How to steal the magic? What was the technique? An incantation, perhaps? Or did they need a pentagram? Everything Garrick had tried in the past to suck even a spark of power from the ether now seemed garishly jokish. Candles and weeds, animal sacrifices. He had been a mere child scrabbling around in the dark. Here was true power in front of his eyes, if he could take it.

Garrick pocketed the blade and dipped his icicle fingers into the orange light until he found the man’s neck. The tendons looked taut as gibbet ropes, but to the touch they were softer than butter. Garrick saw his own fingers somehow merge with the stranger’s body, and with the merging came a sharing of souls.

I know this man, he realized. And he knows me.

With his free hand Garrick ripped off the man’s mask, to demand the knowledge that he could not find in the man’s mind.

“Tell me how to take your magic,” he demanded. “Give me your secrets.”

The man seemed in a stupor. He saw but did not see, his gaze soft and blotted, a look Garrick had seen on the faces of soldiers emerging from chloroform.

I know you, Albert Garrick, said the man, though his mouth did not move. I know what you are.

It seemed to Garrick, as he listened to Felix Smart’s thoughts, that he had joined utterly with this man. Smart’s entire life was compressed into a bitter capsule and shoved down his throat. Memories exploded inside him, more vivid than his own. He tasted blood and sweat, smelled gunpowder and rotten flesh, and felt his own secret shames and regrets that he had never dared acknowledge.

This is the magic, he realized, even as his past life crawled into his gut like a worm. To see, to know.

“Give it to me,” he said, tightening his grip around the man’s neck. “I want it all, d’you hear?”

“They sent you to Afghanistan,” gasped the man, the words grunting out of him.

So surprised was Garrick to hear this that he actually engaged.

“Not many know that, Scotsman. I took up the queen’s rifle, killed my share, and came back a hero.” Garrick shook his head, dislodging the orange man’s probes. “Quiet with your talk, man, unless it is to divulge secrets.”

The man closed his eyes—sadly, it seemed to Garrick. “I can’t. And I know what you intend to do, so...” His hand moved toward a red button on his belt, and Garrick gripped the wrist in his fingers.