Read Page 169

“Evie! Push it in. Now!”

Evie dove for the discarded syringe and plunged it into Jericho’s leg, scuttling backward into a corner as he whirled around violently.Advertisement

“Jericho…” Evie whispered.

He staggered toward her, wobbled for two seconds, then fell onto the bed and was out.

Evie was still crouched in the corner. “Is he…?”

Will touched his swollen jaw, wincing, and sank onto the other bed, exhausted. “He’ll be fine now. Let him sleep.”

A loud knock startled them both. Will covered Jericho with a blanket and Evie ran to the door, opening it a crack. The innkeeper’s wife tried to see around her but Evie kept the opening narrow. “What the dickens is going on in there?”

“My brother fell and broke a lamp,” Evie said, breathless. “My father will pay for the damage, of course.”

“This is an establishment for decent folks. I’ll have no riffraff here.” The woman strained to look over Evie’s head.

“Yes. Of course.”

Evie shut the door and sat on Will’s bed watching as he expertly sutured the ragged skin on Jericho’s chest. She watched Jericho sleep. He seemed an angel now.

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“What was in that fluid?”

“It’s a special serum. I can’t tell you much more than that.”

Evie’s mind reeled out to the breaking point. Her mouth struggled to form words. “What is Jericho?”

“An experiment,” Will said with finality, the teacher dismissing the class. He clipped off the thin suture wire and stowed the tools in the kit containing the syringe and vials. “Where is the pendant?”

In the chaos, Evie had forgotten. She went to her coat and retrieved the filthy object, which she handed to her uncle. “What do we do with it?”

“When we get to the museum, we’ll form a protective circle. Using what you’ve gleaned from the missing page, we’ll bind his spirit back into the pendant and destroy it.”

“Do you think it will work?”

“I have to believe it will,” he said.

“I want you to tell me about Jericho,” Evie commanded.

Will took out a cigarette. He patted his breast pocket. “Where the devil has my lighter gone to now?”

“You’re always losing it.” Evie passed him a book of matches. “Jericho?”

Will lit the cigarette and blew out a plume of smoke. “I think it best to let Jericho tell you. It’s his story to tell, not mine.” He paused. “Evie, that was well done tonight,” he said, offering his hand for a shake, which Evie ignored. It if bothered him, he didn’t let on. “I think in light of our visitors this evening we should leave early, before dawn,” Will said. “You should get some rest.”

Evie shook her head. “I’m going to keep watch over Jericho.”

“There’s no need. He’ll be fine.”

“I’m going to keep watch.”

“There’s no need—”

“Will! Someone has to keep watch!” Evie’s tone was both angry and pleading, the whole terrible night spilling over into this refusal to be moved from Jericho’s side.

Will nodded. “Very well. I’ll sleep in your room tonight.”

A moment later she could hear him moving about on the other side of the thin wall, probably pacing and smoking. Evie soaked a towel and gently wiped the dirt and serum from Jericho’s wound. Then she crawled into Will’s empty bed and lay on her side, watching Jericho’s chest rise and fall. She kept watch for as long as she could. But she couldn’t fight her own exhaustion, and she drifted into restless dreams.

LAMENTATION

Steady rain battered the shuttered stands and stilled rides of Coney Island’s boardwalk as Mary White Blodgett woke from her morphine fog with her heart racing and a feeling that the world was spinning too fast on its axis. She started to call for her daughter, then remembered that Eleanor had gone to the casino.

Pain traveled up Mary’s arm. Oh, how she wished she could have more morphine. If she was to get through the hours until her ungrateful wretch of a daughter returned, she’d need to occupy her mind. She closed her eyes and remembered her days as a great woman.

Oh, she’d been the belle of the ball before she’d married, with suitors aplenty for a girl of such modest means. But it was Ethan White who’d caught her eye. He was older than she, an imperious, fussy sort, not at all romantic, but with a knack for business that would keep her comfortable, and their wedding had been written up in the Poughkeepsie papers for everyone to see. He’d made money in oil speculation. Some dusty town in Texas had vomited black gold, and the money flowed into the Whites’ bank account. There had been caviar and a house north of the city and box seats at the opera, which Mary didn’t really like but which she attended so that everyone could see her there in her fur and jewels, the great lady, Mrs. Ethan White. pqdm.com