Page 26 of Prince of the Undying

A bone-deep hum resonated through the forest. It vibrated in my ribcage and quivered the needles on the pines.

“Stay back!” I warned the watchers, but I couldn’t hear my own words.

Their wide eyes reflected the violet-white magic.

Konstantin split the lightning between his hands. He raised his arms and directed the magic at the sky, letting it linger morein certain places, less in others, as if smoothing over invisible cracks in the Hex.

When he clenched his hands, the magic sizzled out with a flash.

In the deafening silence, polite applause pattered.

“Thank you,” Konstantin said. “Ardis?”

“Yes?” When I returned to him, he handed me a pistol.

“Would you do the honors of testing the Hex?” He faced his audience with a theatrical bow. “And now my lovely assistant will prove that the magic I have just constructed nullifies the power of gunpowder.”

Lovely assistant? That was a bit much.

I aimed the pistol skyward, since I only trusted magic so much, and pulled the trigger. The gun misfired with aclickwhile the spidery tickling of the Hex crawled over my fingers. A shudder shook my body.

More applause from the audience.

Konstantin smiled. “Excellent!”

I inspected the pistol. In ordinary circumstances, the misfire could in fact be a hang-fire—a delayed discharge—but these were obviously extraordinary circumstances. I set the safety and ejected the round from the chamber. The brass of the bullet was tinged blue, a telltale sign that it had been altered by the Hex.

The crowd wandered back to the train, already bored of magic.

“Thank you,” Konstantin said when I returned the pistol. “Have you learned more about the necromancer?”

I clenched my jaw. “Only that he’s an infuriating bastard.”

“Care to elaborate?”

“He evades any useful answers to my questions.”

“The Order of the Asphodel may pose a significant threat to our plans. We need to reduce the number of unknowns.”

“Meaning?”

“We can’t lose the necromancer. Talk to him. Get him to spill his secrets.”

That didn’t rule out seduction, which was probably the only way to strip away the armor of Wendel’s arrogance.

A knot tightened in the pit of my stomach. “Yes, sir.”

With the Hex patched and the dead buried, the train huffed into motion. It rattled from the mountains down into fields of frosted stubble. Clouds streaked the crisp blue sky. Flocks of crows flew alongside the windows.

In the dining car, I devoured toast, poached eggs, bratwurst, and strudel. At least they had good food here. My hunger satisfied, I drank my coffee and studied a newspaper that was only a few days old. I still struggled to read German, though I stared intently at the ornate Gothic letters until I recognized a few words.

“Amerika,” I whispered.

The newspaper had a photograph of the president, Woodrow Wilson, who had been elected after I had left home. I hadn’t seen San Francisco for three years. I didn’t know when I might see it again.

It had been a death that brought me to Europe, and a hope that kept me here.

My fingers found the thin chain at my neck. I opened a silver locket and traced the pair of tintype photographs inside.

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