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Evie picked up the dress with two fingers and laid it across her trunk. Stifling a yawn, she crawled into bed, burrowing under the covers. She nodded at the book on Theta’s bed. “Whatcha doing?”
Theta sighed. “Trying to make sense outta Miss Addie’s spell book and diary.”
“Anything useful, like how to turn men into frogs?”
Theta flipped onto her side to face Evie, resting her face on her fist. “Mostly there’s beaucoup about plants and herbs-avous.”
“Well,” Evie said, facing Theta. “I suppose you could always make a witchy meat loaf.” They shared a giggle. Evie lost her fizz. “That seems like a joke Mabel would’ve made.”
“Yeah,” Theta said sadly.
Evie propped herself up. “I was thinking—”
“Always dangerous.”
“Zarilda says she can talk to spirits. What if…”
“Don’t, Evil. Let it alone.”
“But what if she’s not okay, Theta?”
“If something weren’t jake, don’t you think she’d appear to you first?”
Evie played with the edge of her quilt. What she didn’t tell Theta was that after Mabel had died, Evie had stolen Mabel’s coat from her closet. It was an impulsive act. Evie had been desperate for a physical remembrance of her best friend, and Mabel would never wear the coat again. The first night, Evie had curled up with the coat, crying. But she couldn’t resist leaning into its secrets for long. As the coat’s memories performed their striptease of moments small and fleeting, of feelings that seemed outsized comparatively, Evie searched for the moment that would absolve her. Here was Mabel’s passion for the labor fight. Here was her unrequited crush on Jericho. Here was her irritation over having to attend a strike with her parents when there was something wonderful on the radio. It had made Evie smile to know that even Mabel could tire of doing good. But other glimpses of Mabel’s private life had needled under Evie’s skin: Mabel turning her face this way and that, up and down, trying to find the angle that suited her best, the one that allowed her to believe for just a moment that she was a narrow idea of beautiful. Something bitter and surprising had crept in: Mabel’s envy. She had often felt left out. She’d wanted to have Diviner powers like the others, something of her own to make her feel special. She had both loved and resented Evie—and she was angry with Evie for interfering in her life by talking to Arthur. There had been no time to make up. As far as Evie knew, Mabel had died still angry with her, and that ghost haunted Evie more than any of the others.
What happened after that day was lost. Mabel had not worn this coat to the exhibition. Her motivations and feelings on that day were not available for anyone to know. In life, she’d been an open book. In death, she’d become a painful mystery.
“We fought, you know. About Arthur,” Evie said at last.
“You were right about him.”
“Our last words to each other were cross. It haunts me, Theta. I wish I could undo it.”
“Aw, Evil. Why’re you doing this to yourself? Mabel loved you. She knew you loved her.”
Evie didn’t want to talk about it anymore. It was making her unbearably sad. “Did Miss Addie really raise Elijah from the dead?” she asked, changing the subject.
“Yeah. And it didn’t go so well,” Theta said firmly.
Evie put her hands up in innocence. “I’m no necromancer. I swear.”
“I saw him, you know.”
Evie made a face. “How did he… look?”
“Not… good.”
“Well. That was very descriptive, Miss Knight. Thank you.”
“I ain’t the poet. I leave that to Memphis.” Theta thought back to being trapped in the basement with Miss Addie. The slow shuffle of Elijah’s dead feet against the floor. It made her shudder still. “The way he kept coming after her… it reminded me of Roy.”
Evie heard the worry lurking there. “Theta…” she began, searching for a delicate way to phrase what she needed to say. “I know how much you love Miss Addie. But what if she isn’t under the King of Crows’s power? What if she’s just lost inside her mind because she’s very old?”
“No. He’s got her. I’m sure of it.”
“But the doctor said—”
“To hell with what the doctor said! Sometimes a girl just knows. My gut says that rat in the hat has Miss Addie.”
