Mourners could walk the streets at all hours. The Bulldogs who hunted down undergraduates out after curfew had never bothered Manda. In fact, she had known them to pause in their activities and tip their hats to her as she passed by.

Still, she was nervous tonight. She hadn't left the porch of the University Church – not just because she was waiting for the right moment, but because she was wrestling with her conscience.

Beneath her, the paving slabs were edged with black where the ash from the recent fire had got into the cracks. Seven months of rain hadn't managed to dislodge it. And the spire was still surrounded by scaffolding, like a broken leg in plaster. Manda's heart had warmed to little Sita, but she was not ready to forgive Ellini yet.

People used to believe that, on certain nights of the year, you could stand in the porch of a church at midnight and see a ghostly procession of all the people in the parish who were going to die in the coming year. Lily had told her that. It had occurred to Manda just as she'd taken up her present position, and now she couldn't stop thinking about it.

Because she knew – or she thought she knew – who she was going to see walk by, and it was the last person in the world she wanted to die.

Well, second-to-last, she supposed. The last person in the world she had wanted to die had died ten years ago. She was still stumbling through the aftermath of that. Ash had got into all the cracks.

She forced herself to look up instead of downwards. The black branches of the cherry tree above her were already starting to bud. It would be spring soon, and she would be a married woman. If she could just get to the bottom of this mystery first.

Since her engagement, she had found that quite a few people, contrary to their protestations, were not happy for her at all. She'd been too necessary to too many people, and now they were wondering what was going to happen to them.

Madam Seacombe had been struck dumb, but Manda had never been expecting congratulations from her. The other mourners were dubious and tight-lipped, as if they thought she was making a terrible mistake, but nothing in the world would have induced them to say so.

But Sam's landlady, who liked having a respectable bachelor about the place, and was not looking forward to having a second mistress in her own home, had told her half-gleefully that he was going out in the dead of night, no doubt to visit some harlot.

At first, Manda had thought it was just a spiteful story – especially when she asked Sam, and he looked at her as if she'd taken leave of her senses.

But then she had seen him pass by her window when she couldn't sleep the night before last. And, last night, she had stayed up specifically to watch out for him. She hadn't been dreaming. His bulky, hunched-up shoulders were unmistakable.

And now, here he was again, casting a long, slinking shadow behind him as he passed under the streetlamps. And she was wearing her coat and bonnet – both of them black, as befitted her profession. But the thing about black was that it was good for stealthy night-time operations as well as mourning.

She didn't really think he was going to see a mistress. Sam was not motivated by desire, unless it was the desire to get answers. Perhaps it was a case that was too delicate and dangerous for him to tell her about. She ought to trust him, really.

But... well, he ought to trust her. There was nothing she couldn't help him with – nothing that couldn't be better handled by the two of them working together.

She followed him over Magdalen Bridge, and through the sleepy suburb of St. Clements. She let him get quite far ahead, but that shadow swept behind him like a train, and was never far away from her feet. At the bottom of Headington Hill, Manda accidentally stepped on it, and he stopped and raised his head, as if he'd felt it.

But he didn't turn. She didn't have to dart into a doorway or crouch behind a cart. And, though her heart was thudding in the back of her throat, she was disappointed about that, because she was sure she would have been good at it.

He climbed Headington Hill – almost leaving her behind, because his strides were so much bigger. She was out of breath by the time he stopped, in front of the two stone gargoyles that flanked the entrance to the Academy.

And then he was still, and there was no noise except for a strange, stony grinding, like the sound of a millstone turning, or a carriage trundling up a gravel drive.

Manda stopped and pressed herself up against the railings a few feet away. There was another gargoyle leering over her shoulder, but she tried to pay it no attention.

They had been called the ugliest architectural feature in the city – even uglier than Keble College, which had spoiled John Ruskin's daily walks through the University Parks. But they were particularly ugly to Manda, because she knew what they had done. She had shared a room with women who still cried out in their sleep because of them.

So it shook her to her bones to see Sam conversing with them.

That was the source of the grinding sound, she realized. One of the gargoyles had turned its head to look at him, and it wasn't quite un-petrified – it was halfway between sinew and stone – so its movements scraped, and dusty shards of rock clattered to the pavement on either side.

It spoke a few rasping, incomprehensible words to Sam, and he answered in the same dialect.

Up until that point, she had never doubted him. Up until that point, she'd been sure that she was going to witness a stake-out, or a daring capture, or a desperate chase. Now she was alarmed. Her skin prickled. Her scarf felt sickly and close about her throat.

But the trouble was, when Manda was alarmed, it propelled her forwards, not back. The consequence of having lost a loved one at an early age, perhaps – and knowing that a slow, grief-fuelled decay was so much worse than dying.

She lurched forwards and placed a possessive hand on Sam's shoulder. She didn't know what she intended to do. He was much too big for her to haul away, she couldn't speak gargoyle, and she wasn't sure any other language would be effective at the moment. Perhaps she just meant to stake her claim on him, because she stood on tiptoes and glared at the gargoyle, as if to say, 'This one is mine'.

Sam jerked out from under her hand so suddenly that she almost toppled forwards. He whipped round and stared at her.

And, for a moment, it wasn't Sam. Slit-like pupils looked back at her. Then somehow the shadows changed, or – or he came back into focus. Nothing on his face had really altered, except it was now the face she knew.

The shadows shortened, that was it. They had grown long, like untended fingernails, and now they shrank back. Sam stared at her in his Sam-like way, as if he didn't have the words to describe how reckless and irresponsible she was being.

"What are you-?" he breathed.

And then he stopped, and looked around, and said, in a smaller voice, "Manda, what is this?"

Manda clasped his hand. It was like ice, but then perhaps it would be anyway, on a night like this. And the gargoyle was no longer moving. Beyond the gates, she could see lights coming on in the Academy's windows.

"You don't remember?"

"Remember what?" said Sam. "Why have you-?" He paused again, and then said, "I don't. I don't remember getting here. There's something wrong with that, isn't there? Was I sleep-walking?"

"I don't know," said Manda, her eyes still on the Academy. The front doors were being swung open now. She could see a lantern weaving this way and that as it was carried over the drive.

"Something's happened, though," she went on. "We shouldn't have woken them. It was very quiet."

"What was?"

She knew someone was coming up the drive – two people, perhaps. She could see them. But she still shuddered when she heard the crunch of their feet on the gravel, and glanced nervously at the gargoyle.

It was Elsie – shadowed, as she always was, by John Danvers, who was pulling a coat on over his nightshirt.

Elsie and her lantern beamed benevolently through the railings, while Danvers unlocked the gates. "Good evening."

"Morning," Danvers corrected her. He was glaring at Manda and Sam, for all the world as if they'd been hammering on the gates. "It's past two o'clock."

"The gargoyles said you had a message for me," Elsie explained.

"What?" Sam's confusion was starting to turn to anger. He gestured at the gargoyles. "How could they tell you anything?"

"I'm connected to all demons," said Elsie. Of course, she couldn't see his irate gestures, or the colour in his cheeks.

"Oh, you've got them spying for you now?"

"Sam," said Manda, replacing her hand on his shoulder. "You were talking to them. The gargoyles. Before you woke up."

"But they don't speak any English!"

"You were talking in their language."

He glared at her, as if she was being nonsensical just to spite him. But there was an edge of uncertainty to it now. "How could I talk their language? I don't know it."

"You did in your sleep."

Elsie pressed the lantern into Danvers's hands and slipped through the gates. She put an ear to Sam's chest before he could start back in outrage.

"Are we to understand," said Danvers, squeezing through the gate beside her, "that the Inspector has been sleep-walking?"

"Chief Inspector," said Sam. "And what is this woman doing?"

He pointed to Elsie, who was now trying to run her hands over his torso, and tutting in exasperation when he squirmed away.

"I'm trying to find out what the message was," she said.

"By listening to my heart?"

"No, that didn't seem to work. I'm sure I'll get a clue from some part of you, though."

"Look," said Sam, as he tried to fend her off. "I don't remember talking to any gargoyles. I don't even remember getting out of bed! If I had a message for you, I don't know what it was."

"Ah," said Elsie. She had been reaching up to feel under his collar and must have found the scars on his neck. Her hand stopped cold, as if she was taking his pulse from the jugular vein. "I suspect I do."

She drew her hand back and cradled it against her chest, as if she'd felt the hurt that had caused all those scars three years ago. "Will you both come inside for some tea? I'm afraid it's a bit of an arduous explanation." 

***

Thank you so much for reading! Please give this chapter a vote if you enjoyed it!