I just stare at him. In his sunglasses I see this lone figure staring back.

“How do I know, if you won’t talk to me?”

I swear at him again and go out onto the terrace.

When I come back into the apartment Gabriel has gone.

I don’t know what to do about Gabriel, but I’m not about to share my life story with him, that’s for sure. I decide to mark time with five-bar gates like they do in prison movies. I cut short vertical lines into the wall near the window and scar in a deep gouge diagonally across them.

I stare out of the window for a while and do some push-ups. Then I stare out of the window. Then I do sit-ups and a few more push-ups. More staring out of the window and after that it’s time for a bit of shadow-boxing. Then back to check out the view.

I don’t think me telling Gabriel anything will make any difference anyway. It could all be lies. He must know that.

I flop on to the sofa. Then get up. Then throw myself back down.

There’s no way I’m going to tell Gabriel anything real about me.

I get up. I need something to do.

I decide to sort the fire out, which means standing in the fireplace with my head up the chimney. There needs to be more draw, but I don’t know how to create it, so I just tidy up in there, cleaning the soot out as much as I can, finding a slate that is sticking out of the bricks and jiggling it around a little, and then finding a loose brick and a large, flat tin hidden high in a narrow gap above it.

With the chimney cleared and the slate back in place the fire blazes, but I am black with soot. I need to wash everything. I get in the bath with my clothes on. The bath is an old-fashioned tub on ball-and-claw feet; it’s deep but not very wide. As soon as I get in the water turns gray. I peel my clothes off and throw them onto the terrace to sort out later. I have a change of clothes. I even have two pairs of socks.

I run another bath. There’s a little nailbrush and I scrub at my feet and hands, but the dirt is in the skin and won’t budge.

I submerge myself and hold my breath. I can do it for over two minutes, nearly three if I get the breathing right beforehand. But I’m not as fit as I was under Celia’s regime.

I dry myself and put clean jeans on, and check out my tattoos. They are the same. The scars on my back seem worse but they’re not. How thick they are always surprises me. The line of scars on my right arm is faint, white on the paler skin there, but my wrist can only be described as an ugly mess. My hand works fine, though, and my fist is solid.

When I lean over the basin and look in the mirror, my face looks the same, only more miserable somehow, grayer. It looks old. I don’t look sixteen. There are gray circles under my eyes. The black, empty pieces that move around in my eyes seem to be bigger. The blackness of my eyes is not like the darkness up the chimney; it’s a blacker black than that. I move my head to the side, wondering if I can catch any glints, but instead I see Gabriel standing in the doorway staring at me, mirrored glasses reflecting back.

“How long have you been there?” I ask.

“You’ve done a good job with the fire.” He takes a step farther into the bathroom.

“Get out.” I’m surprised by how angry I am.

“Did you find anything?”

“I told you to get out.”

“And I asked if you found anything.” For the first time he sounds like a Black Witch.

I turn and stride to him; my left hand is around his throat, and I’m pushing him by the shoulder against the wall. He doesn’t resist. I hold him there and say, “Yes, I found something.” And all I see is myself looking back at me. My eyes are black with silver reflected in them but it’s just from the bathroom light. I don’t want to hurt him. I manage to loosen my grip on his neck and then walk back to the sink.

“Did you read them?” He is coughing a bit as he speaks.

I lean forward over the basin, grabbing its sides. I’m concentrating on looking down the plughole at the dirt and the blackness, but I can feel his eyes on my back.

“Did you read them?”

“No! Now get out!” I shout and look up in the mirror.

Gabriel says, “Nathan,” and he steps forward again and takes his sunglasses off. And his eyes are not those of a Black Witch.

He’s a fain.

A fain!

So what was all that talk about being the son of two very respectable Black Witches?

And I’m shouting, “Get out!” as I hit him and he’s on the floor, blood on his face, and I’m swearing and using all the worst words I can think of and he’s lying on his side, curled up, and I stomp on his knees and I hate it that he lied to me and I hate how I was thinking he was okay but he’s just some lying fain and I have to walk out to the kitchen before I really hurt him. Then I walk back and lean over, grab his hair and shout at him. Properly shout, ’cause I can still see him staring at my back. And I hate it that he was staring. I hate that. And I bang his head on the floor and I don’t know why I’m doing that, except I’m so angry. I’m still shaking when I walk out of the bathroom again.

I pace around the sofa, but I have to go back and get my shirt.

Gabriel’s groaning a bit. He looks a mess.

I slide down to the floor next to him.

We’re sitting at the table, by the window. Gabriel is wringing out a cloth into a bowl of water that’s pink with his blood. His left eye is swollen shut. His right is a light brown with a few flecks of golden-green in it but no sparks. Definitely a fain eye. But he has told me that he wasn’t lying: he is a Black Witch but he has a fain body.

“So you can’t heal at all?”

He shakes his head.

He says that his Gift is that he can transform to be like other people. It’s the same Gift as Jessica’s, but he is different from her, opposite to her. He explains, “I like people. They’re interesting. I can be male or female, old or young. I can find out what it’s like to be different people. The only problem is once I became fain, to see what that was like, I couldn’t transform back.”

“You’re stuck then?”

“Mercury thinks I’ll be able to become myself again. She says it’s more than physical, or at least more than just my body, that makes me able to transform. She says she’ll help me find the route back. . . . But she’s in no rush.” He puts the cloth in the water and swirls it around then wrings it out again and puts it back on his eye.

“I’ve been with her for two months.” He looks at me. “She wants to meet you.” He pats the cloth against his cut lip, which is also swollen. “But she’s suspicious. And rightly. You have spent all your life with White Witches.” He shrugs. “You are half White and the perfect bait, just the sort of thing the Council or Hunters would use.”

“But I’m not sent by them.”

“And you’re not likely to admit it if you are.”

“So how do I prove to her that I’m not?”

“That’s the problem. It’s impossible to prove.” He dabs at his mouth with his fingertips. “Someone once said that the best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them.” He carries on dabbing his mouth. But he’s smiling a little.

“Do you trust me?” I ask.

“Now I do.”

“Then take me to Mercury.”

He swirls the cloth in the water again.

“I can’t stay in this apartment any longer. I’ll go mad . . . or kill you.”

He puts the cloth back on his eye.

“Tomorrow.”

“Yes?”

“Yes.”

“Not today?”

He shakes his head. “Tomorrow.”

I get the tin and put it on the table in front of Gabriel and sit back opposite him.

“I didn’t read them.”

He pulls the lid off and carefully takes out the top letter, which has my sooty fingerprints on it. It’s folded over once and there is one word written on the outside in large curly writing. He pulls out the next letter, which is smudged with my black sooty marks too. He shakes his head.