“I don’t know. Ghosts and spirits . . . it’s hard to separate facts from superstition. Does a medium truly contact ghosts, or does the medium’s own magic create the ghost in the first place? I don’t think there’s a single Porter in North America who can talk to the dead.” Though there were a handful of vampire species who could theoretically do so. “Gutenberg has kept so much from the rest of us.”

“Can you find him without repairing the automaton?” Lena asked.

“Maybe eventually. But we don’t have time.” I jogged back to the Triumph, where I dug out an old space opera. When I returned to Lena and the automaton, I had created a small handheld monitoring pad and a shiny silver pellet the size of my thumb.

“That looks like the same toy you used on Ted Boyer.”

“Exactly. Which could be a problem, now that I think about it. Let me change the frequency.” I grabbed the pellet, gripped both ends, and twisted forty-five degrees. The light blinked three times. I adjusted a dial on the tracking pad until the red dot appeared again. “Are you able to carve out a place for this?”

She dragged her index finger through the inside of the automaton’s head, whittling a groove with her nail. I pressed the explosive into place while a lip of wood grew around it, securing it in place.

“I’m not sure what’s going to happen when we fix this thing,” I said. “But if it decides to destroy us, that should take it out.” They might be invulnerable from the outside, but an explosive nested against the heart of its magic was another matter entirely.

“Promise me that when this is over, you’ll press that button.”

Whatever Fust might have done to Gutenberg back in the fifteenth century, he had paid for it many times over. I nodded and reached over to the other side of the head, carefully pulling it into place so that the horizontal rod slid into the matching hole below the ear.

Lena straightened the rod for the jaw. Her fingers slid between mine as we pushed the head together. Just as before, I felt her magic sinking into the wood, infusing it with life.

“This was an oak,” I whispered.

“That’s right.” She smiled at me as splinters on either side twitched and reached out, knitting the cracks.

“Hubert couldn’t repair it,” I said. “That’s why he left it behind.” I couldn’t have done it either, not without carving an entirely new head and body. I marveled at the magic flowing through her hands. It was like she was reaching into the tree’s past, reminding it of the days when it had stood tall and proud, drinking in the sun and the rain.