The driver asked, “Holiday?”

No, I answered, and yes, Janus replied.

Stupid time to come for a holiday, he said. Should have come in summer or closer to Christmas. You’ll have a horrible time now.

The hotel had purple ceilings, blue carpets and a motif of silver storks embossed into the walls. Janus paid with Greta’s cash for two rooms for the night. Dinner was still being served; would we be dining?

No, I said, running my eye over a menu of twenty-euro steak and thirty-euro wine. All things considered, I doubted that we would.

Alone in a room that could have been anywhere in the world, I stripped off before a full-length mirror and assessed the body of Sebastian Puis. He wasn’t my type, nor was I particularly comfortable with either his skin or his style. He hovered on the verge of being unhealthy grey, and from his chest and back tufts of hair sprouted in patchy clusters, unsure whether to give growth a try.

The urge to jump into someone darker, brighter, smoother, hairier–anything which could be firmly defined, seized upon as a starting ground for creating some sort of character–grew in my stomach. I rifled through Sebastian’s bag but could see no evidence of his occupation. His phone, simple and sensible, I pulled the battery from, in expectation of the moment when a friend or loved one, perhaps waiting at Montpellier station still, began to agonise about his disappearance. Maybe a frightened mother was already on the phone to the police, who would reply that young men lead their own lives, and that if she was truly concerned she should call back, on the non-emergency line, at the end of two days. Gut instinct is never accepted as a measure for the disappearance of a loved one, and for that I thank police procedure heartily.

Study this face and guess its nature.

I might be a rakish wit, a piss-taking clown. Perhaps I’m soulful and lonely, sitting awake at night writing sonnets to an imagined love. My hands are soft, alien to manual labour; suck in my stomach and my ribcage protrudes with aching clarity, yet relax my belly and I look almost portly as it rounds out above my hips. My buttocks have suffered the repetitive light abrasion that comes from too long sitting in the same place; the inside of my left thigh was once scratched and now is healed. Am I a student, a designer, a software programmer, a young DJ with a lot of trend and not much taste? More important, am I gluten intolerant? Can I manage lactose, do I get shin splints, should I be careful when eating sugar, will the sting of a bee cause my lungs to collapse? How will I know until I make the mistakes that Sebastian Puis would not make, having already made them once before?

For a moment I miss the familiar weight of Nathan Coyle or the runner’s confidence of Alice Mair.

We eat, Janus and I, in a small restaurant opposite a remnant of medieval wall. She orders cheese and wine and duck in simmering purple sauce. The owner/waiter/matron of the place asks me if I will be paying for my mother’s meal. Janus forgets who she is and for a moment is indignant at the idea.

Conversation is hollow.

Do you know the city?

A little.

When were you last here?

A long time ago.

And who were you then?

I forget. But I wore yellow as I walked by the sea, and ate oysters from a nickel bucket. And you?

I was someone extraordinary.

I am always someone extraordinary, you see.

And then Janus said, “Why did you save me?” The question was so against the tenor of our conversation I was taken by surprise. “Our relationship has been… temperamental, shall we say. You need help–you could have gone elsewhere.”

“Galileo. You’re the only one I know–besides myself and one other–who’s met him.”

“And Miami?” she murmured, prodding a piece of drooping vegetable with her fork. “What of that?”

I laid my cutlery down, folded my hands together beneath my chin. It feels like a gesture Sebastian Puis would not make, but then for this brief encounter, for this rare moment between old acquaintances, I am not he, but…

… someone else.

“We… understand flesh,” I said at last. “We are connoisseurs of eyes and lips, hair and skin. The emotions which would otherwise drive the flesh, the… complexity that arises from a life long lived, we perhaps lack. Like children, we flee from pain and deny our own responsibilities. This is the simple truth of our existence. Yet we have still lived as human. We still dread to die and feel all the things humans feel not merely as a chemical response, but as… the only language we have left with which to speak. Had it been me who switched into a body without injury that night in Miami, I cannot guarantee that I would not have fled. I do not say this–” I added as she opened her mouth to speak “–to forgive you. You left me to die; that was the decision you made. As I understand fear and dread, and panic and pain, I also comprehend resentment, anger and betrayal. You saved your skin and left me to die in mine, and though I can comprehend the action I cannot forgive it.”

“And if I repented?” she murmured. “If I… apologised?”

“I don’t know. I can’t imagine how that might sound.”

The end of a fingertip played with the hollow of her spoon. A moment came, a moment went, and that was all that there was to it. Our plates were removed, coffee presented, for you cannot have dinner and not have coffee, Monsieur, it simply is not a concept we are prepared to comprehend. And as she crumbled in a cube of brown sugar Janus said simply, “You were meant to have killed him.”

“Who? I am caretaker to a whole cemetery of responsibilities.”

“Galileo.”

“I did kill him,” I retorted, sharper than I’d meant. “I shot him, and when the police came I knelt over his body and there wasn’t a pulse.”

“And yet the rumours persist. Milli Vra, Santa Rosa…”

“I didn’t know you paid attention.”

“I read newspapers. I’m particularly fond of the celebrity tattlers, but even the tabloid press will give a few inches to a ship found drifting in the dark, blood on the floor, survivors weeping in a barricaded room. And as we have discussed before, it is easy–so very easy–for one of our nature to make a decision regarding the lives of others. You’ve tasted it. You know how it feels. Hecuba was inclined the same way. Families would slaughter each other, from the chambermaid to the master; only Hecuba killed those who threatened him, and you kill those who threaten the things you love, and you love everyone, don’t you, Kepler?”

My teeth ground at the name, fingers rippled along the edge of the table.

“He wore… a host,” I replied as Janus lifted her tiny coffee cup, little finger sticking out like an antenna. “His name was Will. He was my gofer, in the old days. Last time we met, we argued. He had this thing with his left leg, a muscle that cramped when twisted the wrong way. I don’t know the cause, wasn’t around long enough to get it checked out, but when it happened you could feel the tendons stand out beneath the bridge of your foot like they were going to pop right out from the skin. But he was a clean willing host in a city that wanted neither of us. He kept his nails trim and always carried mouthwash in a little bottle. He didn’t ask questions. He was… good company. Not very often you can say that. Then he was Galileo. And he had to die, so I killed him, three shots to the chest. It would be safer to put a bullet in his brain, but I had this picture in my head, of Will’s face, smashed up. Of his nose just exploding, of seeing his skull, of my–his–eyes staring, hanging out, and I should have put the bullets in his brain, but I didn’t.

“Then I was the policeman and I took his pulse, and he didn’t have one and I thought that’s it, but the medics came and they started resuscitation and they failed. Of course they failed, but I imagine there must have been a moment. Perhaps a moment on the ambulance floor when a medic pushed down on his chest and what little blood there was left went through his arm and his skin touched the medic’s skin and… and I don’t know, because I wasn’t there–I was… someone else by then–but I can almost guarantee you that the medic who called time of death on my Will, if questioned today, would have absolutely no memory of it. None at all.”