“I feel magnificent!” I assure him. And the three of us laugh at the lunacy of it all. I hold Bram’s gaze then. Can he truly love me now? What am I, after all, if not a living corpse? I would be revolted, repulsed, repelled by my own body, if I were not experiencing such glorious strength, such invigorating, blissful magic. But Bram cannot know how I feel. To him I might have become some terrible ghoulish creature. I hold out my hand to him, wrist uppermost. “I am truly alive, my love. Touch me. I am warm. My heart beats. My blood flows. Feel my pulse. Won’t you take my hand?” For a moment I am afraid he will recoil from me now, that he will not be able to love the unearthly revenant being I am become. But he smiles, his beautiful face relaxing.

“If you want me to hold your hand, you’ll have to come down first.”

“Come down?”

“Look at your feet.”

I look and find that I am floating, drifting some distance above the floor. Giggling, I force my feet to find their way back to the ground. I reach out for Bram, happy for him to hold me now. When he touches my skin, he flinches as the heat of the magic within me stings his own flesh. Disconcerted, he tries again, cautiously. I do my best to control this new, elemental force that I have been reborn with. This time I am aware of a tingling sensation in my palm and fingers as he takes my hand.

Relieved, Bram smiles. “I shall have to be careful,” he says.

“I … think I have much to learn about my new … status. I’m sorry if I hurt you.”

“It was nothing. It doesn’t matter. I thought I had lost you forever,” he murmurs into my hair, his eyes still wet with tears. “I could not bear to live on without you. I begged Louis to do it. I fetched the Elixir and the necklace from the convent, I told him the Great Secret, and I pleaded with him to bring you back.”

“Louis, you took such a dangerous step. Oh!” I see through the window Terence’s body, a small dark shape on the roof terrace. I hurry outside to him, but I know already that his spirit has gone. I kneel beside him and hold his cold hand.

“Stricklend,” Bram says. “Terence tried to help you. Stricklend didn’t hesitate for a second. Murdering an old man meant nothing to him.”

I cannot help but feel responsible. “I should have protected him,” I say.

“You cannot help everyone, Lily,” Louis tells me.

“Stricklend will crush anyone to get what he wants,” I say. “Terence is not his first victim, and he certainly will not be his last.” A terrible thought comes to me. “Louis, when you used the Elixir to raise me, was Willoughby here?”