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“What’s he telling him?”
“That I don’t know. But it must have to do with the Eye because that machine is what’s keeping the portal between the two worlds open. It’s the reason the breach won’t close.”
“Follow the Eye, heal the breach.…” Evie muttered. “That’s what Memphis’s mother told him to do.”
“Marlowe has to charge the machine, though. All that uranium?”
“Ling wondered why Marlowe needed so much uranium, why he was pushing his workers at the mines to produce so much more,” Evie said, nodding.
Mabel had been protesting the conditions at Marlowe’s uranium mines and defending his striking workers. She’d said that Jake Marlowe wasn’t a man to be trusted. Evie wished Mabel could know that she had been right to fight against him. “So it’s uranium that makes the Eye work?”
“No. Not entirely.”
“What, then?”
Jericho seemed haunted, lost. “Evie… what charges the machine, what makes it possible for him to see into that other world, is Diviner energy. Sam’s mother, Miriam, was there. I saw her! Marlowe is keeping her at Hopeful Harbor.”
“Sam…” Evie whispered. She was worried anew for him.
“Marlowe was talking to her while she was joined to the Eye. He said, ‘You’re the only one we’ve found who can balance the energy from the Diviners and the other side and keep the breach open.’ Remember I told you I saw Anna Provenza there?”
“Yes! You said that the Shadow Men were dragging her off somewhere. They said she was a mental patient Jake Marlowe was trying to help.”
“All lies. They fastened her to the Eye, and she was seeing into that other world and she was screaming, Evie, she was screaming and screaming.…”
Evie wanted to reach out and put her hand on Jericho?
?s arm, but she was afraid the gesture would be misconstrued. In another moment, he calmed. “Miriam knew I was hiding there. She could sense me in the room and she wanted me to know”—Jericho’s voice got very quiet—“the truth.”
Evie didn’t know why her heart was suddenly beating so very fast, or why she had the urge to tell Jericho she didn’t want to hear another word. “And what’s the truth?”
“She said that what truly powered the heart of the machine, the source of its ferocious energy, were the souls of the soldiers of the One-Forty-Four. They’re trapped inside it somehow, caught in some sort of terrible time loop. That one horrible day during the war, when they tore a hole between the two worlds, played over and over again. The Eternal Recurrence.”
“James…” Evie said, tears springing to her eyes. That machine was powered by pain—the pain of her brother and of every soldier who’d been in his unit. “What has the King of Crows been telling Jake Marlowe? What has he made him believe?” Evie said, more to herself than to Jericho. “We have to get him to stop this. We have to get him to understand what he’s doing.”
“If we go up to Hopeful Harbor, he won’t even let us in the door. And I-I don’t want—I can’t go back there.”
“He’ll be here for Sarah Snow’s memorial tomorrow night. We’ll go to him. We’ll explain—”
“He knows! He doesn’t care. He only cares about power. He only cares about winning, no matter the cost.”
Jericho was right, Evie knew. She hated Jake Marlowe for what he’d done, for the lives he was still ruining. But she had to get him to try to understand. If Jake Marlowe liked to count himself a winner, she’d have to appeal to the side of him that hated to lose.
“All right,” Evie said. “Then let’s fight fire with fire. We’ll tell Marlowe that we know something important about the King of Crows. Something that will help Marlowe defeat him.”
“Like what?”
“That’s the bait.”
Jericho scoffed. “He’ll never go for it.”
“He will if we tell him that Isaiah had a vision so vital that we’re duty bound to bring it to him.”
Jericho pondered this for a moment. “He’ll be staying at the Plaza Hotel. He takes a suite there.”
“Perfect!” Evie headed for the telephone. “I’ll call him—”
“Wait!” Jericho rose, and Evie backed away. Shame burned through Jericho. He would do anything to erase what had been done that day in the woods. He hoped he could earn back Evie’s trust in time.
