Oxford, 1881:

Charlotte Grey stood on the slate roof of the University Church, listening to the wailing of the mourners, who had just begun their evening shift. It was doing a lot to soothe the frantic beating of her heart. At least they knew about grief in this town. And how to express it.

It was a beautiful city to see from the rooftops, even on a rainy summer night. It was beautiful from the overflowing gutters to the spouting gargoyles. And, because at every moment she expected it to be the last beauty she would ever see, she breathed it in with exhilaration.

She could hear sniffing from behind her. It was as reliable as footsteps for letting her know when the creatures were getting near. How many? She concentrated, blinking the rainwater out of her eyes, and heard another sniffle, much closer to hand—somewhere on the church's roof. At least two, then.

She dragged herself round the church tower, trying not to breathe too heavily. The rainwater made everything slippery, and there wasn't a lot of room to manoeuvre up here. There was a handrail to stop the unwary from tumbling to their deaths, but it hadn't been designed for use in a rainstorm. For one startling moment, she was staring out over the cobblestones, forgetting everything else except how very high up she was. Then the sniffing sound shook her out of her stupor, and she crept onwards.

They didn't howl like wolves. They were perfectly silent hunters. But she knew when they'd picked up her trail, because the sniffing became more ragged and urgent. They navigated by smell, but something about the air-quality in Oxford disagreed with their sinuses. It blocked their noses, which had the effect of partially blinding them, and giving their sniffs a wet, rattling sound.

After giving them a few moments to catch up, she coaxed her aching muscles into a leap and jumped from the handrail on the church's tower right down to the leaded roof underneath.

She stumbled as she landed but managed to turn the stumble into a run. Oh, this was so much easier than talking! Everything ached, but for a reason, for a cause. How she wished, now, that there was nothing else.

She wasn't the most amazing athlete. There had been no time to train. Her body had adapted on the go—achy, astonished, and exhilarated at the feats it could endure. She was getting fewer bruises every night. Her grip was surer. Her recoveries were faster.

She knew that one tiny slip—just one—would put an end to all this progress. But, while it didn't come, she ran in a kind of charmed bubble, exulting in the space, the adrenaline, the chance to stretch her legs.

And, yes, her breathing got ragged. She sometimes stumbled and landed in nasty, unnatural ways that would exact their punishment tomorrow. But that was what tomorrow was for. The days were nothing but punishment. The nights were for running, for eating up the space between her and the horizon, for channelling all her nervous energy into the sweet oblivion of speed.

The sniffling—close at hand now—jolted her back to her senses. The fear itself was encouraging. When she stood there, feeling her temples throbbing in time with her pulse, she had a glorious sense of perspective. At moments like this, it was just her and the fear, without any of the desires or distractions provided by other people. She was all alone, without hope or comfort, facing pitiless enemies who would never stop hunting her.

And for some reason, in those moments, she didn't hate herself. She was just flesh and blood, striving. Not a born killer—not a manipulative temptress—not even a confused woman who ran from everyone she'd ever loved. Just flesh and blood, striving.

***

It was a shame the dead woman was a redhead. It made her look like one of those impossibly romantic paintings by Millais or Rossetti. Red-haired, milky-skinned, fully clothed, and floating just below the surface of the water, she could have been Ophelia or the Lady of Shalott. The sodden skirts and shawls had pulled most of her body under, but her chest still bobbed on the surface, lapped by little wavelets as the river ran its course.

Sam hated Ophelia, and the artists who painted her so gleefully. He knew from bitter experience that there was nothing beautiful or poetic about a young woman who'd just taken her own life.

But this one hadn't, he thought, as he crouched down on the bank beside her corpse. The bruising on her neck made him think of strangulation—and messy strangulation too, because there were deep indentations from what looked like thumbnails in her throat.

He looked up. Besides Sergeant Hawthorne, who was always a surly, smoking presence at Sam's elbow, there were two Constables, bundled up against the drizzle in their greatcoats and helmets. They were keeping back from the riverbank, clutching paraffin lamps that spread a little, uneasy light across the scene.

It should have been light enough to see already—it was, technically, an hour past dawn. But this was Oxford, where the clouds hung low and heavy, as if they were in collusion with the dreaming spires, leaning in close and shrouding them in mist to make them seem even dreamier.

It wasn't the worst thing about Sam's adopted home—not by a long mile—but it was bad enough for six o'clock on a rainy Monday morning.

In fact, the only spire out here was the campanile of St Barnabas's Church, dwarfing the boatyards and red-brick houses of Jericho. Still, it was a good thing she'd fallen into the river in this down-rent district. Any closer to the city centre and she would have come under the jurisdiction of the University police—the Bulldogs—who would most likely decide she was the cast-off lover of some Baronet's son, and therefore not worth troubling anyone about.

"Who found the body?" he asked.

Sergeant Hawthorne breathed out. He had taken to smoking a pipe on duty, because he thought it made him look pensive. "Furnivall, sir. And his lady rowers."

Sam pressed a thumb and forefinger into the corners of his eyes. "Wonderful," he said sourly.

"You think they'll gossip?"

"The lady rowers? No. Furnivall? Yes."

"I'll talk to him," said Hawthorne.

Sam grunted and turned to one of the greatcoated Constables. "Go and wake up Miss Perrott."

Constable Roke started to mutter something under his breath, but Sam interrupted him. He didn't need to hear the muttering to know what had been said.

"Could you complain a bit more quietly? Or maybe complain as you go to fetch her? That might kill two birds with one stone."

Beside Sam, Sergeant Hawthorne stirred resentfully.

"We don't need the new-breeds, sir. It's obvious this is just another suicide."

"Oh yes," said Sam. "A suicide whose throat has been mauled? What do you think, she hanged herself first and then jumped into the river? One death just wouldn't cut it?"

Hawthorne didn't say anything, and after a while, Constable Roke squelched off in the direction of Magdalen Bridge and Georgia Perrott's apartments.

They protested like this every time. The disdain for new-breeds was somehow worse in Oxford, where they'd been allowed to live amongst humans for nearly three hundred years. But Sam's officers were still loyal to him. He had almost died for them, after all.

He leaned back on his haunches and turned, without much hope, to the surrounding mud. If the woman fell into the river here—and it was extremely unlikely, because the current was strong—then her attacker might have left some footprints on the muddy bank. They had probably been trodden into mush by the policemen and early-morning traders. Still, he wandered upriver, trying to tread only on the little islands of grass amid the mud. To his vague annoyance, Sergeant Hawthorne followed him.

"Over here, sir," said Hawthorne, after a few minutes of stomping inelegantly along the bank. He dashed into a nearby thicket, as though whatever he'd found was in danger of running away. "Could be the victim's bags."

Sam followed him into a clearing, its edges made jagged by intrusive, poking branches. He got one in the cheek before he was able to see what had attracted Hawthorne's attention.

An overturned basket of apples, like the refuse from some night-time fairytale, was lying on one side of the clearing, and a woman's leather satchel had been upended beside it. Gloves and handkerchiefs were hanging from nearby branches. Pennies had been scattered and not retrieved. And a small glass perfume bottle was lying, shattered, in the muddy grass, making the whole copse reek of sandalwood.

"Would it smash if it fell into the mud from this height?" he wondered aloud. "Have you got anything made of glass on you, Hawthorne?"

With extreme reluctance, Hawthorne handed over a small bottle of whisky, and returned Sam's enquiring look with one of injured innocence.

"For medical emergencies, sir. Cold nights and fainting women."

Sam said nothing, but took some pleasure in hurling the bottle into the mud as hard as he could. It made a kind of cowpat splatter but didn't break.

"So, what does that mean?" he muttered, kneeling down and leaving Hawthorne to retrieve the bottle. "He treads on it when it's already on the ground, maybe?"

The perfume bottle had indeed been driven into the ground with some force, but there was nothing around it that resembled a footprint. Only...

"These could be knuckle-marks," he said, squinting at the mud. "From someone with a very broad fist. He thumped it? There was something about the perfume bottle that made him angry, anyway. Nothing else has been torn up or shattered."

"Why are you assuming the attacker was a 'he', sir?" said Hawthorne. His tone suggested that he was still sulking about the whisky bottle.

"You think it was a woman, do you? And did you have any particular woman in mind?"

"Well, it's a bit of a coincidence, don't you think?" Hawthorne hunched his shoulders and plunged his hands back into his pockets. "The prisoner's due to arrive today, and bodies start turning up before she's even got here."

Sam waved an irritable hand. "Firstly, Hawthorne, she's a prisoner at her own insistence. And secondly, as you say, she hasn't got here. Where was she last night?"

"With the nuns at Godstow."

They both looked down the muddy footpath that bordered the river. It was the only road from Godstow to the city. Although of course, that didn't prove anything...

"But she was locked up?"

"At 'er own insistence," said Hawthorne darkly. "Like you said."

"Well, there's nothing in her file about being able to walk through locked doors."

Hawthorne shrugged. "Doesn't need to, does she? She can just bat her eyelashes at someone, and they do whatever she likes."

"Did she bat her eyelashes at you?"

Hawthorne squirmed, as if he was embarrassed to admit how uninterested in seducing him the prisoner had been.

"She knew she couldn't get at me."

"Of course."

"At least we know where the victim was headed," said Hawthorne, poking at an apple with the toe of his boot. "I've seen women with baskets of apples just like this at the covered market."

"She couldn't be an apple-seller, though, could she?" Sam muttered. "This stuff's too well-to-do for a market girl." He stopped. "There's an orchard at Godstow, isn't there?"

But Hawthorne wasn't listening. He was poking round the edge of the clearing with the toe of his boot, lifting dead leaves and hanging branches. Sam watched him with a deepening sense of dread, until he let out a hiss through his teeth and shouted, "Here, sir! I knew there'd be something! I knew she couldn't have been hovering six inches above the bloody ground!"

Sam followed him to the very edge of the clearing and looked down at the patch of mud that he was pointing at so triumphantly.

It looked like a footprint—but very long, and with toes that had curled sharply into the mud, leaving indentations two inches deep.

Sam passed a weary hand across his forehead. "It doesn't look human, does it?"

"No, sir. Definitely new-breed."

"Well, that's all I need."

Hawthorne squinted down at the footprint. "There's nothing in the prisoner's file about having clawed feet..."

Sam sighed and began walking back to the riverbank and the body. He knew from experience that Sergeant Hawthorne would follow. At a crime scene, Sam had never been lucky enough to lose him.

"But she was nervous, sir," the Sergeant insisted. "I can tell when they're nervous."

"Aren't they always nervous when they're meeting you?"

Hawthorne smiled one of his slow, satisfied smiles—the kind that always pulled at the lining of Sam's stomach. Of course, someone like Hawthorne would take that as a compliment, wouldn't he? He didn't know what it was like to be a walking terror to everyone all the time.

"I want proper procedure on this," said Sam. "I want you to find out her name and address from the other traders at the covered market. I want the relatives interviewed. And I want Georgia god-damn-bloody Perrott!"

"Well, here I am, Inspector," said a smooth, matronly voice behind him. "Certainly God-damned, if not bloody."

Sam turned, to see Miss Perrott—with her grey hair and pointy spectacles—calmly putting on a pair of gloves. She directed her iron-hard gaze over his shoulder, at the body in the river. "Is this my playmate for today?"

Behind her, Constable Roke was trudging back down the riverbank, his helmet under his arm. Sam liked to think he had been polite enough to remove it for Miss Perrott, even if he'd refused to walk with her.

Still, he made Roke haul the body out of the river, assisted by a grumbling—and now shivering—Sergeant Hawthorne.

Georgia Perrott knelt down beside the corpse. She had even brought along a blanket to spread on the ground so that her skirts didn't get muddy.

"Did she drown?" she asked, placing a hand on the woman's chest, and exerting a slight downward pressure.

Sam shook his head. "We think she was already dead when they dumped her in the river."

"Good. I hate it when they've drowned. I have to pump out their lungs before I can get a word out of them."

Everything about Miss Perrott was pointed and grey, as though she'd grown up in a world without nourishment or sunshine. In fact, this assumption wasn't far off the mark, because she had grown up in the prison colonies, where the sun hardly ever broke through the miasma of steam, filth, and disease. In her younger days, because of her extraordinary and unsettling abilities, she had been known as 'the last gasp lass'.

She pinched the dead woman's nose, tilted her head back, and breathed a lungful of air into her mouth.

"I still don't see how this can work," Sergeant Hawthorne grumbled.

"It doesn't matter if you don't see how," said Georgia Perrott, without looking up from her work. She was tapping the dead woman's chest in various places, listening for God-knew-what. "You're not dealing with fairies, Sergeant Hawthorne. I'm not going to drop dead if you say you don't believe in me. This is my inheritance. It's the reason why your people—who I'd always thought of as my people—shipped me out to India to starve."

Sergeant Hawthorne muttered something about there being no smoke without fire, which Miss Perrott was sensible enough to ignore.

She breathed into the dead woman's mouth again, positioned her hands very carefully on her chest, and pushed down, hard.

Sam hated watching this. The air always rushed out of the corpse's mouth with a horrible groan—as though it had felt the pain of the blow or was protesting at the indignity. But, with the groan, the senseless lips would move, shaping the outrush of air into hissing syllables.

Because this was the macabre, but mind-bogglingly useful, talent of the last gasp lass. She could make the dead reproduce the last sounds they'd ever heard.

More often than not, it was meaningless—a laugh, perhaps, or a birdcall. It had never been clearcut enough to close the case. No corpse had ever regurgitated the words, 'That's the last time you'll mess with Harry King, of Number 42, Magdalene Street." But sometimes, it gave them something to work with.

This morning, it sounded like "Shar-ott-cray."

"Did you get that?" said Miss Perrott, who looked as though she'd done nothing more extraordinary than open a window. "Do you want me to do it again?"

"No," said Sam, his stomach churning. "That's fine. Thank you."

Constable Roke, who had been dripping silently beside them all this time, cleared his throat then. "Uh, the mourner-lady wanted to see you, sir. When you're at your leisure."

Sam waved him away and took out his notebook. He scribbled down, as near as he could transcribe it, what he'd heard the dead woman say. "Shar-ott-cray," he murmured.

"I think it's 'Charlotte'," said Miss Perrott. "I've often noticed that the dead have trouble with their 'l's. Charlotte Cray? Possibly Gray? It could just be the victim's name, of course."

"What kind of person stands over the woman they've just killed and whispers her name?" said Sergeant Hawthorne irritably.

"What kind of person kills a woman in the first place? That's your job, Sergeant. I've done mine."