Jack made his way to the Faculty lounge, where Ellini was sitting at the table, lovingly assembling her doll, and talking to it about Orpheus. Manda was sitting beside her, braiding one side of her hair—the other was hanging, loose and shiny, beside her face. Sergei was sitting opposite them, bent over his notes, with a pen that was poised but not writing.

Leeny was ostensibly talking to the doll, but she was having so much fun—framing each word with such girlish enthusiasm—that the others had clearly been caught up in the story. Even Sarah had paused in the act of taking out the tea things, and now stood by the door with a laden tray, eager to hear whether Orpheus got his wife back.

"When he played his lament for Hades and Persephone," Ellini muttered, "it didn't just change their minds, it changed their world. For those few moments, hell wasn't hell anymore. It was a place of pity and tenderness. The damned paused in their interminable labours. The faces of the Furies were wet with tears."

And hanging over the whole table as they listened was the dark, unspoken recollection that it was almost the fourth of July. In fact, the first day of July was nearly over. That gave them only three days before the event that was starting to seem like the end of the world.

Ellini was adamant that she was going to die that night. A book of prophecies had said so. Jack didn't believe in the prophecies, but he did believe that, at certain moments, Ellini wanted to die. And it was the timing of these moments that worried him.

She was nearing the end of her happy stretch now. You could tell because she had a kind of luminous nerviness, as though joy was bubbling up inside her like a hot spring, making her blush, and avoid eye-contact, and turn everything into a joke. There was nowhere to go from here but down. And it was almost the fourth of July.

Jack lingered in the doorway, watching the peaceful scene in front of him. He was afraid to get mixed up in it in case he brought all the agitation and impatience of the glass laboratory with him.

When Ellini got to the part where Orpheus glanced eagerly behind him to see if his wife was still following, and Eurydice melted back into the shadows of the Underworld, never to return, it broke the spell of silence. Sarah gave a loud sniff and hurried out with the tea things. Manda said, "Typical male impatience," and went on braiding Ellini's hair.

"Oh, but it wasn't his fault!" Ellini protested. "Ovid says she was still limping from the snake-bite that killed her. He was afraid her strength might have been failing. He just wanted to make sure she was still following. And it's so frustrating, because Hercules—big, muscle-bound oaf that he was—made exactly the same journey, to rescue Queen—oh, what was her name?"

"Alcestis," said Sergei quietly.

Ellini gave him a look that Jack didn't entirely like. It was partly the guilty, apologetic, desperately polite look she always gave to Sergei, but it was ever-so-slightly wistful. If I was in love with you, it seemed to say, my life would be so much easier.

"And he succeeded," she added, shaking herself as if to recover her train of thought.

"Was she his lover, this Alcestis?" said Manda, glancing up from Ellini's braids.

"No. His friend's wife."

"Hah. That's men all over again. They're so much more useful when they don't care too much."

"You know," Ellini went on, as though anxious to steer Manda away from the subject of useless men, "after losing Eurydice the second time, Orpheus forswore the company of all women."

"Good for him," said Manda.

"Although, Ovid does say that he sort of... compensated for this by confining his affections to young boys."

Jack laughed happily from the doorway. "Just when you think you've found a hero..."

"Ovid was exiled to my home city when he displeased Augustus," said Sergei, glancing up from his notes.

Ellini's jaw dropped open. "You're from Tomis?"

"It's called Constanța now. Although there are still beautiful Roman mosaics from that time."

"Would the two of you like to be left alone?" said Jack irritably.

There was a moment's silence, in which Ellini confined her gaze to the tabletop, and then Manda gasped and snatched her hands away from Ellini's half-finished braid as though she'd been bitten.

"Ow," she said, examining her fingertips. "Why does your hair keep getting so hot? Honestly, I'm surprised your pillows don't catch fire!"

"They probablywould, if she ever slept on them," said Jack. He was having to fight veryhard to suppress a smile. He would have been prepared to bet that her hairheated up whenever she looked at him—that it was a similar symptom to thegiggles she suffered from whenever his skin was in direct contact with hers.And, after all that business with Sergei, it was nice to be reminded of hispower over her.