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Evie remembered the time she and Memphis had been trapped by ghosts in the subway. She’d thought for sure the ghosts would devour them, but instead they’d sniffed and walk
ed away. Had that been the King of Crows’s doing?
“When…” Viola licked her lips. It was a moment before she could speak again. “When does this bargain end?”
“End?” The man in the hat grinned. “The bargains are only null and void if I am no more. Viola Campbell: What is done is done. Your son has no leave to heal you. Should he try, he will violate the terms of this contract. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” Viola whispered.
The ring jostled Evie around through time. There was Viola, looking up and down the street in front of Seraphina’s shop. She doesn’t want to be seen coming here, Evie thought, feeling Viola’s hesitation. In this memory, Viola Campbell was quite a bit sicker. Her hair had thinned; her previously full face was gaunt. She knew her days were numbered.
“I made a bad bargain. I need protection. Not for me. For my boys.”
“You can pay?”
Embarrassment. Fear. Evie felt it all. Viola slid the wedding ring from her bony finger and held it out. “It’s real gold.”
Seraphina tilted her chin up, appraising the ring before she slipped it into her pocket. The ring was Seraphina’s now, and it had her memories fused to it. The perspective changed. That was all.
Evie came out of her trance and handed the ring back to Memphis.
“Well?” Theta asked.
“Memphis,” Evie started. “Did you… try to heal your mother?”
Memphis’s face showed surprise, followed by pain. “She told me not to do it. Begged me not to.” Memphis paused for a moment. “But she was my mother. In the end, I couldn’t. I wasn’t powerful enough. She died anyway. And I lost my healing.”
“But it came back,” Theta reminded him.
“I don’t think that was your doing,” Evie said, rubbing at the back of her neck where the headache was just starting. “She went to him for protection against the Shadow Men, I believe. The King of Crows made your mother promise you couldn’t heal her or the deal was off. I think he was trying to trap you.”
“Why?”
There was something there. Some reason the King of Crows wanted Memphis.
“I don’t know. I know this sounds pos-i-tutely batty, but I almost had the feeling that he’s afraid of you. Your mother would’ve done anything for you, though,” Evie said, swallowing down her jealousy. All mothers love their children, it was said. Not all mothers, Evie thought bitterly. But Viola Campbell had loved her sons desperately enough to bargain away her soul for them.
Memphis held tight to the ring. “All the more reason why I’m gonna get her back from him.”
WITNESS
The street lamps were just winking on as Margaret “Sister” Walker approached her house. She was jittery and exhausted. Will Fitzgerald was dead. She’d heard him struggle for breath as the Shadow Man tightened the wire around his neck. The full weight of the horror hit her, made her bones feel like lead. She remembered meeting Will at the Department of Paranormal in the first years of this new century. They had come from different families, different backgrounds, but in Will she had sensed a kindred spirit when it came to the supernatural. How excited they’d all been by this venture into the unknown, into other dimensions. Through contact with another world, they had hoped to change their own. Naively, Margaret hadn’t realized just how different that change looked to each of them, exciting for some, threatening for others. How terribly it had all ended. Of the original members of the Department of Paranormal, only she and Jake Marlowe were left alive. Jake, with his ideas of racial purity and America first; Margaret herself, playing advisor to the ragtag crew of man-made Diviners who could stop him from making a catastrophic mistake if the Shadow Men or the King of Crows and his Army of the Dead didn’t get there first.
Margaret willed her tired feet to walk faster. She’d go to T. S. Woodhouse at the Daily News, then. The truth would be exposed. Yes, that was the way. The power of the press. She just needed those files. She hadn’t been entirely honest with the Diviners. There were also files hidden away in her house. Files that implicated her in Project Buffalo. They were all guilty, Jake most of all, but Margaret knew he would never take the fall for their crimes. She fumbled with her keys in her pocketbook. Almost there. Margaret looked up and clamped a hand over her mouth to stifle her scream.
“Will,” she whispered through her trembling fingers.
He stood on her brownstone stoop, wispy as early morning fog. The ligature marks from the piano wire glowed at his neck. The ghost of her murdered friend glanced up at her front door, then back at her. He shook his head slowly. A warning. She found herself nodding. And then he was gone. Margaret crept into the front yard and pressed herself against the garden-level door, out of sight, hidden by the falling night. Seconds later, she heard the front door open and close. Footsteps on the stairs above. They landed with the arrogant surety of men not used to being questioned about their comings and goings. Margaret pressed herself farther into the deepening shadows. At the gate, one Shadow Man stopped to light his cigarette.
“Guess she’s flown the coop,” he said to the other, and Margaret scarcely breathed as those sure footsteps carried the men all the way down the block. Margaret made herself count to ten, and then she tore up the stoop and, with shaking hands, let herself in through the front door of the brownstone, into the small foyer. The door to her apartment was ajar. Her sofa and chairs had been slashed to ribbons. Their feathery innards dusted the floor and fell across the ruined furniture. The entire place had been ransacked. They had wanted her to know they were looking.
She raced to the far wall and removed the painting of Paris. She stuck her hand into the hole there, exhaling in relief as she dragged the files from their hiding place. A crow cawed outside her window. Loud. Insistent. Margaret crept to the window. The bird flitted on the ledge. “Viola?” Margaret whispered. The crow squawked something fierce. Too late, Margaret heard the footsteps racing back up to her door. The Shadow Men had returned.
“Margaret Andrews Walker.” The man with the small teeth. The one who’d murdered Will. Jefferson was his name. The other, bigger man was called Adams. Looking at them, Margaret felt both hatred and fear.
“You’re under arrest,” Jefferson said.
They escorted her down the front steps. Her neighbors had come out. Some were just returning from work. They were watching as these men dragged her away. Good. She needed witnesses. Adams pried the files from Sister Walker’s hands. She let them go, allowing them to scatter across the front yard.
