The gun bucked in James’s hand. A deafening crack echoed in the small room, followed by a muffled explosion. In the stunned silence that followed, the three of them watched a small cloud of blue smoke drift away from the gun.

The statue of Raziel was now deprived of its left wing. Bits of alabaster skittered off the mantel onto the worktable below.

James looked down at the gun in his hands with wonderment and not a little apprehension.

“Mundanes call that a Peacemaker, you say?” Thomas asked indignantly. “Mundanes are even odder than I thought.”

But Christopher gave a triumphant crow. “By the Angel, James, this is tremendous. Tremendous! You’ve made it work! Let me see.”

James held the gun out to Christopher, grip first. “It’s all yours.” He listened for hurried footsteps above, but none came. Henry had mentioned that he was improving the soundproofing of the laboratory—or maybe it was just that the residents were so accustomed to occasional explosions that they no longer batted an eyelash.

Christopher cocked the hammer with more assurance than James would have expected and pointed the gun at the dummy in the fireplace. James and Thomas both hastily covered their ears, but when Christopher pulled the trigger, there was only the click of the hammer returning to its starting position, and the cylinder revolving. Christopher tried twice more, then shook his head in frustration.

“Maybe it was just a fluke that it fired that one time,” he said, his disappointment evident.

“May I?” James took the gun back from Christopher. “I wonder…”

This time he aimed at the straw dummy in the fireplace, and this time he was ready for the gun’s strong recoil. With another almighty bang it jumped in James’s hand, and the dummy’s chest burst, straw exploding in all directions. Thomas inhaled a stray bit and fell into a coughing fit. James set down the revolver carefully on its side and knelt in the fireplace, searching for the slug, which he found embedded in a neat hole in the mortar.

“Maybe only you can fire it,” Christopher said, after thumping Thomas on the back until he could breathe again. “Because of your—your lineage. Interesting.”

Thomas picked up the gun and gave it one last curious look before handing it back to James. “Perhaps James should keep it.”

“As long as you’re willing to come back over for some experiments with it later, Jamie,” Christopher said. “We’ll try to find a safer place to test it out.”