“Well, what have we here?” said a rough voice.

I turned and saw a man in the archway, illuminated by dirty light spilling out of windows above. He was big, clad all in blue. A grin parted the thatch of his red beard, and I recognized him as the constable I had fled from earlier that day.

“What is it, MacKenzie?” A second shadow appeared in the archway. He was short and heavy-shouldered, his voice slurred with drink.

“It’s the devil’s own, that’s who,” the constable said, stalking forward at a leisurely pace. The iron gate behind me was locked. “Tell me, boy, given anyone Lucifer’s Kiss today?”

His companion laughed. “So he’s one of those, is he? How about you bend yerself over, MacKenzie, and let him plant a kiss on you.”

“Shut your trap, Ralph,” the constable said, glaring. “I’m no lover of Satan or his ilk. Not like this whelp. A scourge on this city, you are.” He edged closer, big hands flexing.

I didn’t move. “You can’t hurt me,” I said quietly.

“Think so?” he said with a hard laugh. “Your face looks bad enough from where I got you this morning. Did I ruin your pretty looks? Well, there’s plenty more where that came from. You may serve Satan now, but I can beat the fear of God into you.”

I didn’t flinch as his fist descended toward my cheek. He could not harm me. I was beyond that now. Although I had not thought of her in many months, I called out to her now.

I’m coming, Mother!

“Stay your hand,” spoke a deep voice.

It seemed impossible, given the force and speed behind it, but the constable’s fist froze not an inch from my cheek.

“What’s wrong with you, MacKenzie?” the short man said. “Come on, give the whelp a good one.”

“I can’t,” the constable said through clenched teeth. Sweat glittered his brow. His arm shook, as if all his muscles strained, but his fist moved no closer.

“Bloody Hell, if you’ve gone all soft, then I’ll do it.” The one named Ralph marched forward and reached for me with both hands.

“I said stay,” the voice intoned.

Ralph went stiff as a corpse, arms before him, and his eyes bulged. A gurgle sounded low in his throat, but he made no other sound. A figure clad all in black parted from the shadows and drifted into view. It was not the ghost of Deacon Moody.

“Are you well, James?” he said, gazing down at me.

I tried to speak, but I seemed as paralyzed as the two men. I had grown since our last meeting, but the stranger still towered over me, and his voice—full of danger a moment ago—had been as resonant with kindness as I remembered. A stray shaft of light illuminated his face, and I thought it stern and wise and handsome.

“Who are you?” I finally found the breath to ask.

“That is a long tale, and there is no time to tell it now, James. I would that you come with me tonight.”

I glanced at the two motionless men. Spittle dribbled from their mouths.

“You can do with me as you would,” I said. “I can’t stop you.”

He bent down and, as he had long ago, laid a hand on my shoulder. “No, James. I’m not like them. I will not make you do something you would not. I want you to come with me because you choose it, because you want something better for yourself than what you have been given. Because you want to live.”

A moan escaped me. For so long I had believed I was dead, capable of feeling nothing. Only I had been terribly wrong, for at that moment a pain pierced my heart, and a longing came over me—though for what I could not name, except that I thought of the calling of the bells that had awakened me, and how clear the sound had been. I thought as well of Deacon Moody, and how he had wished to save me. Perhaps he had after all.

“I will come with you,” I said.

“I am glad, James.” Keeping his strong hand on my shoulder, he guided me from the close, past the two men who stood still as statues, and like ghosts ourselves we passed into the night.

While it was years before I would finally learn the secret of the Sleeping Ones, before my own eyes would become gold as his, the moment I walked from Advocate’s Close with the stranger was the moment I left death behind and first embarked upon the path to immortality.

While the days that followed are a blur to me now—events seen through a gray fog—I remember that night with perfect clarity: how he led me to a coach waiting on High Street and spoke quiet words to a man clad in a servant’s coat.

“Lay him down in the back. Be gentle with him. And after you arrive at Madstone Hall, you must send for the doctor at once.”

“What of yourself, sir?”

The servant’s voice was rich with an accent I could not name, unlike the stranger’s speech, which seemed to bear no accent at all.

“I must finish my business here in Edinburgh. I’ll take a horse to the manor later tonight.”

“We’ll keep a fire burning in the library for your arrival, sir.”

I could not see—yet I felt—his smile. “Thank you, Pietro. Even after all these years, I haven’t grown used to the chill of this land. To think, they call this springtime. Here—use this to keep him warm.”

He removed the dark cloak and wrapped it over me. It was soft, and laced with the sweet, masculine smell of tobacco. Though his hair was white, and his angled face weathered with age, the servant picked me up with little strain, for I was light as a bird. The tall buildings tilted; stars wheeled in the sky above, then vanished as the coach door opened and I was set on the leather seat inside.

“Go quickly, Pietro. A fever burns in him. I fear he is near to death.”

No, I tried to call out. I am well now.But my lips could not form the words, and it didn’t matter, for the door was shut, and moments later the coach was clattering down the High Street.

I lay on the seat, wrapped in his cloak, weary in every bone of my young body, but strangely awake and alert. I had the sense that the coach was heading downward, and in my mind I could see it moving through the Canongate, past the spires of Holyrood Palace, and into the night-shrouded world beyond, like a tiny craft on a wide, dark sea.

It occurred to me that I should perhaps be afraid. Maybe the stranger had not saved me after all. Maybe he merely wanted me, and sought to use me just as all the others had before him. But no, he was not like other men; that was the one thing I was certain of.

After that my mind drifted, and soon it seemed I was floating on the dark sea. From time to time I heard voices, and I think they were what kept me from sinking into the water. The voices were difficult to make out; they blended with the murmur of the waves. One was the strangely accented voice, while another spoke in the lilting tongue of a well-to-do lowlander. Then, sometimes, there was the other voice, as deep as the ocean I drifted on.

“Come back to us, James,” I heard it say once, and I tried to call out in answer, only black water filled my mouth.

“The fever burns hotter in him than ever,” said the Scottish voice. “It must break soon, or it will burn him to death.”

“It will break,” the deep voice said.

I felt something cool touch my brow. A peace came over me, and I smiled as at last the water pulled me down.

When I woke, it was quite to my surprise.

By the light streaming in through the window, it was late morning. I propped myself up and found I was naked beneath clean white sheets in a large bed. The chamber around me was large as well, with a fireplace, a pair of chairs, and three tall windows, one of which stood open to let in a sweet breath of spring air. Beyond gauze curtains I saw green hills rolling away to a misty horizon. I stared, for I had not been beyond the walls of the city in all my fourteen years, and I had never seen a sight so beautiful.