Lair of Dreams (The Diviners #2) (50 page)

All afternoon, Evie searched for Sam. She even stopped by the museum, where she was surprised when Mabel answered the door.

“Hi, Pie Face. Is Sam here?”

“No. Do you want to wait for him?”

Over Mabel’s head, Evie spied Jericho lurking in the hallway. He saw her and walked back into the library without so much as a hello.

“No. Thank you. If you see Sam, will you tell him I’m looking for him and to call me either at the Winthrop or WGI?”

“Sure. Say, is everything all right?”

“I certainly hope so,” Evie said.

Evie made one last appeal via the radio at the end of the show. “This is the Sweetheart Seer with a message for Sergei—I’m sorry. Please come home. And by home, I mean the Knickerbocker.”

WGI was so ecstatic about the news that Sam was a Diviner that they insisted on hosting a party that evening at the Knickerbocker Hotel. The telephone operators and secretaries had spent the entire afternoon burning up the telephone lines, inviting every swell in town, as well as any reporter with more than an inch of column space. By eleven thirty, the hotel’s ballroom was packed, but Sam was nowhere to be found, and Evie’s heart sank.

As she stood listening to a portly man in a tuxedo drone on about the stock market—“Safest place in the world to put your money. Put it all in today. Every last cent!”—a bellhop delivered a note on a silver tray. “A message for you from Miss Anna Polotnik?”

Evie tore open the envelope. The note read, simply, “
Roof. Now.
”

“Won’t you excuse me?” Evie said sweetly. She sauntered gracefully from the room, then hiked up her dress and ran for the stairs.

“There you are,” Evie said, huffing and puffing as she came out onto the hotel’s roof. “I’ve been looking everywhere.”

“Congratulations. You found me.” Sam leaned forward, resting his forearms on the wide stone ledge. “How’s the party?”

“Oh, you know. Lots of hot air and silver gravy boats. Aren’t you cold?”

“Yes.”

“Do you want to go inside?”

“No.”

“Are you all right?”

“Sure.”

“Are you lying?”

Sam shrugged and stared out at the jagged city. It was clear he wasn’t coming down, so Evie propped open the door with her purse and went to stand beside him. Searchlights had been positioned down below, compliments of WGI. White-hot, they swept back and forth, bouncing off anything with shine.

“That time we went to the Tombs to see Jacob Call,” Evie said softly. “That policeman looked right at us. You put up your hand, and it was like he couldn’t see us. Like we were cloaked in some way.”

Sam didn’t answer.

“How long?”

Sam shrugged. “I never know. Depends on how suggestible the person is. I’ve had folks who last twenty seconds and some who come around quick—I’ve been caught with my hand in the cookie jar, so to speak. Usually, it’s about ten to twelve seconds. Long enough to grab the goods if you’re fast. And I am.”

“I meant how long have you been able to do this
don’t see me
routine?”

“Since I was a kid, maybe eleven, twelve? We’d moved to a tough part of Chicago. These older boys used to bully me, knock me around for being a Jew and for being scrawny and little. There was no way I could take ’em all on. But once I learned that I could do that,” he said, putting out his hand, “it was like hiding in plain sight. It made me feel
like I wasn’t this small, sick kid at their mercy. For the first time, I felt powerful.”

“Why didn’t you tell me before, when you knew about me?” Evie asked.

Sam let out a long exhale. “I needed it to be a secret until I found my mother.”

“But now it’s not a secret any longer.”

“No. I reckon it’s not.”

“Why did you do that today?”

“You’re honestly asking me that?” Sam looked at Evie, and suddenly, she knew.
Don’t see me
was more than Sam’s Diviner power; it was his entire worldview. It was how he’d gotten along in life, keeping hidden, only letting people see what he wanted them to see. His whole life was a sleight of hand. And he’d risked it all. For her.

“I… thank you for saving my life,” Evie said quietly. Her face was hot and her head buzzed. She was too afraid to face Sam, so she stood beside him, and side by side, they stared out at the twinkling city. “I’m so sorry about what I said to Woody. I promise I thought I was helping you, Sam.”

Sam let out a long sigh. “I know. Who knows? Maybe that rat can find something useful after all. I suppose that soldier fella was right out of his mind. Shell shock.”

“I suppose so,” Evie said. “The funny thing is, I know that soldier. At least, I’ve met him before.”

Sam turned his face sharply toward Evie. “What? When?”

“My first week in New York. And then again after my radio show the other night. I tried to put money in his cup and he grabbed my wrist—”

“Doll, you shoulda told me.”

“It was nothing—”

“That’s not nothing. Especially now.”

Evie turned and leaned her elbows against the roof’s stone ledge, lifting her eyes to the night sky. Smoke and steam from unseen sources
blew past in great billowing hiccups. Vague impressions of stars hid in New York’s perpetual neon haze.

“What happened after he grabbed your wrist?” Sam asked.

“He said, ‘I hear them screaming. Follow the eye.’”

“Follow the eye…” Sam said, thinking. “You think he meant that eye symbol we saw on my mother’s file?”

“Why would he know anything about that?”

“I don’t know. But it seems like a pretty big coincidence him saying that, then coming after you with a gun.”

A door opened somewhere inside the hotel and the sounds of the party drifted up from below: a woman’s braying laughter; the high, fast tempo of the orchestra. The door closed again, leaving only the ever-present hum of the sleepless city.

“You and Jericho…” Sam started, then he shook his head. “Nah. Forget it.”

He’d been about to ask if she still carried a torch for Jericho, Evie knew, and she was glad he’d stopped himself. She still had feelings for Jericho. But she had feelings for Sam as well. It was confusing and, yes—if she was perfectly honest—more than a little exciting to have two handsome fellas interested in her. But she wasn’t sure she wanted the responsibility of loving anyone right now. The truth was, she was afraid that when she fell hard for a boy, she’d lose herself along the way. She’d seen it happen to lots of girls. They’d go from drinking gin, driving fast cars, and boldly shimmying in speakeasies to these passive creatures who couldn’t make a move without asking their beaus if it would be okay. Evie had no intention of fading behind any man. She didn’t want to slide into ordinary and wake up to find that she’d become a housewife in Ohio with a bitter face and an embalmed spirit. Besides, things you loved deeply could be lost in a second, and then there was no filling the hole left inside you. So she lived in the moment, as if her life were one long party that never had to stop as long as she kept the good times going.

But right now, in this moment, she felt a strong connection to
Sam, as if they were the only two people in the world. She wanted to hold on to both him and the beautiful moment and not let go.

“Sam,” Evie said.

He turned his face to her. His mouth—why had she never noticed how perfect his mouth was? Impulsively, she kissed him once on those perfect lips and stood back, waiting. His expression was unreadable, and Evie’s stomach fluttered.

He shook his head. “Evie. Don’t.”

Evie’s cheeks went hot. For months, he’d been toying with her. And now that she’d put herself out there, he wasn’t interested. “Why not? Because girls shouldn’t kiss first?” She didn’t mean for it to sound so angry, but she was hurt and embarrassed. “Am I supposed to look up at you through fluttering lashes, all phony innocence, and wait for you to feel moved? I burned that rule book a while ago, Sam.”

“I don’t care about that,” Sam said. “Just… please don’t kiss me if you don’t mean it.”

All of Evie’s old fears bubbled up. She wanted to kiss Sam, but she was afraid of what that meant. What was right? Why was it so hard to know? “I mean it right now,” she said.

Sam kicked at a bit of gravel on the roof’s floor. “That’s always your answer, isn’t it? Don’t think about tomorrow.”

A melancholy undertow threatened. In a minute, it would drag away any hope of momentary happiness. “Now is the only thing you can count on, Sam. It’s all we really get,” she said quietly, and felt that it was the truest thing she’d said in a long time.

For a second, the searchlights fell across their scared faces. Then the bright, restless columns moved again. They reached into the heavens and disappeared, unanswered prayers.

Evie reached for Sam. She was interrupted by the arrival of the
New York Herald
’s society reporter. “There you are! We’ve been looking for you two lovebirds all over. Gracious, it’s freezing up here! Come down to the ballroom. Everyone’s waiting.”

Evie still wasn’t sure if Sam wanted to keep up the charade they’d started.

“Guess we’d better go make nice,” Sam said, offering his arm, and Evie took it, grateful.

“Guess we’d better,” she said.

Dutifully, Sam and Evie marched into the ballroom to applause. Beside her, Sam was skittish as a colt. Evie squeezed his hand and he squeezed back. “Just another con game,” she whispered, and the smirk he put on was just for her, she knew. People crowded around, patting Sam’s back, telling him he was a hero. Then the white-haired emcee quieted everyone.

“I know we’ve already had New Year’s. But let’s usher in the New Year… of the Diviners!” the man barked while people raised their glasses and cheered. “Ready? Here we go: Ten… nine… eight…”

Their counting became a swelling chorus of everything that was good, everything that was hoped for. All Sam and Evie could see was each other.

“Four… three… two… one!”

Confetti and streamers rained down from the ceiling. Horns and blowers bleated their tinny congratulations. The air was giddy with celebration. The little orchestra took up with “Auld Lang Syne,” everyone warbling along drunkenly to the familiar tune, looking sharp and smug, as if it were all so clever, because they were celebrating a new New Year they’d just invented. As if they believed they could rewrite time itself whenever it pleased them, in the same way they revised whatever truth dared to inconvenience them.

“We’ll take a cup of kindness yet for auld lang syne.…”

“Happy Diviner New Year, I guess,” Evie said, a little breathless.

“To hell with it,” Sam said and wrapped Evie in his arms, kissing her fiercely.

Ling and Wai-Mae sat among the soft flowers in the meadow. The sun was bright and warm. The hills glowed, a constant gold. But for the first time in many nights, Ling couldn’t enjoy it fully. As Wai-Mae talked happily of her impending arrival in New York and her wedding day, Ling’s misery increased. She needed to tell Wai-Mae what she suspected about O’Bannion and Lee, but she couldn’t bring herself to say it. She didn’t want it to be true—for Wai-Mae’s sake and, selfishly, for her own.

Waiting for her courage to find her, Ling kept her eyes trained on the village below, basking in the beauty of the sun glinting on the red tile roofs. “It’s pretty. Is it your village back home?”

“No. It is a place I saw once and remembered. A place I loved.” Wai-Mae blinked up at the canopy of leaves. “They had the most beautiful opera there. It was so magical! I had been very sad and homesick, but I sat in the balcony watching the opera, and for a while, I was not sad anymore. I escape to it in my mind whenever I need to.” As Wai-Mae poured cups of tea for them, she flicked a glance at Ling. “Perhaps you need an escape. What’s troubling you, Little Warrior?”

“I…” Ling’s mouth had gone dry. Looking into Wai-Mae’s guileless face, all of Ling’s usual honesty deserted her. Wai-Mae would be heartbroken.

“It’s about this sleeping sickness, isn’t it?” Wai-Mae said, and Ling didn’t correct her. Wai-Mae waved the thought away with a gesture. “You worry too much, sister. For now, leave your troubles behind.”

“I can’t leave them behind.”

“Of course you can! Troubles have no business here in our perfect world. If we don’t like something here, we will simply change it.”

Ling’s sadness edged into annoyance. “You don’t understand. People have died. These are my neighbors. This is my neighborhood. It’s making trouble for us.”

A tiny centipede crawled across Wai-Mae’s leg. “They hate the Chinese. They have always hated us. Calling us names. The men, so full of hate, until the night when they come for you,” she said bitterly, crushing the bug with her thumb and wiping her hand in the grass.

“What do you mean?”

Wai-Mae looked up. For a moment, her expression was stormy, but then she blinked, and her smile returned. “Oh, dear Ling, I don’t like to hear about such things, to know that they are upsetting you.”

“Sometimes we have to hear upsetting things.”

“No. Not here. Never here.” Wai-Mae smiled, letting the sun warm her face.

“Yes. Even here. Especially here, away from the noise.” Ling took a deep breath. She’d put the truth off long enough. “Wai-Mae, I went looking for your matchmakers, O’Bannion and Lee. I’ve asked my uncle and at the library. There is no such firm. They don’t exist.”

Wai-Mae’s brow furrowed. “What do you mean?”

“I believe there are some bad men bringing you over not to marry, but to…” Ling’s tongue couldn’t form the words. “To work.”

“Don’t be silly! My uncle arranged everything. Mr. O’Bannion will meet me at immigration,” Wai-Mae said decisively. “I will have a husband and a new life in New York.”

“I don’t think so. Wai-Mae, they mean to trick you. You’ll be a servant.” Ling swallowed hard. “Or worse.”

“Why are you saying these terrible things to me?”

“Because I don’t want you to be hurt! They’ll make you a…” Ling struggled with the word. “… a prostitute, Wai-Mae. You’ll never be married. You… you shouldn’t get off the ship.”

Two silent tears rolled down Wai-Mae’s cheeks. Her lips trembled. “It can’t be true. My passage is paid. My uncle arranged it.”

“I’m sorry,” Ling said.

“I won’t hear any more!”

“I’m trying to protect you!”

“I won’t hear it!” Wai-Mae stood up. She backed away, shaking her head. “No. You are wrong. I will be a wife to a merchant in America. A good man! A respected man!”

“Wai-Mae—”

Wai-Mae spun around, her mouth tight, her eyes hard. “You had no right to do that. To spy on me like an immigration official, questioning everything! I thought we were friends.”

“We are,” Ling said. She reached out for Wai-Mae’s hand, but Wai-Mae yanked it away.

“You will not take my dream from me!” Wai-Mae growled deep and low, her face hardening with anger, a transformation as startling as any they’d made themselves inside the dream. In the cup, the tea boiled over, splashing onto Ling’s hand. She gasped and dropped the cup as the liquid scalded her. An angry red welt rose up across the length of Ling’s thumb.

She’d been hurt inside a dream.

And Wai-Mae had done it.

Cradling her hand, Ling leaped up and marched toward the wood.

“Where are you going?” Wai-Mae asked, fearful.

Ling didn’t answer.

“But it isn’t time for you to wake yet! Let’s play opera. Or… or we can do more of your science, if you like!”

Ling did not turn around.

“Everything will be fine, sister! I know it will,” Wai-Mae said, trotting after Ling. “Please, don’t worry. Here—we can make something wonderful.”

Ling didn’t want to make anything else. The dream had turned sour. She kept walking.

“Come back, please!” Wai-Mae called. “You promised! You promised!”

Ling ran down the hill and through the forest, calling Henry’s name.

Henry and Louis lay side by side on the dock with their feet in the cool river, enjoying their last night on the bayou. His train was scheduled to arrive in New York tomorrow, and there’d be no need for these nightly visits anymore. Tomorrow couldn’t come fast enough for Henry.

“Henri, there’s somethin’ I need to tell you ’bout,” he said, suddenly serious, and Henry’s stomach tightened, like sensing the first drops of rain at a long-planned picnic.

“Sounds like an awfully serious talk to have without your shirt on,” Henry joked.

Louis sat up. “I shoulda told you ’bout it before. Concerns you.”

“Are you trying to tell me you’re not coming to New York after all?” Henry propped himself up on his elbows and stared out at the sun patches dotting the river. “You got the ticket, didn’t you?”

“That ain’t it,” Louis said, and Henry was relieved.

Louis took a deep breath. He twirled a fallen leaf between his fingers, making it dance like a ballerina. “Just before you left town, your daddy tried to get me to go away. He sent a man over to Celeste’s with a fat envelope fulla money and said it was all mine if I’d agree to leave town on the next boat up the river and never see you again.”

“Bastard,” Henry muttered. His father ruined everything. He didn’t want to be related to a man like that. How did you learn to be a man if the one who raised you was a bully who wasn’t worth your respect? “How much money?”

“A thousand dollars,” Louis said.

A sinuous fear wrapped itself around Henry’s heart. “I suppose a fella could live pretty well on that, if he had a mind to.”

“I reckon he could.”

Henry pulled up a handful of grass. “Did you take it?” He gave Louis a sideways glance and saw the hurt on his face.

“That what you think of me?”

“I’m sorry, Louis. I didn’t mean it. I didn’t really think you’d do that,” Henry said, cursing himself. He wished he could take it back.

Louis let out a long sigh and blinked up to the sky.

“Please, Louis. I’m sorry.”

Louis shook his head. “You know I can’t stay mad at you,
cher
.” He kissed Henry on the cheek, but it was halfhearted, Henry could tell. Louis was still nursing the wound.

Gaspard’s bark sounded up on the path. “What manner of trouble that dog got himself into now?” Louis said, hopping up.

Henry followed, but all he really wanted to do was pull Louis back down on the dock and kiss him. He felt lousy that they’d fought, and he wished he could take back what he’d said.

Gaspard dug furiously at the morning glories, barking and growling as if he’d cornered an animal.

“Gaspard!” Louis shouted. “Get away from there right now!”

“He’s just being a dog,” Henry said. “Probably got a bone there somewhere. After all, it’s his dream, too.”

“He shouldn’t be digging in there. Gaspard!” Louis whistled, but the dog wouldn’t budge.

Louis took a step forward onto the morning glories and stumbled. He put a hand to his head, hissing.

“Louis!” Henry righted him.

Louis stepped back. “I’m… I’m all right, Henri. Gaspard!”

Henry marched through the blanket of purple flowers and shooed Gaspard away. The dog bounded over to Louis. The spot where he’d been digging was dirt and nothing more.

“Henry!” Ling called from the path.

“Ling, what’s the matter?” he asked as she reached him. “Is Wai-Mae with you? Say, what happened to your hand?”

Ling’s voice shook. “I want to go back, Henry. I want to wake up.”

“You want me to wake you up, like last time?”

“No. Together. We need to go together.”

Henry looked over at Louis with regret.

“Go on,
cher
. I’ll see you soon enough,” Louis said. “You can’t refuse a lady.”

“Just one more day,” Henry said, hoping he hadn’t ruined everything.

“One more day,” Louis said.

“You need to wake Louis up,” Ling said, and from her expression, Henry knew not to argue.

“Louis,” Henry said, “it’s time for you to go on back to the cabin now. And then, in a few minutes, you’ll wake up, and when you do, you can watch the sunrise and have some chicory coffee before you catch your train to New York.”

Louis laughed. “All right, then, Henri. All right.” He climbed the steps to the cabin with Gaspard wagging along behind. From inside, Louis’s fiddle picked up the strains of “Rivière Rouge,” right where he’d left off, and then it went quiet.

“What’s got you so spooked?” Henry asked Ling.

“Not here. I’ll explain later. But I don’t want to be here anymore,” she whispered.

“But we didn’t set our alarms, darlin’. We’re stuck till we wake up on our own.”

“Then let’s see if we can find a different dream somewhere else,” Ling said. “Even if we go back to the streets where we come in. If we enter through Devlin’s, maybe we can reverse it.”

“Sounds reasonable. We just reverse our steps. Which way is the station from here?” Henry asked, looking around.

Through a gap in the trees, he spied the dark mouth of the tunnel.

Ling followed his gaze. “We’re not supposed to go in there.”

“Seems like it’s either through the tunnel or we wait until we wake up.”

“But one of us could wake up first, stranding the other one here,” Ling said, shivering. A question had been lurking in the depths of
her. Only now could it surface. “Henry, what happens if you die in a dream?”

Henry shrugged. “You wake up.”

“Even here? Even here, where everything’s real?” she said, feeling the heat from her burn.

Light pulsed against the velvety dark of the tunnel.

“It’s happening again,” Henry said.

The edges of the trees unraveled, as if there was some sort of energy surge.

“What is that?” Henry said.

“I don’t know,” Ling whispered, fear stealing most of her breath. Wai-Mae’s words swam back to her:
I’m frightened of that wicked place. If we do not trouble her, she won’t trouble us.

The lights were dimming, as if the dream itself were going to sleep for the night. The hideous growling had returned, though. It made Ling shiver.

“I want to know what’s inside. I need to know,” she said, despite her apprehension.

“We’re just reversing our steps,” Henry agreed. He offered his hand, and Ling took it, and together they stepped across the threshold into the dark.

“Why is it so cold?” Ling whispered, shivering as her breath came out in wispy puffs.

“Don’t know,” Henry said, his teeth chattering slightly. There was something tomblike about the tunnel, as if he and Ling were trespassing on a private crypt, and Henry was relieved to see the station glowing up ahead. “Not too far.” Henry pointed to the distant circle of golden light. “See? ‘Second star to the right, and straight on till morning.’”

“What nonsense are you talking now?” Ling
tsk
ed.

“
Peter Pan
,” Henry said.

“Just keep walking,” Ling said.

Ling stumbled over something in the dark, and when she crouched
down to see, the old bricks on the sides of the tunnel flickered, then steadied into a greenish glow, like a mercury-vapor lamp warming up.