The man with the muttonchops pushed back the curtain. “Put aside your dreams. It’s time to get to work, Wai-Mae.”
A man waited with his coat off. Evie knew why he was there and what Wai-Mae was expected to do for this man. She couldn’t stay in this vision any longer. She tried to break the connection, but it seemed the vision had something else to show her.
With a small grunt, she bit down on her back teeth as she traveled further under.
The filthy streets again. The muttonchop man dressed in a fine suit. Wai-Mae’s hand on the knife. Wai-Mae racing toward him, plunging the dagger into his chest again and again. The man’s blue eyes, surprised, shocked. The blood spreading across his white shirt, pulsing through his fingers. The man falling to the street. Police whistles. Shouts.
“Murder, murder,” Evie mumbled.
Evie could feel her own heart beating with the girl’s as she ran from the mob and down the steps into the basement of Devlin’s, into Beach’s pneumatic train station. She hid inside the stilled train car, beneath a velvet sofa, where she slept, and in her dream, there was the sound of men working. Wai-Mae opened her eyes only once, to see the light dimming down to nothing, but she was too weak to do anything but sleep.
Waking now. The gnawing hunger for opium. Evie gagged as Wai-Mae retched up bile and shivered. She staggered out of the car to find the tunnel bricked over. The dark was everywhere. Wai-Mae banged her hands against the brick, desperate. She slid down the wall. Evie felt the air thinning, making her head tight. Out. That was what Wai-Mae wanted. Out. Out of this terrible tomb. And the only way she’d been able to escape was through dreams.
Evie broke the connection and fell onto her knees in the dirt, gasping.
“Evil, you okay?” Theta gave Evie’s back a couple of hard thwacks.
“Ow! Quit it!” Evie said, scrambling away.
“I thought you were choking!”
“I’m… tryin’ a… breathe.” Evie gulped down a few lungfuls of air. “She came down here to hide,” Evie said, breathing heavily still. “But it was the day they closed up the station. While she slept there in that car, they bricked it all up. They buried her alive.”
“What a terrible way to die. All alone,” Sam said.
They fell silent as the horror and sadness of Wai-Mei’s death hit them.
“Did you get anything about how we get rid of this dame or her Ziegfeld Ghost Follies?” Theta asked at last.
Evie kept a hand at her neck to calm her racing pulse. “I can’t say for certain, but there was a feeling when I was under. This terrible place… I-I think it’s keeping her here. She can’t rest. We need to carry her bones out of here. She needs to be cared for.”
“A proper burial,” Memphis said.
“Fine. We’ll have a funeral. Where?” Sam asked.
“Trinity Church isn’t far from here. There’s a graveyard. It’s hallowed ground,” Memphis said.
“You think that’ll work?” Theta asked. “Jericho said each culture has its own beliefs.”
“Beats me. I’m a rookie at this ghost game,” Sam said with a shrug.
“We can’t leave her in this terrible place,” Evie said. “That much is clear.”
“Well, I for one am all for getting out of here. Memphis, help a fella out?” Sam said.
Carefully, they lifted Wai-Mae’s skeleton. Some of the bones fell into dust, but others remained intact.
“We can’t put these in our pockets,” Sam said.
Memphis took off his coat. “Here.”
Sam laid the bones inside, and Memphis carefully wrapped them into a bundle.
“Here,” Sam said, handing Evie the skull. “You can carry that. Merry Christmas.”
Evie’s mouth twisted in revulsion. “You’ve ruined the joy of the season for me forever.”