“Yes, you did. You did tell me that.” Bill’s laugh came out like soft cat hisses. “Why, I reckon if you had the healing power on you, you’d put those hands on poor old Bill Johnson and heal up his sight, wouldn’t you, now?”
Memphis’s stomach tightened. He’d never thought about healing Blind Bill. That seemed too great a miracle to attempt. In fact, since healing Isaiah, Memphis hadn’t quite worked up the courage to try again. What if he couldn’t do it a second time? What if there were limits, like a genie in a bottle granting only three wishes? What if it turned sour, like it had with his mother, and he hurt someone? Memphis needed an opportunity to work in secret, in small ways. Easing a scrape here or a sore throat there wouldn’t draw much attention. But giving a blind man back his sight? That wasn’t the sort of healing that went unnoticed.
“You would do that for old Bill, wouldn’t you?” Blind Bill asked again. The playfulness of his tone had vanished.
“Isaiah, Memphis, wash up for supper now!” Octavia called from inside.
“Yes, ma’am!” Memphis called back, grateful for his aunt’s interruption. “Coming, Mr. Johnson?”
“You go on ahead. I’ll be in shortly.”
When he heard the door close behind him, Bill sat for another minute on the front stoop and tilted his head up toward the sky, which he could only see as a dark, grainy impression.
That would change soon, if it all worked out right.
Somebody had healed Isaiah Campbell as the boy lay in that back bedroom at Octavia’s house all those weeks ago. Somebody very powerful. When Bill had put his hands on the boy’s head, trying to see into his Diviner mind in the hope of getting another lucky number to ease his gambling debts, he’d felt the energy in the boy’s body immediately. It had traveled up Bill’s arms and into his own body, till it was too much, and he’d had to let go. That was when he noticed the change in his vision. It was very small—where there had been total darkness he now saw faint, blocky shapes, like looking through several layers of gray gauze. But it had been enough to let him know that it was possible: He could be healed. He could see again. And if he could see again, he could get revenge on the people who’d taken his sight from him in the first place.
Diviners were everywhere these days, it seemed. But Bill was fairly certain there was only one person who had the gift to do that sort of healing, only one person desperate enough to try it. A brother’s love was strong, and the Campbell brothers’ love was stronger than most. It was clear that Memphis would do anything to protect Isaiah, even lie to Bill about his own abilities. Fine. If Memphis Campbell wanted to play the rabbit and hide in his warren, then Bill would play the fox and wait him out. Memphis would surface in time. And Bill would be right there waiting.
And if not, well, he might have to smoke the rabbit out.
Sometimes a child who’d had one fit suffered another.
It happened all the time.
Nearby, a crow cawed, making Bill jump. “Go on, bird! Git! Shoo!”
It squawked again, passing so close to Bill’s head that he gasped at the suddenness of feathers against his cheek like a slap.
Theta waited impatiently for Henry on the corner of Broadway and West Forty-second Street. At last, she saw him sauntering up the street, his beaten boater hat perched on his head. “There you are! Come on, kid. You’re gonna be late.”
She linked her arm through Henry’s, and the two of them hurried as best they could in the bustle of Broadway, past streets housing the many music publishers of Tin Pan Alley, till they came to the address they wanted. Henry stared up at the four-story row house.
“Bertram G. Huffstadler and Company, Music Publishers,” he said on a shaky exhale.
“Don’t have kittens, Hen. They’re gonna love you.”
“That’s what you said about Mills. And Leo Feist. And Witmark and Sons.”
“Witmark and his Sons are a bunch of chumps.”
“They’re one of the biggest music publishers in the biz.”
“And they didn’t publish you, so they’re chumps.”