“It’s better than spending every night brooding like Byron’s long-lost brother. Don’t make that injured face—you are a brooder! And what good does it do you? You’re eighteen, not eighty, kiddo. Live a little.”
Jericho got up from the couch. “Live a little? Live a little!” He let out a bitter ha! “If you only knew…” He stopped suddenly, and Evie could see him force an almost mechanical calm to descend. “Never mind. You wouldn’t understand. I have to get to the museum.” He grabbed his dog-eared copy of Nietzsche and slammed the door behind him.
Evie sat on Mabel’s bed. The aspirin hadn’t helped much, but like a true modern girl, she wasn’t about to lie in bed all day, unlike poor Mabel, who had succumbed to a terrible hangover. She lay curled in her bed, clutching a bowl in case she felt the need to vomit.
“Hot off the presses, today’s headlines: The love of your life does not approve of my wanton flapper ways,” Evie said in a voice of affected mystery. “Really, Mabesie. You might want to reconsider—he is a bit of a killjoy.”
“My stomach doesn’t approve of our wanton ways, either,” Mabel said miserably. She hadn’t lifted her head from her pillow. “I am never drinking again.”
“That’s what they all say, Pie Face.”
Mabel moaned. “I mean it. I feel dreadful. I am ending my association with liquor.” She raised her right hand. “You may be the notary public to this announcement.”
“Noted. Public’d.”
Mabel dropped her hand, her face screwed into an expression of fresh misery. Evie jumped off the bed.
“What is it? Are you about to blow?”
Mabel reached under her bed and pulled out what was left of Evie’s headache band. It was bent in the middle, where someone had obviously stepped on it. Several of the rhinestones were missing, and the peacock feathers drooped like spent chorus girls. “I’m sorry.”
“Oh…” Evie swallowed down a curse word. Mabel’s mouth twitched and Evie could tell she was on the verge of a legendary weep. She tossed the headache band aside as if it were rubbish. “That old thing? I was tired of it, anyway. You’ve done me a favor, old girl, putting it out of its misery like that.”
Mabel cocked an eyebrow. “You’re lying, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Just to make me feel better?”
“No. To make me feel better. Otherwise I’ll cry.”
“Thanks.” Mabel managed a weak smile. She crooked her pinkie. “Pals for life-ski?”
Evie hooked her pinkie with Mabel’s. “For life-ski.” Evie kissed Mabel’s forehead and turned off the bedside lamp. “Get some sleep, Pie Face.”
Evie left the Bennington and walked down Broadway, past the shops. A radio store played its latest model, letting the sound drift out onto the sidewalks to entice customers. Evie idled for a moment, listening as she painted her lips in the window’s reflection.
“… This is Cedric Donaldson, reporting from Roosevelt Field, Long Island, where just moments ago Jake Marlowe landed his American Flyer, an aeroplane of his own invention. You can hear the enthusiasm of the crowds who’ve gathered here on this fine autumn day to give the millionaire inventor and industrialist a hero’s welcome! And here is the Bayside High School marching band playing ‘The Stars and Stripes Forever.’ ”
The man in the shop peered disapprovingly at Evie through the glass. She pumped her arms and legs up and down in imitation of a marching band, gave the man a salute, and continued her meandering walk to the museum. At the newsstand, Evie stopped cold. The front page of the New York Daily Mirror trumpeted MADMAN OF MANHATTAN STRIKES AGAIN! She grabbed the paper and flipped past a store advertisement for Solomon’s Comet binoculars to the story on page two.
“Hey, doll, you gonna pay for that?” The newspaperman held out his palm.
Evie tossed him a nickel and, clutching the paper, ran the rest of the way to the museum.
Will was sitting in the library with Sam and Jericho. He looked pale.
“I… I just heard….” Evie said, out of breath. She held up the newspaper.
“Tommy Duffy. Twelve years old,” Will said quietly. “The killer took his hands.”
The horror of it made Evie’s stomach roil. “Is it the same killer?”
Will nodded. “First he posted a warning note to the papers.”
Jericho opened the previous evening’s late-edition Daily News. “ ‘And in those days shall men seek death, and shall not find it; and shall desire to die, and death shall flee from them. For the Beast will rise when the comet flies.’ ”
“He seems to like attention, this fellow,” Will said. “He left another note with the body.”