Jack didn't go back to the Academy. The thought of being one of those men who stood between the gargoyles and pawed helplessly at the air was still tormenting him. He felt like one of those men – except that, while he was unquestionably helpless, he was not as harmless as them.

He was starting to think that the only reason he'd been able to live among the slave-girls without despising himself for being a man was because he'd been too grief-stricken – and mostly too busy – to feel desire. Oh, and because he had despised himself as a person, not just a man. That was important. Now he hated himself as a person a little bit less, because Ellini had been happy for a few, glorious minutes while they'd been dancing or fighting or flirting, or whatever it was they had done at the warehouse on Cantonment Walk.

But he wanted her. He didn't want to want her. Wanting her brought back all the horror-stories he had heard about men since taking the slave-girls under his wing. He felt like Lord Elsmere in his dark corner, or Carver with his living doll. 

The fact that Ellini hated him – and was probably right to do so – made it even worse. Did she see him as one of those men? He had never put his hands on a woman who didn't want him to. Never. Unless you counted stabbing one of those women in the chest – which, come to think of it, you probably should. 

Anyway, he couldn't bear to go back to the Academy. Instead, not knowing what else to do, he turned up on Sergei's doorstep, and was allowed his old room, provided he swore not to go on the rampage and kill anybody.

It was a reasonable enough request, if you thought about his attack on the mortuary, the riots he had orchestrated in the city, the death of Violet Pike. But still, Jack flinched, as though Sergei had been reading his mind. As though 'not harmless' was tattooed on his forehead.

He couldn't relax. He couldn't sit still. He didn't even try to sleep. He felt sick all the time – either sick with excitement or sick with dread, or some combination of the two. And Sergei exasperated him by refusing to see that he had any cause for complaint.

"Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't you much better off than you were a few days ago? Didn't you think she was dead? And having learned she was alive, didn't you think she might be married, or horribly injured, or destitute and forced to walk the streets? Presumably the least of your worries – and, might I add, the most inevitable outcome of your conduct – was that she would be angry with you?"

After a while, Jack got frustrated with this reasonable behaviour, and went to see Manda. Manda would understand. That was her job.

It was snowing in Oxford too – just enough to put a thin, crackly coating on the rooftops – but the weather couldn't cool him. When he went outside, the snowflakes hissed and sizzled on his skin, the way he imagined holy water would hiss and sizzle on the skin of a vampire. The comparison didn't cheer him up. 

He had been ready to hang around outside the gates of the Academy, feeling like a prowler, until Manda spotted him, but there was no need. She was in the University Church – whose spire was locked in a cage of scaffolding now, as the town authorities gradually gathered the wherewithal to rebuild it. The windows were still jagged with broken glass, letting in the cold air, but Jack couldn't feel the cold, and Manda was too busy to be bothered by it. She was sweeping the floor clean of its ashy coating. She got busier as Jack approached – in fact, he had to follow her around and raise his voice over the swishing of her broom. But it didn't occur to him to wonder if she had her own troubles. He was dying.

She had heard about Ellini, yes. She hadn't expected it, no. She supposed it was rather cruel to let him believe she was dead for seven months while she swanned around in fine clothes and went to parties. Oh, living with Robin Crake, was she? That was interesting.

It didn't occur to him to wonder at these aggressively noncommittal answers either. Instead, he moped after her, restless and miserable, saying things like:

"What do I do, Manda? Manda, what do I do? Manda, she hates me."

"Well?" said Manda, without turning round. "You hate her, don't you?"

"Yes, but I hate her and love her! She just hates me!"

Manda sighed. The broom stopped. "Jack, I know you're not going to want to hear this, but the only way to get her back is to be patient."

Jack staggered at the enormity of this advice. "Oh god – patient?" He seized her by the shoulders, and only refrained from shaking her with extreme difficulty. "I am dying, Manda – dying. I can't sleep, I can't eat, I can't stop thinking about her. It wasn't even this bad when I was a love-sick teenager and she could bring me to orgasm just by smiling at me."

"Jack!"

"And she's been living with Robin!" he said, taking one hand off her shoulder to wave it dramatically. "Their bedrooms were right next door to each other! Do you know what that means? It means there was maybe four inches of brick and plaster between them while she was sleeping! Do you know what that is to someone like Robin? He could punch through it in a fit of pique, I've seen him do it!"

"But didn't you say he's different now? Tormented with remorse?"

"He pretends to be," said Jack, through clenched teeth. "Anyway, that's worse! She'll feel sorry for him – she feels sorry for everyone except me!"

He lapsed back into the moping, plaintive tone. "You don't understand. I thought she was dead, and she's not dead. I don't have a moment to lose. I've got to have her – I'll die if I don't have her."

"Stop saying you're going to die!" said Manda, with a familiar stamp of her foot. "You are not going to die!"

"Do you know what it was like to think she was dead? For seven months?"

"Well, obviously," Manda muttered. "I thought she was dead for seven months, the same as you."

"All right, suppose it turned out that Lily was alive after all this time? Would you be able to leave her alone? Would you wait until she came to you?"

"But Lily," said Manda quietly, "is not alive."

Insensitive as he was, Jack sensed something there, and relented. He cast about for a change of subject. "They're finally rebuilding this place, are they?"

Somehow, he had said the right thing. Manda beamed.

"Sam put pressure on the council to release the funds. You never did that, when you had the mayor and the city councillors in the palm of your hand."

"Of course I didn't. I didn't want you to leave the Academy – you were bloody useful."

She frowned at him. "Your compliments aren't very complimentary."

"Sorry." He hesitated, and then said, "Sam been coming round a lot, has he?"

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Oh, nothing," he said, kicking morosely at the piles of ash. It had come to something when even Sam had a better chance of happiness than he did.

"I'll be off then," he said. "I'm glad we had this little talk."

"Are you?" said Manda, lifting up her chin. "You won't take my advice."

"I can't take your advice. But I appreciate it all the same."

***

The snow slowed the coach down. It was another two days before she arrived. But Jack was kept very well-informed of the coach's movements. The driver was one of the worryingly dedicated inhabitants of Northaven, and he sent a telegram every time they stopped to change horses.

Jack did not need to go to the coaching inn at Folly Bridge to see her arrive. He did not need to watch her breath steaming on the air and think it was as sweet and enticing as opium smoke. He did not need to burn with jealousy when she stumbled on the icy path and one of the ostlers took her arm to steady her. And he certainly didn't need to follow her. That was something the men who pawed at the air between the gargoyles would have done.

She was – as she always was these days – impeccably dressed. She was wearing a smart, figure-hugging coat of midnight-blue trimmed with black fur, and a bonnet with silky ribbons tied under her chin. She was carrying a basket over her arm – the kind of plain, wicker basket you saw every day in the hands of flower-girls, except that she was too regal for a comparison like that now.

She and Matthi parted company on St. Aldates. They were not holding hands, but Jack got the definite impression that, if they had been, they would have stretched out their arms as far as they could before letting go, as though they were being dragged away from one another.

Matthi got onto the back of a cart that was trundling up the hill towards the High Street. And Ellini, after watching the cart for a while as if she was trying to imprint it in her memory, walked on alone. She crossed the road before she reached the police station, and then crossed back when she'd passed it. If Sam was on her list of people to visit, he was obviously last.

Jack kept a safe distance all that time. And then, for some reason, while his inner monologue screamed at him to turn around, he hurried into Blue Boar Street to cut her off at the top of the hill.

"What's in the basket?" he said, without any preamble.

She started, and then laughed, as if she was mildly annoyed with herself for not expecting him to jump out at her. 

Jack, who was annoyed with himself for doing it, flushed and prodded the ground with his boot. "What' so funny?" he mumbled. "I only asked-" 

"Oh, I heard you," she said, keeping her eyes on the icy pavement. "It's just you sounded like the Big, Bad Wolf trying to tempt Red Riding Hood off the path."

"Oh," said Jack, who had spent the past three days feeling like the Big, Bad Wolf, and didn't much relish this comparison. "Well, since you've been living with the ultimate fairytale villain for the past seven months, that should make you feel right at home."

 "Actually, we were only living together for five months," said Ellini. "Before that, I was working in a slop-house in the East End. You know all those stories about shivering in a garret and hunching over a single candle for sixteen hours a day? Well, they're all true. And then some visiting philanthropist took a fancy to me, and told my employers he was going to give me a hand up in life by training me as his scullery maid. Only he couldn't even wait to get me home, because he tried to molest me on the pavement right outside the slop-house. That was when Robin saved me."

Jack winced at every one of these details – as he was no doubt supposed to.

"You didn't have to go through any of that," he said, in a tight voice. "You knew how I-" He stopped, and tried again. "You knew I would have always helped you."

"You stabbed me through the chest."

"It wasn't me! I didn't know you! How could I not know you and still be me?"

Ellini seemed genuinely confused by this. "But you were you before you knew me."

"Not for as long as you think."

He clamped his mouth shut and kept his eyes straight ahead, terrified that she would ask him what he meant. But she didn't. She wasn't interested in any defence he had to offer, and he supposed he had to be thankful for that.

"I understand, you know," he said, in that same tight, controlled voice, when they had gone on in silence for a while. "You wanted to disappear. You didn't want any reminders of your old life, good or bad. And obviously, you wanted to hurt me a lot. It's not unreasonable. Excessive, but not unreasonable."

Ellini said nothing, but that was another thing he had to be thankful for. If she had repeated 'You stabbed me through the chest' – a sentence he was beginning to loathe, even in the voice he loved – he would have tried to throw himself under the wheels of the nearest carriage.

"I don't think you knew how much it would hurt me," he went on, with determined steadiness. "And, incidentally, I think you still don't know."

"Don't-" Ellini started, with something like warmth in her voice. But then she collected herself, and cooled it. "Don't assume I'm a good person."

"Oh, I wouldn't go that far, Leeny."

"Good. That's the first sensible thing you've said since Northaven."

They turned onto the High Street, where their progress was slowed by drovers and barrow-boys. Up here, the snow was old. It had been trodden down and frozen solid until it was just bumpy white ice. You needed a pick-axe to make any progress, so he wasn't surprised when Ellini slipped. He reached towards her, but she twisted away, grabbing the nearest window-ledge to steady herself.

"Here," he said gruffly. "Hold on to me, I've got good boots."

"No, thank you."

"Leeny, there's no point breaking your neck because you're too proud to take my hand."

"I'm not too proud, I'm too practical," she said, turning her face towards him for the first time. She was smiling – not a triumphant smile, but a small, pained little smile that was actually quite beautiful. Except it was the beauty of martyrdom, and it made his heart sink like a stone.

"Those will always be the hands that stabbed me through the chest," she said. "So, you see, I have to make my way as best I can alone."