The King of Crows

  Evie was newly afraid. This was daring. This ghost was a step up from the others she’d met. She was not obedient. Evie could tell that the ghost was thinking.

  “What do you want?” Evie asked.

  The thing ran its dark tongue across the edges of its teeth again. “I hunger.”

  Evie took a step back. “There are animals in the woods.”

  “No. Not enough. Not like the living. And you are a Diviner. Yours is the sweetest honey of all. Give me some of your life and I will connect you to the Eye. You may find your friend.”

  “I can’t do that. You’ll hurt me.”

  “Not if you offer it. If you place your hand upon my heart.”

  “How do I know you’re not lying?”

  “I cannot lie. I am the dead.”

  Evie knew she should scream for Sam and Theta now. But if she did that, she’d never know about Mabel. She was sure it was Mabel’s voice she’d heard tonight.

  “All right,” Evie said. “But you have to help me talk to my friend first. Can you do that?”

  “The Eye joins us. I will ask. Ask for your Mabel Rose.” The ghost closed her eyes. Evie took this moment to really look at the woman and was surprised to see that she wasn’t much more than a girl. More like Evie’s age. Her dress was somewhat modern—a dress that had been fashionable right after the war—and Evie found herself suddenly wondering about this spirit in front of her. How had she died? Was it sickness? An accident? A broken heart? Had she lost someone she loved in the war, too? There was a brooch fastened to a ribbon at her hip. It was unexpected and stylish and Evie wondered if they might have been friends had they known each other before the girl’s unfortunate death. That was dangerous. This girl—no, this ghost, this dead thing—was the enemy. Wasn’t she?

  The ghost opened her eyes, and they were as black as eternity. The blank unknown of those eyes startled Evie into taking another step backward. She was afraid again. Out here in this field alone, surrounded by stars and the dead. What had she been thinking? What had she promised?

  The ghost locked her bottomless gaze on Evie. “I have heard from your friend. From Mabel.” There was a moment’s hesitation, as if the ghost were weighing whether to speak further.

  “What did she say?”

  The ghost did not answer. Evie grew impatient.

  “Please. Please tell me!”

  “You should not disturb her rest.”

  Evie blinked back tears. For as long as Evie could remember, Mabel had been there, her North Star. They’d traded letters furiously, Evie less frequently as she got interested in boys and petting parties. She regretted that now, regretted not paying more attention. How she wished she could race down the stairs to Mabel’s apartment and tell her everything. She just wanted the chance to apologize for all the wrongs.

  “Could you give her a message from me?”

  “If she wished to speak with you, she would. She is at rest.”

  Evie was angry at this ghost. “Mabel would never say that. I was her best friend.”

  “It is not the dead who are so restless, but the living. You must let her go. Your promise now.”

  “Well, I can’t! I won’t.” Tears raced down Evie’s cheeks, hot against the cool of her skin. She brushed them away angrily. Why wasn’t Mabel speaking to her? Was she still mad at Evie for telling her that Arthur was a bad influence? “Mabel? Mabesie! It’s me, Evie!” Evie cried. She was met with silence. “Mabel! Talk to me. Talk to me!”

  “Your promise now,” the ghost said, getting closer.

  “I need to know—”

  “Your promise now!”

  “Why won’t you talk to me!” Evie screamed. Furious, she pushed the ghost. Her hand went inside the dead girl’s chest as if passing into a wall of jelly and stuck fast. The ghost let out a tiny sigh. Evie could feel the raw hunger that gnawed inside the girl, a constant, sharp pain that was nearly alive in its driving need. Evie would do anything to make it stop.

  “Let go…” Evie rasped. “Let… go.…”

  The ghost had her tight. Evie could feel herself joined to so many dead.

  There it was. A brief glimpse. Mabel. Mabel. The name swam inside Evie’s head. Mabel, it’s me. It’s Evie. I’m here. Talk to me. Talk to me!

  She thought she could feel it, a slight stirring. Mabel’s lips parted in a gasp, as if she might speak.

  The ghost had its mouth open. Its teeth had come in, razor sharp. Evie screamed as she saw those teeth coming for her neck. With her free hand, Evie grabbed hold of the stylish brooch, and its memories, undimmed by the grave, rushed into her.

  She could see this girl when she was alive, and oh, how alive she had been! There she was laughing and smiling with her friends. Marching with the suffragettes, a banner, VOTES FOR WOMEN, shining across her chest. She was proud, this one. Defiant. The brooch had been given to her by her sister. No. A friend. Her best friend. One she’d loved as dearly as Evie had Mabel. They were not so different, Evie and this ghost. It was the pills. The girl had swallowed them all. There it was, under all that life, the dreadful loneliness. I am drowning in emptiness. No one sees. I will go out without a sound. But now the girl was in her head. They were connected. You understand loneliness, don’t you? I know you. I see you. You court death all the time. Sometimes, you wish you’d gone instead of him. Instead of her.

  Yes, Evie thought. Yes, I do.

  Let go. So easy to do.

  “Yes,” Evie whispered.

  Give me what you have and I will bring you over. Over to Mabel. And James.

  “Evie! Evie!”

  Theta was running toward her, with Sam close behind. It startled Evie from her dreamy state. She let go of the brooch, severing the connection, and pulled her hand from the ghost’s chest, wiping it furiously against her dress.

  Theta pulled Evie back to safety. The ghost pointed a bony finger at Evie. “You’ll be sorry. You’ll be sorry.”

  “You’re the one who’ll be sorry,” Sam barked. He joined hands with Theta and Evie.

  “Wait! Just another minute, I—” Evie said.

  “We can’t wait, Baby Vamp! Quick—before she comes for us,” Sam said.

  But the ghost made no move. She stood perfectly still. “You’ll be sorry,” she repeated.

  Within seconds, Sam, Evie, and Theta had annihilated the dead girl. Evie felt the familiar surge of overwhelming energy coursing through them all, the temporary euphoria making them feel invincible, as the ghost’s atoms were scattered to the winds.

  “Ohhhh,” Evie said, falling into the grass. Somewhere inside she still felt the ghost’s terrible hunger. She let the bloodlust run through her. When it left, she shivered from the lack of it. She felt awful now. She knew Sam and Theta felt the same. That was the price.

  “What were you thinking? Were you trying to be dumb?” Theta said when she could speak again. She coughed something up into the grass and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.

  “I heard Mabel’s voice! I did, I swear. I had to know if she was okay,” Evie said.

  Theta softened. “And is she?”

  “I don’t know.”

  She dreamed of Mabel’s funeral. The mourners dressed in black, crying at the graveside. And her brother was there in his war uniform. He came to sit beside her. “It’s going to get rough, old girl,” he said. A crow cawed from a headstone across the way. It had a woman’s face. When Evie looked away, her brother was gone. In his place was the dead girl with the brooch. She pointed that bony finger at Evie. “You’ll be sorry,” she said.

  The mourners gathered around the gravesite and tossed in their handfuls of dirt. But the coffin was open. “What are you doing?” Evie said to them. “You’re getting her dirty!” She jumped down into the grave. It was wider than it looked. Up close, she could see the worms wiggling from the tall earthen sides. She pushed a hand against the grave wall to steady herself and it gave way. There was a hole now, and when Evie peered into it, she could see into another univers
e, a place of dead trees and, far off, the Eye, shining gold, creating death.

  Evie turned back to Mabel. She brushed the dirt away from Mabel’s serene face, from her pretty yellow dress. She brushed dirt from Mabel’s hands and the skin slipped off like rumpled paper. Underneath was a mangled hand, the work of the bomb. Evie saw that the other sleeve was empty, the arm simply gone. And Mabel’s face was not serene at all. Explosion burns marred her cheeks. A chunk of her neck was missing.

  “No,” Evie said. “No.”

  She covered Mabel with dirt to keep her safe and whole. Other things were slithering out of the grave now. Two tiny green snakes plopped down and twined around Evie’s shoes. With a cry, she stepped on them. Fingers pushed their way through the packed dirt surrounding her. The grave walls were growing. Higher and higher. She would never get out if she didn’t start. “I have to go, Mabesie. I’m sorry,” Evie said.

  She kissed Mabel’s cheek and started to climb.

  Mabel opened her eyes.

  SECOND SON

  Jacob Ennis Marlowe was a second son. His older brother, John Edwin “Ned” Marlowe, Jr., had been the favorite, as first sons so often are. Ned was also delicate. A hemophiliac, he’d been only fifteen when he’d suffered a fall and bled to death. Jake had been lucky. The “royal disease” had not been passed to him.

  The morning following Ned’s death, the staff swabbed and mopped Hopeful Harbor until it gleamed. But his mother could never bear to live in the house after that. Too many memories. Was that Ned bounding down the stairs now? Was that his laugh outside by the rose garden? The house was full of ghosts, and Martha Marlowe spent a fortune on spirit mediums in an effort to make contact with her son on the other side, a practice Jake both resented and found fascinating. One night, his mother held a séance in the library. Jake hid in the closet to watch through a crack in the door. As the medium begged for a sign from the world beyond, the crystal chandeliers winked. A cup that had been Ned’s favorite shot to the floor and broke. Had it been coincidence? Or was it evidence of a world beyond this one?

  In that moment, Jake Marlowe became determined to find the answer.

  The Marlowes moved to an apartment along the East River in Manhattan. But Jake longed for the simple pleasures of Hopeful Harbor. The lush grounds. The servants bustling through the corridors. The elaborate dinners his parents had hosted for important, elegant people who were not mediums and fortune-tellers. It had all seemed to belong to a time untouched by loss and calamity. Jake Marlowe, the great inventor and industrialist, the trumpeter of progress, was actually building blindly toward the future in the hope of recapturing an idyllic past that had never truly existed in the first place.

  The servants could have told Jake this if he’d ever been willing to listen. Downstairs, their hard work hidden from sight, they worried they’d be let go for some small infraction—a meal that hadn’t been quite enough; the silver not polished sufficiently; the time Maisie asked for a few days to see to a sick sister but was told she couldn’t be spared from her chores, so she’d not been there when her only sister died. That idyllic past Jake glorified had not been so idyllic for them.

  The ghosts could have told Jake this, too.

  Jake Marlowe went on to a prestigious boarding school and then to Yale, as wealthy sons do. He joined a secret society there, but it bored him. Those boys drank port and indulged in symbolic rituals, putting on the trappings of magic when there was real magic out there somewhere, to be found and conquered, Jake was certain.

  Meeting Will Fitzgerald had seemed like fate stepping in. Will was wildly intelligent, if lacking in social good fortune. His Irish last name and Midwestern bluntness had made him a bit of an outcast among most of Yale’s elite. Will had never been chosen to join Skull and Bones or any other fraternity, but his brilliance, curiosity, and tenacity commanded respect. Jake had never noticed the slim, bespectacled boy until, during a dreadfully dull lecture on Hamlet, Will had raised his hand and made an argument that William Shakespeare might have himself been a witch. He held forth with such dizzying argument that the professor had ordered him from the class for disorderly conduct. On his way out, Will had retorted, “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy,” a line he would use time and again.

  Jake had chased after him on the snowy lawn.

  “Have you ever heard of Diviners?” Will had asked him as they warmed their hands on cups of weak coffee.

  From that moment on, Jake Marlowe and Will Fitzgerald had been the best of friends, with a shared mission: to reach into the supernatural realm and decode its mysteries. That passion would take them to the Department of Paranormal, and to Diviners. For Will, this study meant crossing the nation to collect their stories. For Jake, it was about collecting their blood.

  For years, he’d been reading about heredity and bloodlines. Eugenics was the science, and it promised that selective breeding was the answer to all social ills. Blood was the problem and blood would prove the cure.

  Will disagreed. He believed eugenics was bigoted nonsense. Margaret Walker called it an abomination and the seeds of genocide—one had only to believe a race or ethnicity inferior in order to justify murdering them.

  While Jake was busy working for the Department of Paranormal, his parents nursed their wounds with a tour of Europe. In April, they cabled that they would return to New York from Southampton via an elite ocean liner, and expected Jake to meet them when they docked. They’d catch up over luncheon at the Plaza.

  It was Miriam Lubovitch who warned Jake. The Russian fortune-teller, a Diviner of great skill, had brought her young son, Sergei, up to Hopeful Harbor for his assessment. During the meeting, Miriam went rigid, her face contorted with fear. “Your mother and father, they travel by sea?”

  “Yes.”

  “This they must not do,” Miriam had said in her broken English. “Is bad voyage.”

  Jake had chuckled at this. “It’s an unsinkable ship, Mrs. Lubovitch.”

  Miriam shook her head sadly. “No such thing.”

  Four days later, the Titanic struck an iceberg in the North Atlantic, four hundred miles off the coast of Newfoundland. Of the more than two thousand, two hundred passengers aboard, more than half were killed, including John and Martha Marlowe.

  Jake was now alone in the world. Some said the Marlowes were cursed. Jake pushed back against such superstition: What if he could keep disaster from befalling the nation? What if he could ensure the safety of others and promote their well-being through medicine, inventions, or machines? What if Diviners and their connection to the unseen world were the key to these wonders? What made a Diviner, was the question. For Jake, it came back to blood.

  But the more he worked with these fascinating Diviners, the more he became unsettled. How could you ever fully trust a person who might be able to read your history in an object or see the future before it happened? And what about all these immigrant Diviners? Were they loyal to the United States or to the countries of their birth? Diviners were useful, but they were also dangerous, and their powers had to be carefully monitored and controlled. Only the right sort of person should be entrusted with such gifts. If a new breed of Diviner was going to be developed in the laboratory, that Diviner must be of superior stock. The future should belong to people just like Jake Marlowe.

  Of course, Jake had experimented on himself first. He’d wanted to be the Adam of this new genus. The injection had burned in his veins, and a deep purple bruising had bloomed immediately at the injection site, frightening his fiancée, Rotke. “I’m a pioneer on the new frontier,” he had said, and then he waited through the shakes and sweats that raged through him for hours. The next day, when Margaret had him guess at a series of cards, Jake got only one right, as anyone might.

  “Don’t take it on the chin,” Will had said. “I didn’t fare much better.”

  “You are not me,” Jake had snapped.

  He changed the formula and tried again. And again
. It had never taken. Not once. Jake Marlowe could not become a Diviner. He’d never been denied anything but this. The unfairness of it enraged him.

  The war had come on, and the government had pushed for more experimentation with Diviners. With funding from the elite Founders Club, Jake had perfected his serum, he felt sure. He was ready to prove it with Unit 144. Jake had built a prototype for the Eye of Providence when he began receiving messages from the mythical being of which all Diviners spoke, the man in the stovepipe hat, about whom Cornelius Rathbone had told them. The King of Crows. He was sending messages only through Diviners, however. Once again, Jake Marlowe, the golden son, had been denied. The King of Crows, it seemed, only wanted to bargain with Diviners. For once in his life, Jake had no power, no influence.

  But things had changed. The King of Crows was communicating with Jake now, through the Eye. And once Jake Marlowe burst through to that other world and stabilized the breach, he would march into the land of the dead with the world’s mightiest army and take what had been denied him. Jake Marlowe would own the most powerful Diviner of all.

  But only if he could find Evie O’Neill, Memphis Campbell, and the others.

  The Shadow Men had returned yesterday afternoon with a girl they’d procured via one of the Fitter Families tents, at a county fair somewhere in Pennsylvania. The girl didn’t have much Diviner in her, but Jake couldn’t afford to be picky. The Eye needed her energy to keep the portal open. They were running out of prospects. They were so close. Nothing could be allowed to jeopardize the mission. Most of the subjects brought to Hopeful Harbor were awed by the grandeur of the mansion—for a time, at least. But this girl had not stopped crying. When Marlowe instructed the bigger Shadow Man to strap her down, he’d hesitated.

  “Mr. Marlowe, she’s only eleven. I’ve got a niece who’s eleven.”

  Marlowe had done the job himself, placing the cap on the frightened child’s head, assuring her that she was being very brave, that she was making a great contribution to her country. Miriam had refused. Even in her chains, she’d resisted fiercely, bucking and scratching and spitting Russian curses at Marlowe and the Shadow Men as they forced her into the chair.