Free Bring Out Your Dead by MacAlister Katie Page A

and
carmot, not gold.”
    “ Why do I suspect there is
more to this than a rare substance?” Sebastian asked, his gaze
steady on me.
    I smiled, my fingers closing over the broken
bits of ring. “Because you’re a smart man. One of the reasons
carmot was used for items of great importance like this ring is
because of its restorative property.”
    “ Restorative in what
manner?”
    My smile deepened as I
whispered three words: magis plana
conligatio .
    Before I could open my hand, Sebastian was
on his feet, his expression startled. I stood as well, turning over
my hand as I opened my fingers. The pieces burned a bright reddish
gold for a moment before subsiding into a more mundane horn ring
edged in a gold-colored metal.
    “ You remade it,” Sebastian
said, touching the ring with the tip of his finger, as if he were
worried it would break again. “But…how?”
    “ Anyone who knows about
carmot knows how to restore it to its manufactured form,” I said,
and pressed the ring into his hand. My fingers touched the pulse of
his wrist. “I am giving this to you now because I know you will use
it wisely.”
    His gaze flickered to Damian, now thoroughly
engrossed in the video game. “I made a vow to you, Beloved. I am a
man of my word.”
    I touched his cheek, the
anguish inside him so great it leeched into me. I know you are. I could not have bound myself to you if you
were anything but an honorable man. I’m just sorry that I couldn’t
give you back your soul.
    Do not worry, Beloved. I can exist without a
soul—so long as I have you.
    I didn’t know what to say to that. Sebastian
seemed to have no difficulty sharing his thoughts and feelings with
me, blithely accepting his emotions rather than questioning how
such a strong relationship could develop almost instantly. I
couldn’t deny that some pretty strong emotions were building within
me on what seemed to be a minute-by-minute basis, but I was not yet
ready to either confront or accept them. There were other issues to
deal with first.
    “ That’s amazing,” Tim
said, peeking over Sebastian’s shoulder to see the ring. “You just
pressed it together?”
    “ Elle est la daughter of an alchemist,” Sally said, sashaying
forward to look at the ring.
    I frowned at her.
    “ You are? I didn’t know
they still had such things,” Tim said.
    “ They don’t. If the loo is
free, I’ll go clean up.”
    “ Who exactly was Edward
Kelley?” Sebastian asked, following me into the
bathroom.
    The revenants had left me a clean towel. I
scrubbed my face and neck, wishing I had a change of clothes. “He
was a liar and a thief, a man whose ears were cut off early in his
career as a laywer because of fraud. He later turned his talent for
prevarication to alchemy.”
    “ But it wasn’t all false,
was it?” Sebastian fingered the ring. “This carmot seems legitimate
enough.”
    “ It is. Carmot is the one
thing in Kelley’s life that was real, only he didn’t understand
that until the end of his life.”
    “ What happened to
him?”
    I rinsed out the now-soiled towel. “The
common belief is that he died during an attempt to break out of a
Bohemian prison.”
    “ The common belief? What’s
the truth?”
    “ Mind if I use your brush?
Thanks.” I toweled my hair quickly to get any soot out of it, then
applied Sebastian’s brush to the unruly mess, studying myself in
the mirror. What could Sebastian see in my face? My eyes? Did he
see the truth, or had some inner sense prompted him to press the
subject? “He lost a leg during the prison break attempt, but he
survived. He lived in seclusion for several years more, a broken
man who could never recapture the fleeting fame he acquired in his
earlier years.”
    “ I assume he had a
family?” Sebastian’s eyes were watchful. Damn him, he
knew.
    “ That would be a
reasonable assumption.” I set down the brush and turned to face
him. “He had two children by a Gypsy woman: a son and a daughter.
One was captured and