by Libba Bray
Right beside Memphis, a policeman clubbed the wrong man, who went limp. Blood trickled down his face. The chaotic crowd surged anew, further separating Memphis from Isaiah.
“Isaiah!” Memphis made a desperate lunge for his brother. “Isaiah!”
“Memphis!” Isaiah called back as he was borne along by the sweeping tide.
The unruly crowd was quickly becoming a mob. Fists swung. Memphis ducked a fight. Isaiah was carried farther away. Memphis screamed his brother’s name. Bill snaked his muscular arm around Memphis, dragging him away from the frenzied crowd and toward safety.
In that same crowd, Theta’s firepower began to fizzle. That was the moment Evie was most afraid; as soon as the people saw that, they’d come after them. Theta cried out in agony. Strips of molten material adhered to the backs of her hands, stuck there. She’d had no time to remove her gloves before the fire had come upon her. Evie grabbed Theta’s wrist, hissing as the last remnants of Theta’s heat touched her own glove, and then all of Theta’s fire was gone as her rage sucked back up into her body and became blind fear.
“Theta? Theta!” Evie’s eyes went wide with horror when she saw the state of Theta’s skin, which was deeply blistered.
“H-hurts,” Theta cried.
“We’ll get you fixed up, but we’ve got to get out of here, okay?”
Theta nodded, unable to do much else.
Evie saw small Isaiah being buffeted by the throng. “Isaiah!” Evie called. “Over here!” She pushed aside one of the corsage-wearing Sarah Snow girls to get to him. “Where’s Memphis?”
“I don’t know,” Isaiah said tearfully.
Deep in the crowd, Evie locked eyes with Jericho, but there was no way for them to reach each other. “I’m sorry!” she yelled. “I’m sorry for everything.”
He was going to try to come for her, she knew. She shook her head. “Bountiful!” she yelled. “Do you understand?”
He nodded, and the crowd overtook the space between them.
“It’s you. You’re the Sweetheart Seer,” said the girl Evie had pushed aside. For the briefest second, Evie was happy to have been recognized, until the girl’s face went hard and mean. “You killed Sarah Snow.”
“No. No, that isn’t true,” Evie said.
Henry lodged himself between Evie and the angry girl. “Excuse me, miss,” he said. “I’m not from around here, and I’m awfully lost. Can you help me?” With the other hand behind his back, he waved Evie and Theta on.
“C’mon,” Evie said, pulling Isaiah in with them. They ran to Broadway and tried to blend in with the theatergoers rushing to make the curtain. At the corner, Theta glanced over her shoulder. She stopped short. “Wait, where’s Henry?”
“There he is,” Evie said. Talking to the girl had stranded him. He was stuck on the other side of the melee. Citizens-turned-bounty hunters flooded the area between them. Police were on the lookout. Dutch Schultz’s men muscled their way through the crowd. When a man didn’t move fast enough, one of Dutch’s thugs bloodied his nose. It was madness. They were hopelessly separated.
“Henry!” Evie shouted. “Get to Bountiful! Pass it along!”
“Now, wait just a minute—” Henry shouted back.
But already, Evie was moving away. “Sorry—no time to debate it. We meet in Bountiful! Get there any way you can, but go—now!”
“Dammit, Evie,” Henry muttered, watching her go. That was the trouble with wanting somebody else to take on making decisions—sometimes they did, and you ended up going to Nebraska.
“Bountiful,” Henry repeated, and then he was off and running, wishing that he had Sam alongside him to keep them both invisible.
ESCAPE
A frantic Memphis scoured the crowd for his little brother. “Isaiah! Isaiah!” he screamed till his throat hurt.
Bill pulled at Memphis’s arm. “Memphis, we got to move!”
“Not without Isaiah!” Memphis said, shaking the big man off.
Around them, the crowd had gone feral. The night’s earlier grief had been discarded, and in its place was a bloodlust for revenge. Back in Louisiana, Bill Johnson had seen a crowd turn. He’d watched, helpless, as men with torches set fire to a black settlement. And the law? Hell, some of those lawmen were the ones who lit the torches. Bill balled Memphis’s collar in his fist till they were nose to nose. His voice was low and urgent. “Listen to me. This mob is lookin’ for a lynching. Understand?”
Twenty feet away, a man curled up on the ground was taking kicks from Dutch Schultz’s thugs while other men cheered them on. Memphis imagined Isaiah on the ground, Isaiah being taken by these furious people.
“I won’t leave without my brother,” he said again.
“I figured you’d say that,” Bill said and sighed, just before he knocked Memphis out and threw him over his shoulder. Memphis would be furious about this when he woke, but he’d be alive to fight another day. Once Bill got him stashed away someplace safe, he’d come back to look for Isaiah.
“Mr. Johnson! Over here!” Henry DuBois shouted as he maneuvered his way against the tide of people like a skinny garter snake. Bill ducked into a doorway on Fortieth Street. There, hidden by an awning, he waited until Henry caught up.
“Hey. What happened to Memphis?” Henry asked, nearly out of breath.
Bill ignored the question. “You seen Isaiah out there?”
Henry nodded. “He’s with Theta and Evie.”
Bill breathed a little easier. At least the boy was safe. “You see any of the others?”
Henry shook his head and patted the stitch in his side.
“Well, we cain’t stay here. Got to move,” Bill said.
“Evie said to meet in Bountiful.”
“What kind of fool notion is that?”
“It’s Evie,” Henry said as both explanation and apology. “That’s where they’re going with Isaiah. That’s what we should do. Get out of New York right now.”
Bill sucked some air through his teeth, thinking. “There’s a train leaving Penn Station for N’awlins in twenty minutes, and we need to be on it. We can make our way from there.”
Henry faltered. “Oh. New Orleans?”
“What I said. You got somethin’ against N’awlins?”
Henry pictured Belle Reve, his ancestral home in the Garden District of New Orleans, where he was raised. He pictured his cold and distant father reading his evening paper while the household moved around him, making sure he was not disturbed. He pictured his broken mother taking all the silver from the drawers while Flossie, their cook, tried to cajole her away from it and into a warm bath to calm her nerves. He remembered the disappointment on his father’s face when he’d discovered that his son was in love with a boy named Louis. He remembered his mother telling him to “fly away, little bird” as Henry slipped out of the house with only his suitcase.
“No,” he said at last.
“Good. ’Cause we ain’t got much choice in the matter. Anybody asks, this is my brother, Barnabas. He fainted at the memorial because of what them Diviners did. Nobody’s lookin’ for me and you. That’s the advantage we got.”
“Is he okay?”
“He’ll come around soon enough. Come on. Gotta move with a purpose now. Keep ya head down and don’t draw attention.”
Jericho and Ling had taken refuge in a darkened picture house near Times Square. “The picture’s already started,” the ticket booth man had told them as they bought two tickets before stealing into the back of the darkened theater. The picture was German. Something called Metropolis. For a moment, Jericho was mesmerized by the flickering screen and the sight of a robot transforming into a human woman. Instinctually, he put a hand to his chest where, beneath the skin, a configuration of machinelike parts, fueled by Marlowe’s special serum, kept his broken body functioning. For the first time in ten years, Jericho was without that serum. He took his hand from his pocket and made a fist. It was no trouble, and he breathed a sigh of relief.
“Did you see
any of the others?” Ling whispered.
“I lost them in the crowd.”
“Where do you think they are? What should we do? Go back to Sister—” Ling stopped as she realized that Sister Walker couldn’t help them. No one could. They would have to figure this out for themselves.
“I saw Evie in the crowd. She said we should go to Bountiful,” Jericho said.
“Nebraska?” Ling squeaked.
“Shhh!” a man in the back row scolded. Jericho and Ling scooted away from the entrance and back toward the lobby. “Nebraska is over a thousand miles from here. How are we going to get there?” Ling asked.
“Penn Station’s not that far.”
Ling shook her head. “They’ll be watching the train and bus stations.”
Jericho nodded, thought some more. “We could go back to the Bennington. Hide out in Will’s apartment till tomorrow and see if we can find any of the others.”
Ling grunted at him. “The Bennington is the first place the police will think to look.”
“Well, I’m sorry that I’m not as clever as you are,” Jericho said sarcastically.
“So am I,” Ling said, straightforward as ever.
“We just need a place to rest and think,” Jericho said.
Ling thought about Doyers Street and her family’s restaurant. It had always been the safest place she knew, but now the police would probably be on their way to the Tea House. She hated to imagine her parents’ stricken faces or the shame it would bring to them—and the danger. No. They couldn’t go there. But where was safety and someone they could trust to hide them?
“Alma,” Ling said.
“What about Alma?”
“No one knows about her. No one would look for us at her apartment. She’s leaving town tomorrow on the TOBA circuit—they book Negro acts into clubs across the country. They’ve got a bus. We could leave with them.”
Jericho raised an eyebrow. “How are we going to explain…? I don’t think anyone’s going to buy us as an act.”
“We’ll make up a story. One time I went with Theta to a screen test out in Brooklyn and I had to pretend to be her seamstress to get in the door. I’ll say I’m Alma’s wardrobe mistress. And you…” Ling scrutinized Jericho’s face. “What else do you do besides catalog creepy artifacts?”
“I read a lot of philosophy.”
Ling let out a heavy sigh. “Brother.”
“And I’m very strong.”
“That could come in handy. For now, I’ll say you’re my cousin.”
“I… don’t really look like your cousin.”
“My cousin Seamus has red hair, freckles, and cheeks that are always pink.” Ling shrugged. “But he is my cousin.”
Jericho didn’t seem convinced. Ling grunted in frustration. “Did everyone from your little Hans Christian Andersen village look the same?”
“Hans Christian…?”
“…like you all escaped from a German fairy tale?”
“Shhh!” the same man from the back row scolded. Jericho and Ling moved a little farther into the lobby.
“Hans Christian Andersen was Danish. And no. We did not all look the same. The Jorgensons’ daughter, Brigid, had brown hair,” Jericho whispered testily. “How do you know that Alma will help us?”
Ling didn’t know. She couldn’t imagine Alma turning them away. Then again, she couldn’t imagine Alma suddenly saying good-bye the way she had, either. Ling had to ask herself if she was suggesting this plan just so she could see Alma one more time.
“Of course she’ll help us,” Ling insisted.
“And you don’t think anybody will notice that we aren’t who we say we are?”
“Nobody’s who they say they are.”
In Times Square, much of the crowd had dispersed. Police rounded up some would-be vigilantes and locked them up in paddy wagons. Firemen sprayed the stage’s bunting, putting out the last of Theta’s handiwork. As Jericho and Ling approached Broadway, they heard a man pleading for his life. He cowered on the ground, his arms up to fend off the blows and kicks of two men shouting, “Lousy Diviner! Anarchist! Get out of our country!”
“Wait here,” Jericho said. Jake Marlowe’s serum burned through his veins. He lifted the two men by their suit collars as if each weighed no more than a bag of flour. He liked seeing the fear in the eyes of these bullies. The serum made Jericho’s heart pump harder. His act of heroism teetered on the edge of something uglier.
“Jericho?” Ling said. “Jericho. Let go.”
Jericho dropped the men on the curb. He unclenched his fists, unsettled by the strong impulses that had seized him.
“Go on. Get out of here,” he said to the men.
The bullies stumbled away. When they’d traveled a safe distance, one of them called out, “You’re a bum! A bum, you hear?”
Jericho helped the beaten man to his feet.
“They… they just turned on me,” the man said. “Thought I was one of those Diviners.”
“Go home,” Jericho said.
The young man nodded. “Thank you.”
Nearby, another fight broke out. Several people rushed in to join, drawn by the possibility of catching a Diviner and meting out “justice.” It was getting more dangerous.
“Ling, do you mind if I carry you out of here?” Jericho asked.
Ordinarily, Ling would mind, but these were not ordinary circumstances.
“Just don’t drop me,” she said, clutching tightly to her crutches as Jericho scooped her up into his arms and took off running through the city streets.
Ling had heard girls fantasizing about such scenarios, calling them romantic. Mostly, she found it embarrassing. It was Alma’s arms Ling missed. Now that their plan was under way, Ling’s worry took over. What if Alma was unhappy to see her? What if Alma did say no to taking them along? What would they do then?
What if she was with another girl?
“Am I hurting you?” Jericho asked.
“N-no,” Ling said, trying to rid her mind of that last thought. “You’re not even winded,” she noted. “You’re abnormally strong.”
“Are you calling me abnormal?” Jericho said, grinning.
They’d reached the symphony of traffic snarling up Broadway. There were people on the street who stared at the sight of Jericho carrying Ling down the street, and she tried not to let it bother her. She was used to stares.
No, that wasn’t true.
She had learned to keep her own eyes straight ahead. But she never got used to the looks people gave her in the seconds before they corrected themselves: a combination of pity, nervous gratitude for their own good fortune, and the jolt of fear when they realized—just for a second—that this good fortune was not guaranteed, that anything could happen to them at any time. That they were vulnerable. Those were the people who looked away fastest.
Jericho signaled for a taxi and one swerved to the curb. “Ling, I need you to make a lot of noise.”
“What kind of noise? What are you…?”
“Please, my wife’s having a baby!” Jericho said as he gentled Ling onto the backseat, shielding her body from the driver’s view.
Ling’s cheeks burned as she realized what he’d meant by “making noise.” She narrowed her green eyes at him. “If we survive this, you are dead to me.”
“You told me to be clever,” he whispered.
In the rearview mirror, the driver regarded the couple in his backseat with suspicion. “Are you two pulling my leg? Because you can get out right—”
Ling screamed at the top of her lungs. The driver floored it.
“That was impressive,” Jericho said as he and Ling walked the two blocks from Harlem Hospital to Alma’s apartment building.
“Screaming isn’t impressive,” Ling said. Her body ached with each step after such a full day, but she was not about to meet Alma cradled in Jericho’s arms.
“We’re here,” she said, stopping in front of a four-story redbrick building with a fire escape dotted wit
h drying laundry. Light bled from the windows of Alma’s second-floor apartment. Ling’s stomach hurt. She pictured Alma in some other girl’s arms. But now Jericho was ringing the bell, and a moment later Alma stuck her scarf-wrapped head out the window and peered down at Ling and Jericho with surprise.
“Ling? Jericho. What on earth?”
“Please, Alma,” Ling said. “We need your help.”
“Wait there. I’ll be right down,” Alma said.
At Penn Station, Henry and Bill fell in behind late-straggling passengers scurrying to catch the Crescent Limited to New Orleans before it left the station. Most people hurrying on board now were preoccupied with last-minute things. They were not looking for fugitives.
“What’s the matter with him?” one man asked, pointing his cigarette at Memphis, who was still slung over Bill’s shoulder.
“He fainted at the Sarah Snow memorial,” Henry said. “Terrible scene.”
“I heard there was a ruckus. Diviners,” the man clucked. “Ought to round them all up if you ask me.”
“I’ll be sure not to ask you,” Henry said to the man’s back as he boarded the train.
“Now,” Bill said. They made their way down the platform to the porter’s stand, where a tall man with a pencil-thin mustache was at work directing several porters to the luggage.
“We’re looking for Nelson Desir,” Bill said to the man in a low voice. “Madame Seraphina sent us? About some important cargo to transport out of the city? You might even say it’s divine cargo.”
“Ohhh.” The porter looked around to be sure they were safe. “I’m Nelson. Pleased to meet you. Board the last car to the left.” He shook their hands. “Welcome to the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. Don’t you worry—the Georges’ll see you through and keep you safe.”
“The Georges?” Henry said, confused.
“I’ll explain later. Right now, you need to board. Train’s about to leave the station. You made it just in time.”