“Is that where Obel is?” I glance towards the dark corridor that must head to the prison.

“If he’s still alive, then yes,” Mel says, and turns. I can only try to keep up with her brisk pace as she walks further into this underground warren of dark, dank corridors and forbidding closed doors.

Eventually we reach a passageway that is familiar, and I realize we’ve gone all the way under the town square and have ended up at Mel’s study, which is in the basement of the museum. I hadn’t realized there was underground access to these places and inwardly curse myself for not paying more attention to the turns we took – maybe I would have been able to find a way out.

I look around her study, at the shelves of books and the worn woven rug. Her desk is messy with papers. This is where I came to be told my results – where I learned that I had been accepted as a trainee at Obel’s studio. I visited Mel here when I needed her help and advice, back when I thought she was my mentor and that she cared about me. The last time I was here Mel had a charge – a child called Isolda. I wonder where she is now.

Mel shows me around – points out a door to a small bathroom and another that leads into a tiny bedroom where she sleeps.

“You will sleep here.” She points to a mattress and some cushions in the corner. “You’ll be comfortable enough.”

There are no windows to hint at the time of day and so I try to gauge the hour while I arrange the cushions into somewhere I can sit. Time with Longsight always disorientates me – talking with him could have taken hours or just minutes. I am tired from trudging through the forest with Gull, and it was dawn when we arrived in the town. Oh, Gull. I close my eyes and think of her, alone – perhaps in the jail. Perhaps in the hospital, a cruel voice whispers. Or she may be dead. No. Longsight promised that she would be safe for now. I cling to that thought.

The sound of paper on paper and Mel’s sighs and the scratch of a pencil making notes lulls me to sleep.

I dream that it is night, and I hear someone call my name. I run, following the sound, but with each step I am no closer to the voice that is crying out for me to save them. Hands claw at my back and I try harder to run, but I can’t evade them, can’t wriggle free of their grasp. They are on me, and I turn to see my pursuers. Their skin is grey and peeling away to reveal tiny chinks of light – as though they are broken ceramic lanterns, hiding flames inside. Their fingers grasp and scratch at me like dead branches. I don’t know whether to fight or give in; whether to peel away more of their skin to reveal the light or to snuff out their sparks. Where they touch me, my skin recedes into grey too. But I fear there will be no light within me.