Charlie hears her footsteps in the stairwell. He has been waiting for their sound and slips out onto the tiny landing to catch her there. It has been raining and she is wet, her hair clinging to her head and face. It makes the ears look large, their rims delicate and pale, like fine bone china. The miner’s jacket is big around her shoulders, weighted down by water and dirt. Charlie looks and looks. He wants to tell her that all is forgiven; that he does not want to stand in her and Thomas’s way; that things are not her fault and, anyway, there are bigger things afoot. He wants to touch her, hold her hand — like a friend, a brother — rest his forehead on her shoulder.

“You followed Sebastian,” he says.

“Yes. I found out where he lives. A hotel, not far from here. I thought it might be useful to know.”

“Good idea.”

She steps up to the landing, makes to round him. But then she stops, inches away. The cock of her head is that strangest of mixtures. Modesty and strength. City grime dusting the fine down of her cheeks.

A pencil line of Smoke rises from Charlie, light and grey. He is glad for it. It will tell her what he feels.

She looks at it without flinching; opens her mouth, tasting it, tasting him; reaches out and laces her fingers into his.

“Whom do you love?”

He says it and sees Livia smile over the phrase. What would Thomas have said? But that’s just it: Thomas wouldn’t have asked.

“You,” she says. “Him. Both.”

“Yes. But you love him like a bride. And me like a sis—”

She interrupts, cheeks flushing, displeased at being told what she feels.

“It isn’t as simple as that.” She snorts, steps up, kisses him. “There! I’ve been learning to smoke.”

It’s a peck or rather a bite: his lips between hers, tugged and held for the length of a breath; a passing of Smoke, of emotion — hunger, confusion, triumph, fear — from skin to skin and lung to lung. Then Livia rounds him and opens the door.

Behind it, Grendel stands, looking flustered, Mowgli’s porridge on a tray.

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