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Sam nodded approvingly. “I like medals. I accept.”
“Evie, I don’t suppose you still have that feather Isaiah gave you?” Henry asked.
“It’s in my pocket. Why?”
“I don’t know. But Ling often needs an object to find the dead in a dream.”
“It might lead us to the King of Crows,” Evie said, thinking aloud.
Henry gave a wan smile. “See? We don’t even need to be hooked up to that big gold spider for all of us to be on the trolley.”
“Here,” Evie said, handing the feather to Ling, who cupped it tightly in her hand, out of sight.
“Where’s Isaiah?” Memphis asked. “Where’d he go?”
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p; “Poet, he’s not here,” Theta said gently.
“The King of Crows did something to me. I can f-feel it. Like p-poison ins-side me,” Memphis said. “Get it out. I want it out.”
Theta touched Memphis’s shoulder. “Memphis? Can you do this?”
“We’re going to have to give him as much of our strength as we can,” Ling said. “He’s the one who can actually close the breach.”
“My power, my healing power…” Memphis said, examining his hands as if they were not his hands at all. His eyes filled with tears. “He’s not here, is he? He was never here. It was just a trick.”
Theta slipped her arm through his. Memphis shut his eyes tightly. When he opened them again, he looked to his friends and nodded. “Heal the breach,” he said with renewed determination, echoing his mother’s long-ago warning. “Somehow. Somehow.”
“Here they come,” Sam said. “Look innocent.”
“Good luck with that, Sam Lloyd,” Evie muttered.
“Baby Vamp?” Sam was looking at her with such tender affection it nearly broke her. “Ikh hob dikh lib.”
“I love you, too, Sam,” Evie whispered.
The Shadow Men and the soldiers marched the Diviners down into the mouth of the crater. Evie was afraid she’d turn an ankle on the steep slope of rock and sand. “I wish I’d worn different shoes,” she grumbled. She wished so many things. That Isaiah were still alive. Mabel and James, too. Wishing wasn’t enough.
“Sam, you see what I see?” Jericho asked on their descent.
“Yeah,” Sam said, trying to keep his footing.
There were no longer two helmets attached to the Eye; there were eight. One for each of them. The chairs were arranged in a circle around the Eye, with their backs to the belly of the machine. They wouldn’t even have the comfort of looking at one another.
They’d reached the bottom of the crater. Nearby, the golden machine hummed and glowed. Jericho nodded to the eighth spot. “You know about Isaiah,” Jericho said carefully, with a quick glance at Memphis. “What are you going to do about that, Jake?”
“Miriam can fill in. It will be enough,” Marlowe said, busying himself with examining the paper scrolling out from the side of the machine, a communication with the other world.
“We’re all completely interchangeable to you, aren’t we?” Evie said. She wanted to spit in Jake Marlowe’s eye. Given the chance, she would.
“You’ll be making history.”
“If we live through it. And then who would know? Your sort gets rid of any inconvenient history,” Evie said.
“Gentlemen, looks like we’re ready at last,” Jake said, dropping the paper. “Strap them in.”
The Shadow Men and soldiers did as they were told. Each Diviner was forced into a chair. The golden helmets were secured. Evie could feel the weight on her skull as they tightened it. What if they ended up like her brother and the One-Forty-Four, living out this terrible day for the rest of time, for as long as there was time? What if they were banished to different dimensions, chasing one another through doorways that never led them where they needed to go, never home? She glanced to her left at Sam, and she knew he was trying to figure a sneaky way out of those restraints; she was overcome with a crazy love for him. He was a fighter to the very end. To her right, she saw the tufts of the feather sticking out from between Ling’s fingers. The others she couldn’t see, but she knew they were there. They were all there together, no matter what the future held. She had to trust in that.
