Then she got to work.
She pitched spadeful after spadeful of dirt aside, sweat collecting in the space between her shoulder blades and the small of her back. She cleared another mound of dirt and caught sight of a shadow beyond the grave’s edge.
Guy Nolan stood at the foot of it, pale-faced and specter-like. He carried a spade of his own and wore a thick dark coat and a black top hat. He raised his free hand to touch the brim of it as their eyes met.
“Hello, Miss Daly.”
“Mr. Nolan,” she said gladly. Taking out a handkerchief, she wiped the sweat from her face. “It’s good to see you.”
He removed his coat and hat and set them down next to her lantern. Catherine was pleased to see he was dressed for the work. He wore a plain shirt and waistcoat, brown wool trousers. Joining her in the dug-up grave, he said, “Well, here I am. Is this how you usually spend your nights?”
Catherine let out a breathless laugh and pocketed her handkerchief. “Certainly not.”
Guy studied her, his eyes black as ink in the darkness. “I know of the farewell service offered by the Chronicle—the magic you use in the cemeteries.”
“Do you, now?” She leaned against her spade, smiling a little. “Yes, I don’t much care for it, but I suppose it’s why Mr. Ainsworth’s interested in this timepiece.” She angled her spade toward him. “I’ve heard you sell pieces of actual time in your shop. That seems quite the venture.”
Guy turned his face away. “My father used to. He doesn’t anymore.”
There was an odd quality to his voice—an unexpected hardness—that made Catherine feel she’d overstepped in some way. She went back to digging, relieved when Guy followed suit.
His blade hit wood some time later. They cleared the remaining dirt, their breaths fogging the air. Catherine tossed her spade onto the grass and fetched a small crowbar from her coat.
“Let me,” said Guy, reaching for it. “You did most of the digging.”
She passed him the crowbar. The coffin was caved in a little from rot and the weight of the soil, the nails rusted and sunk deep. Whoever this coffin maker was, he’d been buried some time ago.
Guy wrested free the last nail and leaned back on his heels. He was flushed but smiling, holding up the offending nail like a prize. Catherine grinned in return. She took up her lantern and rubbed a spot on the glass.
When she turned back, Guy’s smile faltered. In the lamplight, he appeared somber and thoughtful as a mourner. Standing up, he said only, “Hand me the light.”
She did so, and he pushed aside the coffin lid. The two of them peered inside.
For a long moment, there was only silence.
Guy was the first to speak. He cleared his throat and said, in a rather delicate manner, “Miss Daly, are you quite sure we have the right plot?”
She swallowed. “I am.”
“Did you not say he had a timepiece?”
“I did.”
“Right.” His attention returned to the coffin. “Then, if I might ask, where is it?”
CHAPTER FIVE
INSIDE THE COFFIN, the body was mostly decomposed, dried out and skeletal beneath a frayed suit. Catherine bent down, feeling along the coffin’s sides. Nothing. She searched through the suit pockets only to be met with the same result.
The timepiece was gone. If it’d even been there at all.
She sat back, turning to Guy. He knelt beside her, pale and shivering as wind whistled over the grounds. “What now, Miss Daly?”
She wished she knew. “It ought to be here. This is it, the unmarked plot.”
“Perhaps your employer’s information was faulty.”
They looked back at the remains of the corpse. Skin and muscle tissue stretched taut over the bones, only hollow sockets in the places where his eyes once were. His hair was dark and matted. He’d clearly been dead for years, long enough Catherine couldn’t tell his age.
She wondered how he’d died.
“Perhaps,” she said quietly, “I can wake him.”
The type from Stewart and Sons was still in her coat pocket, though she wasn’t altogether sure her magic would work. The longest dead she’d ever brought back were in the ground six months at the outside. They were intact, preserved—not rotted to the bones.
When Guy said nothing, she looked his way.
He bit his lip. “Is that wise?” he asked finally. “He’s not… He’s been dead a long while, Miss Daly.”
“Indeed, I might not be able to wake him.” Her gaze flickered back to the corpse. “But he could very well know where this timepiece is.” Reaching into her coat, she took out the blank type. She set a corner of it hard against her palm until it broke skin.
Guy whispered, “Do you know who he was?”
“No.” She swallowed. “Mr. Ainsworth only said he was a coffin maker.”
Placing the bloodstained type piece on the coffin’s edge, she closed her eyes in concentration. She realized she didn’t have a name to call on—no title to tie the coffin maker to his body. No sooner did she have the thought than the wind picked up, quickening her heartbeat. There came a sound like the breaking of crystal, thin and barely audible. Catherine frowned, wondering if she’d imagined it, just as Guy inhaled sharply and scrambled back, fetching up against the dirt wall behind them.
“Well, Miss Daly,” he said, wide-eyed. “I think he moved.”
She looked back at the coffin. And almost imperceptibly, the corpse shifted.
Catherine’s stomach gave a lurch. She stared, transfixed, as the coffin maker’s body began to flesh itself out—by nerve by sinew by vein by artery by organ.
A little awed, Guy said, “Is this your doing?”
“No,” she replied, voice hushed. “This isn’t my magic.”
This was something new.
Sitting alongside Guy, Catherine watched it happen.
The boy—it was a boy, she saw, no older than them—lay inside the coffin as if he merely slept. He had a sweep of dark hair, a thin face, lashes that fluttered against his cheeks. His chest rose and fell beneath the folds of his suit jacket. He was breathing. Breathing.
Catherine’s heart thudded.
This boy wasn’t back on a temporary thread of magic. He was alive and whole, like death had never touched him.
The timepiece. It must be.
But where was it?
She got to her feet, eyeing the boy who, minutes prior, had been little more than a skeleton. Guy rose to stand next to her.
“The timepiece,” he said, echoing her thoughts. “Could it have done this?”
“That would be my guess.” Her voice came out faint.
“But how is that possible? It’s not even here.”
The lantern rested near the coffin, illuminating the cracked wood. Catherine stepped closer, kneeling beside it. She reached out to touch the boy’s cheek.
His eyes opened, and she snatched her hand back.
The boy jolted upright, breathing hard and fast. “What is this?” His voice was shrill. “Where am I?” He looked down at himself, at his threadbare suit. He choked on his next inhale, even as he staggered out and away from the coffin. Alive as he was, his face shone deathly pale in the moonlight. He pressed back against the dirt wall behind him. “Stay back,” he told them. “You keep right back from me.”