That attack saved both my life and my sanity. Burning lines of text flared to life: Gutenberg’s spells, embossed into our wooden skin. My skin. I focused on the magic, orienting myself within this form. And having called his twelve disciples together, he gave them power over unclean spirits, to cast them out.

The automaton saw me as a spirit to be excised. Our body staggered, and my awareness began to fade. The mind trapped here had five hundred years of experience in this form, and I hadn’t even figured out how to walk.

Another verse flared to life. And a fire was kindled in their congregation: the flame burned the wicked. I had spent enough time with Smudge to recognize magical fire as it spread through me.

“I’m not here to hurt you!” I might have spoken the words out loud. There was no way of knowing.

Get out!

Pain worked its way inward, surrounding me. I pushed back, but it was like trying to stop the tide with my bare hands. The magic surged past my efforts. I felt the metal keys growing hotter, searing the wooden skin. The automaton would destroy itself before it let another mind take control.

Could I turn the automaton’s magic against itself? Use one of its protective spells to block this attack?

No . . . forget the text encasing our body. I turned my awareness toward the gears and rods in our head, and the letters that bound that other spirit here.

Katherine Pfeifferin. Not a name I recognized from the history books. I could feel the magic spreading out from those carefully engraved letters, a web that both trapped Katherine here and infused her spirit throughout the automaton’s body.

“Katherine!” Nothing. Like Johann Fust, she appeared to have no memory of who she had been.

I tried once again to manipulate the flames, but instead of fighting them, I channeled them toward that metal disk, adding my own strength and will to their heat in an attempt to burn away those letters. I felt Katherine’s fear and confusion, a momentary sense of disorientation. Flames spread over my body, and the metal keys began to soften.

And then, just like that, I was alone. The flames died. I toppled onto my back. My head felt like someone had stabbed a red-hot poker directly into my brain stem. Which was essentially what I had done.

“How did you do that?” Charles Hubert’s voice. I could sense the specific line of Biblical text that allowed me to hear. Then shall the eyes of the blind be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped. The world slowly flickered into place around me.