It was still dark but edging toward dawn when the Diviners returned to the museum. Evie had called Will from the asylum, telling him only that he and Sister Walker should be waiting for them in the library. The Diviners had answered questions from the police about what had happened to Conor Flynn, who was listed as missing, and to Luther Clayton: Jesus, how did the poor fella end up… like that? Did one of the patients do it? Was it Conor? Detective Terrence Malloy had arrived at last. The Diviners hadn’t seen him since the Pentacle Murders case six months before, when all of this had started. He’d taken one look at Evie and the others and shaken his head. “How come every time I see you folks it’s something nobody can explain but something I know is gonna cause me no end of headaches? Go on home,” he’d said on a sigh. “I got any questions, I know where to find you. Give my regards to your uncle.”
The lights were burning at the Creepy Crawly. As the Diviners descended on the library, an anxious-looking Will and Sister Walker rose to their feet.
“Thank heavens you’re back,” Will said. “What happened out there? We were very worr—”
Evie marched up to Will and slapped him hard. “How could you? How could you!”
“We know everything,” Sam said, coming to stand beside her. “What you did during the war to those soldiers. Your experiment? We know the whole story.”
Will rubbed at the fresh mark on his face. “Somehow I don’t think you do.”
“You’ve been lying to us about everything. Even after we asked you to be honest with us,” Ling said. She could barely look at Sister Walker. “I trusted you. I admired you.”
“Anything we held back we did in order to protect you,” Sister Walker said.
“In order to protect yourselves, you mean,” Ling said.
Evie was sobbing now, and it felt as if she were swallowing down the world and its awful sins along with her broken cries. “He was my b-brother. Your nephew, Will. And you let him die! No—you got him killed. You got all of them killed!”
“It… it was an accident. I swear it,” Will said.
“Oh, why can’t anyone just tell the truth?” Evie pleaded.
“Because…” Will started. “Because it’s so hard to know what the truth is. It shifts, depending on who’s telling it and when.”
Evie’s finger was a dagger stabbing at the air between them. “No. That is a lie you tell yourself so you can sleep at night! You just don’t want to know that you had anything to do with that horror! Well, thanks to poor Luther, I was there. I saw! I know. You can’t take that from me by spinning some new story into butter. I won’t let you! And now Luther Clayton is dead! He’s dead because of your lies, murdered by those horrible beasts and the King of Crows!”
“What happened to Luther?” Will demanded.
“Those wraiths got to him. The King of Crows unleashed them,” Henry explained.
Will’s eyes widened. “You met the King of Crows? You spoke to him?”
“How did this come about?” Sister Walker wanted to know.
Evie snorted derisively. “A man is dead, but who cares about that?”
Sam shoved his hands in his pockets and slumped against the wall, exhausted. “We made one of those energy fields and destroyed some ghosts—”
“Destroyed them how?” Will asked, wary.
“And then we were in this creepy place full of the hungry dead, in case you wanted to hear the rest of that sentence.”
“Yes, we destroyed them,” Evie said. “Without your help.”
Will raked a hand through his thinning hair. “What is he up to now?” he muttered more to himself than anyone present.
Sister Walker reached for her notebook and a pencil. “What did he say to you?”
“That you couldn’t be trusted. That you’ve been lying to us all along,” Sam said. “Guess he was right about that. I’m the con who got conned.”
“Please. I need you to remember what you saw and precisely what he said to you. It’s vitally important,” Sister Walker said.
“We’re not telling you anything else, Miss Walker,” Memphis said. “Not till you’re honest with us. For once.”
“You have a right to feel upset, Memphis, but—”
Memphis’s voice boomed. “Stop telling me what I have a right to feel and start telling us the truth!”
Sister Walker seemed the slightest bit rattled, but then she collected herself. She stood tall, smoothing a hand down her dress and speaking with a curated calm. “All right, then. Yes. It was us. All of us at the Department of Paranormal—Will, Rotke, Jake, Miriam, and me. We opened that door to the world of the dead. We were as naive as we were ambitious. The King of Crows baited us, and we took that bait without question. We let him into our world with our ignorance. We made a mistake, and now that mistake is back to haunt us with a vengeance.”
“We assumed that because the experiment had been a catastrophic failure, that was the end of it, and the opening into that world had been sealed once more,” Will continued. “The government shut down the Department of Paranormal. Margaret burned the files so that the experiment could never be repeated. She paid the price for that.”
“I was imprisoned until they decided I was no longer a threat,” Sister Walker said. “They left me with nothing.”
“For years, there was no sign of any activity. We had no reason to suspect that there was anything to fear. And then the signs started: Ghost sightings. Hauntings. A sinister presence lurking in the country. I tried to ignore it. To pretend it was anything other than what it really was. But soon, it became apparent: The door had never fully closed. That energy was leaking into our world. And with it, the King of Crows. He has some game he’s playing, but we don’t know what it is, and that is the truth. Cornelius tried to warn me about him, but I wouldn’t listen. Liberty Anne had told him to be careful. And now I am telling you: The man in the stovepipe hat is cunning and cruel. He is ruthless in his desires, and not to be trusted,” Will insisted.
“Are you describing him or yourself?” Evie snapped.
“You are our only hope of getting the answers we need about him if we’re to be safe from him and his army. Your powers joined together in purpose can heal that breach at last! We cannot stop our work now. You’ve seen for yourselves that the storm isn’t just coming—it’s here. It’s here, and we must stop it from getting worse before it’s too late!” Sister Walker said.
“See, that’s your generation all over—you muck up everything and then expect us to fix your messes,” Sam growled.
“I understand your anger. Mistakes were made,” Will said.
Evie’s eyes flashed. “No! You. Made. Mistakes. You were the one who talked about our choices. About evil being what humans bring about. You made evil.”