Chapter 1

Mortality is a gift freely given. Immortality is an achievement hard earned.

-A Witch's Guide to the Arcane

Rorick

Ifound my seat on the train and was immediately flummoxed. All the beings who go bump in the night had awoken around the city of Purgatory. Under heavy snowfall lit by a crescent moon, hungry preternatural predators prowled and had full sway. I was one such predator, and I was just as starved as the rest of them.

What, then, was a vulnerable old crone doing sitting on the Night Train like she belonged there? Geds—a local term for human mortals—especially mature geds, surely knew better. I tipped up the rim of my bowler hat to inspect her from across the aisle.

Hugging a large carpet bag to her chest and balancing a wooden cane, she huddled closer to the frosted window. Spectacles hung from a golden chain around her neck. Just past the floral bonnet that tidied her silver hair, the city swirled by in a blur of gaslights, brick, and steel.

This late in the evening, sensible mortals should have been holed up in their houses behind windows barred in iron, entrances sealed with braided garlic and burnt sage, salt and dead man's blood in measured lines around the doorframes. Not seated out in the open like fresh bait for the hunting classes.

Perhaps she was some sort of shifter only pretending to be a ged to draw in an unsuspecting werewolf or a lesser devil before she revealed her true nature and gobbled them down. Hunting on the train was frowned upon, but it wouldn't be the first time the rules were broken.

My nostrils flared, reading the air. No, that wasn't it. Shifters had a distinctive cloying scent that this woman lacked. Was she a powerful witch, then?

There were a few holes in my newest theory. Witches always traveled in groups of three—though I didn't know why—and where, then, was the old woman's enchanted hat? They didn't go anywhere without those.

She sighed, and her breath fogged the glass. My dead heart snagged on her frown, chasing away the last of my hesitation.

"Long night?" I asked, and my voice came out raspier than I intended. I hadn't used it much since waking at dusk.

Her slender shoulders tensed like I'd startled her. I wasn't insulted. Vampires had that effect on people. Disliking that she was unaccompanied, I scooted across the aisle to sit beside her without invitation, sending a clear message to the other hunters: if they wanted at this poor soul all hunched over with arthritis, they would have me to deal with first.

Hell's teeth, the innocent thing was bespectacled and carried a cane. She smelled like willow bark tea and peppermints, and I still felt hungry eyes narrowing on us from around the cabin. Though I didn't look it, I was nearly as old as the woman was. But I didn't have arthritis or a problem with stomping my immortal boot through the face of a magical creature who thought it'd be all right to feed on someone's gran.

"If you're thinking you'd like to bite me, I wouldn't," she warned, and my throat went dry with thirst at the notion.

I hadn't dined in a while. To stifle the irritation, I rubbed at my neck. "That's not why I'm sitting here, love."

The exposed skin of her arms pebbled under the puffed sleeves of her day dress. "As old as I am, my blood probably tastes like the dust that sticks to ancient books. You know the ones I mean. The big tomes they keep in museums."

"Come now. You don't give yourself enough credit," I said warmly, and the woman returned my smile despite the threat inherent in my extra sharp canines. "You know what they say about wine well-aged. I bet you'd make a delectable feast."

"Like desert sand and a leathery old shoe," she insisted.

I chuckled with her for a moment before my jaw set disapprovingly. "What are you doing on the Night Train?"

She slid on her spectacles and turned her nose up at me. "I'm trying to get from one side of Purgatory to the other." She had a drawling accent I couldn't place, something that wasn't native to the area. "Same as you, I imagine."

"That's not what I'm doing." Raising a brow, I leered at her. "I'm looking for an old shoe to eat."

She nudged my arm with playful admonishment, and her gray eyes glittered behind the thick lenses of her bifocals. "I'm headed to the northside, near Castleway. There's a dead horse there that needs beating again, you see."

"Ah. Isn't there a saying about dead horses? Something about beating them being pointless, as I recall."

The woman turned back to her window and heaved a heavy breath. "Don't I know it. And yet, here I bloody go again."

Interesting. "Bloody" was a curse geds didn't dare ever use. Most of them were superstitious and believed invoking the term would call the damned—the undead like myself—down upon them. It was just a word, no more powerful than any other, of course, but I'd never heard a mortal use it so readily.

The train barreled through a tunnel, leaving nothing but the gentle glow of oil lanterns to ignite the cabin. Creatures shuffled around in the shadows. Every sort of magical boogeyman was represented on this train. I felt their presence and their hunger pressing in around me like I'd walked through a spider's web and couldn't get the last of the clinging silk off. The elderly woman scooted in closer. For comfort, I encouraged her to lay her arm around the crook of my elbow.

She was warm, and that was nice. One of the greater drawbacks to vampirism was how bitterly cold I often was. That and the persistent scratch of dryness in my throat as the need for blood grew. I'd give both of those things away for a piece of string and not miss them a day.

If she wasn't a witch, perhaps she'd been given a witch's charm. An expensive one could draw the benevolent sort closer and keep the vicious types back. That would explain how I'd ended up in this particular cabin. It certainly wasn't my usual seat.

"Where are you disembarking?" I asked.

"Next stop." She leaned against me and patted my arm. "You smell nice. Like apples."

"So do you," I rumbled in reprimand. "That's the problem, see? No more Night Train excursions. That dead horse of yours can take a beating during the day when it's safe or not at all."

"Don't fuss over me. I'm not as helpless as I look." Holding her spectacles up higher to peer through them, she gave me a thoughtful once-over. "Where are you off to all spruced up?"

I fidgeted under her gaze. Admittedly I'd worn my nicest paisley waistcoat, the blue one without the frayed buttonhole. My dark hair had silvered at my temples before my transformation. I'd combed all of it into submission this evening, but I hoped it wouldn't look to anyone else—one such person in particular—like I'd put in extra effort.

Nudging down my bowler, I let my head fall back against the cushion. A bolt rattled on the floor by my boot, stealing my attention. The screw had loosened. It made a noise a ged would barely notice. In my ears, it was as loud and incessant as two sheets of metal being banged together.

I winced. "I'm expected at the next stop as well, but I was having some trouble deciding whether I should exit here and keep my appointment. Looks like I will now, though. I can't have you wandering about the city on your own."

"Oh?" A knowing curl curved the corners of her lips. "Do you also have a dead horse problem near Castleway?"

"Something like that." My entire life was about to change, the burden of inheritance thrust upon me. I covered the loose bolt with my boot to stop it from clattering.

"It's a girl, isn't it?" She winked at me, the gesture magnified by her spectacles. "A lady you just can't keep away from, try as you might?"

I laid a hand over the breast pocket of my frock coat. The note I'd received upon awaking at dusk, delivered by two large magical moths, remained tucked inside. Through the wool, I felt the squared edges of the corners the insects hadn't nibbled off. "She's a former business partner. It's not what you think."

For one thing, the witch who'd summoned me could hardly be called a girl. Though neither of us looked it at a glance, my former partner and I were both in our seventies now. For another, the older woman appeared to be hinting at a romantic entanglement, and my relationship with the witch was best described as hostile.

I pulled out her message and read it over again. Her handwriting was as tidy as it was small, perfect for keeping detailed research notes while conserving paper.

Detective Liam Rorick,

Two people are dead. Meet me at the entrance to Eckert Castle just after nightfall. Come alone and arrive promptly, or I'll hunt you down and shove you back into a coffin—and it won't be one you can crawl out of when it suits you.

-Quiet

A knock at my door had proceeded the arrival of the note. A constable had come to inform me that one of the murdered victims was my cousin. Now I had two reasons to make my way to Eckert Castle. To be honest, I was more distressed by the thought of meeting my former partner again than by the magnitude of my inheritance woes. I'd been trying—and failing—to forget Quiet and all that had transpired between us.

I tucked the note away again as the train wound around the city center. The blur of steel, brick, and lamplight was replaced by a billowing collection of tents adorned in black and blood-red stripes.

Castleway Circus.

The elderly woman watched it drawing closer out her window. Her next breath was wistful. "All these years, and I've still never been," she said as though she were confessing to a crime. "Have you?"

A shiver touched the back of my neck and went cascading down it, like tiny insect legs scattering over my skin. I squirmed in my seat. "I've never felt the compulsion."

And no immortal would. We knew what the geds of Purgatory did not: The circus wasn't just a show. There was more to the pageantry and fanfare inside.

"The older I get," she said, "the louder I hear the call to go."

The touch of wisdom in her words suggested her instincts were trying to tell her something. Preternatural sorts had a name for this phenomenon. We called it the arising, the mind opening itself to the vast mysteries of this world and the worlds beyond. Another tremor of disquiet wracked me. I straightened against my seat.

"Do you plan to visit soon?" I asked softly. The thump of her heart seemed strong for a ged her age. I sniffed the air—she smelled healthy enough. I couldn't see why she'd be drawn there of all places at this time.

She ran a wrinkled finger through the condensation on the window, tracing the outline of the great tents. "Not just yet, I don't think."

I sighed, relieved. I liked the ged dame more than I tended to like those I'd only just met. In fact, I was already fonder of the woman than most of the people I'd known for years. She felt familiar and new all at once. Perhaps that was the work of the witch charm she likely had tucked inside her carpet bag, protecting her from my indifference.

Gears squealed, the sound painfully sharp in my ears, and the locomotive slowed to a stop. The train guard, a gray-skinned gargoyle, stood up near the doors. "Castleway Township, Northern Purgatory," he shouted.

I helped my new companion shoulder on her cloak. It was black as tar, and though it looked thin, the fabric was surprisingly heavy.

"Thank you." Beaming up at me, she took my arm, and I walked her onto the platform.

Beyond the train doors, she stopped unexpectedly, leaving just enough room for the queue of hungry hunters to filter out behind us.

"Something the matter?" I asked her.

With a crooked little smile, she brought her cane up, knocking my bowler hat off my head. I let go of her arm and bent to retrieve it.

"It was nice seeing you again, Rorick," she told me, only now she sounded far away.

I laughed at her mischief and then started as her words settled in. We hadn't exchanged names.

"Oh? Do we know each other?" My memories from before my transformation were hazy at best. Hat in hand, I rose to my full height, looking for her. She'd gone from my side.

I found her near the top of the stone stairs leading to the Castleway exit. How she'd gotten there so quickly, I had no idea. She waved bony fingers at me in farewell, hoisting her cane as though she didn't need it at all. I lifted a hand to her uncertainly.

In a flash, she was gone, disappearing into the darkness with all the other beings who went bump in the night.