‘What is to come?’ He tapped his fingers on the windowsill. ‘Glimpses, shadows. Nothing is carved into stone. Time is a river. What is past is frozen; what is to come, still rushes. Panta rei.’

Tom had done enough Greek to know what that meant. ‘Everything flows.’

‘I can show you everything. But if you want to see your parents, then …’ He turned and faced Tom fully. ‘You must become my bondsman.’

‘Like Kit?’

‘Not like Kit. You will become my bondsman and my indentured apprentice, and I will show you everything, and you will continue the family line.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You will continue the family line – you will set up home here, and a family.’

‘But how am I to continue it?’

Jack sighed. ‘I had thought that I might do so with Zita. But it must be true, and I will not force her.’

The world around Tom trembled. ‘You’ll show me my parents – if I agree to do what you want? If I agree to … become you?’

Jack, shadows casting his face, folded his arms and laughed, once.

‘Yes, my pretty boy. Yes, my pretty sweeting.’

‘And if not?’

‘You have seen, boy, what happens to people who disobey me.’

The bird in the cage, the spider in the web.

‘Now. There is more. The manipulation of energy, the discovery of powers, the ability to see into and through the obsidian glass, into where the Samdhya go, and what they see …’ He drifted off once more, as if he were now somewhere entirely elsewhere. Tom stood, fixed, like the hare that Leana had almost caught. He coughed, and Jack noticed him once more and spoke abruptly. ‘You had better eat your supper.’

Evening sunlight, slanting through the windows. Leana, coming to meet him at the bottom of the stairs. The kitchen door was open, and the welcoming scent of slowly cooking oniony stew met Tom’s nostrils; Zita had put the gramophone on gently, playing a Mozart piano concerto, and Kit was at work chopping carrots.

Tom felt a sudden and overwhelming rush of love for both of them, and sank down into one of the ratty old kitchen chairs. Zita flicked a teatowel at him.

‘What’s the matter, old boy? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.’

Tom almost said that he had. Kit, Zita, Jack. What were they but ghosts, visitors from another time, remnants of centuries past? The jewelled box. Energy poured from it. Tom kept thinking about it, and coming back to it, all through supper, letting juice drip down his chin so that Zita scolded him and threw him a napkin.

Could it be possible that Jack had somehow trapped the Captive inside it? It was surrounded by iron bands. Tom shuddered at the thought of it. The more he thought about it, the more likely it seemed.

He remembered his dream, of the light and the music.