“Concentrate, please,” Evie said.
The card was cold, like before. It hadn’t been held in many years. Evie wondered if people were like that, too—if something in them died when they were denied affection for too long. A memory bubbled up: Evie was a child desperate for her mother’s attention. But her mother was busy with housework. Evie threw her arms around her mother’s waist. “I’ll keep you here in my cage!” she’d giggled. Her exhausted mother had a schedule to keep. Irritated, she’d pushed Evie away. “Evangeline, you wear me out!”
A great wave of loneliness surged inside Evie at this sudden memory. That was the trouble with object reading—she was open and unguarded. All the feelings could come flooding in, and none of her usual defenses—booze, parties, flirting, sarcasm—would keep them out.
She heard Jericho’s deep, sure voice: “Are you okay, Evie?”
“Fine,” she whispered. Begone, loneliness. I’ve no time for you.
Evie could feel the card’s barriers giving way and she leaned into it. Come on, show me who you are.… Its history began to come alive. First, there was the secretary who’d punched in the code. She was nursing a grudge against her sister for some small slight. Next, the messenger boy running the card to a new location. He wore short pants and suspenders and loved baseball. The warmth of his affection for the game spread through Evie. Every person who’d handled the card left behind emotions until the cards seemed as human as humans themselves. It made her think about the tubes and wires inside Jericho. The longer they were there, the more they became fused to his flesh, threaded to his organs until it was impossible to know what was man and what was machine. Humans infected all they touched.
Numbers and letters blinked fast behind her eyes, dizzying.
“We’re here with you. You can do this.” Henry’s voice in her head. Ling and Henry’s dream walker energy began to relax her, as if she were drifting off into a deep sleep. She needed to find the person who could read the code.
“Sam,” Evie whispered. “Can you help me see better?”
Sam’s hand was on her shoulder. She could feel him. And then, all at once, she broke through layers of old memories to Rotke Wasserman. Rotke knew what was on the cards!
Subject #9. Diego Perez. Mother: Maria Perez. Race: Negro (Dominican). Address: 155 W. 62nd St., New York, New York. Vitamin injections weekly. March 4, 1914. Age 5. Vivid dreams. Still wets bed. No abilities. September 22, 1915. Age 6. Levitated two pencils. Five seconds. October 5, 1915. Levitated coffee cup. Ten seconds. December 12, 1915. Levitated coffee cup. Twenty seconds. December 29, 1915. Headaches. Nosebleeds. Aural hallucinations. Sleeps for long stretches. Mother worried. Radiation therapy recommended, JM.
JM. JM…Jake Marlowe. Had to be.
Something flashed at the bottom of the card, but Evie’s mind couldn’t quite make sense of it. And then the card went dark.
“Hand me another one, please,” Evie said. It was coming faster now. She pawed through the remaining cards as if she were the machine itself. Small details poked through:
Subject #28. Michael Murphy. Mother: Eileen Murphy. Race: Irish.
Subject #67. Anna Schmidt. Mother: Hanna Schmidt. Race: German.
Subject #101. Israel Miller. Mother: Esther Miller. Race: Jew.
Evie raced through, searching for information: Vitamin injections. Vitamin injections. Vitamin injections. Disrupts radio signals. Hears spirit voices. Dream walks. Astral projection. ESP. Created ball of light in my presence. Telepathy. What she was seeing on these cards was astonishing. She wanted to know more but there was no time to linger. Already, she was pressing her body’s limits. Something was nagging at her, though. It was that line at the bottom of the first card. It had been added later, she could tell. And it had been added to the other cards as well.
“Evie. Not too long, okay?” Henry said. “Be careful.”
“Just one more,” Evie answered.
Subject #144: Sarah Beth Olson. Mother: Ada Olson. Address: Route 144, Bountiful, Nebraska. June 1, 1915. Hears spirit voices. Some prophecy. May 5, 1916. Mother reports that subject speaks to an imaginary friend, the man in the stovepipe hat. Mother is frightened by this. Girl has frequent seizures. Do not recommend proceeding.
The man in the hat! This girl had spoken with him. But why did they recommend not proceeding? There was no note added at the bottom of this card. There was a flash, and Evie glimpsed Miriam Lubovitch Lloyd. She had the same dark brows and amber-flecked eyes as Sam. Miriam did not look happy as she spoke to Rotke. “They are only children. We must protect them. I do not trust those men. I know Jake does not like me, a Jew.”
“But I’m a Jew, and he wants to marry me,” Rotke answered.
“There is an emptiness in his soul,” Miriam said. “He wants to use me to keep the Eye open. But I refuse. I refuse!”
“Evie? Her nose is bleeding.” Jericho’s voice.
“We should stop.” Sam.
“No. Just one more minute…”
What had been coded at the bottom of the cards? She had to know. The memory was close. She could feel it. She barely tasted the tang of her blood coursing over her lips and into her mouth. There it was! A final coded note on the card just as she’d felt on all the others: January 25, 1920. Subject deceased.
“Head back,” Jericho scolded, pinching the bridge of Evie’s nose. “You don’t want to start bleeding again.”
“They’re dead. They’re all dead,” Evie said in a nasal voice.
“What killed them?” Henry asked.
“What if the vitamin tonic that made us also makes us sick over time?” Ling posed.
Evie looked to Jericho. “Can you ask Marlowe?”
“Every time I’ve tried to talk to him about Project Buffalo, he’s refused.”
“We could always go back to your uncle and Sister Walker and ask them,” Sam said.
“No! I will not have anything to do with them. They can’t be trusted,” Evie said. Her head swam. She had pushed too far and now she felt awful. “Subject number one forty-four is still alive, though. At least, there’s no note on her card. Sarah Beth Olson. Bountiful, Nebraska. Oh. Oh, no. Ugh. I think I’m gonna be sick.”
Sam noted the look of disappointment on Jericho’s face and tried to hide his smile.
“I’ll help you to your room, doll,” Sam said, jumping up before Jericho could. It was petty on his part.
He didn’t regret it.
LITTLE FOX