Unconsciousness was not the same as sleep. Jack wanted one, but not the other. He wanted oblivion to whisk him off all at once, without having to lie in silence waiting for it.

And he didn't want dreams. There were too many raw spots, too many broken edges that his subconscious was sure to catch on. It would show him his mother, or make him breathe the cold, clammy air of the red room. It would replay Sita's screams.

He had been left in the hall because he refused to go to bed while Sita was in the operating theatre. But he couldn't go down there and see how she was because he was still afraid to look at her. He prevailed on Sarah to sit and talk with him, when she wasn't running around on Sergei's errands, fetching blankets and brandy and hot tea.

He was so afraid of the silence that he even occasionally hovered by the piano, pressed a random key, and shuddered. Every note was a reproach now. He even thought he could see his mother and Henry and Baby Jane standing by the piano, resting their elbows on the top, glancing in his direction as if they'd just been talking about him.

After looking horrified and useless for half an hour, Danvers announced that he was going back to the Academy, where Elsie was spending the night. Apparently, she was dividing her time between the Faculty and the Academy to make sure nobody executed Anna in her absence.

Jack was relieved. He didn't want to endure her questions, or her whimsical explanations. But he still questioned Danvers minutely about her health, because it was the best indicator he had of Ellini's.

"She hasn't been suffering any pains?" he demanded. "Any physical symptoms you couldn't explain?"

Danvers looked half-alarmed and half-offended. "No! Why should she?"

Jack scrubbed a hand across his forehead and tried his hardest to be patient. "She's connected to Ellini, remember? You saved Ellini's life by giving Elsie a transfusion?"

Danvers took a step backwards, as if Jack had been brandishing those words like a clenched fist. He couldn't possibly have forgotten, could he? Jack would certainly never forget that Sergei and Danvers had clubbed together to save Ellini's life when he himself had been at his most useless. It had galled him to even mention it.

Maybe Danvers just hadn't let himself dwell on the implications – the idea that the woman he loved was now twice as vulnerable, twice as easy to kill. She essentially had two lives to lose.

"Good God!" Danvers exclaimed. "You mean if – heaven forbid – one or the other of them were to die...?"

"Best not to think about it, mate," said Jack, though he wasn't feeling particularly matey.

"But – but you're thinking about it!"

Jack sucked in a quick breath through his teeth. "Well, I think about everything. You don't have to suffer from the same affliction. It doesn't matter anyway, does it, because Elsie is fine, and you're going to tell me the instant she experiences anything strange."

"I..." Danvers gave him a pop-eyed, red-faced stare. "Come to think of it, she has been complaining of feeling hot..."

"Then Ellini's in the fire-mines," said Jack. He told himself this was to be expected. It would have been worrying if she wasn't in the fire-mines, after being away for three days. But he couldn't help feeling a prickle of unease at the thought of what she must be feeling, breathing that close, steamy air again. Sweltering away under the black rocks.

Part of him was glad she wasn't here, because he suspected his eggshell-thin calm would crack the moment he saw her. In many ways, he was still in the gauntlet. He had got through the rooms, but he couldn't leave them behind. Part of him knew that this strange, swirling calm was only temporary. At some point, if he didn't die, he would have to sort through all the horrible things that had been stirred up.

There was some kind of doctor, wasn't there, who said it was all good? That you had to realize what you were repressing, confront what you'd been shrinking from, in order to heal? But he didn't understand how.

Anyway, none of it was new, not really. He had always known that he was afraid of getting violent with his loved ones, that he had trouble letting them make their own choices, that his idealistic mother might be ashamed of the man he was now. He had known that Henry and Jane were a stumbling block for him. He'd never been able to properly digest what had happened to them. He'd been pitched into the world of Pandemonium so soon afterwards – he'd been given everything he'd ever wanted – there had been no time for repentance.

But he didn't believe in repentance, did he? That is, he didn't believe it did any good. The dead were still going to be dead, no matter how you felt about it. If remorse didn't stop you from doing it again, what exactly was it good for?

After an hour, Sam stomped in, and took Jack's mind off the piano by seizing his throat and pushing him up against the screen which covered the still-open doorway to the demon realms.

Jack could feel the horrors he had just waded through teeming at his back. He imagined falling down the black stairs and landing in a crumpled heap at the feet of the Queen, who would say 'Ready for another round, interloper? The hydra's still alive, and your mother's been asking for you.'

It was very hard to summon the impudent grin with which he always greeted Sam on principle. This grin was designed – and never failed – to make him angrier, and if he was angrier, he would push harder. But still, an angry Sam was such a reassuring thing, especially when you half-suspected you might be very angry yourself.

"You opened a doorway to hell in my city," said Sam, in his characteristic, clenched voice, "without a thought for what might come out. They tell me you robbed some demon King and Queen and ran away and left the door open."

Jack tried to say that, yes, it was open, and it was right behind him, and if Sam pushed any harder they would both go tumbling through it and land at the feet of a creature who would probably look to Sam like Lily Hamilton, and definitely have something to say about his upcoming wedding, so it would be a good thing for all concerned if everybody kept their tempers.

"Two weeks ago," Sam went on, "I was very kindly refraining from locking you up, because you'd been sliced into tatters and I didn't want you to die in my cells-"

"That wasn't why you did it."

"-and now," said Sam, tightening his grip, "you are starting inter-species wars by robbing-"

"Rescuing," Jack insisted. "She's one of ours. A little girl from Camden."

"-without so much as a 'by your leave'-"

"I had the leave of the little mother," said Jack, trying to curl his leg around one of the slats of the staircase so he'd have something to hang onto when the screen gave way. "She opened the door. She told me nothing would come out unless it was called. And I won the girl, I didn't steal her. I played their game by their rules and I won fair and square. They let me go. They've invited me back. There is not going to be any trouble."

Quite suddenly, Sam's expression changed from crinkly and constipated to smooth and soothed. A curious look took its place. If Jack didn't know him better, he would have called it embarrassment.

Then a freckled hand appeared on his shoulder, and Jack understood. He hadn't seen her come in, because Sam's bulk had been screening the doorway.

"Manda," he said, raising his voice, "will you please tell your ardent fiancé that he's overreacting? Will you tell him there's a little girl from Camden Town in the basement who would be trapped in the demon realms if it wasn't for me?"

Manda's face was still invisible to him, but her voice was so prim and petulant that he couldn't have mistaken her for anyone else. "I'll see this little girl and hear what she's got to say before I give my fiancé any advice about not throttling you."

                                                                                       ***

They were thoughtful when they came back up. Jack had guessed what kind of an effect Sita would have on them, and he wasn't disappointed. Manda's skin was glowing between her freckles. Her natural tenderness had been stirred up – and perhaps something else, a hope that had always been resigned before, that she might one day have a child of her own to worry over.

"Manda," said Jack, as she passed him. "Manda, she's Leeny's sister."

He saw her raise a hand to her mouth, but he ploughed on, wanting to get the worst over and done with. "I have to tell her that her parents are dead. How do I do it? What do I say?"

Manda reached for his hand and squeezed it. "There's no right thing to say. There's no tactful formula that would make it all bearable. When talking to the bereaved, your job is to speak softly and endure it. Don't worry about anything she says to you. Courtesy will be beyond her."

"Some people go through their whole lives like that," said Jack, with a light, meaningful glance over her shoulder.

Manda lowered her voice. "He's getting better. And he's not really angry with you."

"Yes he is, Manda."

"Well, not forever. You leave it to me, I'll work on him."

"I wish I could leave everything to you," he said, in a small voice.

Manda gave him her brave, closed-mouth smile. "It will be all right."

He didn't have the heart to contradict her this time.

                                                                                        ***

Sita grounded people – which was quite fitting for someone named after the daughter of the earth goddess. Sergei was in love with her already, Jack could tell. It was obvious from the gentle way he closed the door behind him, when he finally came up the stairs from the basement.

"I've set the bone and put it in plaster," he said, in answer to Jack's fierce, miserable look. "We've made up a bed for her in the operating theatre, but I'll need you and Danvers to help me move her upstairs tomorrow."

"Is there anything else?" said Jack hoarsely. "Any other breaks or – or internal bleeding? She was so bruised-"

A faint smile twitched behind Sergei's moustache. "I've been thorough. And not just because I knew you'd disembowel me if I wasn't."

Jack shook his head stupidly. His eyes and his throat felt very raw. "I owe you."

"As I say, you were not my only consideration." Sergei sat down on the piano seat. "She's very like her sister, isn't she? Or, rather, like her sister might have been."

Jack shrugged, and felt the beginning of the aches which were going to all-but paralyse him tomorrow. "Is she talking, then?"

Sergei laughed. "Oh yes. A great deal. She has a fever, but I get the feeling she's gregarious by temperament and not by temperature." He paused, and then said tentatively, "She asked how you were."

"And what did you tell her?"

"I endeavoured to reassure her without lying to her. I said you generally tended to survive."

Jack didn't look at him. But he marvelled – not for the first time – at Sergei's powers of perception.

"Is it true what she says? About everything that happened down there?"

"I don't know what she says," Jack muttered. "But she doesn't lie, if that's what you mean. So either it's the fever talking, or it's the truth."

"Was there really a sphinx?"

"Yes. It reminded me of you, actually."

Sergei chuckled to himself and got up from the piano. "You'll sleep here, of course? I would offer to make up another bed in the operating theatre, and brave all Sarah's talk of impropriety, but you seem reluctant to go near her."

"She'll have told you why," said Jack.

Sergei glanced from the fire-screen to the piano. He looked as if he wanted to ask how Jack could contemplate sleeping between two such torments, but he didn't. If Sita had told him everything – or even most of it – he would know that there were torments everywhere. Jack didn't need to bother about the symbols when he had the things they symbolized rattling around his head.