It was a good blow – straight through the heart and out the other side. Jack, who was watching through a gap where the dragon's tapered wings didn't quite meet the ground, saw Myrrha rocking on her heels, saw the rapier tear a hole in the back of her shift. There was no blood, and she was too stiff to crumple, but she teetered. The creaking in the back of her throat had become a moan.

Then Alice wrenched the sword back, jerked it out of Sam's grip, swung it in a long, sparkling arc, and chopped Myrrha's head off.

Jack couldn't keep his jaw from dropping open. He was relieved, of course – he wanted to be certain she was dead – but it still seemed pretty savage, for Alice.

It should have been a warning, perhaps. But his head was too full of warnings. There were warnings literally falling from the sky and bursting up through the pavement. He had no room for more.

And his Leeny was lying limp and ragged underneath him, her hair cropped down to her ears.

It was startling to see her like that. He told himself it wasn't as bad as some horrific injury, but somehow, it looked like a horrific injury. He had never seen her with short hair. It had always been there, framing her face, or spreading like ink over the pillow. Even when it had been pinned tidily back, it had put him in mind of Alice Darwin's corsets – something wild and dangerous, straining to be free.

He felt guilty for thinking that. Perhaps he wouldn't have thought it if she hadn't looked as though she thought it too. She looked... diminished. She was still his Leeny – she was still beautiful – but she seemed somehow smaller, without her hair.

She was conscious – which was to say, her eyes were open. Jack could feel the gentle kiss of her breath on his cheek. But she looked vacant. Her eyes were unfocused, her lips parted, as if she didn't have the energy to close them. Or as if she wanted to say something, but had no idea where to begin.

"Thank god it's just your hair and not your arm," he blurted out, trying to laugh. His chest was still a block of ice from the demon realms, and worry was doing nothing to thaw it.

Ellini didn't answer. Her eyes weren't focused on him, but on the huge canopy of dragon stretched over them. He could see part of the sky in the reflections in her eyes, where the dragon's wing didn't quite cover them. Was there movement up there? Other wings darkening the sky? Maybe Seere's army had arrived behind him. He ought to think about that, but right now, it seemed far more important to get some kind of reaction from Ellini.

"Impressive, isn't he?" said Jack, starting to babble. "If one of those things pulled you out of a lake and told you not to despair, you'd really take it to heart, believe me. I was expecting him to fly away the moment I leapt off his back, but look at him. He's sheltering us. I didn't tell him to do that. I think I'm going to call him Snowball." Jack's chuckle got caught in his throat and came out as a moan. "God, say something to me, Leeny!"

"I'm sorry," she managed.

He burst out laughing. "Oh, thank god! You're still you!"

But she wasn't still Ellini enough to glare at his teasing. She just shook her head, solemn and glassy-eyed. "I can't get through to Elsie. She won't listen to me. She'll tear this place apart. And she's only going to get more frightened, because sooner or later, people will start trying to stop her, and they won't be as gentle as us."

"Where's Danvers?" said Jack. It was such an obvious solution that he couldn't believe she hadn't thought of it.

But then he saw her mouth twist in pain, and realised why she hadn't thought of it. Danvers was dead.

Part of him wanted to question her, to ask 'How did it happen?' or 'Are you sure?' It could have been some trick of Myrrha's. It could have been a near-fatal accident that she had assumed was fatal because she was tired and gloomy, and Danvers always looked so vulnerable in a crisis, with his rolled-up shirtsleeves and his bowler-hat.

But he clamped his mouth shut on these questions. Of course she was sure. She wouldn't have been looking at him like that if she wasn't sure.

Something very cold and sharp slid from his throat all the way down to his belly. Now he understood why Elsie was still panicking – the world was still disintegrating – even though Myrrha had been killed. Danvers was dead.

Jack tried to treat this as just another piece of information – a stepping stone on the road to the right solution. Danvers was dead, so he had to think of something else.

But he couldn't get past it. Danvers was dead. It wasn't a stepping stone, it was a bloody great wall – a wall of sheer black rock that had slammed down in front of him. Danvers was dead. First Henry, then Joel, and now Danvers. Those three iterations of the same soul that kept appearing to him, trying to tell him something – they were all gone. Strike three.

What happened after strike three? You were out, weren't you? You had to go back to the beginning and start again – which, in this case, would probably involve being reborn.

Jack watched the reflections in Ellini's eyes. She was expecting him to say something. It was his job to say something. But he just kept staring at the reflections – the clouds of dust and falling debris, the shapes that he was now sure were other dragons, with demon riders, swooping across the sky. And all he could think was that this wouldn't be a bad vantage point from which to watch the world end.

"Well, I'll..." he muttered. "We'll..."

But he never got to find out how he would have finished that sentence. Ellini lurched up, her breath coming out in a rush, her head almost colliding with his.

Jack caught her and held her chest off the ground, looking for whatever it was that had hurt her. He pictured demon spears prickling up through the pavement, icicles swelling like weeds between the stones. But there was nothing.

Ellini was rigid and gasping in his ear – a kind of strangled cry that didn't have the energy to become a scream. It was hard to understand her, because it was all breathing in and no breathing out, but he thought he could make out the word 'Elsie'.

Jack's spine straightened. He didn't put her down. He couldn't. But he turned to peer under the gap in the dragon's wing, looking for Alice and Sam.

They weren't there.

The sky overhead lightened as his dragon drew back, sensing his agitation. It swung onto its feet with surprising agility and folded its wings in, as if to clear Jack's view.

"Elsie," he muttered, scanning the broken street.

She had crawled away, hadn't she? When Myrrha had fallen backwards onto Ellini and tried to beat her into the ground with flaming fists. Elsie had dragged herself to a safe distance, and Jack had been too worried about Ellini to give her a second thought. He should have pulled her under their dragon-wing canopy. He should have remembered that she was Ellini's second body, and any harm visited on one of them would have to be endured by both.

But what could hurt her now? Myrrha was dead, and the demon hordes filling the sky were here to help her, not harm her. Had she fallen into one of the cracks? He couldn't see her anywhere, but there was enough dust and debris to screen a giant from view.

Something had happened to the devastation all around them. The wail had become a kind of long, shivery gasp. The plumes of dust and pressurised air weren't fountaining up anymore – they were being sucked back into the cracks in the pavement, as if something down there was breathing them in.

And the sky wasn't filled with dragons, as he had thought. They were on the ground – half a dozen of them, not counting Snowball – nuzzling their fallen riders. Jack could see crumpled heaps of black armour, glimpses of skin just like Seere's: white and mottled, like dirty ice.

But Alice and Sam were still upright. He could see them about twenty yards away, struggling together. Sam was wrenching the sword out of Alice's grip, trying to hold her back one-handed.

Again, Jack considered putting Ellini down. He lowered her halfway onto the rubble and felt a wrench in his chest, like a cord being pulled taut. No time, his body protested. Don't leave her.

He hauled her up in his arms and ran, stumbling, over the broken street. He couldn't see where he was putting his feet. He lurched and swayed, half-blinded with dust and sweat, but he managed to stay upright.

Ellini didn't protest. Was she unconscious? But no, he could hear her muttering close to his ear, too weak to shout. She had fastened both arms around his neck, as if she was trying to pull herself up, but all she could say to him, over and over again, was 'Elsie'.

"Elsie!" he yelled, taking up the call, his breath burning in his lungs. He was drenched in sweat, but it was icy enough to freeze his clothes solid. He struggled against them, forcing his limbs to bend, forcing his body to move.

He could hear Sam and Alice shouting as he got closer. "—did you do?" Sam was roaring, above the torrent of the wind.

"What do you think?" screamed Alice, trying to pull away – but Sam had both her arms now. The sword was lying in the rubble beside them. Sam was trying to kick it out of the way without losing his grip on Alice. "This is all happening because of her!" she yelled. "Do you think any of it is going to stop until she's dead?"

Jack shook his head, trying to delay the realisation, trying to stop those words from making sense. She wouldn't. Not even Alice could—

He had thought Elsie wasn't with them, but now he could see her – tiny, hunched over, both hands pressed against her chest.

Jack knew that pose. He had seen it on battlefields. He had seen that much red on battlefields. But he tried to shake that thought away too, gritting his teeth against the rising panic.

He drew level with Alice and Sam, but he didn't stop. Every step was a colossal effort, and Ellini's weight probably wasn't helping, but he didn't dare put her down. "Keep hold of Alice," he yelled.

"I don't need you to tell me that," Sam grunted, as Alice lurched forwards again. It was taking all his effort just to stay on his feet. Dust and grit and chunks of rock were being pulled into the chasm beside them, and the wind was whipping past, strong enough to slice.

Jack reached Elsie and lowered Ellini onto the ground beside her, ignoring the wrenching in his chest. He needed both hands to examine the girl, even though he knew it was hopeless. The demons wouldn't have dropped to the ground if she wasn't dying. The wind wouldn't have reversed its course – as if the demon world was drawing in on itself, shutting down for another three hundred years or more.

She was still kneeling upright in the rubble, her hands clamped over her chest. Jack tried to prise them away, tried to unwind her arms, but she struggled against him, even when she heard his voice.

He took off his jacket – drenched with sweat but still jingling faintly with ice crystals – and tried to wrap it round her, to put pressure on the wound, but she fought that too. She didn't know him anymore.

He had no idea what he said to her. His inner monologue was repeating the words 'No, no, no, no, no' until they blurred into insensibility, trying to stop the working of his brain, trying not to look at Ellini, who was stirring fitfully on the ground beside him, pinned down by Elsie's pain.

"Sergei!" he screamed, straightening up. He hadn't seen Sergei for what seemed like years – since before he had fallen into that demon snowfield – but it was his reflex to call for Sergei whenever he saw someone injured beyond hope. Sergei could see hope where all other people could see was red. "Sergei!"

And then another name tumbled out of his mouth – another wild, desperate thought occurred. He had planned for this, hadn't he? He had no idea if it would work – he had hoped against hope that he would never have to test it – but there was literally nothing else.

"Manda!" he shouted. "Manda! I need that contingency plan right god-damn now!"

She would never hear him above all this. God, why had he left her in Holywell Street? But he had wanted to keep her safe – her and Sita. And he had never really thought this was going to happen. Never in his worst nightmares had he imagined Alice would—

He brought his hands up to shield his eyes from the dust and tried to make out Holywell Street. It wasn't easy, with the wind rushing against him, stinging his eyeballs.

He thought he could see a tiny figure limping over the ground, stumbling as the wind buffeted her this way and that. Her hair was streaming forwards over her shoulders, but it was Manda's wild, curly hair, made even wilder by the gale. Jack wasn't sure if he was hallucinating, but he went on yelling, even though he didn't see how she could hear, or how she would ever get to them in time.

Maybe she could sense Ellini's pain – or his own desperation. She was tuned in to other people's emotions, wasn't she? Please God, she had thought to bring the clay doll with her! And to leave Sita at home. Sita would be swept off her feet in this maelstrom. Even Jack was having to fight hard to stay on his feet.

He bent down as Leeny lurched up again. She could barely draw breath, but she clung to his collar and whispered, "Dragon – faster. Help Elsie."

Jack straightened up, searching for his dragon. It had followed him, keeping carefully out of the way until it was needed. Oh, it was perfect! Seere had given him so much more than just a free ride.

"Snowball," he shouted. His muscles screeched as he raised his arms to point out Manda. "Fetch! Gently!"

Snowball pushed against the ground and lurched up, beating his wings frantically to fight the current of the wind. Had he understood? He was going in the right direction. Jack ducked under a shop awning that had been wrenched from its moorings and sent careening across the street. Ellini had been right – Snowball wasn't just faster, he was the only thing big enough to fight this gale.

Even so, Jack watched him bearing down on Manda with his heart in his mouth. He had to assume that, if the dragon understood 'Fetch', he would understand 'gently', but Snowball had talons like scimitars on his back legs, and Jack hated to think what would happen if he just snatched her up like a hawk with its prey.

But the dragon landed beside her, crouching low to fight the rush of air. For one horrible moment, he opened his mouth, and Jack thought he was going to eat her, but he just snapped at her trailing skirts and flipped her into the air, catching her on his back. Jack could hear her screaming even from the next street.

Snowball had to fight harder to get airborne now. Either the strength of the wind had increased, or he was taking extra care to ensure Manda didn't topple off. Jack was twisting his fingers with agitation by the time they landed. He reached up to help her down, but she was too impatient, kicking his hand away and landing in a heap in the rubble.

"Sorry, Manda," he panted. "Only way. Did you bring the-?"

But he stopped when he saw her face. She had managed to get to her feet, and even swat his hand out of the way, but she was deathly pale. He could see that she wanted to shout and snap, but she was in too much pain. Her lips were pressed together, her freckles standing out starkly against the whiteness of her skin.

Jack suddenly knew that she had felt every drop of Elsie's agony – maybe even Myrrha's. And the city's terror had turned her legs to jelly. She was swaying on the spot.

"Where's Sam?" she croaked, but that was all she had the strength for. Jack dived to catch her as she collapsed and lowered her down next to the other two women lying prostrate with pain beside him.

Strike three, strike three! They were all leaving him.

He opened his mouth to ask her where she was hurt, and then changed his mind. "It's Elsie, isn't it? You can feel her pain? And before that, her grief?"

"Oh, it's awful," Manda moaned, stirring in the same fitful, heavy way as Ellini had done, as if the force of gravity had trebled. "A whole universe with a broken heart. It was almost a relief when it turned to physical pain." For a moment, she caught him with the old, Manda-style glare. "And I asked you where Sam was."

Jack's lips twitched into a smile. "He's making an arrest. He's been brilliant, Manda. You're both brilliant. Please tell me you brought the—"

She fumbled with something in the lining of her coat, and brought out the clay doll, its hair squashed flat, its face criss-crossed with cobweb-fine cracks. "I think I see what you're going to do," she said. "This is what joined them, so you think destroying it will separate them? But even if it works, it will only help Ellini, won't it? It can't do anything for Elsie."

Jack said nothing. The automatic response – the same part of his brain that had been chiming 'Strike Three' over and over like a death-knell – rose up in his throat without any thinking. There is nothing that can be done for Elsie. But he clamped his mouth shut. He didn't want to make that thought any more real by uttering it.

He decided to go for another kind of honesty. "I don't know what else to do," he said, trying to smile. "But, if I can stop worrying about Ellini, there'll be more room in my head. Something will turn up."

He didn't say that last part with much conviction. He didn't have the energy for his old, persuasive charm – not that it had ever worked on Manda anyway. But she let it go. She could probably feel his impatience too – the thumping in his chest and screeching in his head that was yelling, No time, no time! Save Ellini!

She handed him the doll. As soon as he touched it, he felt a tingle in his fingers – numb and bloody as they were. A sense of apprehension prickled up his arm, as if the doll knew what he was planning.

He really didn't know what he was doing. Something this important needed thinking about – it probably needed an incantation, a full moon, and the blood of a thousand virgins – but there was no time, and he didn't have any better ideas.

Trying not to look at Elsie, trying not to think about the sense of pride he had felt when he had glued the last piece of clay in place, trying to banish the words 'Magic – enlightenment – redemption' from his head, he hurled the doll against the paving slabs, where it shattered.

Elsie and Ellini sat bolt upright and screamed.

For a second, he thought he had made everything a thousand times worse. The doll's spiderweb cracks appeared on both women's faces, as if they were about to shatter too.

Jack knelt down beside Ellini and gripped her by the shoulders, with the mad thought that he could somehow hold her together if she broke. But the cracks smoothed themselves away, sank back into her golden-brown skin. She went limp – her head drooped – and then she was stirring, blinking, reaching out her hands like Elsie when she was feeling inquisitive. She found his shirt and pawed at it, as if she was once again using him to haul herself up.

"What happened-?" she gasped. "What happened to the hole in my chest?"

Jack held her close, almost crying with relief, but he couldn't help glancing at Elsie. The cracks had disappeared from her face too, but she wasn't stirring the way Ellini was.

And the space in his head that he had been so sure would open up once Ellini was safe was blank and echoing. It was space all right, but it was empty. He was out of ideas.

"We – we have to find Sergei," he managed. He tried to pull away, but his arms had seized up around Ellini, and didn't want to let her go.

She twisted in his grip – not really trying to break free, just to see where she was, now she was no longer being blinded by pain. Then she gasped and pulled away from him. She must have seen Elsie lying beside her, seen the spreading red stain – not just on Elsie's clothes but on the ground now, pooling underneath her.

"Oh no, no, no, no," she whispered. "Little Cricket – Elsie..."

Jack blinked back tears and turned his head away. He felt as though he should give them a private moment together, although he didn't know if Elsie was conscious enough to respond, or even recognise her.

He turned to Manda, who had struggled up onto her elbows, her mouth still compressed. "He is coming," she muttered, nodding towards the other side of the street, "but..."

Jack turned and started onto his feet. Sergei was here – or anyway, was labouring towards them, dragging something on a makeshift stretcher behind him.

Jack's eyes refused to make sense of the body on the stretcher. They skipped over the limp arms hanging down on either side, the neat jacket and necktie that he had seen Danvers wearing every day for nearly six years. This figure had no hat, he told himself. No matter what he looked like, he couldn't be Danvers if he didn't have his hat.

Jack's eyes sought out Sergei's instead, hope rising, in spite of everything. But even from this distance, Sergei shook his head, confirming what Jack had known all along but refused to admit. There was no saving Elsie. Alice had done her job too well.

God, how had she done it? The question was not why, but how. Even if she was still being animated by the vengeful spirit of Oxford, it would take a pretty hard heart to stab an unarmed blind girl – one who had only been kneeling and crying in the rubble.

But then he remembered the unarmed, kneeling woman he had stabbed, and he thought, No, not a hard heart. Just the right triggers. In his case, it had been rage and humiliation, and the loss of the only memory that had ever made him want to be good. In Alice's case, it was a threat to the peace in Oxford. She'd do anything to avert a war, even murder. In her mind, it would have been the prudent choice: one life sacrificed to save thousands of others.

Perhaps it would even have occurred to him as a solution, given enough time. But it would have taken a bloody lot of time. Enough time for the world to end on its own, probably. Perhaps Alice had known that.

Sergei put down the stretcher. Close to, Jack realised that he must have stretched his own jacket between two broken railings to make it. And then shredded his shirt into strips to tie Danvers to it. He was still wearing his snake-embroidered waistcoat, but it was buttoned over a bare chest.

"My apologies," he said. "I promised I would not leave him, so I had to improvise. It has been rather an arduous task to get to you."

There was no doctor's bag. Sergei never went anywhere without his doctor's bag. Jack was touched – and faintly impressed – to think that he must have chosen to save Danvers rather than the bag. It didn't make any logical sense, since there was, strictly speaking, no saving Danvers, but it still made Jack's chest swell with a warmth he hadn't felt since before the snowfields. Alice had catastrophically disappointed him, but he was proud of Sergei.

"This is all I can do for her," Sergei added, untying Danvers from the stretcher and easing him onto the ground beside Elsie. "As I think you know."

He found Elsie's little, bloodstained hand – she wasn't fighting anymore, she was too weak – and wrapped it around Danvers's. It must have been cold, but perhaps it was some comfort. It seemed to revive her, anyway, because she gripped it hard and twisted away, questing for something with her other hand. "Ms'Syal," she mumbled. "Leeny..."

"I'm here," said Ellini. Her breath was coming in spasms. She was clenching her teeth to keep back the sobs. "I'm here, Little Cricket. I won't leave you."

Elsie's lips were moving, but only the barest of sounds were coming out now. Ellini lowered her head, trying to make out what she was saying, but Jack could have told her. There was only one thing she had ever really wanted to know.

"–t am I?" she breathed. "What am I, Miss Syal?"

Ellini shook her head. "I don't–" But she stopped and blinked the tears out of her eyes. Perhaps she had realised that it didn't matter what she said. Elsie just wanted a story. She just wanted to feel Ellini's lovely words washing over her, like she had in the beginning.

Ellini leaned down and took Elsie's hand, holding it close to her mouth to hide her trembling lips.

"You're Elsie 'Little Cricket' Danvers," she said, in her story-book voice – the voice that breathed magic into every word. "Intrepid seeker of truth, solver of mysteries, devourer of encyclopaedias. There's no big truth that ties everything together, just lots of little ones – and you spend every lifetime seeking them out, lovingly trying to understand people, no matter how demented they turn out to be. You're joyful and curious and loved more than I can say, and we'll see each other again, Little Cricket. Even if we have to start all over, we'll do it together."

Elsie seemed satisfied. She leaned back and breathed a little sigh, stretched out between Danvers and Ellini, holding each one by the hand. Then the hand holding Ellini's slackened, the fingers uncurling one by one, as if she had chosen a side. Ellini let out a stifled sob.

And she was still. Jack had seen dozens of people die, and knew about the eerie stillness – the shock of seeing something animate suddenly become inanimate. But stillness had never looked stranger on anyone than it did on Elsie. He had first seen her as a motionless body in a glass coffin, but he hadn't known, back then, the way she could make motion her own – the way that blindfolded head was always turning, her hands always questing, her skin dancing with lights even when she was asleep. It hurt to see her like this.

The wind dropped, as if it, too, had stopped breathing. And then, with a creaking moan, the ground under Elsie and Danvers started to crumble. They didn't drop – they just sort of sank, as if the rock underneath them was retracting, drawing them in. Ellini let out a noise of protest, but Jack pulled her back, disentangling her hand from Elsie's just in time.

The ground around them was shifting too. Cliffs and columns sank back to the level of the street – the sagging earth plumped up – the cracks in the pavement pulled together, healed over, as if none of it had ever happened.

And then, as if the sky was complicit in this sneaky clean-up operation, it started to rain.  

***

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