AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Leave this to me,” Evie whispered back. She followed Jericho into Will’s study, shutting the door behind her.
Jericho was pawing through Will’s shelves. “Aha!” he said, selecting a book. “This is it.” Jericho flipped through the pages, opening the book at last to a soft watercolor of a young man, naked and smiling, with his arms outstretched, as if he wanted to greet the world, then gather it up and hold it to himself. A wheel of light—fiery reds, soft blues, warm gold—shone behind him, and all at once, Evie thought of Mabel’s flowery letters describing Jericho as a bright angel. Evie had giggled over Mabel’s idealistic view of him. Her heart ached doubly, for the loss of her friend and for Will, murdered here in the museum he loved, which would now be torn down to make room for another anonymous apartment building to house the smart set and their bevy of brats.
But when she looked at the naked man in the painting, she thought of Jericho. She remembered petting with him on the four-poster bed at Hopeful Harbor, the way he’d groaned on top of her with his lips against hers. And she remembered fighting him off in the woods when he’d been in the throes of Marlowe’s serum. Was the serum to blame for his behavior? Sam didn’t think so. Sam. She’d done more than pet with him. Much more. Why had she come in here alone with Jericho? What knife’s edge was she dancing on now?
“What, um, what is this book?” Evie asked, her face hot.
“William Blake poems and paintings. I found them fascinating when I was younger. And a little terrifying. There are a lot of utopian drawings, but a lot of apocalyptic ones, too. Blake would’ve made a great Diviner,” Jericho said with a half smile.
“Perhaps he was,” Evie said. “What is this called?”
“The Dance of Albion. Looking at it made me envious.”
“Envious? Why?”
“Because he was so free. I wanted to be as free as this painting.”
Evie moved closer to Jericho in order to see the painting more clearly. Her perfume wafted up, a powdery floral smell. Jericho wanted to cradle his head in the space between her shoulder and neck and kiss the softness there where her pulse thrummed. He wondered if she was sad now, the way he was. He moved an inch closer. With his enhanced hearing, he could hear her heart beating fast and sense her fear even before she took a step back. He couldn’t blame her, after what had happened up at Hopeful Harbor. Still, it hurt.
“I used to think death would be like that,” he said a bit coolly. “You’d disintegrate into all that light, become joined to it. But now…”
Ling opened the door.
“You know, sometimes people knock first?” Evie said.
Ling made a show of lifting her fist. She banged it against the door once. “We should go. Somebody might see us.”
Evie sighed. “Fine. I don’t think there’s anything in this museum to help us anyway. We’re just going to have to figure it out for ourselves.” She nodded at the book in Jericho’s hands. “You might as well take that, too. They’ll just throw it out. Like the rest of it.”
They gathered in the library one last time. “Feels like we should have a toast to him,” Memphis said.
“You got any hooch?” Evie asked with obvious excitement.
“No.”
“Applesauce,” Evie mumbled. She was sorry she’d given away her flask.
Memphis lifted his hand. “Everybody raise an imaginary glass to Mr. William Fitzgerald. May he rest in peace.”
“To Will,” Jericho echoed.
“To Will,” everybody said.
“To Will,” Evie said quietly. She pretended to drink, then tossed her imaginary glass into the fireplace and shrugged. “Seemed like the time for a grand gesture.”
The others pretended to throw their glasses as well, except for Ling.
“Aren’t you going to, uh…” Memphis mimed tossing his.
“I pretended to toast,” Ling said and left it at that.
Jericho took one last look around. This was the second time he’d had to say good-bye to his home. Maybe that was what growing up was—learning to let go again and again.
“Jericho, are you all right?” Evie asked.
Was anyone ever actually all right? Jericho wondered.
“Sure,” he said, turning back toward the way they’d come in. “This place is just another ghost.”
