She punched her pillow and waited impatiently for sleep. When it came, it was violent. Evie dreamed of the soldiers. Their faces, pale and ghostly, were carved in shadow, their eyes as prominent as a dying fish’s. There was a sound like a howling wind full of bees, and under that, a galloping, clanging heartbeat keeping time. The men shouted to her across a great distance, their voices sailing past in a fast whine like bullets:
Help usEye Stop stopHelpStop O
Godhim stopfree usss
HELP. US.
The soldiers’ screaming mouths opened unnaturally wide, as if the screaming had distorted their very bones. As if they were coming apart and there were no words for the agony. Conor Flynn appeared. His eyes were haunted. “Can you hear it? The Eye is close. You gotta find it. You gotta stop him. I can’t keep hiding from him forever,” he said.
When Evie woke the next morning, a note had been shoved under her door.
I am so sorry. Can we please talk? Jericho.
Just reading the note upset Evie. But she didn’t want to leave with only yesterday stretched between them. She needed answers.
Jericho was hunched over his untouched plate of eggs and flapjacks when Evie walked in, baseball bat in hand. He saw her and stood, like a gentleman would. Evie startled and raised her weapon. “I’m no Babe Ruth, but I have a decent swing.”
“You won’t need it. I promise,” Jericho said. “Ames is in the kitchen, right there.”
Evie flicked her eyes toward the swinging door behind Jericho with the inset porthole window. Through it, she could see Ames and the kitchen staff hard at work. “From what I saw yesterday, Ames would be no protection.”
“His gun would.”
“Let’s talk,” she said. Jericho took his seat again, and Evie sat at the opposite end, keeping the long dining table between them. She did not drop the bat.
“I’m sorry. I’m… I’m horrified,” Jericho said, staring down at his plate. He still seemed a bit dazed, and Evie wasn’t sure if it was the tranquilizer darts or the guilt or both. Her earlier resolve retreated some. She hated that she felt frightened of Jericho and angry at Jericho and sorry for him and angry that she felt she should have sympathy for him when she was the one who got hurt. And still, underneath it all lurked that twisted, awful physical attraction to him. Never had she been more confused.
“Jericho, what’s in that serum Marlowe’s giving you?”
“I don’t know. He won’t tell me.”
“It seems dangerous.”
“It’s keeping me alive right now,” Jericho said, glancing up at Evie for just a second, then having to look away again. The shame he felt was like a trapped animal scratching inside him.
“Maybe it’s not,” Evie said. “Maybe that serum is making you sick and dependent. What if you stopped taking it? You could come back to the city with us. Right now. Today.”
Jericho’s head shot up. “Go back… with you?”
“On the train,” she said, and the implication was clear: with us but not with me.
Jericho shook his head. “I can’t. I made a promise.” He sneaked another look at Evie. There was a bruise on her neck. The shame was overwhelming. “I wouldn’t blame you for hating me. But if you could see it in your heart to give me a second chance…”
The way he was looking at her now, like the Jericho she had known and loved, the studious boy with all the books who had talked soothingly to her on the roof of the Bennington when she had been at her most vulnerable, the one who fed the pigeons, who burned with ambition just like she did, who understood the darkness that roamed her own soul—did that Jericho deserve another chance? Was she being unfair? Had what he’d done to her been brought about solely because of Marlowe’s serum, or was Sam right and the serum had only brought out something that already lived deep inside Jericho?
Yes, he was beautiful. Yes, her body still yearned for his touch, she hated to admit. And she’d seen tremendous good in Jericho. But now that she let herself see more clearly, there was something else in there as well. A deep, dark struggle whose ending she couldn’t read, something that both intrigued and frightened her.
“I don’t hate you, Jericho. But I’m all balled up right now. What happened yesterday… well, I need time to think,” Evie said.
Jericho nodded. “It’s more than I deserve.”
Evie shut her eyes and let out a long breath. “Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
She blinked her eyes open. “Don’t say things that make me feel sorry for you.”
Sam and the others arrived. Their suitcases were packed and waiting in the foyer. Jericho could feel everything slipping away from him. He’d always said that a man was defined by his choices. He didn’t want to only be defined by what he’d done yesterday.
“Before you go, there’s something I want to show you,” he said.
“She’s not going anywhere with you, pal. Not without the rest of us,” Sam said.
“I can speak for myself, Sam,” Evie said. She looked into Jericho’s face for an uncomfortable moment. “What is it?”
“I need you to follow me into the woods. All of you,” Jericho said.
Sam picked up the bat. Evie pushed his hand down. “I think we should trust him on this.”
Sam hoisted the bat onto his shoulder. “You know what helps with trust? A baseball bat.”
Henry had appropriated the old wheelchair in the abandoned soldiers’ quarters, which he used now to carry Ling into the forest over pine needles that stuck to the rickety wheels like stiff brown hair. Up ahead, Evie and Sam trailed after Jericho as he led them deeper into the forest.
“I’ve seen this picture,” Henry said in a low voice. “Where the trusting victims traipse off into the woods. It doesn’t end well.”
“I can hear you,” Jericho said from several feet away.
“Superhuman hearing,” Evie reminded him.
They came to the charred clearing. “This is where I’ve seen the soldiers,” Jericho said.
“It’s… it’s just like my dream. Just like what I saw with Luther.” Evie ran to a moss-covered tree stump. “This is where the Victrola plays. This is where it happened. Where my brother…” She swallowed hard.
“It feels like a graveyard,” Ling said. A flock of birds circled into the sky, crying.
“There are things I need to tell you. Things I’ve held back because I… I thought I was being disloyal to Marlowe. One night, I saw two men in dark gray suits dragging a young woman upstairs—”
“Shadow Men?” Sam asked.
“I think so, but I can’t be sure,” Jericho said.
“What are Shadow Men doing at Marlowe’s estate?” Ling asked.
“The men said that she was a mental patient that Marlowe was trying to help. But she sounded perfectly sane to me—sane and terrified. When I asked Marlowe about it later, he said she was a Diviner.”
“Have you seen her since then?” Henry asked.
“No. Not a peep. She wanted me to know her name, though. She kept screaming it at me: Anna Provenza.”
“Anna Provenza!” Evie exclaimed. “Mabel spoke to her sister, Maria. Her family was deported as anarchists. Mabel swears it’s not true, though. She said Anna disappeared and the family had been looking for her ever since.” Evie wished she could talk to Mabel. About everything.
“Why would you deport a family but keep one sister you claim is a mental patient? That doesn’t make any sense at all,” Henry said.