Evie hopped up on the sideboard. “Gee, I love what you’ve done with the place. How smart you are to put the spectral barometer beside the … um”—Evie gestured vaguely to a group of shriveled potato-like cuttings on a table beside Jericho—“dead vegetables.”
Jericho smiled and lifted one eyebrow. “It’s a mandrake root.”
“So it is! I’m certainly rooting for it.”
“Evie, I need to tell you something. You’re the only person I can tell, actually,” he added.
“All right,” she said. It made her feel special that he trusted her.
From his pocket, Jericho brought out a leather pouch. He unrolled it and took out a stoppered glass vial with a small portion of blue liquid inside. “It’s all I’ve got left. Marlowe gave me an ultimatum: Be part of his Future of America Exhibition, let him test me, parade me onstage as his shining victory—or he’ll cut me off for good.”
Evie knew that Marlowe’s serum was lifesaving. It kept the tubes and wires inside Jericho working. “He wouldn’t really do that, would he? Why, that’s blackmail!”
“No. It’s Marlowe,” Jericho said. He hopped up beside her on the sideboard. “If I agree, I’d need to live with Marlowe upstate until the exhibition. I’d have to leave the museum and Will and you just when you need me most.”
“Oh,” Evie said, deflating a bit at the thought of Jericho being gone. “We’ll manage. Don’t worry about us.”
“I do worry, though. Feels like something big is happening. I don’t want you to get hurt.” Jericho reached out and tucked one of Evie’s loose curls behind her ear, and she caught her breath. “As terrible as it was, that night with John Hobbes made me start to come alive again. I saw that I had just been existing before. I want more than that. You made me see that, Evie. I’m forever grateful to your uncle. But I don’t want to shelve books for the rest of my life. I want to make my mark.” He took hold of her hand. “It never would’ve worked for Mabel and me, you know.”
“I see that now. But does Mabel?”
“I think so. What about you and Sam?”
What about Sam? It was probably for the best that he had ended things. They were combustible together—perfection one minute and at each other’s throats the next. Still, it hurt her pride to be the “jilted woman,” with the papers reporting on all of Sam’s flings. And she’d be lying if she said she didn’t still carry a torch for him. Was it normal to have a crush on two boys at the same time?
Jericho was looking right at her. His eyes were the blue of a summer sky.
“Just a publicity stunt,” she said, hoping it didn’t sound bitter.
“Seems like, for the first time since we met, there’s nothing standing in our way,” Jericho said. Very gently, Jericho took her hand and brought it to his shirt, above his heart. It had been months since their kiss on the roof of the Bennington, but she knew that the feeling hadn’t gone away. She’d only pushed it aside again and again. Evie spread her fingers against Jericho’s broad chest, and he moaned softly. It made her dizzy; it made her feel powerful.
“Evie, I don’t want to waste any more time.” Jericho leaned in to kiss her.
There was a loud knock. Theta popped her head around the door. She looked from Evie to Jericho, her eyebrows rising. Quickly, Evie yanked her hand away from Jericho’s chest and shoved both hands under her armpits.
“Hi, Theta! We were just talking!” she said.
“Yeah. I didn’t ask. Sister Walker’s looking for you, Evil. She wants you to come read some objects. So when you’re finished talking, we’re in the library.” Before Theta shut the door, she shot Evie a We will talk about this later oh yes we will look, to which Evie responded with her own: Okay. Fine. Yes. Go!
“I’d better report for duty,” Evie said with a mock-salute. Her cheeks were warm. She let her hand rest on a poppet doll, and its secrets licked at her palm before she snapped her fingers away again.
“Say, Evie?”
“Mm-hmm?” Evie said, chasing the object’s thoughts from her mind.
“Maybe you’d like to go to the pictures sometime? Or for a walk. Or anything, really.”
“Maybe,” she said. “Sure.”
“Sure?” Jericho smiled.
Evie bit her lip and nodded. “Sure,” she said.
“Say, I was just looking for you. Are you okay?” Mabel asked as Evie breezed back into the library and took a seat.
“Of course! Why wouldn’t I be?”
“I don’t know. You’re all flushed. And your voice is really high. Are you sick?”
“I … I think it’s just been too much excitement,” Evie managed.
Mabel laughed. “You? Too much excitement? I never thought I’d hear those words come out of your mouth!”
The pocket doors slid open again, and Jericho let himself in silently. He looked over at Evie, smiling shyly, guiltily. Evie did her best not to return the glance but failed.
Mabel saw it all.
Why?
That was the question on Mabel’s mind as she crossed Sixth Avenue, her bones rattling as the elevated train rumbled far above her head.
Why did Jericho like Evie and not her? (It was painfully obvious and had been for some time. Mabel just couldn’t seem to let go.)
Why did some people have special powers but not her?
Why did she let it bother her so?
Oh, Mabel knew that she and Jericho weren’t a good match. Not really. But it stung that he hadn’t wanted her. Just once in her life, Mabel had wanted to come first. She’d wanted to be the chosen one instead of the chosen one’s reliable, unexciting best friend. A kid tried to sell her a newspaper. “No, thank you!” Mabel barked. Then she felt guilty for it and tossed him a nickel at the last minute, taking the newspaper she hadn’t even wanted in the first place.
Why had she done that? Why did she feel like she had to be so good all the time?
As Mabel turned the corner onto Bleecker Street, she noticed the man in the brown fedora at the bottom of the train steps. He was just standing there, watching her. Her stomach fluttered. Quickly, she tucked her purse and the newspaper under her arm, walking up Bleecker Street. She glanced behind her. The man followed. She couldn’t lead him to Arthur’s place. Mabel took a sharp left onto Macdougal Street and stopped in front of a bakery window, pretending to admire a pastry display. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the man stop a few windows down, pretending to check his watch. That was all the confirmation Mabel needed. Heart beating fast, she walked briskly toward Washington Square Park, trying to lose herself among the throngs of people. She let the newspaper fly. Its pages scattered on the wind, a distraction Mabel used to duck into a drugstore and sneak out the back door into an alley, practically running to the Bohemian Reader and up the back stairs to Arthur’s garret. The others were already there, gathered around the small, scuffed wooden table, smoking cigarettes and knocking back coffee.
Mabel fought to get her breathing under control. She didn’t want to come off half-cocked.
“Ah. Mabel. How is your little Italian friend? Any more visions?” Aron joked, and everything about Mabel’s rotten day came crashing down inside her.