Danvers made his way up Mansfield Road to the Chemistry Faculty, with steps so heavy that he felt as though he was leaving a deep groove in the pavement as he went.

He did not want to talk to Violet Pike. Violet Pike made him feel as though the world was full of grasping, grudging, suspicious people. And yet where else could he get answers?

It wasn't right that Mrs Darwin had made Jack forget the woman he loved. He wasn't precisely sure what Mrs Darwin had done to bring this about—only that it involved Professor Carver somehow, and that Yelavitch seemed to think it was not chemistry, but magic. The only thing he knew—and therefore the only thing that comforted him—was that it wasn't right.

And now he had that mysterious conversation between Ellini Syal and Miss Violet to ponder. They had escaped from something. And Violet was afraid that whatever was pursuing Miss Syal might start pursuing her.

And she had no fingernails! This detail stood out horribly to Danvers, who felt as though Violet's bright, false fingernails had been raked across his eyes. Someone had been capturing women and removing their fingernails! Someone who hadn't wanted them to escape, and might well take back Miss Syal, even if he wasn't interested in Miss Violet. Where could you go from there, except to talk to Miss Violet?

Still, Danvers had tried to avoid it. He had gone back to Dr Petrescu, looking for guidance, but Dr Petrescu was, in some way...gone. He didn't seem to remember asking Danvers to eavesdrop on his conversation with Mrs Darwin. He just winced and shrugged whenever Jack was mentioned, and the sound of Miss Syal's name made him splash sulphuric acid all over the tabletop.

Danvers had never felt alone before. To him, the world had always been like a school dormitory after lights out. He had always been able to huddle and gossip with other people, safe in the knowledge that they were as excited by the world's wonderful goings-on as he was.

Now it was as though he was the last one awake. Everyone else had stopped telling ghost stories and fallen asleep, but he was still staring, wide-eyed, into the darkness, trying to make out familiar shapes. And, with every passing second, he couldn't help thinking that maybe the darkness was not exciting and full of wonder. Maybe the other people in the dormitory were not his friends.

He went into the Chemistry Faculty through the servant's entrance. Everybody knew him there—he was greeted like a breath of fresh air, which was often what the servants at the Chemistry Faculty needed. Strange, nameless fumes hung beneath the soot-caked ceilings, and he had often observed that this close atmosphere made the faculty servants cagey. It was not a promising sign, when you were hoping to extract information from the cagiest of them all.

When he entered the kitchen, he found Violet standing alone by the window. She jumped as soon as she noticed him.

"What do you want?" she said, narrowing her eyelids. "Yelavitch isn't here."

Danvers removed his hat. "Actually, Miss Violet, I came to see you."

He noticed as he got closer that she was shivering and cradling a hot cup of tea between her palms. There was a roaring fire at one end of the kitchen, but it seemed she would rather shiver in a corner than go near it.

"What are you after?" said Violet.

"Reassurance, Miss Violet. May I sit down?"

Violet didn't actively protest, so he took a seat at the kitchen table, with the fire at his back. He could barely see her eyes now, they were so narrowed with suspicion. This was probably not going to work. He should have brought Jack with him, just to break the ice. Miss Violet had a crush on Jack. His violent past and criminal tendencies made him just her type.

Violet leaned against the sink and watched him expectantly. Now that he was seeing her close up, there was something in the dark eyes and brownish skin tone which suggested her hair hadn't always been bone-white. Had she dyed it after she'd escaped? Surely not—it was hardly the most inconspicuous shade. And yet... he had seen another woman with bone-white hair somewhere in the city, hadn't he?

"It's about Miss Syal," he said, on a sudden flash of inspiration. If he pretended Ellini's presence in the city was a cause for alarm, Violet would be sure to open up. There was nothing she loved more than dark, fatalistic gossip. "You know her, I'm sure, if only by reputation, and I daresay she is a good sort of woman—" At this suggestion, Violet's eyes became so narrow that they were, to all intents and purposes, closed. "However, I worry that her presence in Oxford will precipitate a certain amount of disorder."

"You should," said Violet firmly.

"I'm sorry to say it, but the Faculty of Demonic Speculation is in disarray," he went on, relieved to have the opportunity of telling the truth for once. "And I thought perhaps the perspective of another young woman might shed some light on Miss Syal's behaviour."

"Don't you lump me in with her!" said Violet, hunching her shoulders defensively. "I am not the sort of young woman she is!"

"Of course not," said Danvers soothingly. "I didn't mean to imply that you were. Only, I remembered how intelligently you diagnosed the problem when poor Ben Howell escaped from the castle prison, and I thought you might be the person to set my mind at rest."

"I can't set your mind at rest," said Violet. "There's no 'rest' to put your mind to. She's evil."

"In what way?"

"How many ways are there?" said Violet, throwing her hands up in desperation. But her eyes were starting to widen. She was starting to warm to the theme. "Oh, I know she pretends she doesn't love it when people fall in love with her. I know she's all 'oh, dear, how could this have happened? I'll never forgive myself, I'm sure.' It makes me sick!"

"Do you think the men of Oxford will start fighting over her?"

"Well, that's where we're fortunate," said Violet sulkily. "The men of Oxford are so bad at fighting that, if they all started rioting tomorrow, I doubt there'd be so much as a broken bone between them."

"But—" And here, Danvers leaned backwards, trying to make this seem like the most casual sentence in the world. "—couldn't there be trouble if Jack came under her influence?"

"Hah!" said Violet triumphantly. "There's nobody safer in the whole city!" She sat down and leaned forward in her chair. "Mind you, I'm sure that's what she's here for. She thinks she can come back and control him, just like the old days, but it's too late. It's been too long. That Darwin woman's in his head now. And she can't blame me—not that I'd care three straws about it if she did—because I haven't done a thing. Not a thing. Mrs Darwin and Professor Carver came up with the idea all on their own."

Danvers tried his best to look puzzled at this. "I beg your pardon, Miss Violet, but what could Mrs Darwin or Professor Carver do about it if Jack was amorously attached to this woman?"

"Do?" Violet gave him a smug smile. She seemed to be relaxing now—or settling into a more familiar stream of agitation. "There's nothing those two couldn't do, between them."

"Do you mean they could... manipulate his feelings somehow?"

Violet seemed pleased at the naivety of the question. "Nothing easier. It's only Jack! Darwin's been pumping him full of chemicals for five years anyway. It's not a gigantic step from that to pumping him full of magic."

"Magic?"

Violet shuffled forward in her chair once more, her eyes alight with malicious enthusiasm. "Oh, it's ever so good," she whispered. "Ellini could never get past it. You see, back in the days of Faustus, when demons could come and go as they pleased, there was an old demon sorceress—down in Kent, or somewhere—who couldn't stand the sight of young couples in love. It made her as sick as Ellini's false regret makes me. She wanted to wipe love off the face of the earth."

Danvers nodded sympathetically, even though it was a difficult idea to sympathize with.

"So, she set herself up as a kind of... travelling games mistress, I suppose," Violet went on, "seeking out couples, asking them whether they thought their love was true love, and whether they'd like to put it to the test. She said her test was the only way to be sure—the only way to prove it. And, because young couples in love are disgustingly smug, they accepted her challenge. Nobody who's in love thinks it isn't the real thing. And nobody's about to say, in front of their lover, that they couldn't stand up to a bit of testing. See, they had to consent in order for the magic to work, but she found a way to make them beg for it."

"Really?" said Danvers, with a weak smile.

"She made one of them—usually the man—forget the other, and made him incapable of feeling any lust or tenderness for her. Then, starting from scratch, using only the art of conversation, the woman had to win him back. If she succeeded—if he kissed her in that forgetful state, and it was a proper kiss, with real feelings behind it—then their love was true love, and the spell would be broken."

Danvers stared at her with undisguised enthusiasm. This story had grabbed him by his sentimental heart. It was rather like the Snow Queen.

"And did he...?" he prompted.

Violet gave a delighted laugh. "Of course not! Why would he? He hadn't got any feelings. Do you think you can talk someone into falling in love with you? What usually happened was that the woman committed suicide, and the man took up with someone else—but not always in that order."

"It didn't even work once?" said Danvers, a little crestfallen. "Nobody passed the test?"

Violet waved her hand. "Oh, I don't know, really. Professor Carver says the Sorceress didn't like to lose, so maybe she killed anyone who passed the test, just to teach them a lesson. Anyway, that's the spell he found to put on Jack. He persuaded Mrs Darwin that it was some kind of chemical compound."

"But she's a chemist herself!" Danvers protested "The best chemist there is! How could he fool her?"

Violet laughed again. "You really don't understand much about women, do you?"

Danvers couldn't spare the energy to be offended by this because his mind was already racing. The fairytale nature of the story pleased him a lot—he liked to think of himself as a crusader on behalf of true love—but the practicalities of breaking the spell didn't seem quite so alluring. How could he get Jack to fall in love with Ellini? Jack felt nothing except boredom—and this had been the case even before he'd been placed under the spell. It seemed as though his feelings for Ellini had been the one emotional event of his lifetime. Now they were gone, what was there left to work with?

It would be all right if he still had, for example, a fondness for cats, or a profound sense of respect for a colleague. These would be low levels of love which could be built upon. But Jack turned the same cool, fascinated eyes on everything—from sunsets to mangled bodies. Everything was a game to him.

"I still can't believe Professor Carver would practise magic," he insisted, realizing once again that Violet was waiting for him to speak.

"That's not the worst he's done. I could show you things in this place that would turn your hair white." She grimaced, as if something unpleasant had occurred to her, and then leapt off her stool and grabbed his sleeve. "Come on, I'll show you. It'd be worth a dismissal just to see the look on your face!"

She dragged him out of the kitchen and into a sooty corridor, while Danvers tried—as politely as possible—to liberate his sleeve.

"You know Carver's seen Ellini before?" said Violet, as she dragged him down a stairway. "And Jack. He was in India—occupying some lowly position in Jack's army—when we were there."

"You were there too?" said Danvers, trying to keep up.

Violet nodded and pinched her lips together with distaste. "Ellini's maid servant. Worst job in the world. Don't ask me about it. Anyway, Jack and Ellini don't remember Carver, but servants have to socialize, so I got to know him quite well. That's how I got the job here. Anyway, he caught Ellini-itis during those years, but, obviously, he knew he didn't have a chance with her, so he came up with a very ingenious way to live without her."

She continued to lead him by the sleeve across a corridor, and into another grand but soot-stained room. The only furniture in this one was a large, ornately carved wardrobe with clawed feet, which struck Danvers as being ominously story-like.

Violet swung the wardrobe doors open and went on babbling, while Danvers stared.

"It's called a stock," she said proudly. "The demons used to make them to replace the human children they stole—you know, so nobody got suspicious? Trust Carver to make do with the dummy when his forefathers would have had the real thing!"

It was Ellini—slim and delicate in every limb, with closed eyes, and hair tied back in a modest bun. She was even wearing the terracotta-red dress he'd seen her in that morning.

"Dear God," said Danvers. "Is it... alive?"

Violet chuckled. "It's not alive, but it contains something that is. He's sealed an elemental spirit inside the stock to make it move like a living thing."

"What does he do with it?"

"What he wishes he could do to the real Ellini," said Violet grimly. "I'd be afraid of spoiling your innocence if I got any more explicit than that."

Danvers let that one slide too, even though the insults were piling up to the point where even he was starting to recognize them. "Well," he muttered, still staring at the woman in the wardrobe. "It certainly has been an education talking to you, Miss Violet."

"Oh, don't lose the naivety, Danvers," she said, nudging him in the ribs rather harder than friendliness dictated. "It's the only thing that makes you tolerable."