his face soften and picked another piece of lichen off her dress. "But we'll have some supper first – how does that sound? You can tell me about the Ars Goetia, because I bet you've read it cover-to-cover, and apparently it's a big hole in my education."

She gave him a smile of relief. That lovely smudge of ash on her cheek stretched, prettier than any makeup.

He had a few misgivings about this plan, but he tried to dismiss them as he climbed down after her. Ellini – with a suddenness that made him groan – took the descent in two gazelle-like bounds.

He loved their time together, but it was getting harder and harder to hide his attraction to her. He might not have been able to picture or articulate what he wanted from her, but his body knew, and it wasn't shy about getting its point across. He just had to hope Ellini hadn't noticed.

Still, it could have been worse. She could have taken him to the piano room. He lived in dread that she would take him by the hand and lead him towards the piano, begging him to play her favourite song.

She never had, yet. She seemed to know – although not to understand – that it was a sensitive subject for him. And it was difficult to explain, even to himself.

He hadn't played the piano since coming here. Since killing Henry and Baby Jane. He was a murderer, and yet life had instantly rewarded him – given him Ellini and Robin and Pandemonium, and all the things that had made him happy for the first time in his life.

And, as he gradually came to realize – or came to suspect – that Ellini had only started liking him because he played the piano so well, it was his skill with the piano that left him. The tunes still came into his head, but he couldn't translate them into music anymore. His fingers cramped up over the keys. His vision started to blur, and he had to lean forward and rest his head against the sheet-music on its stand until he felt better.

He was starting to think of the piano as some kind of agent of retribution. He remembered his childish nightmares about falling inside – getting beaten by hammers and tangled in strings. And he wondered how long it would be before justice caught up with him.