The Drowned Vault (43 page)

And Radu Bey marveled at the works of man and laughed, because he knew they would be his.

On Forty-First Street, he threw a policeman from his horse and jumped into the saddle.

He rode toward the brightest lights.

North and west, on the shores of Lake Michigan, Ashtown was quiet in the darkness.

In a hospital room with white walls, where a curtain
slowly stroked the back of a lake breeze and a ceiling fan ticked quietly in the darkness, there was a woman on a bed, breathing low, wet breaths.

The breathing stopped. The curtain floated. The fan ticked. And then the woman’s ribs quaked with a long, long breath, like she was inhaling her own soul.

Because she was.

Katie Smith’s eyes opened, and she looked around the room.

G
RATITUDE

Jim T. for trekking

Knox A. for devouring

Aaron R. for stomping

Sisters for insisting

Parents for believing

Rory for waiting

Lovely

A
BOUT THE
A
UTHOR

N. D. WILSON is the bestselling author of the 100 Cupboards series and
Leepike Ridge
. Once, in the fourth grade, he split his buddy’s arrow while shooting at a mattress from twenty yards. Now he writes at the top of a tall, skinny house, where he lives with a blue-eyed girl he stole from the ocean, their five young explorers, two tortoises, and one snake. For more information, please visit
AshtownBurials.com
.