Free The Immortal Heights by Sherry Thomas Page A

create just such a network for himself. It started with a Sunday afternoon stroll to a railway station in nearby Windsor, and a ticket purchased for London. When he reached London, he walked about Paddington Station and some of the surrounding streets, then got on the underground and took himself to Euston Station and King’s Cross, two other railway termini.
    Once he knew all of London’s major railway stations by heart, he would vault to one after lights-out and board a night trainsomewhere, taking care that he did not accidentally go beyond his vaulting range. Soon he could materialize directly in rail stations in Bristol, Manchester, and Exeter—and take the train farther afield. It was not long before he vaulted handily to any major population center in Britain, plus a number of remote, scenic places.
    With Britain under his belt, he set his sights on France, beginning with a night crossing from Dover. Once he reached Paris, the biggest railway hub in France and achievable in a single vault from Mrs. Dawlish’s, the rest of France lay open to him.
    Over the years he expanded this network to many corners of Europe that were readily accessible by rail, and some that were not. He had, however, never penetrated east of the Balkans. But this was where Alectus did him a favor.
    Usually he was left alone on his school holidays to be looked after by Dalbert—Titus could be very unpleasant company. But each summer Alectus, Lady Callista, and Aramia went on a holiday abroad, and for that Alectus always insisted that he come along too—for the appearance of family unity, if nothing else.
    Two summers ago they sailed the eastern Mediterranean on the crown yacht. Alectus delighted in calling at nonmage ports, pretending that they were the ruling family from the nonexistent principality of Saxe-Limburg. They visited the great pyramids at Giza—not the ones the nonmages flocked to see, but a series of six upside-down structures buried nearby that comprised an ancient translocator said to be able to, in its day, send a mage anywhere on earth. They eventook a smaller craft from the yacht and set sail from Cairo, one hundred miles up the Nile.
    Thanks to that trip, Titus was able to vault, in two segments, from Luxor to the vicinity of Giza, then northwest to Alexandria. Two more vaults and he was in Tobruk, which lay directly south of the isle of Crete.
    From Crete he hopped to Zakynthos, an island in the Ionian Sea, west of mainland Greece. One more hop and he was in the easternmost spot of continental Italy.
    The back of his head was beginning to throb painfully; he had no choice but to stop for a while. The sun shone warmly on his face; gulls wheeled and dipped; a breeze made fish-scale patterns on the surface of the bright-blue sea. He sat on the rocky shore and drank the last of the tea Fairfax had made in the morning.
    As it often happened, when he allowed his mind to wander a little, he thought of her future. She had never told him herself, but he knew, from the material Dalbert had collected on her a while ago, that she would like to attend the Conservatory of Magical Arts and Sciences.
    The Conservatory had a lovely campus on the shoulder of the Serpentine Hills, overlooking the Right Hand of Titus and the ceaseless Atlantic beyond. He could see her walking along the flagstone paths between buildings, talking with her friends, perhaps making plans to gorge on ices later at Mrs. Hinderstone’s sweets shop, which she had often visited as a little girl.
    The summer before, he had sent Dalbert to Mrs. Hinderstone’s, to obtain a selection of the tastes and textures she had adored during her years in Delamer. Dalbert, always one to go above and beyond the call of duty, had brought back not only baskets of foodstuffs and beverages, but also postcards that captured the shop from every angle: the small, round tables on the sidewalk under a white-and-blue-striped awning; Mrs. Hinderstone herself