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Luther Clayton’s voice was so soft Evie had to lean forward to hear.
“They… m-made m-me.”
“Who made you do it, Luther?”
Luther’s sad brown eyes were bloodshot. It looked as if he hadn’t slept in weeks. His whisper gained power. “The Shadow M-men. They said it… would s-stop the sc-c-screaming. I hear them… sc-screaming.”
“I don’t understand—who’s screaming?”
Spit bubbled up on Luther’s bottom lip as if he were trying to birth his words. But nothing came.
“Kid, you got what you came for. Let’s ankle,” Woody said.
“They never should’ve done it! Follow the Eye! He is coming—don’t let him find me!” Luther cried out suddenly, his back arching with tension. His palm came up and pounded the side of his head. “Stop screaming! Stop screaming!”
“Mr. Clayton! Please! You’ll hurt yourself!” Evie reached for Luther’s arm. With surprising quickness and strength, he grabbed hold of her wrist. Evie’s fingers grazed the leather strap of his radium-dial watch.
“Let go!” Sam said. He raced forward and then fell back as if he’d been shoved by a giant’s hand. “What the…?”
Luther Clayton’s eyes locked on Evie’s. Whispers from Luther’s watch crawled up her arm and settled in her head. Her mind flashed with gunfire-quick glimpses of the terrible secrets he carried. She saw a train transporting soldiers through mountains and trees. She saw those same soldiers in a forest clearing. A Victrola playing “Pack Up Your Troubles.” It was a scene Evie knew all too well from her own dreams. Her body shook from the force of Luther’s revelations. She could smell blood and fear and a presence so sinister it made her want to run as far as she could get from the asylum and the demons inside Luther Clayton’s mind.
“Help them,” Luther pleaded. “Please. Help. Him.”
Evie struggled to speak over the whispers inside her head. “Who?”
“Help James.”
Sam and Woody tore Evie loose from Luther’s grip. The whispers floated away.
“Doll,” Sam said, concerned. He dabbed his handkerchief against her nose and it came away bloody. She was still trembling.
“H-how… how do you know James?” Silence. “How do you know my brother? Where is he?”
“We should get outta here.” Sam put an arm around Evie’s shoulder.
She shrugged it off. “Tell me! Tell me!”
Luther Clayton’s eyes were again fixed on the wall. “The Eye has him.”
A thin stream of tears trickled down his cheek. He tapped his head gently against the back of his chair: “The land is old, the land is vast, he has no future, he has no past, his coat is sewn with many woes, he’ll bring the dead, the King of Crows.… He’ll bring the dead, the King of Crows, King of Crows, King of Cr—”
The door flew open. The guard was still a little woozy from Sam’s touch, but that was no match for his fury. “Out,” he said. “Now.”
“I can’t believe we actually got thrown out of an asylum,” Sam said.
“I prefer ‘firmly escorted from the premises,’” Evie said, holding Woody’s wet handkerchief to her aching head, his parting gift to her before he’d decamped for the newsroom. It didn’t help that she and Sam were winding through Times Square, their ears assaulted by the discordant symphony of car horns, clattering trolleys, and the rumble-and-clang of a steam shovel and pile driver pumping away at a nearby construction dig, where men in coveralls busied themselves making way for more skyscrapers in the city that never stopped reaching higher. “Where are we going, Sam?”
“Somewhere safe.”
On Eleventh Avenue, Sam knocked on the basement door of a building that looked to be falling down.
“This is your idea of safe?” Evie said. “It’s probably crawling with thieves and ne’er-do-wells.”
Sam grinned. “Yeah. I’m in my element.”
“As long as they have gin.”
A panel in the door slid open. “All for one, and one for all,” Sam said.
