by Libba Bray
“What’s wrong with you?” Theta asked when she returned to Evie’s room with ice. “You look like you swallowed a whole Mary Pickford movie.”
“Jericho,” Evie said on a sigh.
Theta shook her head, sighing. “Evil. Your romances are like a tennis match—Sam one day, Jericho the next. I can’t keep up.” Theta settled the ice bucket on the dresser and took out her flask. “Here. Ice. We’re making Poor Man’s Manhattans.”
“What’s that?” Evie said, putting out two glasses.
Theta smirked. “You whisper ‘vermouth’ over the glass, then fill the rest with whiskey.”
“Say, I like your Manhattans! But what’s the ice for, then?”
“For the headaches we’re gonna have later.”
“Ah.”
Theta raised her glass to Evie’s. “Here’s mud in your eye.”
They each knocked back a generous swig, and Theta welcomed the burn and the booze. She needed its courage. “Say, uh, you remember when you read my bracelet that time?”
“Sure,” Evie said, squinting. “You were running. You looked scared.”
“Because I was scared. I was running from my husband, Roy.”
Evie halted her drink at her lips. “Go on.”
“He wasn’t a good man.” Theta told Evie everything then. About Roy’s rages and the beatings. About the fire she started that she thought had killed him. About the menacing notes, the terrible shock of seeing Roy again after thinking he was dead, and Roy’s threats. By the time the whole story had come out, Theta had nearly finished her drink, and she wasn’t sure if it was the hooch or the confession that had made her feel looser.
“He was waiting for me outside the Bennington today.”
“Oh, no!”
“He wants things between us to be like they were, and he wants that meeting with Flo. I managed to stall him—told him Flo’s all broken up about a sick aunt—but I can’t do that forever. At some point, you run outta sick aunts.”
Evie slammed her glass down, sloshing whiskey over her wrist. “He can’t do that to you! Why, I’ll march over there right now and—”
“Nothin’ doin’, Evil. This is my mess to sort out.”
“But you don’t have to do it by yourself, Theta. You have friends.”
“I know. But you don’t get Roy like I do. He’s dangerous. You gotta handle him just right. I can’t let this blow up.”
Evie glanced sidelong at Theta. “Is that why you broke it off with Memphis?”
Theta glugged back a little more of her whiskey. She nodded, miserable. “I didn’t want Roy to hurt him. He hates me now—can’t say I blame him. But I miss him something awful.”
Evie scooted close and put her arm around Theta. “Oh, gee, honey. Did you tell Henry?”
“I don’t wanna worry him. He’s still getting over Louis. I just needed to tell somebody or I’d go crackers.” Theta stared at her hands. They were quiet, no hint of the raging fire coiled inside. “Sometimes I think maybe I would like to burn it all down. Start over. Make different rules for the world.”
Evie clinked Theta’s glass with hers. “Hear, hear. Well, once we stop supernatural evil from leaking into our realm and taking over.”
Theta shook her head. “You can’t stop evil. You can only push back as hard as you can. Another?”
“And how!”
They drank until they could blot out the ghosts. But they slept with the lights on.
Ling had taken on a dream-walking job from one of her neighbors in Chinatown, Mr. Moy. “I want to propose and I need to make sure this is an auspicious match. I want you to ask my grandmother,” he said, handing over his grandmother’s delicate ivory fan.
“That will be five dollars,” Ling said.
Snorting, Mr. Moy gave her three. “The gossip is that you have failed the last two times. The spirits didn’t speak to you. I am willing to take the chance that your luck holds. So, three for now. Two more if you deliver a message from my grandmother.”
That night, Ling entered the dream world with apprehension. The gossip was true. She’d not heard a peep from the spirits lately, and she was beginning to feel desperate. This was her gift. This was what she could do that set her apart, and as her muscles had atrophied, she had come to rely on that skill more and more to make her feel important. When she reached a place that she recognized as being a memory of Auntie Moy’s—the village in China she had left as a young bride—she called respectfully for the dead woman, her panic rising when her calls went unanswered. Then, suddenly, storm clouds moved in over the village. And along the edges, ancestral spirits shimmered. Their faces were grim. Auntie Moy was among them, and Ling felt great relief. She bowed her head with respect and opened her mouth to speak.
The spirits turned their backs to her, and then they were gone.
Isaiah was drawing when the vision came over him. He found himself standing at the crossroads near the farmhouse he’d seen before. But when he looked to his right, Conor stood in the cornfields, and behind him was a shimmering hole showing that terrible place where the King of Crows lived.
“Isaiah,” Conor called.
“I’m here,” Isaiah said. The wind whistled in his ears something fierce, and he heard a swarm of wasps screaming inside it. “Where are you?”
“I’m in his world,” Conor said. “I could go back and forth. That’s why I hadda keep my mind shut. So he couldn’t get in. The longer he holds me, the more of my power he can suck up. You gotta find the Eye.”
“We’re trying. Is… is my mama there?”
Conor looked over at Viola’s sleeping form under a quilt of feathers.
“What happens once we find the Eye?” Isaiah asked.
“You hafta destroy it. You gotta heal the breach so he can’t come in with the dead. Watch out for her.” Conor pointed behind Isaiah.
Isaiah turned and saw the strange girl with the crumpled peach hair ribbon. She was watching him from the sagging porch. In the vast dark woods stretching behind Conor, the night had a thousand of those burning eyes.
“Gotta go,” Conor said, and he wrapped his arms around his knees. “Onetwot’reef-f-four…”
And then the vision was gone. When Isaiah looked down, he’d drawn it all. Just like Conor.
THE CARD READER
“I know you don’t want me to leave the grounds,” Jericho said to Marlowe over a lunch of roast beef and potatoes. “Would you mind if I had a guest? I haven’t seen anybody under the age of thirty since I got here.”
Marlowe sipped his milk. “Who did you have in mind?”
Jericho concentrated very hard on cutting his beef. “Evie O’Neill,” he said, sneaking a surreptitious glance at Marlowe.
Marlowe was silent but frowning, and Jericho feared he had lost already.
Jericho cleared his throat. “I, uh, also wanted to bring Ling Chan. She wants to be a scientist, too. You’re her idol. She thinks the world of you!”
“That so?” Marlowe said, warmer.
“Yes, sir.”
Marlowe added another lump of sugar to his coffee. He squinted against the sun streaking through the dining room’s faultlessly clean windows. “Fair enough. Tell them to come up on Friday, then. I’ll send a car to meet their train. They can stay the weekend.”
“Really?”
Marlowe’s eyes twinkled. “Yes, really. Why not? We’ll need to continue with your training, of course.”
“Of course. Gee, that’s swell. Thank you,” Jericho said. He was ecstatic about getting to see Evie again and guilty for the deception.
“Go on, then. Give her a call before you burst out of your skin,” Marlowe said, wiping his mouth and leaving his napkin for a silent servant to carry away.
The Winthrop’s telephone operator informed Jericho that Evie was not at home. Jericho thought about leaving a message, but he wasn’t sure she’d get it. Instead, he tapped out a quick note, posting the letter straightaway. He couldn’t wait to show her how strong and muscul
ar he’d become in the short time he’d been at Marlowe’s estate. The knowledge that he’d see Evie again soon put Jericho in an excellent mood. He felt fantastic. Never fitter.
Once Marlowe was safely out of the house on exhibition business, Jericho set off to see if he could find the elusive card reader. He missed Evie, and he really wanted to be able to write to her and say, “Victory!” He wanted her to see him as a hero.
For some reason, he was drawn back to the long room on the second floor that had once housed the soldiers. He pushed at the door. It opened with a creak. Inside, soft afternoon sunlight pooled on the worn rug. Jericho passed down the middle aisle created by the beds lined up on either side of the room and let his fingers trail across the iron bedposts. He stood in a patch of sun. It was warm, and his mind drifted. Memories of Sergeant Leonard bubbled up. Jericho recalled the two of them racing around a track, Sergeant Leonard taking the lead, making Jericho catch him. He’d won easily, and a winded Jericho had been frustrated that he couldn’t keep up. Sergeant Leonard had patted Jericho’s shoulder. “One day, you’ll run circles around me, around all of us, kid,” he’d said. “Don’t patronize me,” Jericho had said and taken off running. It wasn’t until later, after he’d exhausted himself on the track and come back to find Sergeant Leonard still at the track waiting for him with a glass of water though it was dark, that he realized Sergeant Leonard’s sincerity and kindness. A thread of shame tightened around Jericho’s heart at the memory. Sergeant Leonard had been a good friend and a good man. If nothing else, he wanted to do well on Marlowe’s tests to honor his friend’s sacrifice.
Jericho’s heightened hearing picked up the sounds of the house: The hiss of the radiator. The gurgle of water in the pipes. The servants talking in another room, the housekeeper giving instructions on the evening service, Ames the butler: “… The book is called The Passing of the Great Race, and it’s everything to do with how our proud white race is doomed unless we can stop this tide of immigration and mongrelization of America.…”
“Ah, you’re all wet, Ames-y.” The Irish cook. Mrs. Farrelly. “We’re all immigrants here. Unless you’re an Indian or you got brought in chains.”
“I wouldn’t expect you to understand.” Ames.
“I understand plenty, you old coot.”
Jericho thought he heard a woman crying again. He strained to hear. Yes, there it was! But where? He stood in the center of the room, listening. A strange sensation of cold came over him, and then the room was filled with the hubbub of men talking, and one voice in particular whispering, “Check the closet.…”
With a gasp, Jericho whirled around. No one was there, but he’d clearly heard someone speaking. Hadn’t he? His heartbeat picked up and with it came a second memory: the moment when Jericho realized that Sergeant Leonard was tipping into madness, that he hadn’t beaten the Daedalus program curse after all. He’d found his friend sitting on the floor of the shower, staring at the tile wall.
“You hear that, Jericho?” his friend had said, water spilling over his twitching lips. “Do you hear that?”
“Hear what?” Jericho said. There was only the pounding of the shower.
“That.”
Two weeks later, Sergeant Leonard was dead.
“I am not going mad,” Jericho said. “It’s just the adjustment to the serum.”
Jericho approached the closet with great apprehension. When he tugged open the sticking door, a fluttering of moths whooshed out on a spiral of dust. Inside was a curious wooden cabinet. At first glance, he thought it was a sewing machine table. But on the right side were a series of typewriter-styled keys, some switches, and a lightbulb. To the left was some sort of automatic feeder chute. In the center was a sorter, and on top, a printing press with a paper roll attached. The machine was electric; a long plug hung from the back of it like a tail. U.S. DEPARTMENT OF PARANORMAL had been stamped on the side.
The card reader.
SHADOW MEN
The day was crisp and sunny, a last blast of winter before the thaw. Mabel hugged herself to keep warm as she watched the skaters taking the season’s last turn around the ice rink in Central Park. The April weather might be unpredictable, but Evie was not. Once again, she was late.
Mabel sighed as at last, here she came, cheerily waving a pair of skates in one hand.
“What took you so long?” Mabel grumbled as Evie plopped onto the bench and removed her shoes.
“I wasn’t sure what to wear,” Evie confessed. “If I die on the ice, I wanted my last outfit to be memorable.”
And that was the thing about Evie—she had a way of making you forget why you were unhappy with her to begin with, replacing it with a longing to be her pal always and forever. Evie shrieked and pawed at Mabel as they wobbled onto the slick ice.
“You’ll bring us both down!” Mabel shouted, but they were both laughing.
“Wouldn’t that be something? We’d be a tragic flapper ice sculpture in the heart of New York. A landmark, like the Woolworth Building!”
“The Woolworth Building isn’t going to break a leg if it falls!” Mabel giggled. “Now I understand why you sat in the café the last time we went skating and never touched the ice. Here.”
Mabel linked her arm through Evie’s and guided her carefully around the outer edge until they found their stride. Sunlight sparkled in the budding trees. Spring was imminent. Mabel could feel it in the air. The Secret Six would probably call this outing frivolous. Who but the privileged could afford to spend an afternoon ice-skating in the park? But the sun felt so delightfully warm on her face, and Mabel would make use of this time.
“Evie, I need your help,” Mabel said, her breath coming out in little puffs.
“What are we doing? Burying a body? Carrying out revenge upon your enemy of a thousand years? I am yours, Pie Face!” Evie thumped her breast and they teetered again.
“No more dramatic gestures, please,” Mabel begged. “There’s this woman I met, Maria Provenza. Her sister, Anna, disappeared a few months ago. Maria said that Anna could tell fortunes. She was a Diviner. And that these men came and took her away.”
Evie slid toward the railing, her arms out to grab hold. “Wh-what sort of men?”
“That’s the funny thing: She said they wore dark suits and lapel pins with an eye-and-lightning-bolt symbol.”
Evie nearly toppled over. “Shadow Men!”
“That’s what I’m thinking, too.” Mabel wiped a thin sheen of sweat from her brow before it could drip into her eyes and sting. “But then I started thinking, maybe you could read something of her sister’s and tell me what you get. This poor woman. Evie, if you’d seen her…”
“Anything for you, Ma—aaah!” Evie slipped and Mabel righted her. “Besides, I’m terrified of these little boots of death. Please lead me to safety.”
Evie took shelter at a table in the Bennington’s shabby dining hall while Mabel ran upstairs. When she returned moments later, Evie pushed a cup of tepid cocoa her way. “Same old Bennington. Drink that if you dare.”
“No, thanks.” Mabel signaled to the waiter, who brought her a coffee. She poured a thick coating of cream into it.
“Since when do you drink coffee?” Evie asked.
“There are lots of things I do now,” Mabel said, as if daring Evie to ask more, and Evie couldn’t help feeling that she’d missed something vital about Mabel these past few weeks while she was preoccupied with training and ghosts. She felt as if she should’ve been paying closer attention.
Mabel handed over Anna’s disturbing sketch. Evie turned the picture sideways and upside down. “Well, I can tell you one thing—Anna Provenza was no Picasso.”
“It didn’t make much sense to me, either. Some sort of ship?” Mabel suggested.
“Or a very fat spider.”
“But look, there’s the eye symbol.” Mabel tapped the spot where Anna had drawn it. “Maybe she was onto something.”
“Certainly worth a try.” Evie let her fingers drift ac
ross the sketch, but it was dull beneath her touch. Evie pressed harder, fighting the exhaustion of the past few nights’ activities. She caught something, a machinelike sound that reminded her of blood pulsing quickly. She couldn’t see where the sound was coming from; she only knew that it produced a feeling of absolute terror.
She broke away.
“Did you see anything?”
“Not really. Just a strange whooshing sound. But it was very frightening. Mabesie, I think we should go see this Maria Provenza right away,” Evie said. “And then, afterward, we could go to the Hotsy Totsy.”
“Yes to the first, no to the second. I don’t have time for nightclubs, Evie. I’m trying to change the world.”
“What do you think I’m doing?” Evie challenged.
“It isn’t the same thing,” Mabel said, and Evie was annoyed.
“Are you not allowed to dance while saving the world, Pie Face? Because that sounds dreadful.”
“Why do you always have to make a joke?” Mabel said, exasperated.
Evie sipped her cocoa and Mabel her coffee, and the distance stretched between them.
“Anyway, I can’t,” Mabel said. “I have a meeting with Arthur.”
Evie shook off her irritation and scooted forward, all excitement. “Another mysterious meeting. What are you not telling me, Mabesie? Or will I be forced to read something of his to find out?”
“Don’t you dare! And besides, who said you’re the only one allowed secrets, Mademoiselle O’Neill-ski?”
“But I don’t have secrets from you,” Evie said, the hurt seeping out. The coffee. Arthur. Secret meetings. Mabel had changed. And she hadn’t bothered to keep Evie informed.
Some part of Mabel was enjoying Evie’s discomfort. Yes, she wanted to say. I am so much more than you ever allowed me to be. More than you ever saw. But there was Evie, her pal, biting her bottom lip as she only did when she was trying not to let people know how vulnerable she was. Mabel softened. It was true that Evie had always been there to hear every one of Mabel’s secrets. It was Evie who’d always said that Mabel was the real star in the family, not her mother. Evie who had taken Mabel’s side in every argument. And Mabel desperately wanted Evie to know about her other life. What good was having a secret if you couldn’t share it?