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“I’ll telephone him. No doubt he’ll want to reclaim his prize,” Jericho said bitterly.
“Well, he can’t have you. You’re with us now,” Evie said.
Jericho was buoyed by a sudden ballooning of new hope. His eyes filled. He wiped them against his dirty shirtsleeve. “I’ll go make that call,” Jericho said and went into Will’s study.
From where she was at the kitchen table, Evie could only hear bits and pieces. Jericho fed Marlowe the story along with one he concocted about the serum causing him to run away. After that, his answers were mostly along the lines of, “Yes, fine,” “That will be fine,” and “Thank you.”
“Well?” Evie asked once he’d returned to the kitchen.
“He’s agreed to talk with us.”
“Well, that’s a start at least. When are we meeting?”
“Tomorrow night. After Sarah Snow’s memorial.”
“At the Plaza?” Evie said hopefully.
Jericho shook his head. “He’s flying to California right after the memorial. He said we’re to come to the service and we’ll talk there.”
Evie groaned. “I can’t believe I have to go to Sarah’s memorial. Everyone thinks she was a saint, but she was a phony.”
“So are lots of folks. Doesn’t mean they deserve to be blown up.”
“No. No, of course not,” Evie said. Mabel, Mabel. What had she been thinking in those final moments under the stage with the bomb? Had she known she was going to die? Was she frightened? In life, they’d shared so much. But Mabel’s death was a gnawing mystery.
Jericho was pacing the room, just like Will used to do, and that brought a lump to Evie’s throat as well. He didn’t seem delirious anymore. In fact, he was as clear-eyed and clearheaded as if he’d just woken from a good sleep.
“Jericho? How do you feel?”
Jericho stopped in his tracks. “Fine,” he said, the realization dawning. “I feel… perfectly fine.”
“And how long have you been without the serum now?”
He tipped his head back, thinking. “Four, five days at least?” He made a fist, relaxed his hand.
“And you were in the woods all that time, making your way back to the city. On foot. Without stopping to rest?”
“Mm-hmm.” Jericho made a fist and flexed his fingers twice more. He really was fine. Better than fine. He felt goddamned immortal, and that confused Jericho: Jake Marlowe was repugnant in so many ways. But that same Jake Marlowe had not only cured Jericho, he’d made him superhuman. He had turned Jericho into his shining example of a superior American, the Übermensch, the Superman.
But did Jericho want to be that Übermensch?
Jericho craned his neck, looking around the empty flat as if truly seeing it for the first time. “Say, where’s Will?”
Theta knocked at Adelaide and Lillian Proctor’s door. She’d never really had a family of her own, and she’d come to see the elderly sisters as adopted grandmothers. She’d grown especially close to Miss Addie, who had the sight. The Proctor sisters were descended from a long line of witches, and they had been encouraging Theta to become more comfortable working with her own power, though Theta felt no such comfort. Who could, knowing they might start a fire without meaning to? Most of the Diviners had useful powers; Theta saw hers as destructive. Hadn’t it only brought pain so far?
She rubbed the silver locket at her neck, a gift from Miss Addie. Bloodstone, for courage. When no answer came at Theta’s first knock, she rapped at the door again, and after a moment, a pale and drawn Miss Lillian opened it a sliver. Her face was somber.
“Oh, my dear. Come in. Quickly, quickly!”
Miss Lillian didn’t stop to explain, so Theta followed her down the dim hallway, carefully avoiding the menagerie of feral cats at her feet. She wanted to take inventory of them to make sure that none of them had been sacrificed to divination, as she’d made the sisters promise, but there wasn’t time for that. Whatever business Miss Lillian was about, it was urgent. At last they came to Miss Addie’s bedroom. The curtains had been shut against the day. Miss Addie lay in her bed with her long gray-white hair billowing cloudlike around her face. Her eyes were open and staring straight ahead. She did not speak, and she seemed unaware of either Theta or Miss Lillian.
“I came in this morning and she was like this,” Miss Lillian said, her voice breaking.
“Did you call a doctor?” Theta asked, alarmed. She lifted Miss Addie’s bony wrist to check her pulse, which was steady.
“Of course I did! I’m not simple!” Miss Lillian snapped. “He said there’s nothing physically wrong with her. She just won’t wake up.”
Miss Addie looked peaceful enough, except for her lips, which quivered as if she needed to say something. “Is it her heart?”
