Evie glared. “No, I don’t, Mr. Woodhouse.”
“I’m a reporter, Sheba,” Woody said sheepishly but not apologetically.
Will dead. It seemed impossible. Everything about her uncle suggested life. He was never still. Had never been still. Was still. Now. Another camera flash went off. Evie blinked away spots and put up a hand to block her face. “Please… please don’t.…”
“You wanna put that flash box away before I break it?” Theta shouted at the photographer.
“Why don’t you smile for us instead, beautiful?” a reporter joked.
The others laughed. Theta felt her hands getting warm.
“Ignore them,” Henry whispered.
Evie marched forward with grim determination.
“Evie, where are you going?” Henry asked.
“I want to see for myself,” she said, muscling her way through the reporters.
Woody chased after her. “They won’t let you in, Sheba.”
“They have to let me in. I’m his niece.” Evie pushed past him and charged toward the museum’s steps. “Let me through, please! Let me through! That’s my uncle!”
The museum’s front doors opened, drawing everyone’s attention. Out stepped Detective Terrence Malloy, all one-hundred-eighty-five gruff, Lower East Side–bred pounds of him. His badge shone against his suit lapel and his mouth worked a piece of chewing gum.
“Detective Malloy! Detective—hey, Detective! Over here!” the reporters shouted.
Evie wondered if Detective Malloy liked hearing his name called as much as she had liked hearing hers whenever she stepped out of the radio station. From the look on his face, she decided he did. Reporters clamored for the big man’s attention:
“What do you know, Detective?”
“Do you suspect foul play?”
“Say, was it a ghost?”
This got a laugh. Evie’s cheeks burned. She wanted to slap that reporter. Her uncle was dead and they were making jokes.
“Is it true that anarchists did it?” another asked.
“Is it true that Diviners did it?”
“That’s ridiculous!” Evie blurted out. “My uncle was a friend to Diviners!”
She had everyone’s attention now, including Malloy’s. The New York City homicide detective had been her uncle Will’s friend once upon a time, before the Pentacle Murders and all that followed destroyed that bond. The look Detective Malloy gave Evie was decidedly less than friendly.
“Well, somebody wasn’t a friend to him, Miss O’Neill,” a reporter said, oblivious to the silent showdown. “Did your uncle have any enemies?”
“Yeah—was there anything worth stealing in all that junk?” another reporter asked.
“Any dangerous objects?”
The reporters were shouting at her.
“As next of kin, I demand to see my uncle’s body,” Evie announced over the din.
“That’s the stuff, Evie!”
“You tell ’em!”
She had Malloy against the ropes now, and she didn’t care that she’d had to use the press to her advantage. If he turned her away, he’d look like a heel. She could see from the way he was grinding that chewing gum against his back molars that Malloy didn’t like this one bit.
“All right, Miss O’Neill. I know from experience that saying no to you is a full-time job,” he said, getting one in at her expense. “But remember—this is a crime scene. Don’t touch anything.”
“Say, Detective—couldn’t the Sweetheart Seer help crack the case?” The reporter waved his fingers.
“Detective work is what’ll crack this case, Johnny. You can print that. Follow me, Miss O’Neill. Your pals have to stay behind, though.”
“Evil? You copacetic?” Theta asked, Henry looking on.
“I’m jake. Don’t worry.”
Broken glass littered the beautiful black-and-white marble floor of the museum’s foyer. Evie glanced to her left, at the collections room, with all its rare supernatural and folkloric objects on display. As she followed the detective through the broken museum, Evie could practically hear echoes of a shared past in the walls—there was Jericho taking down a book from a shelf and Sam annoying him by calling him “Freddy.” She thought of Ling sitting on the sofa, her crutches beside her, as she scoffed at some corny joke Henry made. She could picture Theta and Memphis making eyes at each other across a library table when they were supposed to be looking for clues about otherworldly occurrences. She could hear Isaiah’s laughter and Sister Walker gently admonishing him to concentrate. She could see Will as she had the first day she’d arrived, suitcase in hand, from Ohio. He was standing at a lectern teaching a class of college boys about good and evil, about magic and religion, and about a curious man in a tall hat who seemed to be all those things.
They’d reached the library. Steeling herself, Evie followed Detective Malloy inside. The grand room was a mess. Books lay on the floor with their spines bent. Papers had been strewn about everywhere. Like someone had been searching for something, Evie thought.
“Who’s the tomato?” a cop said as Evie walked past.
“Her? She’s the stiff’s niece,” another cop answered.
Evie flinched to hear Will discussed like that.
“You wanna clam up?” Malloy barked and the officers fell silent.
The police photographer’s flash blinded Evie. When it cleared, she saw Will’s body. He was on his back on the floor, looking up toward the ceiling’s painted mural of witches and shamans and vodou priestesses as if he might simply be contemplating America’s supernatural past. Except that his blue eyes had gone a milky white, the pupils fixed, and a deep purplish ligature mark encircled his neck above his popped collar. Evie had seen more bodies than she’d cared to in the past several months. But none of them had been Will. Get up, she wanted to say. You’re not dead. Get up. Get up.
Detective Malloy came to stand beside her. “Miss O’Neill, you all right? You feel faint?”
“No,” Evie said, and she wasn’t sure which question she was answering.
“Do you know anybody who might’ve wanted to kill your uncle?”
Just me, Evie thought. “No,” she said.
“I know this must be a shock.”
“Yes,” Evie said, her voice barely above a whisper.
“When was the last time the two of youse talked?”
Evie tried not to glance over at Uncle Will and failed. His eyes. “Oh. Um. A few weeks ago, I think.” They’d fought. He’d left her a note to come to him before it was too late. She’d thrown it away. Foolish. Foolish.
“And what about the rest of your Diviner pals? Your set used to come to the museum pretty often, didn’t you?”
“I suppose.”
“Any of them dislike your uncle?”
The full weight of Malloy’s questions caught up to Evie. She straightened her spine. “If you’ve something to say, Detective, I think you’d better come out and say it plainly.”
Malloy cleared his throat. “Very well. Miss O’Neill, do you know the whereabouts of Memphis Campbell, his brother, Isaiah, or Margaret Walker?”