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indeed, there were signs that work had just recently come to a halt. Flickering coal-oil lanterns still burned along the hundred-foot board sluice that stretched like a dark road up to the mouth of the mine. A thin trickle of black water ran off the sluice into a muddy pit that snaked down to rejoin You Bet Creek below.
    The foreman’s cabin, crooked and leaning, shone silver-gray in the moonlight. Dark shadows under its eaves made it look angry. Stanton used his foot to carefully ease open the door.
    “No one inside.” He disappeared through the door and Emily followed.
    The cramped foreman’s cabin was packed with mining paraphernalia—crates marked “California Powder Works” spilling drifts of wood shavings, spools of timing fuse, rope and drills, and broken headlamps waiting to be mended. But it was an enormous machine, huge as the upright piano in Mrs. Bargett’s boarding house, that dominated the space.
    It was a behemoth of gleaming brass and polished mahogany, ornamented with a great deal of machine-engraved scrollwork. Here and there, lights flickered under blown-glass buttons. Emily squinted to read the enameled plaque:
    Vivification Control Switch, D. J. Conway and Company, Chicago, Ill., Pat. Pend. 1862 .
    “This is the Corpse Switch?” Emily asked, but Stanton didn’t answer. He was twisting a dial and looking closely at one of the needle indicators.
    “It seems to be working just fine.”
    “You sure? Maybe touring the factory doesn’t make you as much of an expert as you’d like to think.”
    He glared over his shoulder. “Corpse Switches are really very simple, even though they do a complex job. If one were to fail, it would be immediately apparent.”
    “All right. If the Corpse Switch is working, then where are all the corpses?”
    At that moment, a distant, piercing scream sliced the night air. It came from the entrance of the mine where iron tracks vanished into the blackness.
    They rushed out of the shack and up the hill to the heavy-timbered mouth of the mine. From deep within they could hear the amplified echoes of an incoherent shriek of pain and terror. The sound was like a cold steel rod rubbed against Emily’s spine.
    Stanton grabbed the satchel from Emily’s shoulder and threw it open, ignoring her cry of outrage. He pawed through bottles and leather pouches, peering at labels.
    “Chelidonium majus, inula helenium, hyssopus officinalis, viscum album  … house-magic basics. Oh, and black storax! That will help immensely. At least you’re well prepared.” He poured garlic and salt and cayenne onto a flat rock, then, using a smoothly rounded piece of granite as a pestle, he ground them together with a few of the other herbs, finally adding the storax. He muttered charms in low cadent Latin.
    “You’re not rhyming,” she snapped. “You have to rhyme!”
    “There isn’t time for that nonsense,” he said. “This is an extremely simple devivification powder, the kind a schoolboy might compound as an amusement on a rainy Sunday.” He scooped two handfuls and put them in his pockets. He gestured to Emily to do the same.
    “Throw it at anything that moves,” he said. “It’s not strong enough to hold them off long, so don’t let your guard down.”
    They crept into the mine, holding their brands before them. The bright white light cast harsh flickering shadows against the rough-hewn pine supports, made the mining-car tracks seem as sharp as if they’d been honed on a whetstone. A thin trickle of muddy cocoa-colored water ran down the middle of the tracks, smelling of iron or, perhaps, Emily thought as they got closer to the anguished screams, blood.
    They followed the screams to the end of a shallow test tunnel off the main line. There, they found him—Mr. Hart, the foreman, the mine’s only live employee. He was buried under huge, mud-slick boulders and crumbling earth. Only his head and shoulders and arms protruded. His breathing was choked, constricted by the