On the journey back, Ellini didn't think. She propped her elbow against the carriage door and held a book in front of her eyes until her arm went numb. Her eyes followed the lines of print diligently, but she couldn't take in what they said.

There wouldn't have been much conversation, even if she hadn't been immersed in her book. She and Alice had nothing to say to each other.

On the way back through the fire-mines, Alice had questioned her minutely about what had gone on there. And Ellini had been in such a detached, dream-like state that she'd answered without feeling. Perhaps that had infuriated Alice most of all. The cruel stupidity of the place was one thing, but the docile way Ellini described it made her clench her fists.

Val was sulkily silent all that time, but she listened. Ellini could see her gnawing her underlip. And, when they reached the sunlight of Cherry Hinton, she hefted her sword onto her back and trudged off, muttering significantly that she would be 'around'.

Ellini was too relieved to wonder what that meant. Now she had one less person to convince that she was fine. If she hadn't had a four-hour carriage ride with Mrs Darwin to endure, she would have been almost light-hearted.

At Oxford, they got out, and walked to the Faculty in silence. It seemed an endless trek to Ellini, who couldn't read and walk at the same time, and couldn't recall what she'd just been reading, and couldn't think of anything to say to Alice either. She had no distractions to take her mind off her fears. She had nothing but the deadening calm which had descended on her as soon as Jack had said the word 'sister'.

When they reached the Faculty, Alice bustled off immediately to see what had been done to her glass laboratory in her absence.

Ellini stayed in the hall with Sarah and Dr Petrescu, going through the pleasantries of greeting and leave-taking as though it were a dance. One step forward, one handshake, one brief, flickering smile. She couldn't bear to meet Dr Petrescu's eyes and read what he was thinking. She wanted to go straight to Matthi, fling her head on her shoulder, wring her hands and ask what she was supposed to do.

But she knew what Matthi would say. 

"What you've promised. What's kind. What'll hurt the smallest number of people."

It was just that knowing the right thing to do was not the same as being able to do it.

There was a beautiful piano in the hall – it must have been new since her last visit. Ellini fixed her eyes on it while Dr Petrescu spoke.

"You'll be wanting to see our young guest, of course. She's gone to bed, but I'm sure she wouldn't mind you looking in. I've given her your old room – and, of course, Sarah is back in the attic, which leaves us rather pressed for space." He paused a fraction, and then said, with exquisite tact, "Will you share a room with Alice, or Jack?"

Ellini was so surprised that she looked up at him. Of course, it was Dr Petrescu, so there was no judgement there, but she sensed his interest in her response – as though he was holding his breath.

She looked down again, blushing wretchedly. "I suppose... Jack," she muttered. She knew Jack could be prevailed upon to leave her alone, whereas Alice couldn't.

"Ah," said Dr Petrescu.

She didn't stay to savour his expression. She hitched up her skirts and climbed the staircase, trying to outdistance her embarrassment. It almost made her purposeful.

But she was meandering again by the time she reached her old bedroom door. She wanted to meander right past – up another two flights to the Jigsaw Room, or onto the ledge which led up to the roof. God, how willingly she would have sprinted over those rooftops, even with fifty gargoyles on her tail, rather than open this door.

But the sound of gentle, rhythmic breathing reassured her. At least she wouldn't have to make conversation if the – the person was asleep. She only had to look.

She drifted into the room without a sound. Without feeling alive enough to make one.

The person was asleep in the bed. One plastered leg was protruding from the covers, propped up on a stack of pillows. A paraffin lamp was turned low by her bedside. Her bare arms, mottled with bruises, lay on top of the bedclothes, quite still.

Ellini thought, this is how it would have been twenty years ago, if they'd been able to find her body. She would have been laid out just like this for the wake. Mother would have insisted. Somebody would have come to say the last rites – not Father Maloney, obviously, although no-one had thought of blaming him back then.

She took a deep, shuddering breath, and forced her eyes open. She was back there. You had to watch your thoughts so carefully, because the most unguarded of them could lead you back there. It was an 'all roads lead to Rome' situation.

She couldn't understand why the girl was so young. Had Jack said something about that? But she hadn't been listening, of course. How could this be her sister when she didn't look a day older than the morning she had tumbled into the Fleet?

Nobody could have survived a drop like that. Everyone had said so.

The little girl stirred and opened her eyes a crack. She tried to shift into a more comfortable position, and then winced as she wrenched the broken leg.

"Leeny?" she said, half-conscious, peering through the gloom. "Will you read me back to sleep?"

She had said it automatically, perhaps. As if they still shared the top-floor bedroom in the cottage by Camden lock. She had often asked for stories when she woke up from a nightmare: 'What happened to Roderick Random again? Who d'you think would have won in a fight between him and Robinson Crusoe?'

Ellini pursed her lips and bit down on them hard. She could feel something encroaching on her.

"It can't be you," she said hoarsely, half-hoping the girl would sink back into sleep and not notice her.

The girl stirred and blinked, as if she was trying to wake up. "What did you say?"

"I said it can't be you," Ellini repeated, straightening her back, even though she was swaying. "You've been dead for twenty years. That's over half my life." She made a sweeping gesture, trying to brush off the panic that was crawling up her frame. "You can't just come back here and... If it had been only one or two years, fine, it might have done some good. But it's too late now."

She looked at the girl, who was still blinking in a befuddled way.

"It's too late for you to come back," she repeated. "It can't be you."

"Well, all right, fine, supposing it isn't?" said the girl, with a glare so familiar that it cut through all Ellini's defences. She had thought she'd forgotten it. She had squashed it down so hard. She had avoided children just so that she wouldn't encounter anything similar, even though she was scarcely likely to, because that glare was so unique.

"I'm still a little girl with a broken leg who's just asking you to read to her for half an hour. Let's stop thinking about what's true and start thinking about what's kind, shall we?" The girl gestured irritably towards the windowsill. "Book's over there. The Moonstone. Do you know it?"

Ellini took it shakily. "I can't-" she said, in a tight voice.

"From what I remember, it's all you can do when you're upset. Anyway, we've got to a really exciting bit, and Sergei can't do it properly. He keeps saying how unlikely everything is."

***

When Jack looked in on them half an hour later, it was a very idyllic scene – exactly the sort of thing he'd imagined when he'd been fighting to get Sita out of the demon realms. Ellini sitting by her bedside with a book in her lap, occasionally looking up from the page with an expression of gentle disbelief, but never losing the thread of her sentences.

And Sita lying back with her eyes closed, looking as though she felt safe, in a way someone who'd met Father Maloney seldom ever did.

He wanted to go in – somehow be a part of the scene – contribute something – but he didn't want to disturb them. They probably needed time together. Besides, there was nothing so guaranteed to remove the idyll from a scene as the presence of a man.

He shut the door gently, half-hoping they would hear it and call him back. But they didn't.

The trouble with being a man was that, no matter how much wisdom you'd accumulated, no matter how many epiphanies you'd lived through, you were still a hostage to the same base instincts. You still felt your life wasn't worth living if you couldn't serve them. All the perils and privations he'd been through just made everything seem more urgent. What had he survived them for, if he couldn't have Ellini?

He was annoyed by these thoughts. He was annoyed that they could follow on the heels of the lovely, idyllic scene he'd just witnessed. He went down the staircase into the hall and seated himself with grim determination before the piano.

He thought of the Jigsaw puzzle he'd used in the Indian Room to draw her out and curb his own impatience. The piano could be like that: something to focus on while he tried with every fibre of his being not to catch hold of her.

It was like a shifting, musical puzzle anyway. He found that if he thought about what he was doing – considered which chord to play, or anticipated the next movement – he lost the flow and clattered to a halt. It was like fighting. You sort of had to feel your way around, use your senses without being conscious of them.

And, because he was trying to curb his impatience, he played boring things first – staid and sober pieces which could be counted on not to make his heart race.

But he could never keep his thoughts away from Ellini for long, especially when he was trying so hard not to think about her.

Soon he was playing the piece he thought of as 'the dark song' – or 'the darkness made song', depending on how confident he was feeling. He wanted it to drift up the staircase to her like tendrils of black smoke, winding round each other as they rose. He pictured them touching her shoulder, caressing her cheek, with all the comfort and forgiveness that the curtain of dark hair had brought to him as a child.

He was about halfway through when he became sure that she was watching him.

He didn't know whether it was because he'd heard her footfalls on the stairs, or smelled her perfume – or whether it was just because he was viscerally, physically aware of her tonight – but he knew she was standing behind him. He could feel the prickle of her gaze on his back.

It was a challenge to stay focused after that. It came into his head that she hadn't heard him play in a long time – that she'd been listening to Elliott Blake a few days ago, who was so good he could make the pianist and the instrument disappear, until nothing was real but the music.

Then he felt her hands on his back, and his heart almost stopped with his fingers. She was close, her hair was loose – he could feel it spilling over his shoulders.

When she nuzzled against him – when her lips found his neck – he started to turn, but she whispered, "Don't stop. Please. I'm enjoying it."

Jack forced his hands back to the keys and tried to concentrate. He ploughed clunkily through a few more bars, breathing fast. Her hands were sliding round to caress his ribs now. She was still kissing his neck, his jaw, his cheekbones.

He hadn't the faintest idea what he was doing. Every part of him seemed numb except the parts under her hands, and they were thrilling with such sweet, silvery sensitivity that he was afraid it would all be over before he got a chance to kiss her.

When she moaned in his ear, his hands slipped with a sharp, unmusical clunk. He turned to catch hold of her, and she fell into his arms as if she'd been expecting it, giggling between his frantic, haphazard kisses. There were tears in her eyes, he thought. Her cheeks and her jaw and her neck tasted salty, as if tears had run silently down them, and not been wiped away. But she was still laughing.

He pressed her to him so that she could feel the extent of the urgency – so that she would take it seriously – and dropped her onto the keys with a clatter that made her giggle even more.

He could feel the demon realms, the black lake – even the red room – crowding behind this white-hot sense of urgency, sharpening everything. He had no idea what he called her – his angel, his goddess, his everything. He chattered rapturously against her skin until she finally had the strength or the opportunity to interrupt him.

"Not here," she muttered. "Not in the hallway-"

"Anywhere," said Jack."Anywhere. Just so long as it's now."

***

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