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Songbird reared back, shrieked a fast and furious string of Chinese, backed up by power’s whiplash; Yancey felt her hand slice air and ether alike, slamming both window-ward. Caught in its path, the bearded spectre outside distorted lengthwise, like smeared ink—

—and Yancey sat back into her proper body, still locked upright at Splitfoot Joe’s table, muscles stiff as a day-old corpse’s, while a dizzying chill swept her from head to toe. Released, her hand fair flew from Geyer’s wrist, movement alone appearing to transmit somewhat of the same sensation to him; he gasped out loud and stared at her, rigid, like she’d grown another head.

What gave you the right to rummage ’hind my eyes, Miss, when I’ve tried to treat you kind? he thought, so theatrical tin-thunder sharp she winced, trying to block it out.

“That ghost, on the train’s side,” she said, out loud. “Songbird . . . knew him.”

Morrow frowned. “What ghost? And—how d’you know that name, anyhow?”

The information came rattling out headlong through Yancey’s throat, unstoppable: “Little Chinese witch, barely more than a child, works with—” Don’t say Pinkerton’s name! She had to remind herself, forcibly. “—your boss, and Doctor Asbury . . . there’s something wrong with her, more so even than the usual. Bone-bleached, eyes so weak she can’t see properly in any world but the spirits’, can’t bear the light of the sun or walk outside without two veils and a parasol.”

But now they were both regarding her with a similar pitch of horror, which finally stopped her in her tracks.

“I’m sorry,” she said at last, weakly, eyes avoiding Geyer’s. “I just needed to know. What you knew.”

The Pinkerton swallowed. “Are you . . . you’re a hex?”

“No. Hell, no.”

“Then how—”

Yancey felt a hopeless lurch; the innate Goddamned impossibility of telling him anything acceptable suddenly fell on her all of a piece, with all the dead weight of grief deferred.

“There’s other things in this world, Mister ‘Grey,’” was all she could manage, finally, “and I’m one of them. That’s all.”

But then, you should understand that, given what we left behind us. Sheriff Love, and all his godless Man-of-God works.

And maybe he could hear her still, hard as she was labouring to make it so’s he couldn’t. Because with that, Geyer nodded his head, looked down at his hands, took a great fresh breath—and started over.

“She did seem to see something, though I didn’t; left quick enough, afterwards. The boss and Asbury just let her go. I thought . . . well, I had other things on my mind, at the moment.”

Mister Morrow broke in, impatient: “Hold on here, let’s go back a minute, ’fore we outpace ourselves. What ghost?”

Yancey described him, and watched Morrow’s face fall.

“Sounds like Kees Hosteen, to me,” he said. “He was in Rook’s gang; last man standing, really, after Mictlan-Xibalba. I sent him to get help, before we left, but we were gone when he got back. Died in Tampico, walkin’ into a bullet meant for—someone else.”

“Can your Reverend Rook raise the dead?”

Morrow snorted. “Don’t doubt he can, considerin’ how much there is of it in the Bible.”

They sat, ruminating on the concept. ’Til Geyer said, slowly, “If I’d been more attentive, I might’ve known what to expect later on at the Hoard, ’specially after noticing how the . . . remains . . . of Sheriff Love were gone from Bewelcome square. But I was so engaged in taking Asbury’s readings, it simply never occurred to me—not even when I saw tracks leading off into the desert, and that mystery light poor Mister Frewer described off in the far distance, moving faster than any human eye could follow.”

Love, travelling quick, as the dead tend to do.

Morrow frowned again. “Readings? He gave you the Manifold?”

“A Manifold, yes. To take the data he needed.”

“‘A’—hold the hell on, Frank. There’s more than one, now?”

And with that, they were off again, Geyer sinking back into a lengthy explication of Asbury’s various achievements: a whole tiny Manifold factory ensconced in one boxcar of Pinkerton’s king-train, churning out fifty of the things a day (Yancey caught a flash of the one Morrow’d once carried from his mind, spasming painful ’gainst his waistcoat pocket-seams as a heart attack in progress). Geyer drew it out, flipped it open with a thumb-tip, and they all admired the way its needles clicked immediately roof-ward, toward Chess—the single most magic-charged object to be found, doubtless, within several vicinities.

“Didn’t even guess you had that on you,” Morrow said, amazed. Geyer shrugged.

“Much good it’s done me, considering they let me go without any real instruction. But it’s like George Thiel said—now the die’s been cast, this machinery of

the Professor’s will change the world as we know it, for better or for worse. There’s no stopping it.”