There was a sound of grinding stone behind her, and Ellini ducked and rolled instinctively, raising the axe to shield her face. Elsie's column seemed to be sinking back into the earth.

The wind dropped – the distorted wail that was Elsie's voice and so much more quietened. Looking up, she could see that Elsie had sunk to her knees, deflated, as if she had run out of breath to scream.

Again, Ellini felt that tender ache of sympathy. She knew what the girl was feeling. In one way, this was all chaos, but in another, it was so familiar. Ellini had lived it. She could follow its rhythms. The peaks and troughs of grief. After the first, frightened rush came a moment of glassy-eyed quiet, where you stared into the darkness that had opened up in front of you, tried to feel its edges and gauge its depth, tried to come to terms with what it would all mean now that your loved one wasn't in the world anymore.

Ellini had nothing to say to that – no comfort to offer. The only way past it was through it. And, with the world breaking up in time with Elsie's sorrow, she wasn't sure she would survive long enough to see Elsie come out the other side.

Well, it didn't matter. She had promised not to leave the girl, and she was going to keep her word.

The axe's blade flickered at the edge of her vision, as if it was trying to get her attention, and Ellini pulled herself together, getting shakily to her feet. The ground beneath her was steady for the moment, but there was still debris to be avoided – loose roof-tiles and chimneys sliding into the depths.

And there was something else – some other sound. Or was it a sound? Maybe a scent. A gurgle of effort and a reek of burning that raised the hairs along Ellini's arms.

Myrrha. Myrrha was still here somewhere, and Elsie was in no condition to fight her.

Ellini turned. There was a figure struggling upright through the mess of dust behind her. It was hunched over, muttering unintelligibly. But as she watched, it straightened, holding out something that it appeared to have wrenched from its own torso. Ellini caught the glint of bone.

Oh god. She had removed the rib bone. That meant Elsie wouldn't be able to control her – assuming Elsie was ever in a condition to control anything again.

Underneath her terror, Ellini was faintly impressed. Myrrha was a demon – one who, half a second ago, had been connected to the little mother. She ought to have been wailing with despair. She ought to have been rushing to shield Elsie, like the other demons presumably were. If it was hard enough for Ellini, as a new-breed, to resist the current of Elsie's grief, what must it have been like for a demon?

But there was too much resentment. Myrrha had been on her own too long, nursing grudges. She could never go back.

She didn't look like Myrrha now – just charred and stick-like, glowing in places, as if she really was the stake Danvers had been tied to. She was standing about five yards away, on the other side of a chasm that had split the road between them. But Ellini wasn't going to let that fool her. Myrrha could probably jump across it, or even stretch across it, the way she had elongated herself to glower over Danvers's shoulder.

Ellini pushed her hair back. Even though she had tied it in a plait, a few strands always worked their way loose, and this time, they were crackling like electric filaments, hot and nervous against her cheeks. They stung, but she couldn't help feeling warmed by them, because they felt like hearth and home. They made her realise that the fire still answered to her, and always would. She didn't have the energy for anything like the wall of fire that Myrrha had driven against her earlier, but she could still burn things. Perhaps it would be enough.

Myrrha was holding a deck of cards in her hands, tapping at it with twiggy fingers. She didn't speak. Perhaps she couldn't anymore. Or perhaps her hatred for Ellini had gone beyond anything that could be expressed in words. She just tapped her deck of cards with a hollow, wooden sound not normally associated with living flesh.

Then, with a suddenness that made Ellini start backwards, she flicked a card towards her. Another two followed, with a speed that made her hands blur. They flew like missiles, edge-first, slicing through the air between them.

Ellini thought of Gram, and the silvery, snickering sound it made at the crest of a swing. This was just like that. The cards were moving like knives – no, like shuriken, cleaving the air with a delicate flutter.

She lurched to one side, trying to shield Elsie. One card scythed past her shoulder and cut a little nick in her sodden bandage. She concentrated on the others, pinning them with her gaze one by one, feeling her anger kindle in the cardboard. They caught fire in mid-air and burned with a blue-white flame that curled their corners and made them drop, shrivelled, out of their intended trajectory.

One of them even turned to ash and blew back in Myrrha's face. As spiteful touches went, Ellini was rather proud of that one, but she didn't hold out much hope of blinding Myrrha. Her eyes were hard, lidless, glowing things now, like a cross between hot coals and black marbles.

Myrrha didn't pause. She flicked her wrist again and then again, launching a second volley that whistled over the chasm between them.

The wind picked up. Maybe it was the elementals trying to blow the cards off course. Ellini couldn't be entirely thankful for it, because it made their arc harder to anticipate. They whirled about like snowflakes, slicing anything they touched.

The ground lurched again – Elsie was gathering breath for a new scream. Ellini staggered, using the handle of the axe to keep herself upright. She had to keep her eyes on the cards – she needed eye-contact to burn them – but there were so many, moving so fast.

She couldn't watch her feet, so she let the axe do it for her, prodding the ground with its handle, occasionally falling forwards and rolling upright when there was no ground to prod. It was like running across the rooftops, jumping from sheer instinct, hurling her whole body behind each leap.

The king of spades went up in flames – goodbye, Robin. And the ten of diamonds – lashings and lashings of blood.

She could read the significance of each one before it burned up. That felt so much more dangerous – so much more insulting – than simply incinerating them without understanding. She was processing each meaning and then rejecting it – reading Myrrha's story and then scorching it off the face of the earth.

No wonder she was seething. Or was it snickering? There was a dry, repetitive sound coming from her mouth, like the wind whistling through rotten wood.

Ellini fell forwards and landed on a shelf of rock about two feet below the level of the street. The ground was disintegrating too fast, and Myrrha didn't seem to need it. Was that the reason for the chuckling? She knew Ellini would tire sooner or later, and she had no shortage of cards. She certainly seemed to have more than the standard deck of fifty-two.

One of the cards went wide, skittering in a long arc, as if she meant it to loop round behind Elsie. Ellini turned her head to follow it and felt a swift, slick rustle at the back of her neck, followed by a weightlessness that made her stagger. Suddenly, there was more loose hair around her eyes – but cropped short, ends barely longer than her cheekbones.

Her head felt so light. The wind was chilling at the back of her neck. One of the cards must have severed her plait.

She slumped down, cold to the bone, wondering what this might mean. Did she still have the fire? Did she have any powers at all? This wasn't the first time Myrrha had tried to undermine her, but it felt real this time. She felt like a puppet whose strings had been cut.

Her short hair was damp against her cheekbones, curling under her eyes. It made her feel mutilated – far more than she had when her fingernails had been torn out. She tried to tell herself that was stupid. Hair grew back, fingernails didn't. But right at this moment, she couldn't bring herself to believe it.

Myrrha swooped down close and groped around in the rubble. Ellini flinched, but the woman wasn't interested in attacking her. She was searching for the severed plait, her mouth still making that hollow, rotten-wood sound. Ellini knew what it was now. A little creak of inevitability – the sound of falling timber.

And it couldn't have been more surreal if Myrrha had run off with her right arm. There was a part of her, completely out of context, disappearing into the clouds of dust as Myrrha scrambled away.

Was it still glowing a little? Or fizzling out like a damp firework?

Clever, thought Ellini, as she stared at the stones in front of her. Making a weapon out of my bones would be too slow now – now that the cavalry's coming. She's going to try strangling Elsie with my plait. It's still a part of me. It could work.

Another scream – this one higher, girlish, singular, as if Elsie was already cut off from the demon realms rushing up through the pavement. It blazed through Ellini's nerves and made her clench her fists.

"No," she said, to the rubble in front of her.

She could smell burning in her nostrils – a cleaner scent than the scorched-flesh wrongness that followed in Myrrha's wake.

"No," she repeated, raising her head.

There were new screams now – Myrrha's – and a gold-red glow lighting up the clouds of dust.

Ellini didn't remember getting to her feet. Her vision kept cutting out – life was coming in little snatches. One moment, she was staring at the silhouette outlined in that fiery glow, and the next, she had hurled herself at it, climbed onto Myrrha's back, choking on smoke and dust and desperation.

"Elsie!" she screamed, trying to raise her voice above the wind. "Elsie, run!"

The plait was blazing red-hot in Myrrha's hands – Ellini could feel it surging in time with her own frantic heartbeat. But Myrrha wouldn't let go. She kept running, even with her hands on fire and Ellini on her back, tearing, biting, scratching anything she could reach.

She found Elsie kneeling in the rubble and hooked the plait around her neck, yanking her backwards. And Ellini had to quiet the flames, or they would burn the little mother.

Burn inside, she told the plait. Curl and shrivel up.

She wasn't sure if she was quick enough. There was smoke everywhere, and the fire didn't want to be quenched. Elsie was making strangled noises, but they were so faint. Was she already dying? Or was she just too spent with grief to protest anymore?

Finally, Myrrha fell back, cursing, shaking ash off her hands.

Even though Ellini had been driven back into the rubble, crushed beneath Myrrha's weight, it was still surreal to see the ashes of her own hair showering down around her.

Myrrha's hands were on fire. Ellini couldn't discern any fingers at the heart of that blue-white flame – they were just burning stumps, stretched out wide like a candelabra.

She twisted painfully on top of Ellini, crushing her further into the dirt. Ellini's breath left her in a rush – she could see it as a cloud of steam, as if the world had gone suddenly cold.

And then, as Myrrha turned and towered over her, raising those burning fists to strike, Ellini felt little flecks of cold on her face. Like snowflakes. How could there be snowflakes?

There was a huge, unfurling shadow overhead – and several smaller ones, leaping. Ellini tried to cling onto consciousness – just to get to the bottom of the mystery – but the cold brought such a welcome numbness. Her eyes closed under the fluttering snow.

***

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