“I have somewhere you can stay,” Guy told him.

Catherine gestured back with her lantern. “We need to fill in the grave,” she said quietly. “Before sunrise.”

Owen’s knuckles whitened where he still held the fence. “Do not ask that of me.”

“Mr. Nolan and I are more than capable. And the sooner we do, the sooner we can get out of this cold.” Catherine looked to Guy. “Shall we?”

Shoveling the dirt back in wasn’t as arduous as the initial dig. As such, her attention wandered from the grave to the boy it once contained. Owen stood watching them, shivering, his arms curled about himself.

“Oh, gracious,” said Guy. He put aside his spade to remove his coat and hat, pushing them onto Owen. “You’ll catch your death the very night you woke from it.”

This time Owen took the items offered. The coat was a looser fit on him—Guy was taller by a couple of inches, his shoulders broader—and Owen dug his hands into the pockets, tucked his chin into the coat’s collar, making himself appear even smaller.

“I truly died, then,” he said, voice wavering. “I really… I was really dead.”

“But now you’re alive,” Catherine told him. “Isn’t it a wonder?”

“Not a wonder.” Owen sniffed. “Magic.”

“Not magic of our doing. It’s a powerful sort that brought you back as you are.”

Guy heaved another pile of dirt into the slowly filling pit. He said, “Miss Daly, you did make an attempt.”

All she’d done was set down her piece of type. Guy turned to her, his spade balanced in his hands. He went on. “Perhaps your magic worked as a spark.”

She looked away. God only knew what Ainsworth might do if he found out. She certainly couldn’t tell him. The timepiece wasn’t where he thought, and its magic had brought the coffin maker back to life.

Over the stone monuments, the first flush of dawn lit the sky. Catherine hadn’t slept at all this night, and little the night before; she felt the heavy pull of exhaustion at her eyelids, her head clouded, that dizzy, unsteady feeling. She looked to Guy in the blue-black of the coming morning. He wiped at his eyes, offering her a tired smile.

“Come along,” he said once they’d finished. “We’ll head back to mine.”

They left their spades behind the cemetery fence. Making their way to the watchmaker’s shop, they passed by dustmen and lamplighters with their ladders and poles, extinguishing the streetlights. Guy stopped outside the shop and pulled a key from his trouser pocket.

Owen gazed into the darkened window. “You’re a watchmaker?”

“Yes.” Guy’s tone was crisp, the pride in it quite plain. “My family has worked here for three generations.”

Owen looked silently at the shadowed clockwork beyond the glass.

“Do you recall it?” Guy asked, unlocking the door.

After a pause, Owen shook his head. “Perhaps not.”

Catherine ducked inside behind them. The interior of the shop was dark, the still audible ticking of the clocks made eerie in the dimness. It seemed a different place at night, somewhere strange and unfamiliar.