by Libba Bray
“Adelaide…”
A cry clawed at Addie’s throat, but she didn’t dare utter it. Still. Remain perfectly still. Whatever you do, don’t look. Shafts of street light shone through the high basement windows. Behind her lay the elevator doors. Could she make it in time? And if she did, how long before salvation rattled down to her?
Addie gripped the knife in her shaking hand. “What a friend we have in Je… sus…” she sang in a voice fading to a whisper, her mouth too dry to furnish more sound as she moved carefully in the dark, sprinkling salt behind her as she did. He was somewhere in the room with her. “All our sins and griefs to bear…”
The elevator. She was close. Blood trickled down her arm and stained the fine lace cuffs of her nightgown. The salt stung in the wound. She’d made it to the elevator. With a shaking hand, she pressed the button and watched the golden arrow slowly ticking off the floors. Four. Three.
“Oh, please, please!” she whispered. Blood whooshed in Addie’s ears. She was faint with fear. She would not turn around. “Wh-what a f-f-friend…”
The elevator had stopped at one.
“Adelaide…”
Miss Addie gasped. She tried to keep singing. “Our s-sins and g-griefs to bear…”
“You’ve freed me at last.”
She pushed the button over and over.
“And now I’ve come for you, as I promised I would.”
Through the frayed gray curtain of her hair, Addie stole a glance over her shoulder.
Elijah.
Once, he had been the handsomest boy she’d ever known, with hair that turned buttery gold in summer. The thing shuffling toward her had the mummified skin of the grave. It peeled back from his mouth; his yellowed teeth appeared monstrous. Two maggots wriggled from his ears and fell to the basement floor with sickening plops. That once-lustrous hair was nothing more than brittle straw sticking out in clumps. She could smell rot on his breath as he crept closer.
“You made me.”
Adelaide Proctor backed against the wall. “No,” she whispered. Elijah’s feet scraped across the floor.
“Did you forget your promise, my love?”
His voice was cruel, taunting. Not at all as she had remembered.
“Every debt shall be paid now, for the King of Crows brings us through at last. Soon this world will belong to him. And you and I, Adelaide, will be together, forever and always.…”
“No!” Addie screamed, frantic as a child.
The elevator doors opened. With a great cry, Adelaide Proctor fell against Theta. “Go, quickly! Oh, please! Don’t let him get me!”
“Who?” Theta asked, her eyes searching the empty basement. “Miss Addie, there’s nothing there.”
Miss Addie lifted her head from Theta’s side. The lights had come back up. Her dead lover was nowhere to be seen.
But I saw him. He came back.
As the doors slowly closed, Adelaide spied a frayed break in the salt circle mere inches from where she’d stood moments earlier. Something had fallen there: the blackened petals of dead daisies.
A gift to her from Elijah.
A warning.
As the weak morning sun broke through the branches of Central Park, Theta sat in Miss Addie’s Morris chair beneath an old quilt while a parade of curious cats meowed and rubbed their noses against her legs. One curled up in her lap, and she happily scratched under its chin while it closed its eyes in bliss.
“How did you know to come for me?” Miss Addie asked. Her hands had only just stopped shaking. Her sister, Lillian, brought out a silver tray with a tea service comprised of mismatched china cups.
“This is gonna sound crackers, but a ghost told me to come. Mr. Bennington’s ghost. He said you were in trouble.”
“Oh, dear Reginald!” Miss Addie said joyfully, as if she were speaking of a favorite old friend.
“He said something about how you were the guardian of the Bennington. The, uh, the old witch, he called you.”
“I don’t think the old was necessary,” Lillian tutted.
“But we are, dear sister. We are,” Miss Addie said.
“Nevertheless,” Lillian sniffed. She poured the tea into three cups and handed one to Theta. “The Bennington was built for safety, you see. There has always been a Diviner in residence. Someone to be sure it would remain safe from evil spirits. Before Reginald died, he entrusted that duty to Addie.”
“I think I woulda passed on that little gift,” Theta said. “How come Mr. Bennington didn’t seem scary?”
“Not all spirits mean harm, you know,” Miss Lillian said. “Some want to help. Or they need help.”
“I’m guessing this Elijah isn’t one of those, though,” Theta said. “Who is he?”
Miss Addie’s face went sad. Her eyes seemed fixed on a point in time long passed. “He was my everything, my greatest love. And one day he was taken from me, cut down in the prime of his youth.”
“Gee. I’m sorry,” Theta said. She tried to imagine losing Memphis. It hurt so much she didn’t want to even think about it. She grimaced as she sipped her tea. “What kind of tea is this?”
“Dandelion! It will ease your dreams. It will help you come into your power.”
“I… I don’t have any power,” Theta said quickly.
“Yes, you do. I can always tell. I could tell about your friend who came to see me, the boy with the boater hat, and his green-eyed friend. And I could tell about your Miss O’Neill.”
“My sister has always been gifted,” Miss Lillian said. She squeezed Addie’s hand. “And I have been her protector.”
“You have great power,” Addie said to Theta. “You mustn’t be afraid of it, child.”
Ha, Theta thought. You don’t know what I can do. Then you’d be afraid, too.
“Tell me, do you have family near?” Miss Addie asked.
“I’m an orphan,” Theta said.
“You’re wrong.” The old woman blinked up at the ceiling, her fingers waving in the air. “You do have family. I see it in your aura. They’re… they’re all around you.”
“Sorry, Miss Addie. But if I got family, they’ve done a good job of hiding it for the past seventeen years.”
Miss Addie picked up Theta’s cup. She read the tea leaves, frowning.
Theta got nervous. “What is it now? You see something bad?”
“Some ghost does wait for you. This is a bad ghost. You must not let it win.”
“Okay. Now you’re scaring me.”
“We’ll read the signs. Come along, Archibald,” Lillian said. She pushed herself out of the chair and grabbed one of the cats and a curved knife. The cat squirmed in her arms, meowing his displeasure.
Theta jumped up. “Wait! What are you gonna do with that cat?”
“He’ll need to be sacrificed, of course. To read the signs.”
“Nothing doing!” Theta ripped the cat from Miss Lillian’s arms. She pressed him tightly to her chest. Archibald meowed loudly. “Nobody’s killing any cats.”
Miss Lillian glowered. “It’s what we’ve always done.”
“Yeah, well, I’m changing how things are done.”
Miss Lillian started to protest, but Miss Addie cut her off. “Very well. We could stand to change.” She smiled. “I do believe that Archibald likes you. You should take him home. He can be your familiar.”
“My what?”
“Your witch friend.”
Theta looked into the ginger cat’s green eyes. He meowed again and licked her cheek, and Theta knew she was going home with a cat. “Swell. Just what I need.”
“I’ve made mistakes,” Addie said, fidgeting with her lace handkerchief. “And I have tried to make amends for that. I’ve tried to do good in my life. I want to help you. All of you.” She pinned a brooch to Theta’s dress, a silver filigree heart. Dead leaves rattled around in the chamber.
“What’s in there?” Theta asked.
“Wolfsbane and rosemary, birch bark and sweet basil. It’s for protec
tion. And this”—Miss Addie removed her own silver locket and slipped it around Theta’s neck—“this is a bloodstone. It is for courage.”
“Miss Addie. I can’t take this. It’s yours.”
“And now it’s yours, my dear,” Addie said, squeezing Theta’s hand. “Bloodstone asks you to work for the good of others. It demands courage.” Miss Addie swept an age-spotted hand across Theta’s brow, and for a moment, Theta thought of her as the grandmother she’d always wanted but never had. “You’ve been very hurt, my dear. But you’re safe with me. And it’s high time to stop hiding from your power. It will find you out, you know, whether you accept it or not. Best to let it in, show it who’s boss.”
“I’ll think about it,” Theta said, cuddling the purring Archibald close. “But I’ll be counting the cats when I come over. There better be the same number each time.”
PUNISHMENT FOR THEIR SINS
The next day, the Diviners gathered as usual in the library. They were on edge, like the prophesied storm was already happening inside them.
“Good afternoon,” Will said as he and Sister Walker swept into the room, where the Diviners were seated around the long table, silent and scowling. “What’s the matter? Did the city run out of jazz?”
“Why did you breed Diviners as part of your Project Buffalo?” Ling blurted out.
Sam groaned and buried his head in his hands.
“Ling, what part of ‘keep our traps shut’ didn’t you understand?” Henry said under his breath.
Ling appraised him coolly. “I understood fine. I simply didn’t agree. It’s silly to pretend we don’t know when they have the answers we need.” She turned to Will and Sister Walker. “How do you expect us to work for you when you’ve been lying? You owe us the answers. You owe us the truth.”
Sam readied himself for further stonewalling, but to his surprise, Will nodded at Sister Walker.
“You’re right,” she said. “We do.”
Will started a fresh fire, poking at the kindling and newspaper until it roared to life. Then he took up his pacing, as if he could outrun the truth, while Sister Walker stood beside the fireplace quite still, her hands clasped at her waist like a schoolmarm ferreting out trouble.
“We thought we were helping. That we would make our country safer with the help of Diviners,” Will said at last.
“Yeah? By breeding Diviners?” Sam threw the punch cards on the table. “You made us out of some kind of crazy serum. You made us!”
“You made me,” Evie said with barely controlled fury.
“Evangeline, I… Where did you get those?” Will asked, pointing at the cards.
“And now you’re changing the subject!” Evie growled.
“It’s important. Please.”
“A room that used to belong to the Department of Paranormal down in the basement of the post office. Evie and I broke in,” Sam said.
Will blanched. “Did anyone see you breaking in?”
“No,” Sam said. “Why?”
Will let out a deep breath. “Because… because that was a government office and you could be arrested.”
“Still waiting for that answer,” Sam demanded.
“Yes, we all are,” Evie chimed in.
“We thought we could create a generation of extraordinary Americans with extraordinary powers.” Will sagged into one of the club chairs. “We thought we were doing something good for the country.”
Sam was starting to piece together what he’d been trying to ignore. “My mother was sick with me on the boat over from Russia. Rotke singled her out at immigration. Is that how you picked your subjects? Did you camp out at Ellis Island waiting for all the immigrants coming through?”
“We did choose from immigrants, yes,” Sister Walker said. The fireplace lent an otherworldly glow to her cheekbones.
“Would you tell them they couldn’t come into the country if they said no to your little ‘vitamin tonic’?” Sam spat.
“It wasn’t just immigrants.” Memphis’s voice shimmered with anger. “You went after your own people.”
Sister Walker glared. “Did you want to be left out of the new America? Or should those special powers belong only to white folks?”
Memphis had never felt so conflicted. He was appalled by Sister Walker’s choices even as he understood them. “What about Isaiah? My mother wasn’t in the program by the time he was born. How did he…?”
“Sister?” Isaiah prompted.
For the first time since they’d arrived, Sister Walker seemed at a loss. She lifted the poker from its stand, and, though it needed no help at all, she stoked the fire, staring into the flames as she spoke. “It appears to stay in the cells. A mutation that can affect future children.”
“What else does it do to the cells?” In Memphis’s mind, he saw his mother’s gaunt face and cracked lips as she stared up at the ceiling, the cancer eating her up. She had been only thirty-five.
Sister Walker returned the poker to its proper place. “We don’t really know,” she said softly.
Memphis balled his fists at his sides. “You shot our mothers up with this stuff, and you didn’t even know what it would do?”
“We had to be willing to take certain risks—”
“Take ’em yourself. Leave us out of it!”
“Did they know?” Henry said with a rare flash of anger. “Did you tell our mothers what you were doing? Or did you lie to them?”
“We felt it best to keep it quiet,” Will said. “We told them we were giving them vitamins to help with their pregnancies, which was true. Many of those women would’ve lost their babies without—”
“Stop defending it!” Evie said, leaving her seat and coming to stand beside Henry. “They’re human beings, Will—women, not things! You experimented on them—on your own sister—and you didn’t tell them!”
“Not intentionally.”
“What does that mean?”
Will kept his eyes trained on the Persian rug.
Sister Walker’s voice was church quiet. “Will.”
“No,” Will whispered.
“For the last time—tell us the truth!” Evie demanded.
“I administered the formula to James when he was a child!” Will admitted.
Evie sank into a chair again. “You what?”
“He was sick. Pneumonia. The doctors thought… he wasn’t expected to live and Jake had developed the tonic.…” Will raked a hand through his hair. “So I gave it to him. His recovery was miraculous. James was the proof Jake needed to move forward with Project Buffalo.”
“Subject zero. Zenith, Ohio,” Evie said numbly. The first thumbtack in the map they’d seen was her own brother. Evie’s eyes stung. She narrowed them at Will. “What about me?”
“That was a mistake.”
Evie flinched at the word mistake.
“The tonic. I’d left it behind. Your mother was already expecting you. She’d had several miscarriages after James. She figured if the tonic had made James strong and healthy, then… so she…” Will looked down at his shoes. “I didn’t know until she was well along with you. You said you wanted the truth, Evangeline. But truth is complicated.”
Evie slapped a hand down on the table. “No. It isn’t complicated. It’s very simple. You experimented on human beings and we are the results. What’s left of them, anyway. That board we saw had thumbtacks all over the country. One hundred and forty-four of them, to be exact. So, where are the rest?”
“Some of our subjects simply never developed any powers,” Will said. “It turned out that it was actually very hard to make Diviners.”
Theta narrowed her eyes. “You said some didn’t develop powers.”
“You don’t seem to understand: Once they shut down the department, that was the end of it. We never saw the files or the subjects ever again. We were finished,” Will said. “We don’t know what happened to the others. For all we know, their powers didn’t take and they’re out there now, living perfectly ordinary lives wit
hout a lick of connection to the supernatural.”
“Well, somebody didn’t think it was finished,” Sam said. “And I’m pretty sure that those somebodies have my mother. And now they’re going around killing people who had anything to do with Project Buffalo. You remember a fella named Ben Arnold?”
“I have read my history books, Sam,” Will snapped.
“Wrong Ben Arnold. This one was my informant. Except now he’s dead, right after he told me a buncha stuff about Project Buffalo. And his death notice was slipped under our door at the Bennington.”
Will paled. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
Sam snorted. “Why didn’t I tell you? Oh. That’s rich. You’re the ones who’ve been keeping secrets about us from us and telling us to trust you!”
“All right! Now you know.” Sister Walker marched forward and planted herself in front of the Diviners. “We can’t undo the past. But we are here now. If you truly want to help your country, you’ll move past this. We have work to do to save—”
Memphis leaped up, voice thick with scorn. “Move past this?”
“You’ve got some nerve saying that—” Sam said, joining him.
“Don’t yell at her,” Ling snapped.
“How ’bout you don’t tell me what to do!”
Will came forward now, hands up. “Now, wait just a minute—”
“Hang your ghosts!” Henry growled. He was out of his seat now. They all were. “You’re liars!”
The Diviners had gathered, without realizing it, in a tight huddle, nearly nose-to-nose, arguing, their voices rising over one another:
“—What choice do we have?—”
“—I don’t like being lied to—”
“—Easy for you to say—”