“You weren’t thinking of me when you shimmied into that dumbwaiter by yourself. Don’t pretend you’re better than I am, Sheba. You got a little thief in you, too.”
Evie slammed the door on Sam and sat in Will’s office awaiting her fate. What if Will really did decide to send her home? She hadn’t allowed herself to really think about it; she just assumed she’d win him over. Now that thought crawled under her skin and left her feeling unsettled.
At precisely one minute before three o’clock, Will marched in. He hung his hat and coat on the coatrack and took his time taking off his gloves while Evie squirmed in the silence. At last he settled into his wingback chair behind the desk, templed his fingers, and fixed her with a pensive stare. Evie swallowed. The saliva caught in her throat and she suppressed a cough.
“Your mother was at a luncheon at her club when I telephoned earlier. I’ve left a message that she should ring me back. There’s a train to Zenith tomorrow evening. You will be on it.”
Evie gasped. “Oh, Unc, please. You can’t send me home. Not yet.” She could feel the tears burning at the corners of her eyes.
“What’s done is done.” Will rubbed the bridge of his nose. “It was foolish of me to think that I could take this on. I’m an old bachelor, set in my ways.”
“No, you’re not,” Evie said, sniffling. “I’m sorry. Everything will be the berries. You’ll see. Just give me another chance. Please,” Evie’s voice thinned to a whispery pleading.
“My decision is final, Evangeline,” Will said gently, and his sympathy was worse than his anger. “You’ll be better off back at home with your friends.”
“No, I won’t.” Evie wiped the backs of her hands across her cheeks, but the tears kept falling.
Will was making a speech, something about having been young and careless once, the sort of thing old-timers said when they issued a deathblow, as if they thought their sanctimonious ramblings disguised as empathy would be welcomed, but Evie was only half listening. She’d never told him about the object reading, she realized. He didn’t know. He didn’t know what she could do—that she might be able to use her skills to help him find the Pentacle Killer. After all, she’d gotten a glimpse from Ruta Badowski’s shoe buckle. Maybe what she’d heard wasn’t so irrelevant after all.
“There’s something I need to tell you,” Evie blurted out, interrupting Will’s soliloquy on responsibility. “I never told you what happened back in Zenith. The trouble I got into.”
“Something about a party game and slander,” Will said. “Your mother told—”
“It wasn’t a party game.”
“Really, Evie, there’s no need—”
“Yes, there is. Please.”
Will relented and Evie summoned her courage.
“The night of the party, I got into trouble for divining. I believe I may be a Diviner, Unc, like Liberty Anne Rathbone. And if I’m right, I could use my powers to help you solve this case.”
Will stared at her openmouthed, but Evie didn’t give him a chance to say anything just yet.
“Do you remember at the first murder scene, when I was ill?” Evie said, her words coming in a rush. “It wasn’t the sight of that girl, though it was gruesome. There was a buckle that had come loose from her shoe. I simply wanted to put it back, to make something… right. I must have been holding it very tightly—tighter than I meant to—and…” Evie let out a whoosh of breath. “I saw things. Just from holding something of hers.”
Will’s sympathy had hardened into a tight-lipped disgust. “I suspected this would be a ploy on your part to remain in New York, but I didn’t think you’d stoop so low as to capitalize on the murders of two innocent—”
“I’m trying to tell you something important!” Evie practically shouted, stunning him into silence. “Please. Just give me five minutes of your time. That’s all I ask.”
Will flipped open his pocket watch. “Very well. You have five minutes of my time, starting… now.”
This was it. If she couldn’t convince Uncle Will, she’d be on the first train back to Ohio. She needed to give him proof.
“It’ll be quicker if I just show you. Let me have something of yours—a handkerchief or hat. And don’t tell me anything about it.”
“Evie,” Uncle Will said with a sigh. Evie knew that sigh. It was often paired with her name and disappointment, and she had to fight the tears that wanted to come. Because why should he take her seriously? The party girl, the flapper with the ready quip and the closet full of rhinestones and embroidered stockings.
“Please, Unc,” she said softly. “Please.”
“Very well.” Uncle Will looked around before settling on a glove. “Here. You have exactly four and a half minutes left.”
Evie pressed the glove between her palms and concentrated. The tick-tick-tick of the second hand on Will’s watch was distracting. She tried to block it out and concentrate on the glove, but there was nothing, and the first cold fingers of panic seized her.
“Three minutes,” Will said.
Evie gritted her teeth. She didn’t understand how or why her object reading worked, only that it did—in its own way, and in its own time.