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“I said you would understand. And do you understand?”
Evie wanted to be closer to Mabel. She was still afraid Mabel would disappear.
“I don’t think you do,” Mabel said. Her voice took on a harder edge. “I told you to let me rest. I was having the most beautiful dream. I was… happy.”
Evie slowed her steps. Mabel’s eyes. Those eyes that had shown sympathy. Irritation. Wariness. Joy. Those eyes were as blank and black as a pair of dull coat buttons.
“Mabesie?” Evie came to a sudden stop. Her skin prickled.
Mabel lifted her chin. Her lips twitched, revealing pointed teeth. And then, like the others, she sniffed. She was breathing in Evie’s scent, tracking her. Evie tried to speak Mabel’s name again, but fear reached up from her gut and strangled the sound. Mabel closed her black eyes for a few seconds, inhaling deeply, her body spasming, desperate. Hungry. Whip-quick, she opened her eyes and faced Evie. She lurched forward like a foal testing its legs, suddenly realizing their strength and speed. “I told you. I told you. But you never did listen to me, did you?”
Instinctually, Evie took a step back. Her mind struggled to make sense of the moment: Mabel was the kindest person Evie had ever known. Her best friend. Mabel would never try to hurt her. Would she? Mabel’s gait was uneven, but she was closing the distance. It was only now that the spell was broken that Evie realized the terrible danger she was in. She had allowed herself to be separated from her friends when they needed her and she needed them. Together, they were stronger. Evie knew this.
“Evie! Watch out!”
Theta never called Evie by her actual name, and that was what made her turn her head to the right. She sucked in a terrified breath. The ghoul was right there. Grave dirt matted its hair; its face was skeletal. It let out a long hiss of desire. Death had not dulled its burning need to take. Even in death, it still wanted.
“No—” Evie started. She put a hand to the thing’s decaying dress, stiff with rot. Maggots pushed out from the holes in the fabric and crawled across the back of her hand and Evie screamed and screamed. Theta was coming. She was shouting to Henry, whose blue eyes widened in alarm. Theta and Henry were too far away. They were trapped on the other side of Main Street with a wall of hungry spirits between them.
“Mabel…” Evie whispered.
Mabel, her best friend, who had also been the best of them. Mabel, in her yellow dress, bright as sun. Mabel watched and did nothing to stop this. In that moment, Evie didn’t care to live. Who would want to live in a world where you could find no good?
The ghoul was face-to-face with Evie. She could smell its stench, like the water in a vase of rotting flowers. It grabbed her around the neck. Evie clawed at the thing. It tightened its grip and her head went buzzy-light. Mabel was still watching.
The thing’s voice slithered into her ear. “I would have all the life you possess.…”
Razor-like fingernails pierced her right side and reached inside her. The pain was enormous. Evie wanted to scream but had no breath for it. That cold hand was digging under her skin. The ghoul positioned its mouth above hers.
Evie could feel her life force being sucked from her body. Her bones felt close to snapping. This would not be a peaceful death. She struggled against
the ghoul’s hold, and even in this terrible death grip, she could still get a sense of the life it had lived before: A house in town. Ruffled dresses and elegant, candlelit balls. Piano lessons. A husband. Four children, two of them dead—measles, a fall from a horse. All of that humanness that should have joined them.
The pain was unbearable. It hurt too much to cry.
“Give up, Evie.” Mabel’s dry voice. “Why don’t you ever give up?”
“I… I…” Evie coughed out. She was losing her strength. Let go, she thought. Just let go. If she did, the pain would stop. She would see James. And Will. It would be someone else’s trouble to stop this terrible plague on the world. It would no longer be Evie’s responsibility but Theta’s and Henry’s. Ling’s and Jericho’s. Memphis’s and Isaiah’s and Sam’s. Her friends.
“I… can’t,” Evie said, barely a whisper.
Evie heard the lurching mechanical heartbeat of the Eye. The screams of the soldiers. Her brother. Screaming into eternity. She was screaming inside, too. They were being ripped apart with a machinelike violence, all their screams lost under its constant clanging. Evie felt herself slipping under, one more Diviner fed to the Eye to keep open the tear between the worlds. She saw the future under the King of Crows. He and his dead would eat through this world until all that was left were bones and ash, lies and corruption. She knew that they would never stop coming unless somebody stopped them. And who would be left to do that?
“I. Won’t. Give. Up,” Evie whispered.
She cried out in fresh pain as something bright and hot exploded near her. The ghoul feasting on her shrieked and let go. Evie crumpled, but from the ground she saw Theta, bright as a phoenix. The ghoul had been lit up like a bonfire. Theta, her face twisted with pain and rage, took out two more. And then Theta turned toward Mabel.
“Th… Theta. D-don’t,” Evie croaked. “It’s M-Mabel.”
“No, it’s not.” Theta raised her fiery hand to strike.
But the King of Crows was calling all his dead to him. “Enough! I would have your tribute now,” he commanded. The spirits moved toward him in blind obedience, Mabel included. The King of Crows opened his mouth and the life the ghouls had taken flowed into him, leaving them with that slight ache in the belly that told them to feed and keep feeding. That nothing would ever be enough to sate their endless need. The King of Crows shone like a terrible beacon against the dark dust settling over every inch of Gideon. He had been recharged by the carnage. He and his dead would move on. Take another town. And another. And another. A death cult on the move until there was nothing left to take.
“Thank you for bearing witness, Diviners,” the newly restored King of Crows trumpeted. “Not that anyone will believe you.”
With that, he turned toward the widening hole in the dust, back toward the land of the dead, with his army, with Mabel, following.
“Theta?” Evie croaked. Because something wasn’t right. She’d never been so cold before. What was happening? Where her dress had been torn open, Evie saw that the wound in her side was turning sour and spreading. Tiny branches of gray rot inched across her stomach and up toward her heart.
