Ellini lay on her side on the roof of the Turl Street Music Rooms, while her heartbeat slowed, and her breathing gradually quietened.

She knew she shouldn't have come here. She knew she should have been back at the Faculty, taking advantage of these few, precious moments before dawn to get some sleep. She knew the piano music which came from this building at night was dangerous, because it had the same effect on her as Jack's touch. It reminded her that she was alive. It made hunger and exhaustion, and all the things she had been resolutely ignoring, rush back in on her and clamour for attention. You will pay these bills, they said. You can't go on like this forever.

As such, she should have been avoiding the music as carefully as she avoided Jack's hands. But somehow, she couldn't. It was beguiling—even if it was full of pain—to be a living, breathing creature for a few seconds.

She had slipped Jack's coat around her shoulders again. She'd taken it off for all the running—because a piece of clothing that trailed behind you was a piece of clothing that could be grabbed and used to pull you back. But her body temperature and her spirits dropped so much after these night-time chases that she had thought it prudent to stash the coat behind a chimney on a rooftop in Broad Street, so she could warm herself up when the business of the night was over.

It smelled of him—not in a bad way, although there was a lot of alcohol and cigarette smoke mixed up with the familiar scent of his skin—but just enough to comfort her, and tug at her heartstrings in time with the piano keys.

She wondered if he was still him. How much of your memory could you lose and still remain the same person? He seemed exactly the same—just as cheerful, restless, friendly, curious and charming as he'd always been. She couldn't help smiling whenever she saw him drumming out a rhythm on his knees, or tracing patterns in a puddle of spilled whisky on the tabletop.

But there was something strange about him, and it wasn't just the fact that he didn't want her anymore.

Was she really doing him a favour by keeping him from remembering her? Wasn't it better to be yourself—to be free to make your own choices—even if it cost you a lot of pain? But he had made his choice. He really had. The spell couldn't have worked unless he'd consented to forget her. She had just hurt him too much, that was all—enough to turn even those happy memories sour.

The thought of this made her turn over on the slates, in the wild, stupid hope that the heartbreak in her chest would somehow bleed into the roof and stay there. Not forever—she wouldn't wish this kind of pain on anything, not even a building—but just until the twenty-six days were up, and she could safely earth her feelings in the cold ground with the rest of her.

The tiredness was the worst part. She could flee pain—both physical and mental—until it dwindled into a small, bruise-coloured heap on the horizon. But somehow, exhaustion was the enemy of escapism. It clung to your skirts and pulled you back when you tried to run. Then it climbed up your spine and into your brain and turned all your beautiful, golden dreams to lead.

The piano music died down for a moment, and instead of endless thoughts about Jack, somebody else's voice rushed in to fill the silence in Ellini's head.

"It's an odd time of the morning for concertos, don't you think?"

Without thinking, Ellini's muscles jerked into life. She rolled up into a crouching position, ready to spring under any outstretched claws and off the rooftop in one motion.

But the person who had spoken seemed to be definitely human. She was a woman in black, with voluminous hair, and a black veil which was sucked inwards every time she took a breath. She had freckles on her bare arms.

Ellini squinted, still not relaxing her guard. "I've seen you before, haven't I? You were at the police station? You're one of the Inspector's friends?"

"One of?" said the woman happily, coming closer, and settling down on the rooftiles a few feet to Ellini's right. "I'm Manda. I'm a mourner at the University Church."

The strong voice and diva's bosom seemed to bear out this claim. Ellini relaxed a little. She sat back down and pulled her knees up to her chest when the piano music started again. "How did you know I'd be here?"

"I've got a book about you," said Manda, in the same happy tone of voice. "And it's not the one that everyone else is reading."

"Oh." Ellini looked out over the edge of the roof for a moment, drawing her knees even closer to her chest. It was embarrassing to have someone with her while she was listening to the music. She felt as though she'd been caught indulging in some kind of illicit pleasure—although, in fact, it had been illicit pain. "You mean the Book of Woe, I suppose?

Manda nodded. She seemed inordinately pleased with herself. "And I knew you were going to be here because down there—" She pointed over the battlements to the foot of the building, where a flight of elegant white steps ascended to the front door." —is where you're supposed to die. 'The stairs where the music plays', yes? I've been wandering round the city all night searching for them. So, I assumed you'd come here to be all mournful and tragic, because you haven't had much of an opportunity for that yet. And in your case, I'd say that a few moments to feel sorry for yourself is as much-needed as a solid meal and a good night's sleep."

"And yet here you are, interrupting them," Ellini muttered under her breath.

Manda waved a hand. "Well, you can overindulge in these things. And I needed to talk to you."

"I'm afraid I can't tell you any more than I told the Inspector."

"You don't have to. I know everything already." She grimaced and added, "Well, there are a few gaps, but I'll be happy to let them go, for the sake of not having an argument."

Manda stopped talking. The music was getting intrusively good. Notes were pattering down around them like rain. "Do you know who that is down there?"

"No," said Ellini. "And I never want to know. Knowing people can only disappoint you."

"Are you often disappointed?" said Manda, edging closer to her across the tiles.

Ellini smiled humourlessly. "All my expectations were formed from novels, Miss Manda. I'm constantly disappointed."

"But, mostly, you're disappointed in Jack, yes? Sam was telling me that he used to love you, but he took a serum to forget?"

Ellini blinked. She hadn't expected such a brutal attack from such a friendly-seeming girl. She liked loud, talkative people as a rule—they tended to shock her out of herself. But this one seemed fiercely perceptive. She could probably talk at you for half an hour, and yet, at the end of it, she'd know far more about you than you would about her.

"If you already know everything, Miss Manda, then surely I don't have to answer your questions?"

"It would be polite," said Manda. "But no, you don't have to answer my questions. You do have to listen to my advice, though, and just so I know I've got your attention—" she added, getting to her feet, and stepping back a few paces, across the flat roof. "I brought a little souvenir from the police station."

Ellini's mouth dropped open. She was holding up—and uncorking—a little glass perfume bottle. She threw the cork away without bothering to watch where it landed and used her other hand to pull back her veil. The pattern of freckles continued on her face, but mostly, what caught Ellini's attention was the pure, steely determination.

"If you don't listen, or don't do what I say, then I'm calling up your little friends."

"Um. Please don't do that," said Ellini, struggling to her feet, and making her voice as polite as she possibly could. "You'll be killed."

But Manda wasn't listening. "Firstly, Miss Syal, please don't wear red. Maybe you know what I'm talking about, and maybe you don't, but, either way, I'd appreciate it if you stuck with the white dress. Secondly, it seems to me that we could save your girls and avoid a war if you were willing to climb down off that masochistic pedestal and accept some help."

"I see," said Ellini. Her voice was desperately gentle now. She felt as though she was talking Manda down from a ledge. "And have you told the Inspector about my girls?"

"No." Manda grimaced, as though mention of the Inspector had put a bad taste in her mouth. "Look, you might be right. He might try to lock them up for the sake of the peace. He's a bit... touchy about the peace. He feels as though it's his responsibility."

Ellini waited, keeping every one of her muscles tensed. She could almost visualize the scent particles as they rose from the neck of the bottle and were snatched up by the wind. Did Manda think you had to put the perfume on and jump about provocatively? Did she think they were going to be sporting about this?

Now, let's see... the wind was blowing eastwards, and she had definitely seen one of the creatures go to ground by the West Gate, so that would be all right. But the other one, she'd last seen on Magdalen Bridge, which was to the south-east. And there were still a good twenty minutes before sunrise. The creature might think it was worth it, if the scent was strong enough...

"Why are you so convinced that you have to do this alone?" said Manda, raising the bottle even higher, as though she thought she was losing Ellini's attention. "You're too busy trying to hurt yourself to notice that you've got allies!" Ellini got the feeling she had been wanting to say all of this—to somebody—for years.

"So maybe you can't rely on Sam, but Jack used to love you, didn't he? Has it ever occurred to you that, if you got him on your side, he could sort this out in a matter of minutes? Don't you know what he can do when he really focuses on a problem? He could make mincemeat of those gargoyles!"

"Only the Doctor's last descendant can kill the gargoyles," said Ellini matter-of-factly. "If he tried to fight them, he'd be killed."

She glanced behind Manda at the edge of the roof. It was a sheer drop, with no convenient, protruding balconies or window ledges. But, if she got the angles and the momentum right, they could land on the roof opposite, which sloped down gently, and might afford some handholds before the big drop. What had been in the alley below? Oxford's architecture was so jagged that you were always in danger of being impaled on something if you lost your footing. Not to mention the dogs and flagpoles and barbed wire fences that littered the ground. But, if she managed to cling on to the guttering, and then to Manda, they would be all right.

"But you know who this last descendant is, don't you?" Manda protested. "Why don't you ask him for help? Why didn't you do that right from the beginning? Then you wouldn't have needed to keep the gargoyles distracted. You could have killed them all off and led your girls out in one go!"

"The Doctor's last descendant can be as touchy about the peace as the Inspector," said Ellini soothingly. "Touchier, I'd say. The Doctor's last descendant dreams of being the one who makes the peace permanent."

She ignored the dark shadow in her peripheral vision. She had to keep her eyes trained on Manda. This one wasn't going to get away from her. There was not going to be another Helen Thorne.

"Well, the very least you could do is—" Manda's words turned into a squawk as Ellini leapt at her and pushed her backwards, just as a huge, lithe, stinking shadow passed overhead, so close above them that it ruffled their hair. Ellini had knocked her hand wide, so that the perfume bottle fell as far away from the two of them as could be managed. She saw the dark shadow tumble after it as she fell.

Both girls landed on the sloping roof opposite and tumbled downwards, trying to grab handfuls of slate and moss as they went. Manda managed to grab on to the gutter, but Ellini was pitched forwards off the edge of the roof, and fell for what seemed like forever before her momentum slowed with a lurch and a tearing sound.

She opened her eyes, hardly daring to take a breath, in case it caused all the hurtling to start up again. Jack's coat had caught on the barbed wire at the top of a fence and stopped her a few feet before she hit the ground.

She hung there uncertainly for a few seconds, and then fell out of the coat, one arm at a time, and slithered to a heap on the cobblestones below. Her immediate impulse was to just lie there until the streets filled up and the citizens of Oxford trampled her to a pulp. But there was a sudden fluttering next to her temple—as though a bat had skittered past her face—and she managed to wrench her eyes open, to see what fresh new troubles the night had in store.

Sharp little rectangles of paper were falling after her, carpeting the alley like snow. As she watched, one of them fluttered onto her chest. She picked it up without thinking, and then, very slowly, put it down again.

They were letters—slightly crinkled with age, and much-folded, as though they had been taken out and held and read and played with over and over again. The name on the front of the envelopes was Jack Cade, and the handwriting was her own.

Ellini didn't have the breath to moan or the energy to cry. She tried to gather up the letters, but either she'd injured herself in the fall, or her muscles had finally gone on strike, because she couldn't get to her feet.

He'd kept them with him, sewn up in his coat, for all these years.

She lay back, shut her eyes, and listened to the patter of the paper falling around her. She thought: five minutes. Five minutes, little girl, and then you're picking up those letters and destroying them, before the streets fill up with people.

He couldn't have known. When he forgot about her, he must have forgotten he had the letters sewn up in his coat. And if he saw them now... well, it probably wouldn't change anything, but it would frighten him, the way he'd been frightened when she'd started speaking French, and he would stop spending time with her, and she needed his teasing and his meaningless conversations as much as she needed the night-time piano music. Twenty-six days was such a long time to stay alive for! She couldn't do it alone.

Manda had managed to climb down from the guttering by this point and crawled through a gap in the fence to get to Ellini's side. She crouched down beside her, brushing dust off her dress. "Are you all right? What did you do that for?"

"What did you do that for?" Ellini snapped, losing her patience at last. "Why do you want to make my life even more difficult? You could have died!"

Manda shrugged in an infuriatingly calm way. "It's not nice when people try to kill themselves right in front of you, is it?"

She picked up the letter that was lying on Ellini's chest. It was a strangely intimate action—as though they'd known each other for years and were therefore entitled to pluck pieces of paper from one another's cleavages. "What are these things? They fell out of Jack's coat, didn't they?"

"Nothing he'll be interested in anymore," said Ellini, taking a deep breath, and trying to hitch her composure back in place. Manda's strange, unceremonious behaviour had thrown her off balance. Maybe they were friends... maybe they had known each other for years.

Manda slipped the letter out of its envelope and scanned it. Her eyes got wider the further they slipped down the page. But she didn't say anything obvious—Ellini was grateful for that, at least. She didn't say 'Wow', or 'You wrote these?' or 'Haven't you got any shame?' She just folded the paper carefully, slipped it back in its envelope, and said, "He kept them sewn up in his coat."

Ellini stayed silent.

"Did he forget you on purpose?" Manda went on thoughtfully.

"Yes."

"He still loves you."

"No."

"Oh, come on!" Manda gestured at the coat, which was still hanging from the barbed wire at the top of the fence. "He kept your letters sewn up in his coat! Do you have any idea how unsentimental this man is? How quickly he forgets women? He's slept with almost every girl in the city—"

"That's fine," said Ellini, mainly to stop her talking. "Listen, Miss Manda, I feel as though we've started off on the wrong foot. You've been very kind to me, so far. You know about my girls, and you haven't told the Inspector. That's worth a secret or two. I promise, there are reasons for all the apparently insane things I'm doing, and I'd be happy to impart them to you, only perhaps a little later. When I've had some sleep—and changed out of my work clothes..."

She faltered miserably, plucking at the long black skirts. But, contrary to all expectations, Manda relented. She sighed and got to her feet, pulling Ellini up after her.

"I'll help you collect up the letters," she said. "But we won't destroy them. They're not ours to destroy. And then you'll go to bed, and we'll talk later, all right? But I can get plenty more of that perfume, Miss Syal, so I'd advise you not to do anything too masochistic while I'm gone."