Evie stopped mid-chew. “You can’t be serious.” She stared at Will. “Oh, sweet Lois Lipstick, you are serious.”
Will tossed his hot-dog wrapper in a garbage can. “We’re going upstate, to Brethren. And we’re going to need a shovel.”
Jericho returned to the Bennington from the records department, where Will had sent him. He didn’t even stop to take his coat off. “I found it! The documentation.”
He handed it to Will and nodded grimly at Sam, who was seated at the dining room table with Evie. “Sam. You’re here late.”
“Just keeping Evie company,” Sam said. He smiled triumphantly at Jericho.
Will read aloud from the document. “Yohanan Hobbeson Algoode was taken to the Mother Nova Orphanage, where he was admitted on October 10, 1851. The director’s entries on him are brief, but they document Yohanan Algoode as quiet but ill-humored, a bed wetter, arrogant, and prone to small acts of cruelty. When brought before the director for discipline, he said only, ‘I am the Dragon of Old, chosen of the Lord our God.’ The other children shunned him. He called himself the Beast. After two thwarted attempts, Yohanan successfully ran away in the summer of 1857. No further documentation exists.”
“So we know it’s him. But we still don’t know how we’re going to stop him,” Jericho said, finally removing his coat and hanging it on the rack. “The last page of the Book of the Brethren—the one with the incantation for binding and destroying the Beast—was torn out. You said yourself that we have to dispatch him according to his beliefs. But how are we going to find that information in time? The comet arrives in two days.”
“I need to show you something.” Evie unwrapped the tissue covering John Hobbes’s ring.
“Is that what I think it is?” Will asked. Evie nodded. “This is becoming a habit, Evangeline.”
“Will, if I can see him, understand him, we can be one step ahead of him.”
“Do you think that’s a good idea, doll?” Sam asked. “This fella’s a killer.”
“And a ghost,” Jericho added.
“What good is it to have this power and not use it?”
“I salute your spunk, but I question your sanity,” Sam said.
Will crouched beside Evie. “Evie, this isn’t a party trick. This ring belongs to the Beast himself.”
“I understand.”
“Get in, get what we need, and then get out,” Will advised. Evie nodded. “I’ll clap three times to help bring you up. If at any time you feel as if you are in danger—”
“I don’t like the sound of that. Do you like the sound of that, Frederick?” Sam muttered.
“You will say a code word. Let’s decide on one now.”
“How’s about no?” Sam said. “Or hooey? Or stop?”
“James,” Evie said. “The code word is James.”
Will nodded. “Very well.”
“Evie, are you sure you want to do this?” Jericho asked.
“Pos-i-tute-ly.” Evie attempted a smile. Her hands shook with both apprehension and excitement; going under was a bigger thrill than a front-row table at the most exclusive nightclub. “Put it in my hand, please.”
“I don’t like this,” Sam grumbled, but he put the ring in her hand anyway.
Evie closed it tightly in her palm and placed her other hand on top, like a seal. It took a moment for her to find her rhythm, and then she was falling through time in her mind.
“I see a town with muddy streets….” Evie said from her trancelike state. “Horses and wagons. I can’t… it’s speeding up….”
“Concentrate. Breathe,” Will instructed.
Evie took three deep breaths and the image stabilized.
“There’s a crowd, and a preacher….”
A tall, heavily bearded man in a black suit stood on an overturned fruit crate as he preached on the edge of a small town. A crowd had gathered. Many ridiculed him. Evie saw their laughing faces as almost satanic. The preacher didn’t stop. If anything, his voice gathered strength. “You must arm yourself that when the day of judgment comes, when the Beast brings forth God’s justice upon the sinners, you will be counted in the Lord’s number and spared. Prepare ye the walls of your houses with his markings to usher in his holy coming and anoint your flesh to bear witness to his glory!” the preacher thundered. At the preacher’s side stood a small boy of no more than nine or ten with a pale face and arresting blue eyes.