City of Lost Dreams by Magnus Flyte Page A

guards.
    Or that she would be. And they would lay her down here, right here on the ground in front of Maria Theresia’s horsemen.
    “Me, me, do me,” said the four horsemen in chorus. Sarah started running again.
    The second orgasm came as she reached the gates of the Volksgarten. “Ohhhhhhh,” she groaned, passing a pair of older women. “Sorry, ate some bad chicken.” They didn’t quite believe her, she feared.
    She wanted to tear her clothes off, touch herself all over, grab any other person . . .
    Where was she going in such a rush anyway? This could be the best night of her life.
    Another orgasm came as she pulled out her phone. She needed to get a message to Bettina. Did she know what was in the galleon? Sarah had another orgasm, right under a statue of Empress Sissi. Every cell in her body was filled with intense joy, vibrating in unison. Sarah sang out in ecstasy, all thoughts banished. She finally knew the truth. It had been revealed. Nothing else mattered but this feeling.
    “Pull yourself together,” Sissi snapped. “I am no prude, but . . .”
    “Anyone who starts a sentence with ‘I am no prude’ is a total prude!” Sarah shouted. God, even her fingernails felt pleasurable. “You were a melancholic. You didn’t even like food! There is nothing wrong with me!”
    “Is the drug stimulating the vagus nerve?” asked Sissi. “That’s how they treat epilepsy and depression, both of which Rudolf II may have suffered from.”
    Sarah stared at the empress.
    “You read this online last month when you were researching a cure for Pols.” Sissi sounded very smug. “The vagus nerve acts on several parts of the brain and nervous system in ways we don’t yet understand. They’re exploring the use of vagus nerve stimulation in other diseases, including Alzheimer’s. It has anti-inflammatory properties that may make it useful in treating heart disease, colitis, and arthritis. And it’s very long, connecting the brain to the—”
    “Okay!”
Sarah shouted. She fought down another orgasm and dialed a number on her phone.
    “You should call Max and admit you’re still in love with him,” said the empress.
    “Fuck off, Sissi,” said Sarah. “It’s not that simple.”
    The call went through at last. “I’m sorry to bother you but it’s an emergency,” she told Alessandro. “I need a drug test.”

TEN
    M ax Lobkowicz Anderson, shifting uncomfortably under the stern gaze of a priest, was trying to pinpoint the exact moment when his life had gotten really weird. You could, he thought, go all the way back to the day five years before, when his father had called him to say that the Czech government had decided to restitute twenty-two castles and palaces that had been seized from the family in 1948. In a single gesture he had been transformed from a guy taking a few years off to find himself (drums, weed, Southern California) to landowning European aristocracy.
    Max looked around him at the somber and magnificent interior of SS. Cyril and Methodius’s Cathedral and tried to concentrate on the mass. He wasn’t raised religious and, though he enjoyed the rituals, had never quite been able to decipher these things. He had come with Pols and Jose. After a few minutes of rest, Pols had been able to finish her concert, but Max was really worried about her. He was doing everything he could to keep her from getting overtired, which today meant bringing them to the mass in his car rather than have them take the tram. And that way he could get a good lunch into her afterward, too, at a restaurant she liked next door to the church. Nico, back from London, had used the offer of lunch to tag along, though Max was sure he, too, was keeping an eye on Pols.
    Max was eager to get back to his grandfather’s secret library in the basement of the palace, where he’d found some books about Philippine Welser. He was intrigued by Philippine’s husband, too. Archduke Ferdinand (Order of the Golden Fleece,