“On the level: Was Will murdered?” Henry asked.
“Yes,” Evie said. “And Malloy thinks Memphis and Sister Walker did it.”
“Bushwa!” Theta said. Her hands tingled with heat.
“Pos-i-tutely.” Evie felt as if she were floating in her body, until a boy bumped headlong into her. “Ow! What’s the big idea?”
“’Scuse me, miss. Message for you,” he said. He shoved a scrap of paper into Evie’s hand and ran off toward Central Park.
Theta peered over Evie’s shoulder. “Say, that’s a numbers slip. Memphis used to keep those in his socks when he was a runner for Papa Charles.”
Something had been scribbled on the other side: I know who killed him. Meet at Madame Seraphina’s shop tonight. Bring everybody. It was signed MW.
MW.
Margaret Walker.
GHOSTS
Evie stood outside the door to Will’s apartment in the Bennington for some time. No one lives here anymore, she realized, and it sliced through her. Will was dead. Jericho was gone. Sam had been taken. The apartment was now a ghost. She rattled the doorknob. Locked. Evie took the stairwell that led up to the Bennington’s roof. When she climbed out onto the tar expanse, she remembered a night in September, when she’d first arrived in the city, excited and hopeful, before the murders, the ghosts, the Shadow Men, and the terrible revelations about what her uncle Will, Sister Walker, and Jake Marlowe had done during Project Buffalo. Before she’d seen firsthand what the King of Crows could do. That night in October—it seemed ages ago now—she and Jericho had gazed out at the skyline, and then they’d kissed for the first time. The memory brought a flush to her skin. She’d liked being with Jericho. Liked his strong arms wrapped around her. He had been Mabel’s crush, and she’d kissed him.
Evie couldn’t stop herself from thinking that if she hadn’t kissed him, if she’d worked harder to make Jericho fall in love with Mabel, maybe Mabel wouldn’t have fallen in with Arthur Brown and joined up with anarchists. Maybe she’d still be alive. More than anything, Evie wished she could undo this part of her past. She wished she could stop Mabel from making such a terrible mistake.
And now here Evie was, desperate to find Sam but thinking of Jericho’s kiss at the same time. And after what Jericho had done to her at Hopeful Harbor! What was wrong with her?
But how could she both love and hate her uncle Will? They’d fought so bitterly about her Diviner powers. She’d wanted to let the world know—why hide such a talent? Will had insisted it wasn’t safe. In the end, Evie had told all those reporters about her object reading. She’d told them because everyone had a right to the truth; she’d told them because she wanted to be famous. Again, both things were true. She loved Will. She hated Will. She was desperate for Sam and she fantasized about Jericho. She wanted Mabel to rest in peace; she’d do anything to talk with Mabel again.
Evie crawled over the roof’s edge onto the fire escape, descending till she was level with the window to her former bedroom. She snugged up the sash and angled her body inside. After she and Will had fought and she’d moved into a hotel, Sam had taken over her old room, until he, too, fought with Will and moved in with Henry. The pillows still smelled like him, though. If she wanted to, she could probably get a reading from this pillow and know his secrets, even secrets about her. That wasn’t right, she knew. Still, her palms itched with the temptation.
There was a sound at the front door. From Sam’s bed, Evie could see the knob rattling. Uncle Will, she thought. No. Not Will; of course not. He was dead. Then whom? Sam? Had he found his way back like the Houdini escape artist he was? The knob rattled again, that sound followed by the thud of someone heaving their strength against it. Fear pricked inside Evie. The Shadow Men. If they came for her, she’d scream loud enough to shake the building. She grabbed a lamp from the bedside table, grateful that her gloves muted the voices inside it for now, and tiptoed to wait beside the door. Another heave and it splintered open, and Evie brought the lamp down on the intruder’s back with all her strength. The intruder stumbled forward and fell to his knees with a groan Evie recognized.
“Jericho?” she said.
“Hi, Evie,” Jericho whispered and collapsed on Will’s Persian rug.
Evie helped Jericho to the table, then ran to the tap and brought back a cool glass of water, which Jericho gulped greedily. His clothes were filthy and torn, his lips chapped, and he was slightly delirious, as if he’d been wandering for days in some desert.
“Jericho, what’s happened? Where’ve you been?” Evie asked.
“Woods,” he gasped between gulps of water.
“What woods? Where?”
“Do you… anything to eat? Please?”
Evie rustled through Will’s cupboards, trying not to think about the fact that her uncle was dead; he would never open these cupboards again. She found bread and a tin of peanut butter and made Jericho a sandwich. She took the milk bottle from the icebox, gave it a sniff, and handed that over as well.
“Sorry. This is all there is.”
Jericho didn’t seem to care; he polished off both like a desperate man. Evie was worried about his weakened state. If Jericho had been in the woods for a long time, it meant he’d been without his lifesaving serum, and she didn’t want to think about what that could do to him. But she also remembered vividly the last time they’d been together, and she was wary. She hovered near the door and kept her hand ready to grab the lamp if need be.
Jericho stretched out his arms. Evie startled and reached for the lamp. Jericho saw. He knew why. The misery of it was on his face. The Übermensch serum had turned up some dial inside Jericho, and he’d attacked Evie. If Marlowe’s butler hadn’t shot several tranquilizer darts into Jericho, he would have been successful. It wasn’t his fault. He was doped up, one side of Evie’s brain said. But what if it was his fault? said the other. What if that Mr. Hyde has lived inside Jericho always, and the serum just helped him along?
“I promise I won’t…” Jericho didn’t finish. He kept his eyes trained on his hands, which were now wrapped around the empty glass.
Evie blushed but did not leave her place by the door. “I… I know you didn’t mean to…”
“If I could take it back, I would.”
“I know that,” Evie said softly.
“I just keep… reliving that day over and over. I don’t remember much of what happened after Marlowe gave me all that serum and I ran into the rose garden and saw you and I…” Jericho gazed intently at the glass. “I’m sorry.”
Evie’s chest tightened. She wanted to make him feel better. She wanted to keep her distance. “Never mind about that now. Won’t you tell me about the woods? Can you tell me now what’s happened to you?”
“I… escaped. From Hopeful Harbor.”
“Why would you need to escape from Hopeful Harbor? Jericho…”
“I saw it, Evie. I saw the Eye.”
The Eye! They’d been searching for clues to its whereabouts for weeks. The King of Crows had told them to hunt down the ghosts and ask them questions if they wanted to know more about the Eye. But it felt as if all they had gotten from the dead were riddles upon riddles.