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“You didn’t know my uncle at all.”
Malloy’s eyes were steely. “Maybe not. I sure didn’t know Mabel Rose. Then again, maybe I don’t know you so well, either, Miss O’Neill. I heard you refused to sign a loyalty pledge at WGI, and that’s why they dismissed you. Maybe I shouldn’t just be looking at Memphis Campbell.” There was no mistaking the threat in Detective Malloy’s words.
“Am I free to go?” Evie challenged.
“Sure. But don’t leave town. None of youse.”
Evie stormed out and down the front steps, for once ignoring the reporters waving their notebooks in the air, clamoring for a quote.
Woody sidled up to her. “Sheba, hey, Sheba! You okay? Aw, gee, Evie. I’m awfully sorry.”
“Thank you.”
“Listen. I know that must’ve been rough.” He lowered his voice. “Can you tell your old friend Woody what you saw in there? Is it true there was a five-pointed star drawn on the floor like in the Pentacle Murders?”
Evie didn’t know whether to admire the reporter’s moxie or
spit in his face. “There was a message left, Mr. Woodhouse,” she said coolly.
Woody poised his pen above the page. “What’d it say, kid?”
“It said, ‘No matter what happens to me, T. S. Woodhouse will always be a rat!’”
“Was that nice?” Woody yelled after her.
And it was all Evie could do not to give him a very not-nice gesture she’d seen some fellas on the Bowery do.
“Evie! Evie!” Henry waved to her from the corner.
Evie ran and linked arms with her friends, practically dragging them back toward the Bennington.
“Hey, don’t pull my arm outta the socket. I got plans for it later,” Theta said.
“On the level: Was Will murdered?” Henry asked.
“Yes,” Evie said. “And Malloy thinks Memphis and Sister Walker did it.”
“Bushwa!” Theta said. Her hands tingled with heat.
“Pos-i-tutely.” Evie felt as if she were floating in her body, until a boy bumped headlong into her. “Ow! What’s the big idea?”
“’Scuse me, miss. Message for you,” he said. He shoved a scrap of paper into Evie’s hand and ran off toward Central Park.
Theta peered over Evie’s shoulder. “Say, that’s a numbers slip. Memphis used to keep those in his socks when he was a runner for Papa Charles.”
Something had been scribbled on the other side: I know who killed him. Meet at Madame Seraphina’s shop tonight. Bring everybody. It was signed MW.
MW.
Margaret Walker.
GHOSTS
Evie stood outside the door to Will’s apartment in the Bennington for some time. No one lives here anymore, she realized, and it sliced through her. Will was dead. Jericho was gone. Sam had been taken. The apartment was now a ghost. She rattled the doorknob. Locked. Evie took the stairwell that led up to the Bennington’s roof. When she climbed out onto the tar expanse, she remembered a night in September, when she’d first arrived in the city, excited and hopeful, before the murders, the ghosts, the Shadow Men, and the terrible revelations about what her uncle Will, Sister Walker, and Jake Marlowe had done during Project Buffalo. Before she’d seen firsthand what the King of Crows could do. That night in October—it seemed ages ago now—she and Jericho had gazed out at the skyline, and then they’d kissed for the first time. The memory brought a flush to her skin. She’d liked being with Jericho. Liked his strong arms wrapped around her. He had been Mabel’s crush, and she’d kissed him.
Evie couldn’t stop herself from thinking that if she hadn’t kissed him, if she’d worked harder to make Jericho fall in love with Mabel, maybe Mabel wouldn’t have fallen in with Arthur Brown and joined up with anarchists. Maybe she’d still be alive. More than anything, Evie wished she could undo this part of her past. She wished she could stop Mabel from making such a terrible mistake.
And now here Evie was, desperate to find Sam but thinking of Jericho’s kiss at the same time. And after what Jericho had done to her at Hopeful Harbor! What was wrong with her?
