Danvers nursed a cup of black, tar-thick tea in his hands, and tried not to take up too much space. The little kitchen was crammed tight – with three children, three adults, and a large, coal-burning stove which made the air as thick as the tea.

It was a poor house, but there were some tokens of respectability. A few soot-blackened books on the shelf above the stove, an icon of the Virgin Mary, and an absence of visible alcohol made this by far the most salubrious house he had ever visited in the west Oxford slums. This was poverty, but it was poverty that had the wherewithal to clean. Yelavitch's wife, Anastasia, fought a daily battle against the coal-dust. And though her three boys were always covered in it, they weren't choking on it, which suggested she was having some measure of success.

At the moment, the boys were clambering over Danvers – one on his back, one hanging off his right arm, and one standing up in his lap, shouting "la la la la la la" into his ear. 

Danvers was weathering this storm quite stoically – even giving them a few absent-minded smiles – but their exuberance was obviously annoying Yelavitch. When he thumped his hand on the table and shouted "That's enough!" the boys scattered into various corners of the room, giggling.

But not for long. Danvers knew this game. They would creep back, inch by inch, as soon as their father stopped fuming. The aim of the game was to see who could get closest to the visitor before the next eruption of shouting. It was double points if you could get sooty handprints on his suit.

"You see what I have to put up with?" said Yelavitch, waving one of his large, beefy hands. "They can't spend a single moment of the day behaving rationally."

"They're young boys," said Danvers diplomatically. "They'll calm down."

"I heard you lost your job," said Yelavitch, gulping his tea with a grimace. "I couldn't believe it at first. But then they told me you were standing up for a mistreated woman, and the world seemed to make sense again. I can get you a few odd-jobs at the Chemistry Faculty till you find something new."

Danvers beamed and leaned across the table eagerly. "I was hoping you'd say that. You shave Professor Carver, don't you?"

"Oh, yes. Practically have to wipe his arse, the way he--"

Anastasia shouted something in Russian – presumably an admonishment for swearing – but Danvers leaned forward and pressed on: "And what if you couldn't shave him? If you'd sprained your hand or something? Would he go to a barber?"

"Oh, god no. He won't pay a shilling for something he could get done for free. The kitchen-boy does it if I can't."

"But suppose the kitchen-boy was out on an errand?"

Yelavitch frowned irritably. "What are you getting at, Danvers?"

"Could I shave him?"

"Why in god's name would you want to do that?"

Anastasia started shouting again – perhaps for blasphemy this time – even going so far as to clip him round the head with her tea-towel.

"It's rather difficult to explain," said Danvers, even though Yelavitch had now turned to Anastasia, and was shouting back. "All I can tell you is that it's in a very good cause, and that I'll move mountains to repay the favour, should you ever need anything from me."

This caused Yelavitch and Anastasia to stop shouting and become quite thoughtful. Presumably, if you had three children and not much money, you didn't lightly brush away a favour.

"You're not going to cut 'is throat, are you?" said Yelavitch. "I'd have enormous sympathy with you if you did, but he is my employer."

Danvers – despite the fact that his intentions were uncomfortably close to cutting Carver's throat – couldn't help being shocked. "I would never--" he protested, but Anastasia cut him off.

"Dear Mr Danvers, Vasya is only joking with you. Of course he will help you."

Yelavitch raised his eyebrows, but Anastasia – as they both knew – wasn't finished.

"And we would not dream of taking money from you. Only, you know so many tradesmen in the town – and Alexis is getting to the age where we need to find some employment for him. If you could find him an apprenticeship – he could do anything, Mr Danvers – clock-making or carriage-building or carpentry – and we'd be so grateful."

Danvers hesitated, but his natural honesty won out. "Anastasia," he said. "I would do anything for the boys anyway. You must ask me for something else – something for you or Vasya – because this last is no favour. The boys know they can always count on me."

Anastasia beamed, but Yelavitch said, "All right, then – five pounds."

The tea-towel was whipped out instantly. "Vasya!" said Anastasia, deeply shocked.

"Stasi, you can't win when he's being gentlemanly like this. If we don't let him make some noble sacrifice, he'll be on at us all night. Besides, he's got much more money than we have – although possibly not for long."

"Five pounds is fine," said Danvers, caught between amusement and offence.

"You see?" said Yelavitch. "We probably could have got more. Is tomorrow all right with you?"

"It must be tomorrow," said Danvers, leaning forward in his chair. "But I give you my word, I mean the Professor no harm."

Yelavitch brushed this aside, as though it hadn't been a real concern anyway. "The harpy seems to have taken quite a shine to you too, so, for once, she won't be a problem."

Danvers blinked. "The harpy?"

Yelavitch was looking at him with grim amusement, as though it was perfectly obvious, but he was by no means averse to elaborating further.

"You know – the harpy? The hedge whore? The pug-nosed trollop? The whining, shrieking bitch?"

Danvers looked in alarm at Anastasia. But far from bearing down on him with her tea-towel, she was listening approvingly to this stream of invectives. She didn't even try to put a stop to it when the boys caught hold of certain words and began bellowing them across the room to each other. They liked 'hedge whore' best.

"Yelavitch," said Danvers weakly, when the word 'bitch' was reeled out for the third or fourth time.

Yelavitch sighed. "Violet," he explained. "Violet won't be a problem. She likes you. You're the only man in the city she can still shock."

"Well, perhaps that won't be the case for much longer," said Danvers stiffly.

Anastasia gave him a friendly cuff around the head with her tea-towel. "You don't know how much she has done to deserve it, Mr Danvers."

"I can't imagine what anyone could have done to deserve it!"

But this wasn't true anymore. The scope of his imagination had been widened painfully over the past few weeks. And, according to Miss Hope, Violet had betrayed the other slave-girls – had betrayed Miss Syal. Perhaps a few of the less horrifying insults had been deserved. He quite liked the sound of 'harpy'. At least that had a basis in classical literature.

Danvers looked to his left and made eye-contact with Alexis, who had crept out of his sooty corner, and was clearly thinking of making a dash for Danvers while his father was otherwise occupied. Dannvers tried to shake his head without being seen by Yelavitch or Anastasia, but he had seen the mischievous determination in the little boy's face, and he resigned himself to the oncoming scuffle with a groan.

He felt as though his whole life consisted of moments like these. He was always standing by helplessly, imploring people not to be bad – but it was like trying to stop an avalanche with a look. They went on being cruel and unkind anyway, as though it was a matter of physics, rather than a matter of choice.

Alexis leapt onto his back, and Yelavitch shouted, and Anastasia shouted even louder, because she couldn't bear to see her son being beaten. Danvers excused himself as soon as he could. He had quite frequently been told that he should have a family – and he didn't actually have anything against them – but they seemed to be a sort of slow, modulated descent into madness, and he already had one of those in his life anyway.

He walked down Botley Road and under the railway bridge, dragging his heels in the way which had become habit over the past few weeks.

He wondered for the hundredth time why he was doing this. It was no longer sufficient just to tell himself that it was the right thing to do. Right for whom? For Jack? Wouldn't Jack stifle that gentle creature? Wouldn't her exquisite sensitivity be deafened by all his pranks and vulgar jokes? And, anyway, wasn't Jack keener on being free than being happy?

Danvers plunged his hands into the pockets of his coat and sighed. It would be the fourth of July tomorrow. And Miss Syal was still alone in the Faculty with Jack, who couldn't love her, Dr Petrescu, who couldn't help her, and Mrs Darwin, who couldn't stop making her life a misery.

Also, he would have to find a new job quite soon, because five pounds was everything he had in the world.

He had only been walking for a minute or two when he heard Yelavitch hurrying after him, without coat or hat, folding his arms against the evening chill.

"Did you tell anyone?" he said urgently. "About the – about Carver casting spells at the Chemistry Faculty?"

Danvers had to think very hard before he remembered what Yelavitch was talking about. "Of course not," he said – and this was technically true. Madam Myrrha had already known Carver was casting spells, so he hadn't needed to tell her.

Yelavitch seemed to relax a little. "You know, I'm not really going to take your five pounds."

Danvers waved a hand dismissively. "I was only going to leave it to your sons when I died anyway."

"Good god, Danvers!" said Yelavitch, genuinely shocked. "There's no telling what those little animals will spend it on! Besides, you might have a wife and family of your own soon."

Danvers stared at him. "I'm sorry?"

"This Miss Syal?" Yelavitch prompted. "The one you lost your job over? The one you are – presumably – collecting Carver's blood for?"

Danvers didn't say anything, but Yelavitch – for once – didn't seem inclined to triumph over him. "Look," he said gently. "I came to Oxford to learn. I didn't have the money to learn the way a gentleman would, but that was never going to stop me. And I wanted to learn an honest discipline like chemistry, but instead I had to make do with picking up incantations and mumbo-jumbo from that idiot Carver. So I know why you want to shave him. So will he, probably, but he doesn't pay much attention to servants, so perhaps he won't credit you with the intelligence to collect his blood. I hope you know that it isn't sufficient just to get a phial of the stuff and say a few magic words over it. Unpicking somebody else's spell is ten times harder than casting one yourself, and, as far as I'm aware, you've had experience of neither."

"I, uh... I have an acquaintance who can unpick the spell for me," said Danvers.

"Well, whoever he is, he won't do it for free."

"I fear you may be right."

"I've seen your Miss Syal, you know," said Yelavitch, swinging his arms awkwardly. "And not on the rooftops when everyone else has been gawping up at her, hoping her dress'll get snagged on a passing gargoyle and leave her even more naked."

Danvers carefully refrained from reacting to this. He could see that Yelavitch was watching for a reaction, and he didn't want to play into his hands.

"I've seen her in the corridors of the Chemistry Faculty," Yelavitch breathed. "Carver's got some kind of copy of her. It's horrible." His mouth twisted. "She can't talk – she's got a slate and a piece of chalk round her neck so she can communicate basic things, like hunger and thirst, but whenever I've seen her alone in the corridors, it just says 'kill me'."

Again, Danvers didn't say anything. He felt as though a cold hand had seized him by the throat.

"She's like a ghost that desperately wants to be exorcized. The other servants have taken to calling her 'the grey lady'. If it wasn't so bloody stupid, I'd call in a priest." 

He shuffled closer to Danvers, looking over his shoulder to check that they couldn't be overheard. "I actually know a little bit about the magic involved. You can make a stock – that's a copy of a living person – without too much trouble, but if you want it to move around, you've got to seal a spirit in there. Carver's called up an elemental – you can capture those in earth, water, air, or fire, and I suppose the stock would count as earth. You can see a sigil at the back of her neck which marks the place where the spirit's been sealed in."

His mouth twisted with disgust again. "Obviously, elementals don't like to be trapped anywhere, but I'm guessing it's also being – mistreated, if you know what I mean."

Danvers desperately tried to clamp down on his imagination before it could visualize what he meant. He told himself he had known this already – he had known that Carver was abusing his copy of Miss Syal. But to also know that the poor thing was conscious – that it had scrawled the words 'kill me' on a slate around its neck...

"And tomorrow morning," said Yelavitch, "you have to hold a razor to this man's throat and only make the tiniest of cuts..."

He trailed off, and Danvers pretended he didn't know what his friend was getting at.

"I'm just saying," said Yelavitch, with a shrug of his beefy shoulders. "How good a man are you? And can you vouch for your goodness one moment to the next?"

Danvers – very briefly – considered being offended. And, even when he had decided against that, he toyed with the idea of saying: 'Why am I the one who has to justify my intentions? I didn't use the word 'bitch' four times in front of my children, or make a walking, breathing copy of Miss Syal in order to molest it. I haven't been cutting off male genitals and preserving them in glass jars – or forcing men to forget their loved ones – or enslaving women in an underground cavern – or smashing dolls in a fit of spite. I seem to be the only person in this sordid world who actually knows how to behave himself, and you are questioning my motives as though all of the above is an everyday occurrence, but trying to break a malignant spell which is keeping an innocent man from remembering the woman he loves is the most suspicious thing in the world!'

But he didn't say that – because, in a world where all of the above had happened, it was the most suspicious thing in the world to try and break a malignant spell that was keeping an innocent man from remembering the woman he loved.

And Jack wasn't innocent. And Danvers wasn't sure he did know how to behave himself any longer.

So, instead, he forced a smile, and said, "I've managed to resist the temptation to cut anyone's throat for thirty-one years, Yelavitch. I'm sure I can manage one more day." 

***

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