The shop assistant—Miss Evershott—snapped herself out of shocked stupor as Chatham cried, “Stop her!” But the small golden cat with the fluffy tail that Lena had admired in the window launched itself at the assistant’s stricken face. She fell down, shrieking, and Lena heard her head rap sharply against the floor. Lena rushed to the lever but stopped short.

Miss Evershott’s eyes were open, staring blankly at the ceiling, a halo of blood spilling around her head.

Dead.

Time seemed to slow. The cat, animated by Lena’s magic, was sitting on the woman’s chest, gazing up at Lena with empty eyes, its mechanical throat purring. Or were its eyes really empty? She could see something swirling in their depths. The world was faded around the edges and she realized she wasn’t breathing, but she pinched herself, forced herself to face the truth.

I killed her.

Another, harder voice spoke in her mind. There’s no time. Just run.

Lena pulled the lever up, and the bars over the front door shrank back into the ceiling.

Chatham was doing his best to pursue her, but his numerous bird and insect mechanicals were buzzing around his head, tugging at his clothes, and an elephant the size of a goat had started to sneeze great multicolored spurts of gas into the air. Chatham was choking and staggering, enraged, in the wrong direction. The vicious metal insects dug tiny limbs into his face. Blood ran onto his collar. The elephant was ramming its shiny, sharp tusks into his shins. And now the cat was poised to leap on its second victim, its furry tail already soaked in blood, its metal teeth pointed and gleaming.

What have I done?

Lena stumbled, wondering whether to help the magician.

But then she remembered the secret workshop, and her heart hardened. There had been so much blood. Wasn’t it likely that he too was a killer?

She sprinted out the unlocked door, pounded down the street, and turned into a backstreet she thought might lead toward the temple district. No sounds of pursuit. Had she killed Chatham too?

She caught her breath in the little back alley, her mind spinning, her face hot and sweaty. A flash of metal suddenly glinted in front of her face, lit by the sinking sun, and she flinched, suppressing a scream—remembering how the creatures had attacked their creator.

But the brass butterfly merely fluttered in front of her nose, circled once around her head, and landed on her shoulder. Lena started, but didn’t brush it away. It didn’t appear to mean her any harm. Carefully, her hands trembling, she picked it up and slipped it into its customary place in her pocket, where it was happy to stay.