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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.”
“There are choices you make, things you do, that you don’t know are wrong when you do them. Only time gives you that perspective. Only history,” Will pleaded.
“We made mistakes,” Sister Walker said a bit more crisply. “And now we must atone for those mistakes. I’m sorry, but it’s going to take all of us to fix it.”
Evie’s laugh was bitter. “After you murdered my brother? After what you did to our mothers? After you engineered us to be your little army of freaks and kept the truth of it from us? When did we ever get a say in any of it?” Evie shook her head and backed away. She couldn’t even look Will in the face. Not after what he’d done to James and the other soldiers. “I hate you for what you’ve done. I’ll hate you till my dying day! I will never, ever have anything to do with you again!”
Evie bolted from the room.
“We didn’t know. I swear we didn’t know,” Will said again as the others filed out.
As if that made any difference.
