Evie laughed. “Gee, this is swell!”
“Sorry. I couldn’t quite figure out how to give her a proper ascot,” Jericho said, and the two of them laughed as if they were drunk. Gently, Jericho brushed a wayward curl out of Evie’s eyes, and he saw her catch her breath. Jericho thought that if Nietzsche was right about the eternal recurrence and that one’s life repeated, unfolding in the same fashion throughout all time, then he would be glad of living this moment over again, with the sun shining through Marlowe’s pretentious stained-glass windows and falling on Evie’s upturned cheeks in a wash of color.
“Amor fati,” he said.
“What’s that mean?” Evie said. It wasn’t the reflection from the windows, Jericho realized. Her cheeks were really flushed.
“It means love of fate.” Impulsively, he wrapped his fingers in hers and pulled her close. He kissed the top of her head, inhaling the scent of her hair. It smelled clean; it smelled hopeful.
“You seem so… different,” Evie said, gazing up at him. Her stomach did that twirling thing. What was it about Jericho that attracted her so? She didn’t know entirely, and she was tired of trying to explain it to herself. It just was. Especially with the way he was looking at her now.
“I feel different,” Jericho said. “I feel terrific, in fact. This new stuff Marlowe’s been giving me has made me much stronger. Less…” Afraid, he wanted to say. He was the new Jericho, and the new Jericho wasn’t waiting for life to come to him. “Well, I feel really good. It’s almost like… like I’m part Diviner now.”
“What do you mean?”
“I can hear the maids talking all the way down in the kitchen sometimes. And I can run for miles without tiring. Yesterday I lifted a steel cabinet over my head.” Jericho laughed and leaned in to Evie with a conspiratorial grin. “You can see why I needed some companionship.”
“And how!” Evie said, laughing, too. She hadn’t realized how much she’d needed to get away from New York and gossip and ghosts. And even though she knew they had a mission, seeing Jericho felt like a small respite. She wished she could call Mabel right now—Mabesie, you’ll never guess where I am!—and then she’d pos-i-tute-ly swear to turn all of Marlowe’s fancy ceramic figurines on their heads just to make her happy. But Mabel hadn’t spoken to Evie since their fight, and thinking about it would only make her sad. She was determined not to be sad this weekend.
“So this is where the party is. Sorry I missed it,” Sam said, barging through the doors. He gave Evie and Jericho a long sideways glance. Then he walked around the room as if studying it.
“Are you casing the joint, Sam?” Evie said, annoyed by his interruption.
“No. I’m having déjà vu.” Sam folded his arms and squinted at the meticulous oil paintings of pinch-mouthed men.
“Again?” Henry quipped, coming into the room along with Ling.
“Because you were here before,” Evie said. “I remember it from reading your mother’s photograph. This is where she brought you when you were little. Right over there—that’s where Rotke tested you with the cards.”
Sam sat in the Louis XVI chair Evie had pointed out and rested his hands lightly on the arms, as if he could find the memory that way. He shook his head. “I got nothing. It’s almost like somebody tried to keep me from remembering.”
“There were other children here, too,” Evie said.
“Diviner kids?” Henry asked, and Evie nodded.
“So what happened to them?” Ling asked.
“I don’t know,” Evie answered.
“That’s why we’ve got to read these cards,” Sam said. “So we can find them. Jericho, where’s this card reader and when can we fire it up?”
“We’ll have to wait until tonight,” Jericho answered, keeping his voice low. “Marlowe is hosting some sort of gentlemen’s club dinner. The whole house will be occupied with that. Nobody will notice us.”
Ling stood in the middle of the room grinning one of her rare, unguarded smiles. “I can’t believe I’m in Jake Marlowe’s house.”
Despite everything they now knew had happened during the war, Ling still admired Jake Marlowe. He’d made terrible mistakes, she knew, and he didn’t seem to love Diviners very much, but he was also a top-notch mind. Some people couldn’t separate the man from the work, but Ling could. With luck, maybe he’d see something in her, too. Maybe she would change his mind about Diviners. “He’s contributed so much—all those inventions and medical advances. And all of it has happened so fast, just since the end of the war.”
Jericho hadn’t thought about it, but Ling was right. By all accounts, Marlowe had been struggling before then. He’d been a failure in many regards. But in the past nine years, he’d had one triumph after another. His stock had soared. He was an American hero.
“And I hear he may find a cure for paralysis,” Ling said.
“Yes. He’s working on that and much more. He’s very close,” Jericho said. If the experiments Marlowe was running on Jericho could somehow help Ling in the future, that alone would be worth it.
A truck marked MARLOWE INDUSTRIES ambled up the long driveway and parked outside.
“What’s that?” Ling asked.
“Uranium delivery from the mine. They come every week,” Jericho explained. “There’s a lead-lined pool in a shed where he stores it.”
“I was too embarrassed to ask before, but what is uranium?” Evie asked.
“Uranium is a radioactive element capable of producing tremendous energy and heat,” Ling explained. “When you mine uranium ore, you get radium.”
Henry snapped his fingers. “Say, maybe he’s using it to make himself one of those water jars, a fancy new Revigorator. Aren’t they lined with radium and all that jazz?”
Ling made a face. “Nobody should drink radioactive water.”
“Radiation is supposed to be good for you! That’s what all the advertisements say. Even Al Jolson wears Radio-X radium neck pads to keep his vocal cords relaxed!”
“That’s not what the ghost of Mrs. Leong told me. She said it would make our bones crumble and our jaws rot off,” Ling said.
“Ugh,” Evie said. “I’m rather attached to my jaw.”
Henry sang, “Oh, the jawbone’s connected to the—”
“It all goes back to atoms,” Ling said, talking over him.
“That’s what my Sunday school teacher said,” Evie said.
“Atoms. Not Adam. Everything is made up of atoms. You. Me. This chair.”
“You know, I felt a real kinship with this chair,” Sam quipped.
Ling’s glare was penetrating.
Sam whistled and put up his hands. “Sorry.”