The prologue originally ran a bit longer, with this brief scene tagged onto the end. We cut it so as to end on a more dramatic note (and because the reader would eventually know the key element, the fact that Alsius’ spirit wound up in Master Peabody), but since Vargo and Alsius have such fans, this extra shred of interaction might be of interest!

* * *

::Get up.::

Vargo woke to the meaty taste of blood and the sharp pain of a split lip. His limbs shook. His bones ached. And his head pounded worse than an entire squad of Vigil boots crossing the Sunset Bridge.

Within that pounding, a voice. The cuff who’d branded him. ::Boy, I said get up. We need to leave before they send someone to silence you.::

“What?” Sitting up dislodged a shower of glass and twigs into Vargo’s lap. He blinked hard to fight off the doubling of his vision. He was still in the study, chest still bared. The cuff’s ink had seared into his skin, pink and weeping and burning in the open air.

::You were an assassin’s tool. An ignorant one, given how dull-witted you appear to be, but that won’t keep you from being killed like I was.::

Vargo rolled over, pushing up to his hands and knees. “Fuck you, old man. You en’t dead if you can–” He choked on the rest of his words as he spied a hand curled into a death-claw, still tangled in the collar of a midnight velvet cloak. Above that, a face wax-pale, eyes red with burst blood, wide and unseeing.

How the fuck–?

::A question for later.:: Something stirred on Vargo’s sleeve, a spot of color he almost flung off until he realized it was only Peabody clinging in the fold of his cuff.

The voice, the dead man’s voice, was still nattering at him. ::Did you hear me, boy? I said you need to run. Now!::

No need for prodding. Vargo didn’t want to have anything to do with this, and he certainly didn’t want to take the blame for a dead body.

He ran.