There was a knock at the door, followed by a series of progressively more urgent knocks.
“I knew she’d come!” Mabel hurried down the hall and opened the door not to Evie but to a bedraggled Ling.
“Oh. If you’re here for the party, I’m afraid you’re early,” Mabel explained.
“I’m looking for Henry DuBois. I’m a friend of his. I tried his apartment, but he wasn’t answering. Then I remembered that the Diviners exhibit was opening tonight, and I hoped… Please, may I come in? It’s urgent—”
A taxi screeched to a halt at the curb and Theta jumped out, still in her stage makeup and costume. She tossed money at the cabdriver through the passenger window and shouted, “Keep the change!”
Memphis crawled out from the backseat, holding Henry in his arms.
“What’s the matter?” Mabel asked as they reached the steps.
“It-it’s Henry.” Theta sputtered, wild-eyed. “I came home and the metronome was going. He’s dream walking. But look—” Theta pointed to the faint red blisters forming on Henry’s neck. “I can’t wake him up. I think he’s got the sleeping sickness.”
Henry’s lips were parted; his eyelids twitched. Another mark bloomed on his skin.
“Should I call a doctor? Should I call my parents?” Mabel asked.
“A doctor won’t help. Neither will your parents,” Ling said. “It’s her. She’s got him. You’d better let me in.”
The angry wind howled at the windows and across the roof of the museum as Ling sat in the library among strangers while the dreaming Henry lay on the couch, precious minutes ticking by.
“My name is Ling Chan,” she started. “I’m a dream walker.”
“The other Diviner,” Mabel said.
Ling briefed everyone about her walks with Henry and all they’d seen and experienced there, from the Beach Pneumatic Transit Company to the strange loop they’d seen each time with the veiled woman. She told them, too, about the Proctor sisters’ revelations to Henry, and what she’d learned about the veiled woman haunting the site of her past and the dream machine she’d been building brick by brick, ghost by ghost, a grand architecture of illusion meant to keep painful memory at bay. “Henry is in trouble. He needs help. Our help.”
“I’m confused,” Mabel said. “Your friend Wai-Mae is actually a ghost, the veiled woman—they’re one and the same?”
Ling nodded.
“So she doesn’t even know she’s a ghost,” Mabel said, mulling it over. She looked to Theta. “It’s like what Dr. Jung talked about—the shadow self.”
Sam whistled. “That’s some shadow. Mine just makes me look taller.”
“She doesn’t really know what she’s doing,” Ling said.
“Horsefeathers!” Theta’s eyes glimmered. “That lie’s been around since Adam. She knows. Somewhere, deep down, she knows. I want her dead.”
“She’s already dead,” Sam said.
Theta glared.
Sam put up his hands in surrender. “Just making a point.”
“You said the station was for Beach’s pneumatic train? You’re sure?” Memphis asked.
“Yes,” Ling said.
“That mean something to you, Poet?”
Memphis reached into his coat for his poetry book. “Isaiah asked me about it. In fact, he even drew a picture of it. Isaiah’s my brother,” he explained to the others as he opened the book to Isaiah’s drawing of Beach’s pneumatic train and the glowing wraiths crawling out of the tunnel.
“That’s it,” Ling whispered. “That’s where we go each night. How did your brother…?”