by Libba Bray
Jefferson’s comment, a confirmation, was like another slap to Theta. Tears sprang to her eyes. These men had robbed her of so much. One terrible moment that lit a fuse leading to so many others. These men never thought about the consequences of their actions. They never thought about the people on the other end of an order.
Evie jumped up from her seat and kicked Jefferson in the shins, hard. “That’s for Theta.” She kicked him again, higher up. “And… and… that’s for Theta, too.”
“You still got a good kick on you, Baby Vamp,” Sam said admiringly.
Mr. Adams picked Evie up and forced her back into her seat.
“Thanks, Evil,” Theta said, and it seemed to her that she had never been so grateful for a friend.
“You and me,” Evie said back to her. “If they come for one of us, they come for all of us.”
“How sentimental,” Jefferson said in a strained voice. He’d gotten back to his feet with murder in his eyes. He moved toward Evie.
Marlowe held him back with his hand. “Your department can take over once we’ve secured the land of the dead.”
Jefferson eyed Evie. “You’re mine.”
And Evie mouthed back a phrase for which she was certain her mother would still wash her mouth out with soap. Beside her, Sam grinned. “Oh, Baby Vamp. Let’s get married tomorrow. Promise?”
Evie softened. “Promise.”
Marlowe peered out the window at the barren landscape below the clouds. “Looks like we’re here.”
The plane pitched left to right on its approach. It sailed down and screeched to a stop in the desert, and Evie thought that she might have enjoyed her first airplane ride had it not been this one.
There were several fighter airplanes lined up across the desert floor. Men in aviator suits stood at attention beside them.
“What are they for?” Evie asked.
“We’ll send them into the breach once you’ve stabilized it,” a general explained.
“You’re sending in a battalion?” Henry said, incredulous.
“We have to secure our new territory,” the general said.
“I told you we’ve taken every precaution.” Marlowe, smug as usual.
“In addition to being a lousy fella, you’re also a goddamned idiot,” Sam said.
Adams moved forward to hit Sam, but Marlowe stopped him. “We need him to function. He’ll quiet when he sees her.”
Mr. Jefferson brought forth Miriam from the sedan. She was still in irons. She looked much worse than she had a few weeks earlier. Her skin was mottled and she limped.
“Mama,” Sam said.
She looked his way. He heard his mother’s voice in his head. She sounded weak but determined. You must close the breach. Even if it means we are trapped inside. You understand, Sergei?
There’ll be another way, Mama, Sam answered.
Promise me.
Yes, Mama. I promise.
The Shadow Men and generals gathered by the fighter planes to confer with Jake Marlowe. The Diviners still stood near Marlowe’s plane, with an armed guard nearby. The desert heat was a shock after the cold of Wyoming, and Ling marveled that two such different climates could exist in the same country. It was so many countries in one, she knew. Back home, her parents would be resting, getting ready for another day at the Tea House. The dawn would rise over the Lower East Side. The streets would respond with a symphony of smells, a daily re-creation carried over from the villages of Russia and the towns of Sicily, the fields of Ireland and the winding streets of Poland and Germany. Somewhere out there, maybe Mississippi or Oklahoma, Alma and the Harlem Haymakers were finishing up a night’s work in some vaudeville dance hall. Ling wished she could see Alma and her parents one last time. In Kansas and Nebraska, Oregon and West Virginia and Washington, D.C., people had gone to sleep thinking about all they’d left unfinished today and all they’d need to do tomorrow, thinking that there would be a tomorrow.
The Shadow Men marched the Diviners forward into the desert. Heat lightning crackled above. The heat sucked the life right out of the Diviners. Fear sucked up the rest. Evie felt sleepy and a little light-headed. She was worried mostly about Memphis, though. Anybody could see that he was getting sicker. And his healing power was gone. He’d given it up in a bad bargain, just as his mother had made her bargain to try to save her boys. Isaiah was dead and Memphis was the living dead.
What would happen to him when they were hooked up to the Eye? A Diviner’s power could fend off its relentless energy pull for a while, but what about a Diviner whose power had been stolen by the King of Crows? Without Memphis, they might not be able to heal the breach. He might die. They all might.
“What is that?” Theta asked as they neared a giant canyon of striped rock.
“The Ubehebe Crater,” Mr. Jefferson informed them.
“I got them Ubehebe Jeebie bluuuues,” Henry sang. Ling shot him a contemptuous look. “Sorry. I couldn’t let that one go. It might be my very last joke.”
Down at the crater’s bottom, the army men set up generator-fed klieg lights around the perimeter of Marlowe’s latest iteration of the Eye, and for one brief moment, Ling was completely taken by its beauty. The Eye was a true marvel of ingenuity and, yes, science. Jake Marlowe had managed to open a doorway between dimensions. How many other dimensions existed in the universe? How many universes? An ax could be used to till the earth. An ax could be used to kill. Tool or weapon. It was all in the intent. The knowledge that had gone into constructing the Eye was knowledge that could have been used to advance humankind, and Ling hated that the beauty of physics was being used to create an imperial death machine.
Evie stared at the golden sphere of the Eye, sitting in the middle of the desert crater. It was also built from death, and it would bring more pain and suffering than it already had. Once they were hooked up to its immense power, they’d have no protection from it. The Eye would drain and break them like the others. Unless…
“Sam!” Evie said. “Can you tell the Eye not to see us?”
Sam was beginning to understand what Evie meant. “Not with this iron on us.”
“But the iron is part of the machine…” Ling said, a hint of a smile showing. “Isn’t it?”
“Worth a try,” Sam said. “But you know I can’t do it forever. How long will Megalomaniac Marlowe have us on that thing for?”
“It might last longer if we’re inside a dream state,” Henry suggested.
Evie looked confused, but Ling was nodding. “If Sam can keep the Eye from seeing us long enough for us to go to sleep—”
“You’re just gonna go to sleep with that Eye thing on you?” Theta said.
“I was talking,” Ling said, narrowing her eyes at Theta, who put up her shackled hands in a Pardon me gesture. “Don’t you see? We’ll be connected through the Eye. Whatever one of us feels or experiences, the others will, too. Isn’t that right, Jericho?”
“Yes. The Eye will connect us all,” Jericho said.
“For the record, I also know this. Because I also got to ride on Marlowe’s not-so-merry-go-round,” Sam complained. “It hurt. A lot. I did not enjoy it. I would just like some recognition of my troubles.”
“I will make you a swell little medal if we survive,” Evie said with a generous roll of her eyes.
Sam nodded approvingly. “I like medals. I accept.”
“Evie, I don’t suppose you still have that feather Isaiah gave you?” Henry asked.
“It’s in my pocket. Why?”
“I don’t know. But Ling often needs an object to find the dead in a dream.”
“It might lead us to the King of Crows,” Evie said, thinking aloud.
Henry gave a wan smile. “See? We don’t even need to be hooked up to that big gold spider for all of us to be on the trolley.”
“Here,” Evie said, handing the feather to Ling, who cupped it tightly in her hand, out of sight.
“Where’s Isaiah?” Memphis asked. “Where’d he go?”
&nbs
p; “Poet, he’s not here,” Theta said gently.
“The King of Crows did something to me. I can f-feel it. Like p-poison ins-side me,” Memphis said. “Get it out. I want it out.”
Theta touched Memphis’s shoulder. “Memphis? Can you do this?”
“We’re going to have to give him as much of our strength as we can,” Ling said. “He’s the one who can actually close the breach.”
“My power, my healing power…” Memphis said, examining his hands as if they were not his hands at all. His eyes filled with tears. “He’s not here, is he? He was never here. It was just a trick.”
Theta slipped her arm through his. Memphis shut his eyes tightly. When he opened them again, he looked to his friends and nodded. “Heal the breach,” he said with renewed determination, echoing his mother’s long-ago warning. “Somehow. Somehow.”
“Here they come,” Sam said. “Look innocent.”
“Good luck with that, Sam Lloyd,” Evie muttered.
“Baby Vamp?” Sam was looking at her with such tender affection it nearly broke her. “Ikh hob dikh lib.”
“I love you, too, Sam,” Evie whispered.
The Shadow Men and the soldiers marched the Diviners down into the mouth of the crater. Evie was afraid she’d turn an ankle on the steep slope of rock and sand. “I wish I’d worn different shoes,” she grumbled. She wished so many things. That Isaiah were still alive. Mabel and James, too. Wishing wasn’t enough.
“Sam, you see what I see?” Jericho asked on their descent.
“Yeah,” Sam said, trying to keep his footing.
There were no longer two helmets attached to the Eye; there were eight. One for each of them. The chairs were arranged in a circle around the Eye, with their backs to the belly of the machine. They wouldn’t even have the comfort of looking at one another.
They’d reached the bottom of the crater. Nearby, the golden machine hummed and glowed. Jericho nodded to the eighth spot. “You know about Isaiah,” Jericho said carefully, with a quick glance at Memphis. “What are you going to do about that, Jake?”
“Miriam can fill in. It will be enough,” Marlowe said, busying himself with examining the paper scrolling out from the side of the machine, a communication with the other world.
“We’re all completely interchangeable to you, aren’t we?” Evie said. She wanted to spit in Jake Marlowe’s eye. Given the chance, she would.
“You’ll be making history.”
“If we live through it. And then who would know? Your sort gets rid of any inconvenient history,” Evie said.
“Gentlemen, looks like we’re ready at last,” Jake said, dropping the paper. “Strap them in.”
The Shadow Men and soldiers did as they were told. Each Diviner was forced into a chair. The golden helmets were secured. Evie could feel the weight on her skull as they tightened it. What if they ended up like her brother and the One-Forty-Four, living out this terrible day for the rest of time, for as long as there was time? What if they were banished to different dimensions, chasing one another through doorways that never led them where they needed to go, never home? She glanced to her left at Sam, and she knew he was trying to figure a sneaky way out of those restraints; she was overcome with a crazy love for him. He was a fighter to the very end. To her right, she saw the tufts of the feather sticking out from between Ling’s fingers. The others she couldn’t see, but she knew they were there. They were all there together, no matter what the future held. She had to trust in that.
Little Fox. Sam’s mother, in their heads. I will free you from the iron’s constraints. I have been working against it for some time, figuring out a way. But they are too stupid to know.
Sam smiled. “Thanks, Ma.”
Don’t talk out loud, Miriam scolded.
“Thanks, Ma,” Sam said, a little sarcastically.
Marlowe flipped his switches. Cones of striped white light shot down over the Diviners. Evie’s breathing came faster. She was quite scared. This was a voyage into the unknown. It felt like an execution.
“Ling!” Henry’s voice, somewhere behind her, on the other side of the machine.
“I-I can’t fall asleep!” Ling answered in a high-pitched voice.
Blue lightning struck the ground of the crater. The Eye whirred louder, faster. Whatever was going to happen would happen soon.
“Listen to the hum of the machine,” Henry shouted back. “Hold on to that feather.”
“You c-can d-do it,” Evie said through chattering teeth. The pressure had increased. Above them, the ominous clouds were tearing each other apart like a pack of wild gray dogs.
“Sleep, sleep, sleep,” Ling intoned. “Dream.”
“Dream,” Evie echoed.
“Dream,” Theta said.
They were all thinking it now, with purpose.
Spears of light shot through the dark clouds. With a mighty groan, the sky opened its huge dark mouth, ready to devour them. A jolt passed through Evie. It was as if the electric hand of god had reached in and thrown apart her atoms like marbles.
“S-Sam,” Evie managed.
Sam writhed in his seat. “Don’t. See. Us. Don’t…”
Beside her, Evie heard Ling crying out in pain—or maybe it was her own voice she heard. They were joined now; all their pain was shared. It was a tight squeezing, like a birth.
“…See… US—aaahhhh!” Sam cried out.
Evie felt herself being sucked up into that giant tear in the sky and the unknowable dark beyond, into the wicked soul of the Eye. Into the land of the dead.
Evie looked at her hands. They were her hands, she knew, but they were not quite the same. They belonged to a slightly altered Evie. She was existing in two places at once, in Death Valley and the land of the dead, connected via the Eye.
Memphis was beside her, examining his own hands.
“Memphis,” Evie said. “Do you feel…?”
“Yes,” Memphis answered, intuiting her thought. “I’m me, but a different me.” He raised his head. “Where are the others?”
“I don’t know,” Evie said, taking in their surroundings.
The land of the dead was a desolate, miserable place. Cadaverous vultures settled their bony forms in the blighted branches of monstrous yew trees. The ground was hard and cracked, punctuated here and there by foul, oily ponds thick with flies and sulfurous fumes. Everywhere, an ashy snow fell. It smelled of grave dirt and the sickly sweetness of rotting flowers, of old blood, and tainted meat. The discordant whine of the Eye hung in the stultifying air, like the thin, high scream of the factory whistle. As with Gideon and the other towns devoured by the King of Crows, everything here was dead, diseased, or dying. And Evie wondered what Jake Marlowe possibly thought he could claim in this world. What here was worth owning?
“Sam?” Evie called. “Theta? Ling!”
“Here,” Theta said. “Memphis?”
“H-here, Princess,” Memphis said, throwing his arms around Theta.
Evie let out a sigh of relief. Everyone had made it. She did not see Sam’s mother, and she hoped Miriam was all right.
“She’s okay,” Sam said, glancing at Evie. “I know she’s okay somehow.”
“How do you feel?” Evie asked the others. The extreme pain had ebbed to a dull tension, like a headache trying to come on.
“Better,” Jericho said. “A little odd.”
The others nodded. Ling did not have her crutches here, and Evie supposed it was because she and Henry had created a bubble of a dream for them to inhabit. Hadn’t Henry said that Ling could walk unaided in dreams?
The dead were everywhere, standing in the broken fields, not moving or thinking, staring off into nothing, a story without an end. There were thousands of them, too many for the land of the dead to house for long. Theta held her breath as a listless ghost woman, face eaten by rot, shuffled past in search of something that could not be named. Theta felt a touch of the woman’s restlessness inside her own soul. The dead woman stopped and sniffed but
, seeing nothing, moved on.
Theta exhaled. “Sam. Your power seems to be working.”
“For now,” Sam said. “Whatever we’re gonna do, we’d better do it fast, before Marlowe and the generals start invading—or those dead get wise to us.”
“Look!” Ling pointed to a long rift on the horizon. The giant, breathing wound stretched wider with each groan on its way to permanence.
“The breach…” Memphis said.
Henry’s eyes widened. “That’s what we have to heal?”
“Don’t be a baby,” Ling grumbled.
“How is it possible for you to insult me in two worlds?”
“Practice.”
The rift was a wonder to behold, though, like being present at the creation of a new universe, and Ling marveled that so much death and such new life could exist in the same place at the same moment.
“This is a lot of atomic energy,” Ling said. “If you could harness all that, the power it generated would be enormous.”
“So we’re existing in two universes at the same time?” Evie asked. She wanted to be sure she understood.
“Yes,” Ling said.
“And they’re connected?”
“Yes,” Ling said in an annoyed voice. “I don’t have time to teach a science class.”
“So if we destroy the Eye in this universe…”
“It should destroy it in our world,” Ling confirmed.
“And what happens if we die in this world?” Sam asked.
Ling swallowed hard. “As I said, it’s all connected.”
A palpable current ran from the Eye through the Diviners’ bodies and back into the land of the dead. Every second they spent here empowered the King of Crows and fed the widening breach. The longer they stayed, the more they were being threaded into this world. If they stayed too long, they might not have the power to get out again.
“Why aren’t we burning up, like the other Diviners did?” Theta asked.
“I imagine the dream state Henry and I created is keeping us protected for now, like being inside a womb. That along with Sam’s ‘don’t see me’ act.”
Henry gestured to the swirling, expanding breach. “At least it’s a womb with a view.”