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Seraphina shook her head and cackled as she returned with two cups of tea, one for herself and one for Sister Walker. “Those people? They always get away with murder. They got away with killing Papa Charles. Nobody’s writing about that in the Daily News, I notice.”
“You think those Shadow Men killed Papa Charles?” Memphis a
sked.
Seraphina’s expression said everything.
“Fine. I’ll take those papers to Mr. Woodhouse myself, then,” Memphis said.
“We can’t go to Woody just yet,” Evie blurted.
Theta eyed her suspiciously. “Yeah? What are we waiting for, Flag Day?”
Evie took a deep breath and let her words out very quickly. “We can’t because we have to meet with Jake Marlowe tomorrow night. After we attend Sarah Snow’s memorial.”
“I beg your pardon?” Sister Walker said.
“The hell we do!” Theta growled.
“Wait just a minute—when did this happen? Who arranged it?” Ling asked.
“Jericho and I did,” Evie said.
“Without asking the rest of us?” Ling said. “Who died and made you boss?”
“My uncle Will,” Evie said through her teeth.
The conversation turned even more contentious, everyone talking at once, hurling accusations and counteraccusations while Sister Walker tried to calm tempers.
“I’ve seen the Eye of Providence! I’ve seen what horrors it can do!” Jericho said at last, raising his voice above the din until everyone quieted. “The Eye and the time loop with Evie’s brother and the One-Forty-Four is what’s keeping the breach between our world and the land of the dead open. But it’s wildly unstable. It’s releasing all sorts of strange energy. Marlowe keeps needing to recharge it, and for that, he’s using Diviners.”
“Using them how?” Ling said nervously.
“He attaches them to the Eye and it sucks the life from them.”
“We have to save Sam,” Evie declared. “I won’t let him be fed to that awful thing.”
“The King of Crows is toying with Marlowe, doling out instructions for keeping the breach between worlds open permanently,” Jericho continued. “Do you really want to leave that in Jake’s hands without telling him what we know?”
“My god. He’s still using it,” Sister Walker said, disgusted. “He was supposed to destroy it after what happened during the war.”
“All the more reason we shouldn’t go see that bum Marlowe, you ask me,” Theta said.
“If we can’t convince Marlowe to destroy the Eye, my brother and the other soldiers will stay trapped in that awful loop, playing out the same agonizing day again and again.” Evie’s voice broke. She wished Sam were there. She wished Mabel were there. She wished Will were there to tell them what to do. Evie glared at Sister Walker. “And you’re responsible for it.”
Sister Walker bristled. “That’s not true.”
“Maybe not fully. But she ain’t all wrong, either,” Bill challenged. Healed by Memphis’s power, he stood tall before Sister Walker. But his youth he could never get back. That had been taken from him by Project Buffalo and the Shadow Men. And Margaret Walker and Will Fitzgerald had let those men do that to him.
Sister Walker started in on Bill while Evie, Memphis, and the others were getting all worked up about Jake Marlowe’s machine. Everybody was always talking, and Isaiah never got to speak. Memphis had promised that what Isaiah had to say was important and now, as usual, everybody else was running their mouths, arguing over every little thing. He’d been holding on to his story for as long as he could, but now he felt like he would burst if he didn’t talk. “I had a vision while we were in the tunnels!” he blurted. “About another Diviner. She said she was in danger. She said we were all in danger from the King of Crows and his army. And she knows how to stop him! But we gotta get to her. We gotta go to Bountiful.”
“Bountiful?” Evie repeated.
“Uh-huh. Bountiful, Nebraska.”
“Sarah Beth Olson,” Evie said.
“Say, how’d you know her name?” Isaiah was annoyed. Finally, he had something of his own to share that made him feel special, and here Evie had gone and stolen his thunder.
