“Clearly, she couldn’t see everything,” the boy in the golf trousers said. “That will never happen.”
Will rapped his knuckles on the desk. “Knock wood, as they say.” Will grinned and the College Joes laughed at his superstitious joke. He fidgeted with a silver lighter, turning it end over end, occasionally flicking his thumb across the flint wheel so that it sparked. “Liberty Anne died a month to the day after she emerged from the woods. Toward the end, her prophecies became quite dark. She talked of ‘a coming storm,’ a treacherous time when the Diviners would be needed.”
“Diviners?” Evie repeated.
“That was her name for people with powers like her own.”
“And what would these Diviners do?” the boy in the golf pants asked.
Will shrugged. “If she knew, she didn’t say. She died shortly after making the prophecy, leaving her brother, Cornelius, bereft. He became obsessed with good and evil, and with the idea that this was a country haunted by ghosts. That there was something beyond what we see. He spent his life—and his fortune—trying to prove it.”
The boys fell into heated discussion until one of them shouted over the others. “Yes, but Professor, do you yourself actually believe that there is another world beyond this one, and that the entities from that world can act to help or hurt us? Do you believe that our actions here—good or bad—can create an external evil? Do you believe there are ghosts and demons and Diviners among us?”
Uncle Will took a cloth from his pocket and wiped the lenses of his spectacles. “ ‘There are more things between heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy,’ ” Will said, hooking the spectacles over his ears again. “That quote is from William Shakespeare, who seemed to know a thing or two about both humanity and the supernatural. But for your examinations, you will need to know the following concrete information….”
The boys groaned as Will fired off a dizzying plethora of information and their pencils struggled to keep up.
Evie slipped out and went to wait for Will in his office. The steady click of the mantel clock kept her company as she took a look around. His desktop was awash in newspaper clippings and perilous-looking stacks of books. Bored, Evie leafed through the newspaper clippings. They were reports from towns across the country of ghost sightings, hauntings, and such strange goings-on as dead relatives appearing for seconds in a favorite chair and red-eyed “demon” dogs who frightened the caretaker of a junkyard in upstate New York. Some of the clippings were two or three years old, but most were recent—from the past year. Evie started reading an article about a girl who claimed to be able to speak to the dead and who had been warned by “kind spirits” of trouble to come. She’d just gotten to the part about the girl’s sudden disappearance when Uncle Will announced his presence with a soft clearing of his throat.
Evie shuffled the clippings to one side. “Hello, Unc.”
“That’s my desk.”
“So it is,” Evie said brightly. “And a tidy one it is, too.”
“Yes. Well. I suppose it’s fine this time,” Uncle Will murmured. He took a cigarette from a small silver case in his breast pocket. “You’re looking well.” Will lit his cigarette and inhaled deeply. “Did Jericho show you the museum?”
“Yes, he did. It’s very… interesting.”
“Was your trip comfortable?”
“Swell, although I was pickpocketed at Penn Station,” Evie said, and then wished she hadn’t. What if Will decided she couldn’t look after herself and sent her back to Ohio?
Uncle Will raised an eyebrow. “Really?”
“A hideous young man named Sam Lloyd. Well, that was the name he gave me before he kissed me and stole my twenty dollars.”
Will squinted. “He what?”
“But don’t worry. I can take care of myself. If I ever see that fella again, he’ll wish he’d never tangled with me,” Evie said.
Will blew out a plume of smoke. It hung thickly in the air. “Your mother has told me that you were in a spot of trouble back home. A prank of some sort.”
“A prank,” Evie muttered.
“And you’re to stay until October?”
“December, if possible. Until the coast is clear back home.”
“Hmm.” Will’s expression darkened. “Your mother has petitioned for you to attend the Sarah Snidewell School for Girls. They are overburdened at present, so your schooling, it would appear, falls to me. I’ll provide you with books, and, of course, you are free to attend my lectures. I suggest you make use of our many fine museums and lectures through the Society for Ethical Culture and whatnot.”