The King of Crows

by Libba Bray

  The Crusaders finished their hymn and the crowd applauded. It felt as if every person in New York City were packed into Times Square. The city’s neon eyes watched from above, remote as any god’s. Young girls in white gardenia corsages of the sort Sarah used to wear pushed against the barricades, wailing into their handkerchiefs.

  Evie scowled. “That’s a bit much, isn’t it? Why is everything a performance nowadays?”

  Theta raised an eyebrow. “That’s rich coming from you, Evil. If you could get somebody to watch you pick up your mail from the mailbox, you would.” Theta’s grin was short-lived.

  “What’s the matter?” Evie whispered.

  “It’s Roy.”

  Evie and Henry peered around Theta to see Theta’s abusive ex-husband, Roy Stoughton, muscling through the crowd in a fine new suit, glad-handing folks as he went, Dutch Schultz’s murderous thugs on either side of him. Roy had always hated it when Theta got the attention. He’d wanted to be the important one. As he made his way to the stage, he looked smug, and Theta knew he was lapping it up.

  “Why is Roy sitting up there with all the swells?” Theta asked. Under her gloves, her palms began to heat up. For comfort, she patted the pocket of her long cardigan, feeling Miss Addie’s slim spell book diary hiding inside, and imagined Miss Addie standing at her side, telling her she was brave.

  Some of Dutch’s men broke off and moved among the crowd. Theta lowered her head and tugged down her veil again. She wished Sam were there to make her temporarily invisible. She wished he were there with them, period. “Can you see what they’re doing?” she asked Evie.

  Evie stood on tiptoe, straining. “They’re handing something out. But not to everyone. Just some of the men. Oh, no. Here they come. Don’t look up!”

  Evie and Theta huddled together, pretending to be overcome with grief. Dutch’s men moved past them. One of the thugs stopped in front of Jericho and Henry.

  “You fellas look like you might want in on this.” Dutch Schultz’s thug shoved a pamphlet at Henry and Jericho, then moved on, doing more of the same.

  “What’s it say?” Evie asked as she and the others crowded around Henry and Jericho.

  America is in Danger!

  From Immigrants! Bootleggers! Negro Agitaters! Anarchists! Diviners!

  The Invisible Empire and the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan

  invite all White Protestants

  to a lecture and rally to discuss the dangers to America’s Great White Race.

  Pillar of Fire Church, Zarephath, New Jersey. April 15, 1927.

  Meet at the sign of the fiery cross.

  The KKK: Yesterday, Today, and Forever!

  “So Roy’s in with the Klan now,” Jericho said.

  “Bullies need other bullies,” Theta said bitterly.

  “They misspelled agitators. Maybe America is in danger from bigots who can’t spell,” Henry said.

  But Theta couldn’t laugh. Roy was a threat who’d aligned himself with an even bigger threat.

  Up on the stage, pugnacious preacher Billy Sunday delivered a prayer that made God sound like a boxer against sin. Memphis searched the crowd for Sister Walker again. It was odd that she hadn’t shown up yet. Now, at last, Jake Marlowe took the stage. The young girls in corsages lifted their arms to him. “We love you, Jake!” they cried.

  “Oh, I wish I could comfort him,” one tearstained girl sobbed.

  “I’ll bet you do,” Theta grumbled under her breath.

  With his sleek hair and blue eyes, Jake Marlowe was the son every mother was proud of, the man every other man wanted to be, the lover every girl desired. He stood now at the microphone and looked out over the crowd, two hundred thousand strong, and paused, gathering his words. His voice echoed over the heads of the people packed into Times Square: “Sarah Snow was the best girl I ever knew. She was a saint. My very own angel.”

  A collective cheer rose up from the people: “Sarah, Sarah, Sarah!”

  “Brother,” Evie grumbled.

  “We just gotta stick it out and then we get a private audience with Marlowe,” Theta whispered.

  Jake raised his hands. The crowd quieted, eager to hear whatever the great man would say next.

  “An evil deed took her away from me. Took her from all of us. But evil deeds do not arrive in the air like songs on the radio. Evil deeds are perpetrated by evil people. Like those anarchists, the Secret Six. People like Arthur Brown and Mabel Rose.”

  Evie swallowed down her anger. In her heart, she knew that Mabel had been every bit as good as Sarah Snow—better, even. She did good things just because it was the right thing to do, without expecting any adulation for it. That she had been part of the terrorist group who’d bombed the exhibition was hard for Evie to accept. Her best friend, who had lived her life with a strong moral code, had died violating that code to the worst degree. Evie felt like she was grieving Mabel twice—both the person she loved and the person she thought she knew.

  At the microphone, Jake Marlowe was gathering steam. “Or how about this Memphis Campbell? He dares to call himself the Harlem Healer, but at Miss Snow’s last revival, he laid hands on a man who died that very same night! Did he also place a curse on Miss Snow?” Jake removed his pocket square and dabbed evenly at his forehead before returning it to its place.

  “Or what about the Sweetheart Seer, Evie O’Neill? Did you know that she refused to sign a loyalty pledge with WGI? Now, why would any decent, law-abiding American citizen be afraid of signing such a loyalty oath? Is it, perhaps, because Evie O’Neill was close friends with Mabel Rose, the bomber herself?”

  Angry boos erupted in the crowd. Theta squeezed Evie’s hand.

  “That bum. That lousy bum,” Theta muttered.

  Evie was frightened. This crowd had once adored her. Now they hated her. And Jake was egging them on. She wanted to leave. But she needed to get Marlowe to see reason about the Eye.

  “I’d like you to hear from a man who knows firsthand about the dangers of Diviners,” Marlowe said through the microphone. “Mr. Roy Stoughton.”

  Theta gasped as Roy, in all his awful beauty, took the stage. Around her, women’s eyes shone when they looked up at his muscular physique and sensual pout and took no note of the fists that had bloodied Theta so many times.

  Roy stepped to the microphone. “Thank you, Mr. Marlowe. Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. I stand before you as a simple man from Kansas. I came to this big city looking not for fame or fortune, but for my wife.”

  “I stand before you as a man. Who sounds. Like he is reading. From. A. Card,” Henry zinged to Theta under his breath.

  “Shhh,” Theta cautioned.

  Roy put a hand over his heart. “You see, she was tempted by the bright lights of Manhattan. She ran away from our happy home. From me. My search took me all the way to the stage of the Ziegfeld Follies. I met Mr. Ziegfeld, by the way. A fine man. Yes, sir, a fine man. And that’s where I found my wife—singing and dancing in the Follies. You might know her better as Theta Knight.”

  An excited murmur rippled through the two hundred thousand people. The heat of gossip. The promise of more to come.

  “But to me, she’s just good old Betty Sue Stoughton of Topeka, Kansas. Back then, she was my wife. There wasn’t any of this running around with flimflam artists and Negro healers. I miss her, and so does her mama. Her mama’s not well, you see. This has near broken her heart, she misses her little girl so.”

  The only thing Theta’s adoptive stage mother missed was the money Theta had made for her on the Orpheum Circuit, singing and dancing from the time Theta was three years old till she ran away with Roy at fourteen. The woman had never shown Theta a day’s kindness. She was as phony as Roy’s story.

  Roy had worked a few manly tears into his voice for the crowd. “So if you see her, if you see my Betty Sue, all I ask is that you please, please bring her back to me. Bring her home. I just wanna take her home to Kansas, that’s all. Betty Sue—if you’re out there, just know th
at I won’t rest until I find you, darlin’. I won’t rest a single day.”

  There it was—the threat in the velvet glove. Roy’s specialty. He wanted her to know she was marked. He’d have everybody hunting for her. And the worst part was, the folks in the crowd bought it. They were applauding him like he was a hero. He’d put himself in charge of the story—hers as well as his—and nobody doubted it. Roy took a seat next to Harriet Henderson, who patted his back as if he were a wounded little boy in need of mothering. Theta could feel the acid in her throat and the heat building inside, seeking a way out.

  Jake Marlowe took to the microphone again. “Now, I promise: We’re going to dedicate this new church to the memory of Sarah. But before we do, there’s something I need to say. These Diviners with their strange powers—it’s not natural, I tell you. Can their powers truly be trusted?”

  A murmur of doubt moved among the assembled.

  “They brought the ghosts on us!” a man shouted.

  “Amen! They did, indeed!” Billy Sunday shouted back. “Sorry, Mr. Marlowe.”

  “Quite all right. Now, I’m a man of industry. Of business,” Marlowe continued. “I never went for ghost stories. But people have seen them. They’ve seen them on the streets. In their very homes. And just last night, in Central Park. Sarah knew there were ghosts,” Marlowe continued. “Why, she warned me about them!”

  “That isn’t true,” Evie whispered to Theta. “She didn’t believe in them at all.”

  “I thought this was supposed to be a memorial. Where’s he going with this?” Henry said, keeping his voice low.

  The air was suddenly electric, a storm building. The klieg lights cast their starry shine upon Jake Marlowe as his voice shook with emotion. “Last night, this city was under attack. It’s the Diviners who brought this plague upon us! They are fundamentally un-American. And now, thanks to the tireless efforts of Detective Terrence Malloy, we have proof—proof!—that these so-called Diviners, with their unnatural powers, have aligned themselves with the terrorist bombers who killed innocent people, including my dear Sarah. Last night, tireless federal agents have arrested Margaret Walker, Mr. Fitzgerald’s former associate, for his murder and for sedition.”

  “What’s he talking about Sister Walker, Theta?” Isaiah asked as the crowd grew agitated.

  “I don’t know,” Theta said.

  “These Diviners—Memphis and Isaiah Campbell, Sam Lubovitch Lloyd, Ling Chan, Evie O’Neill, Theta Knight, Jericho Jones, and their friends…”

  “I didn’t even make the bill?” Henry muttered.

  “…are wanted as accomplices in the bombing of the Future of America Exhibition, in the murder of Dr. William Fitzgerald, and on suspicion of a plot against the United States of America. They were supposed to be here tonight as my guests, but I see that they are not here.” Marlowe gestured to the area where the Diviners were to have stood. Evie was grateful for Bill’s advice earlier. “I see that, like the cowards they are, they wouldn’t dare show their faces at a memorial for a true patriot, Sarah Snow,” Marlowe continued.

  More boos came from the crowd.

  “Evil, we oughta scram,” Theta said.

  “But we have to talk to Marlowe.…”

  “Evil, don’t you see? He’s not gonna talk to us. It’s a trap. We gotta go now.”

  But Marlowe was still talking. “And that is why I am offering a five-thousand-dollar reward for each one of them captured alive.”

  Excited gasps rippled through the crowd: Five thousand dollars—a fortune! And there were at least seven of them to be found!

  Detective Malloy stepped up to the microphone. “Anyone harboring these enemies of the state will be charged with treason under the 1918 Sedition Act. Due to their powers, these Diviners are considered highly dangerous. Therefore, we ask that if you do see them, you call the New York City Police Department or the Bureau of Investigation.”

  “Evil…” Theta said, frightened. Marlowe had betrayed them, put a shiny price tag on their heads. The Diviners had all just become Public Enemy #1. And if anyone recognized them in the crowd, they were done for.

  The heat that had been building in Theta’s palms could no longer be contained. “Evie, we gotta ankle,” she said, wide-eyed. “I-I’m gonna blow.”

  Theta’s face was tight with fear, a sheen of perspiration betraying her struggle. The heat inside her wanted out.

  “All right,” Evie said, swallowing down her own panic. “Let’s try not to make a scene. Isaiah, follow us.” Evie pushed against the crowd. “Excuse me, my friend is ill.” They were packed in so tightly it was hard to move.

  Wisps of smoke curled along Theta’s fingertips and a faint orange glow silhouetted her willowy frame. “No,” Theta moaned, helpless. “No, no, no.”

  “There’s one!” A matronly white woman in a too-large hat pointed at Memphis. “There he is! That one!”

  Memphis put his hands up in a placating gesture. “Me? No, ma’am. You’ve got the wrong fella.”

  The woman jabbed her finger excitedly. “That’s him! It’s him!”

  “I saw him first!” another man said, advancing toward the Diviners.

  “The devil you did!” another man shouted, pushing through the crowd. Fights erupted among the memorial attendees. They’d gone from sharing grief over Sarah to a frenzy.

  Theta rushed toward Memphis, Evie and the others following.

  “We need to create a distraction!” Evie said.

  “We do that and we prove we’re a danger,” Jericho said, just as a man made a grab for Evie and Jericho knocked him down.

  “Did you see that?” a woman called. “That Diviner hit him!”

  “I-I’m sorry,” Jericho said, horrified.

  “We do nothing and we’re going to be trampled by a mob of bounty hunters or shot by police,” Evie said.

  Detective Malloy bellowed into the microphone. “Hold it right there. Don’t move.” A line of police pushed into the crowd, guns drawn.

  “Shit,” Memphis muttered.

  “You said a bad word,” Isaiah said.

  “Come together and get ready,” Evie called, reaching out.

  “Ready for what?” Ling said.

  “I-I don’t know yet,” Evie said, joining hands with Theta and Henry. “Jericho?” Evie pleaded. “Please?”

  “What are we doing?” he asked.

  “Nothing like last night,” Evie promised, even though she couldn’t say for sure what would happen. “Jericho, we need you.”

  Reluctantly, Jericho reached for Ling’s hand. The Diviners made a line facing the crowd, who began backing up.

  “What are they doing?”

  “Some kinda Diviner mumbo jumbo.”

  “Get back! Get back!”

  “Somebody stop them! We aren’t safe!”

  “These aren’t ghosts, Evie. What are we going to do?” Theta said.

  Ling was jostled. She cried out as she nearly lost her balance. If the crowd surged, if they had to run, what would she do? “Make an energy field!” she yelled.

  “How?” Henry said. “This isn’t the museum. There’s no credenza to shape into something else!”

  “Just… concentrate. Find something to… to…” But Ling didn’t know. She couldn’t think. She could feel her friends struggling against one another, fighting their own individual fears. No one could seem to concentrate on any one thing. The connection was elusive.

  From the stage, Roy shouted: “There she is! There’s my Betty Sue.” He nodded, a signal to Dutch’s boys. Now they were coming, too. Theta’s panic moved through her, along with her fire. Evie gasped and dropped Theta’s hand like a hot coal.

  “Theta! Theta, you’ve got to calm down.”

  “There’s my Betty Sue right there. Don’t move, Betty. I’m coming.” Roy’s voice. His men, on the march. The police, getting closer. The crowd on the verge of bloodlust.

  “Stop,” Theta whispered. She grabbed her friends’ hands again, squeezing. “Stop, stop, stop
!”

  The word wrapped itself around the Diviners and shot through them like a burst of energy that pushed several rows of people backward, knocking others down as they flew. They were dazed, and sat, stunned, where they landed in a heap. The energy traveled through the crowd, surrounding them like current along a telephone wire. People were frozen where they stood. The Diviners could see their eyes, wide and afraid. They tried to speak but couldn’t. But the people saw. They understood what was happening. Understood how it had happened and who was to blame. Onstage, Jake Marlowe also watched, frozen in place.

  “What did we do?” Ling whispered.

  “I… I just wanted them to stop,” Theta said. She could see the fear and hatred in the eyes of the crowd.

  “We’ve got to get out of here now! Run!” Evie shouted. She let go, barreling around the stage, running toward the sidewalks of Broadway and the throngs of people going about their business like it was any other night in the city. If they were fast enough, they’d be able to lose themselves in that crowd.

  “I just wanted them to stop,” Theta repeated and took off after Evie.

  “Theta!” Henry yelled, giving chase.

  “Move, move, move!” Memphis pushed at Jericho’s back, trying to catch up to Isaiah, who ran alongside Evie, Theta, and Henry.

  The crowd was no longer dazed and fearful. They were angry. Hungry for vengeance.

  “There they are!” came a shout.

  Theta turned around. Several men rose to their feet from the heap. Mouths set, they pushed toward Memphis.

  “Poet—run!” Flames burst from Theta’s fingertips and engulfed her hands. Lost to her rage, she glowed like a beacon. “Leave him alone!”

  People screamed and leaped back from the heat of her.

  “Theta!” Evie said. She doubled back, coming up behind her friend. “Let’s go!”

  Theta moved her hand quickly. Fire went loose. It caught on the funeral bunting and exploded into sparks. The crowd panicked, running over one another to get away. Police whistles cut across the night. Men in blue thrust into the crowd with nightsticks at the ready. The girls in gardenias shrieked and clung to one another. Onstage, detectives moved Jake Marlowe toward the safety of a waiting touring car.