Ring. Sister. Piano (Book 4 of The Powder Trail)

Chapter Twenty Two: One Wobbly, Lurching Moment

Jack spent most of the afternoon lying on the floorboards of Lily Hamilton's old room. He couldn't think where else to go. He couldn't go back to the Academy, and he couldn't face Sam – although it would have been quite reassuring to have exchanged a few words with a man who would cheerfully lock him up if he stepped out of line.

It was probably a stupid thing to do. The walls of this place seemed to exhale despair through the damp, peeling paper. He wouldn't have been surprised to learn that some deep, primeval well of unhappiness had its source beneath those floorboards – and that Lily Hamilton, instead of falling in love with the wrong man, had simply been lodging in the wrong room.

But unhappiness was in your head, wasn't it? All the deep, primeval wells were in your head, which was why you could never bloody well escape them.

He had expected these thoughts to make him sink into the floor. He had expected to replay her endlessly repeated phrase, 'You stabbed me through the chest' until he couldn't understand what it meant anymore. He had expected to dwell on the fact that he was just like every other man to her now – just like the gargoyles who'd molested her, and the master who'd enslaved her – and she would never be able to feel his touch without shuddering.

But somehow, he picked himself up off the floor. Perhaps Lily Hamilton's spirit wasn't as potent anymore, now her last letter had finally been delivered. Perhaps her ghost had been exorcized.

Jack's endless practicality reasserted itself as soon as he was out of the door. He was afraid of himself, yes. He was afraid of what he might do to Ellini. But if his energy was her enemy, then he knew a place where he could work it off quite harmlessly – or almost harmlessly, anyway.

He went to the sparring ring at the Six Bells, where he gave vent to some of his frustration, and left a crumpled heap of opponents beside the bar. Exercise really was good for despair – and specifically the kind of exercise where you could punch someone in the face. He went back to the Faculty that evening with a foundering sense of perspective – to be told that Ellini was spending the night.

It was like refusing a drink for months, diligently going to meetings and reading your Bible – and then coming home to find there was nothing to drink but the finest oak-aged whisky, and you had to either break your vow or die of thirst. 

Jack was furious, then excited, then forlorn. The energy he'd spent all day working off was under his skin again, like thousands of coiled springs. They would uncoil themselves. The only question was how.

He moped through supper. She was eating in her room – which was to say, Sarah's room, at the top of the house – and Sergei and Shikari were cautiously beginning to enjoy each other's company, so nobody paid him much attention, as he pushed his food disconsolately around the plate.

After supper, he went up to his room and lay, fully-clothed, on the bed, staring up at the ceiling and wondering what she was doing. And then, when his brain supplied him with images of what she might be doing, he got up and tried to distract himself with pacing. 

He locked his door, threw open the window, shut it, took up a book, and tossed it aside. Everything in here was too close. He wanted to feel the sky over him, even if it was just that dim Oxford sky, which hovered so low over your head that you felt as though you could reach up and adjust the positions of the stars.

He unlocked the door, climbed the staircase without a single creak, opened the window on the top landing, and climbed out.

The cold was wonderful. There was a wedge of snow on each of the chimney stacks, making them look like thickly-iced cakes. But he still felt stuffed with coiled springs, and he couldn't help pacing up and down on the slates over her room.