Ellini made her way to the Turl Street Music Rooms – not because the Book of Woe had said she was destined to die there, but because there was nowhere else to find comfort. 

Her footsteps were shuffling and numb. There had been pain – and not just the physical kind – but now it had died down to a hazy, empty kind of cold. 

There was no Jack. He had never been what she'd thought he was. She might just as well have made him up. He was no different from Robin, or Carver, or Pandarus and his master. And yet, for some infuriating reason, she still liked it – all of it. She still laughed at his jokes, even when she was bleeding to death through a hole in her chest that he had put there.

She was heartily ashamed of herself – although it had been nice to punch him. She had been wanting to do that just as much as she'd been wanting to kiss him. And now she had done both in the same night. As well as stabbing a gargoyle. She would never have believed it of herself. 

Still, it wouldn't have worked if she hadn't had the brass knuckles – and if Jack hadn't been so disoriented. Had there been pain too? Had he been looking at her as though he loved her in those last, brief seconds between kiss and unconsciousness?

She didn't know. She'd been too angry to look for it. And too frightened that her resolve would weaken if she let him say a word.

She had wanted him to know – she'd wanted him to realise what he'd done and live with it. That was why she'd kissed him. But even then, she couldn't bear the idea that he might die because of it. That was why she'd put the bracelet on him. If he remembered he loved her, and he tried to...

But he wouldn't. He couldn't have loved her much if he'd been able to stab her in the chest. It was just a stupid precaution. She'd thought of it before he'd even stabbed her. She had realised he wasn't going to back down from a fight with the gargoyles, and that the bracelet might be the only way to keep him safe. She had enchanted it in the church, when she'd been kneeling at the altar. 

And the person she had chosen as the one creature in the world who could get through the bracelet's defences – well, that person was gentle as a lamb, and would probably just unfasten the bracelet rather than killing him.

It hadn't been a fool-proof plan to begin with, but, when he had stabbed her through the chest, her mind had put the last, spiteful finishing touches to it. She had decided to kiss him as well – let him live forever with the knowledge of what he'd done – and see what his conscience would make of it.

In truth, his conscience probably wouldn't make that much of it. But she'd been in a lot of pain. It had seemed to her like justice and mercy at the same time, but perhaps that was just the blood-loss talking. It didn't matter. It was done now. 

***

Dr Petrescu drew the needle and tubing out of Danvers's arm a split-second before he tumbled off his chair. A split-second before that, the poor man had been protesting – with increasingly slurred speech – that he was feeling fine, and he could stand to give her just a little more blood.

Sergei bandaged up his arm and arranged him comfortably on the floor – as there wasn't another bed – before sitting down on the chair he had just vacated.

Eve was still gasping and shivering. She had stopped breathing out smoke, but she was still losing blood. She needed more. He wondered whether the rumours about demons feeding on human blood had sprung from how difficult they were to satisfy during the process of transfusion.

Probably not, although it was a nice idea. Almost certainly nicer than the truth, whatever the truth might have been.

He sighed and deftly inserted a new needle into his own arm. To pass the time, he started to count down from ten thousand in his head.

***

She could already feel her heart lightening as she came within sight of the Music Rooms. If there was no comfort to be had from Jack, she was sure to find it here.

She wanted to see the Orpheus-trick done one last time. Just once in her life – and once in classical antiquity – there had been music so beautiful that it changed the very nature of hell. The damned had paused in their interminable labours, and Ellini's head had suddenly been a nice place to live in.

Both times, it had ended badly. But, now that it seemed she couldn't choose but end badly, she might as well have the beautiful music to play her to sleep.

Luckily, as she approached the steep marble steps, she realized that her mysterious pianist was still playing – and not Chopin's Nocturnes, either, but some composition of his own. There was something desperate to it. Ellini could hear the thunking of the keys and the squeak of the pedals over the notes, as though he was trying to play his piano to death.

She would have preferred a lullaby. His playing was so angry that it made her think of a whirlpool stirring up all the refuse and wreckage at the bottom of the sea – all the ugly, damaged things she would have liked to remain hidden.

It was still sweet, though. He could even make ship-wrecks and dead bodies beautiful.

She settled down on the steps, trying to find a position where it didn't hurt. The pain was back now. She supposed it went hand-in-hand with the pleasure of the music.

And, typically, just as the death she had longed for was approaching, her brain started to come up with all kinds of strategies to defer it. Maybe she could make it to the Radcliffe Infirmary – maybe she could go back to the Faculty and ask Dr Petrescu to help her. He could patch her up and smuggle her out of the city before Jack even regained consciousness.

But he couldn't. She knew that. She'd lost too much blood. It was just that, in spite of everything, she was starting to feel better.

This was stupid. What would it solve, anyway, even if she did survive? Was she any happier? Good god, no. But she was angrier. And it wasn't all directed at herself this time. It was difficult to tell yourself that you should have expected Jack Cade to drive an arrow through your chest. She could try telling herself that she had driven him to it, but that didn't quite work either, since he had done it in cold blood.

She had no idea how long she had been lying there, thinking these turbulent thoughts, before she became aware of the figure standing over her. It was wearing a severe grey dress, and it had a slate hanging round its neck, on which someone had chalked the words 'kill me'.

Ellini sat up, her jaw dropping open.

There were two separate stages of recognition – the first, when she saw her own face, and her own dark eyes looking down at her. And the second, when she looked closer at those eyes, and saw how alien they were.

She had read about this, hadn't she? It was a simulacrum – an elemental trapped inside a magically transfigured body. The body itself might have been no more than a log or a tree-stump with a glamour cast over it, but it was the spirit trapped inside that gave the whole thing a semblance of life.

But it was a very strange semblance. The creature hardly blinked. If it was a substitute for her, it must have been made by someone who didn't mind disconcerting little details.

At first, she thought the doppelganger might have meant her some harm, but it just looked down at her like an uncomprehending little fawn, with eyes that might have been imploring, if the creature had known what it was to implore. It just held out its slate to her, as though that was the only thing in the world which had any meaning.

Aching and shivering, Ellini got to her feet and tried to pat the little creature's hand. But it shrunk back. Obviously, it hadn't had many good associations with human contact.

It suddenly occurred to her that the creature had probably been mistreated in the same way she had. And, for some reason, it was this – out of all the things that had happened tonight – that made her eyes fill up with tears.

She looked at the elemental's face, and didn't feel the same hostility she usually felt towards that face, when she was looking at it in the mirror. She had done nothing to deserve it. This Ellini Syal hadn't ruined other people's lives just by being pretty.

What a stupid thing to think, when you considered it. As if something you'd been born with – that you had no control over – could make you responsible for the way other people behaved. It would be like saying Napoleon had invaded Spain because Josephine had brown eyes.

Well, not quite like that, but almost.

This creature wasn't her, but it was the essence of victimhood – and there was nothing guilty or contemptible about it. The contempt rested with other people. It wasn't difficult to treat a little fawn like this with the gentleness it deserved.

"I'm sorry," said Ellini, pressing a shaky hand to her mouth to keep back the tears.

But the elemental didn't want to hear apologies. It held out the slate a second time and motioned to the demon-knife she was still clutching in her fingers.

"No," said Ellini, drawing her hand back, in case the elemental tried to make a grab for it. "That's not the answer, believe me. I can't just-"

But she stopped, and saw the whole path – fully-formed, perfect in every detail – stretching out in front of her. It would mean the prophecy would come true, the elemental would be released, and Jack would have no reason to come looking for her. She could be free.

But it was stupid – it was stupid! Hadn't she been wanting to die all this time? How was she going to live with all those memories? And she hated herself, so she would be constantly remembering. She would drag out one of those hideous recollections every time she sensed her spirits were low. And they were always low! How were they supposed to be high? Jack had stabbed her through the chest!

It would be a daily struggle against every single one of her thoughts. 

But there would be music. And books. And black coffee. You didn't get any of those things when you were dead.

And ideas kept occurring to her – ways to save herself, ways to make it bearable. She couldn't shut them out. She wished she understood it better. She wished it had been a revelation – an epiphany – rather than a group of feelings ganging up on her and beating down her despair.

If it had been an epiphany, she might have known what to do next – how to live with everything she'd been through. As it was, she just wanted to disappear. She wanted to get away from Oxford, with its dreaming professors and damp, overhanging sky. She never wanted to see another quad or college building again. She didn't even want to see the slave-girls again. She wanted total freedom, without home or friends or love or responsibility. 

She wanted to do what she did best – a disappearing act. And now she could see her way to it. In fact, everything had been laid out in front of her – a near-fatal wound, a trail of blood leading here, an exact double who was begging for an end to her life.

It was like the glowing footprints that had been leading her around all night – from the Music Rooms, where she had picked up the little bunch of forget-me-nots, to the River Club, and back again. At first, she had thought it was the trail of the prophecy, but it wasn't. It was the trail of necessity. It was just that, if you didn't have all the facts, they looked like the same thing.

She supposed she must have been standing still for a long time, because the elemental held out her slate again and made another gesture towards the knife in Ellini's hand. Suddenly, she realized that the piano-music had come to a halt. He was between songs, she supposed, glancing up at the curtained window.

And she thought: if the next song he plays is a lullaby, I'll lie down and let him play me to sleep. But, if it's another angry song, I'll do it. I'll live with everything. I'll set the poor elemental free. I'll try and find a way to get through life, simply because I couldn't lie down and submit to it when I really had the chance to die.

The next song began with a series of crashing chords so loud that it sounded as though the mysterious pianist was banging his head against the piano. She supposed that was fairly unequivocal.

"All right," said Ellini briskly, turning to the elemental and blinking back her tears. "Follow me."

She led the poor little creature into the alleyway behind the Music Rooms, and somehow managed to make it understand that it was to switch clothes with her. It unbuttoned itself as if in a trance, but, when it saw the wound in Ellini's chest, it wordlessly tore off a strip from its petticoat and tied it in a kind of bandage around her shoulder.

It didn't even make eye-contact with her. Perhaps it didn't know how to make eye-contact. But Ellini felt heartened all the same.

"Thank you."

When she had laced the elemental into her blood-soaked dress, and slipped the plain grey one over her own head, she led the poor thing back to the Music Rooms, and eased her tenderly onto her back on the steps.

She couldn't have said whether it knew what was going on, but its meek co-operation was probably a good sign.

She fumbled in the chatelaine pocket attached to the dress, and brought out the bottle of sandalwood perfume, and the black ribbons that a Charlotte Grey always twisted round her arms when she was about to suffer in someone else's place. Then she wrapped the elemental's skinny arms in ribbon, and dabbed the perfume onto her wrists and neck in a calm, ritual mood, as though she was tucking a beloved child into bed.

"The Book of Woe said it would be the last Charlotte Grey who died here," said Ellini, "so I'm making you one of us. You don't even have to go through the normal ritual of losing your fingernails first. But let me tell you what I tell all the girls before they take a turn as Charlotte Grey. It's not really a role, or even a supernatural entity whose whole is much greater than the sum of its parts. The original Charlotte Grey doesn't descend from the clouds and take possession of your body – at least, not so far as I know. But you're connected to her because you're making the same promise. You're already her – and just as good as her – simply because you're willing to put on the costume and make sacrifices for other people. You don't have to worry about living up to her, because everything you do enriches her. Everything you are beautifies the uniform – and it was quite a beautiful uniform to begin with."

The elemental didn't seem to understand. It just waved the slate at her again.

"All right," said Ellini, with a sigh. "I was just trying to have a moment with you."

With trembling hands, she found the poor thing's fluttering heart, and positioned the demon-knife directly above it. She desperately didn't want to get this wrong – she didn't want to hurt the creature any more than she had to.

She shut her eyes, and tried to think about what it would be like to be an elemental, riding on the wind and the sunbeams, like Ariel in The Tempest. What was the song he had sung?

Where the bee sucks, there suck I:

In a cowslip's bell I lie;

There I couch when owls do cry

On the bat's back I do fly

After summer merrily

Merrily, merrily shall I live now

Under the blossom that hags on the bough.

That was better than this. It was certainly better than being Ellini Syal – and no-one knew that better than she did.

She drove the point of the knife downwards with a little, barely audible sob. When she could finally bring herself to open her eyes again, the body was quite still, its eyes mercifully shut.

There was a little, whispering breeze stirring the hairs at the base of the elemental's neck, and Ellini tilted its head to see that the sigil which had sealed the spirit in its magically-transfigured body had evaporated. There was no indication now – other than the slate with its horrible words – that a life had ever been trapped in there at all.

Ellini got up – and, as she did so, became aware of a flood of light spilling onto the steps. Someone had opened the curtains in the main recital room. She supposed she should have realized the music had stopped. 

She tried not to look up, but it was impossible. There was nowhere to hide, nothing else to look at – nothing that wouldn't make her eyes swell up with tears again, anyway. And, besides, it might be nice, before she left Oxford, to see the face of the one man who hadn't disappointed her.

She looked up at him, tilted her head slightly, and then smiled, thinking that, actually, he looked a lot like his music, and there could be no greater compliment than that. Nervous and eager and soft-hearted.

He was staring at her, just as though he had been wondering what she looked like too. Ellini waved to him, then raised a hand to her lips and motioned for silence. This seemed to hold him in thrall for a second, but she could tell it wasn't going to last – he was already shifting impatiently from one foot to another – so she flashed him one last smile, and then hurried down the steps into the next street, before he had a chance to come running out.

She knew exactly what to do this time. She wasn't going to ruin this one the way she had ruined Jack. One look was enough.

For a few moments, she heard the sound of his pursuit, as she dodged from alley to alley – but he obviously didn't know Oxford very well, because he soon lost her. She was left alone in the empty streets, wondering what she was going to do, and where she was going to go, now that she'd gone to all the trouble of faking her own death.

An infirmary would probably be a good idea, but she felt a lot stronger now. She felt as though she had an hour or two before she was in any danger of collapsing. And the Radcliffe Infirmary was too close. She couldn't heal anywhere in Oxford – nowhere where the smoke from the University Church would still be visible from her window.

She found a hansom cab in St Aldates, just as the first rain-drops were beginning to fall further up the road, and asked the driver where the second-nearest hospital was.

He didn't raise his eyebrows at the question – this was Oxford, after all, so he had probably heard more inscrutable riddles.

"There's an Infirmary at Tetsworth, on the road to London, Miss?"

"London," said Ellini, turning the idea over in her mind. "Perfect. I'll give you half a sovereign if you can get me to the Infirmary in an hour, and another half a sovereign if you forget you ever saw me."

She looked out of the back window of the carriage as they pulled away. The rain seemed to follow them for some time, without ever quite catching up. It fell like a curtain across the road, closing the air behind her.

To be Continued...

***

Woohoo, end of Book Two! If you've made it this far, you deserve a medal, so thank you from the bottom of my heart! Please vote, share and comment if you've enjoyed this story. Jack and Ellini will return in Book Three...