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“I will,” Evie said. “Give my regards to the wolfhounds.”
“I’ll name one Evie. It will, naturally, be my favorite.”
His favorite. Evie bit her lip to keep the smile from taking over her face.
“What’s wrong with you?” Theta asked when she returned to Evie’s room with ice. “You look like you swallowed a whole Mary Pickford movie.”
“Jericho,” Evie said on a sigh.
Theta shook her head, sighing. “Evil. Your romances are like a tennis match—Sam one day, Jericho the next. I can’t keep up.” Theta settled the ice bucket on the dresser and took out her flask. “Here. Ice. We’re making Poor Man’s Manhattans.”
“What’s that?” Evie said, putting out two glasses.
Theta smirked. “You whisper ‘vermouth’ over the glass, then fill the rest with whiskey.”
“Say, I like your Manhattans! But what’s the ice for, then?”
“For the headaches we’re gonna have later.”
“Ah.”
Theta raised her glass to Evie’s. “Here’s mud in your eye.”
They each knocked back a generous swig, and Theta welcomed the burn and the booze. She needed its courage. “Say, uh, you remember when you read my bracelet that time?”
“Sure,” Evie said, squinting. “You were running. You looked scared.”
“Because I was scared. I was running from my husband, Roy.”
Evie halted her drink at her lips. “Go on.”
“He wasn’t a good man.” Theta told Evie everything then. About Roy’s rages and the beatings. About the fire she started that she thought had killed him. About the menacing notes, the terrible shock of seeing Roy again after thinking he was dead, and Roy’s threats. By the time the whole story had come out, Theta had nearly finished her drink, and she wasn’t sure if it was the hooch or the confession that had made her feel looser.
“He was waiting for me outside the Bennington today.”
“Oh, no!”
“He wants things between us to be like they were, and he wants that meeting with Flo. I managed to stall him—told him Flo’s all broken up about a sick aunt—but I can’t do that forever. At some point, you run outta sick aunts.”
Evie slammed her glass down, sloshing whiskey over her wrist. “He can’t do that to you! Why, I’ll march over there right now and—”
“Nothin’ doin’, Evil. This is my mess to sort out.”
“But you don’t have to do it by yourself, Theta. You have friends.”
“I know. But you don’t get Roy like I do. He’s dangerous. You gotta handle him just right. I can’t let this blow up.”
Evie glanced sidelong at Theta. “Is that why you broke it off with Memphis?”
Theta glugged back a little more of her whiskey. She nodded, miserable. “I didn’t want Roy to hurt him. He hates me now—can’t say I blame him. But I miss him something awful.”
Evie scooted close and put her arm around Theta. “Oh, gee, honey. Did you tell Henry?”
“I don’t wanna worry him. He’s still getting over Louis. I just needed to tell somebody or I’d go crackers.” Theta stared at her hands. They were quiet, no hint of the raging fire coiled inside. “Sometimes I think maybe I would like to burn it all down. Start over. Make different rules for the world.”
Evie clinked Theta’s glass with hers. “Hear, hear. Well, once we stop supernatural evil from leaking into our realm and taking over.”
Theta shook her head. “You can’t stop evil. You can only push back as hard as you can. Another?”
