“There’s a spare room upstairs,” Guy told Owen. “You may stay there for the night.” He took his coat and hat from him, setting them on the rack near the door. “What’s left of it, rather.”

“Thank you,” said Owen. He glanced over at Catherine.

Even in the shadows, she made out the curiosity in his eyes. She spoke before it resolved into a question. “My place is at the Invercarn Chronicle. It’s a few blocks from here.” She turned to Guy. “If I may, I’ll call on you tomorrow.”

“Of course, Miss Daly.”

She wanted to say something else. Something like Thank you or My apologies. She’d paid him to inspect a timepiece they hadn’t been able to find. Now they were in this quandary, with this boy who hadn’t any memory of his previous life, let alone the timepiece. But she said only: “Good night, then.”

With her lantern in hand, she stepped back out into the darkness of the street. Tired as she was, the light seemed to flare and oscillate, spots dancing in her vision. She reached the print shop, the door opening with a groan under her hand. The presses were still, dark shapes across the floor, the sheets on the drying racks ghostly silhouettes above her head. She started upstairs and eased open the door to her room. Bridget was asleep, curled up facing the wall. Catherine placed her feet just so to avoid the creaks in the floorboards, not wanting to wake her. She set her lantern on the desk and changed into her nightclothes.

She needed just a few hours’ rest, just a moment to close her eyes.

And as she got into bed, she considered once more what had occurred in the cemetery. Until sleep pulled her down into the dark.

CHAPTER EIGHT

CATHERINE SORTED THROUGH the type case in front of her, picking out another letter to place in the line forming on her composing stick. Her hands barely shook as she did so—a minor feat. Any moment, Jonathan Ainsworth would stride into the shop and find her lacking what he’d sent her to collect. The thought of it was like a fist around her heart, squeezing tighter with every beat.

She fixed her eyes on the type in her composing stick. Her thumb held the line in place, the nicks in the metal facing up. The written obituary informed her that the woman—Elizabeth Cleary, aged twenty-six years—was taken by consumption in the late-night hours. Catherine transferred the type from her composing stick to the chase. There was so much death in this city, printed in every paper. Lives snuffed out like candles, bodies put in the ground, to remain there so long as no robbers came to dig them back up—or, conversely, no magic restored them to life.

The public cemetery was now short of another corpse.

At the soft chime of the bell above of the shop door, Catherine stiffened. Ainsworth was early this morning—she ought to have anticipated that. She set down her composing stick, stomach churning.