“Good night, my girl,” her mother said, kissing her forehead. “Sweet dreams.”
Ling lay in bed staring at the ceiling. Just before one thirty, she took Henry’s watch in her hands, letting its steady tick lull her into a trance, her green eyes growing heavier, until she fell deeply asleep. She woke inside a dream, aware of everything around her. A large house loomed in the distance like a many-roomed castle of the sort she’d seen in library books about English manors.
“You jake?” Henry said, making her jump.
“I’ve told you not to sneak up on me,” she said.
“Just keeping you on your toes. Wouldn’t want our dream walks to become boring.”
The laughter of happy children echoed through the dreamscape.
“Do you hear that?” Ling asked.
Henry nodded.
“Come on,” Ling said, running over the pine-needle carpet beneath their feet. Here in the dream world, she could run and walk and jump, and for the first few minutes, she reveled in the ease of movement. Ever since she and Henry had begun to dream walk together, the dreamscapes had become much more vivid. At first, Ling had chalked it up to the enchantment wrought by the supernatural sleeping sickness that had terrorized New York only a few weeks earlier. But it seemed that the new power Ling and Henry had sparked during that time hadn’t completely waned. Even now, she could smell the spicy pine and feel the suggestion of a cool breeze coming from the forest to their right.
“We’re inside Evie’s dream,” Henry said. “I’ve been here before.”
“Me, too. Once,” Ling said.
“James? Where are you?” Evie called, moving through the trees, her hands out in front of her as if she were feeling her way through fog.
“That’s her brother she’s calling for?” Ling asked.
Henry nodded. “She’s never really gotten over his death during the war. They were very close. She dreams about him a lot.”
“James!” Evie called again, and it sounded as if her heart would break. She disappeared into the forest. The trees fell away like a painted sheet tugged quickly from a line. Henry and Ling stood on the lawn of the great house now. The joyful laughter of children echoed across dream time, and then, one by one, the children winked into existence on the lawn, where they hunted for brightly colored eggs, dropping them into their baskets as they went.
“Easter?” Henry said with a smile. “I love Easter! Actually, I love ham, and since ham is the food of Easter, by definition, I love Easter.”
“You should come for Easter at my house, then,” Ling said. “It’s all pig. Chinese pork and Irish ham. You’ll be trapped watching my cousins, Seamus and Liam, eat, though. They’re barbarians. You can actually hear them chewing. It sounds like a gravel truck filled with spit.”
“You’re really selling me on Easter at your house,” Henry deadpanned, but Ling was frowning.
“Henry, look at the children.”
They were lined up on the lawn, their heads cocked toward the sky as if they were waiting for a message. But around the edges, they shimmered.
“Are they…?” Henry started.
Ling nodded. “They’re all dead.”
The Easter eggs cracked open. Snakes slithered out into the browning, curling grass.
“They never should have done it,” the children said.
A giant hand pushed the skies apart. It was made of thousands of dark, screaming birds. The hand reached toward the children as if to scoop them up.
“What is that?” Ling said.
“We’re not waiting to find out. Run,” Henry said. He had just grazed Ling’s fingers with his own when the scene shifted like machinery, sending them toppling through layers of dream time. When everything settled, Henry was alone in a room he didn’t recognize. It reminded him of a hospital except that there were bars over the windows. There was a piano in the corner.
“At least there’s a piano,” Henry said, sitting to play. “Ling Chan, Ling Chan, oh, where can you be? I’m lost here without you and it’s mighty… spook… y.…”
“You should go.”
Henry nearly jumped off the piano bench. There was a boy in the room. He was skinny, with dark hair and eyebrows. He wasn’t fully awake like Henry. But he was aware of Henry’s presence somehow. And in the corner was a man in a wheelchair, his back turned toward Henry. The man in the wheelchair was dreaming, Henry knew. And he talked in his sleep: “The time is now. The time is now. We are the one forty-four!”
“He’ll be looking for you,” the boy said, drawing Henry’s attention again. “He’s looking for all of us. You should go now. Before he sees you. Before he finds you.”
“Who?” Henry asked.
The boy held out his palm. In the center was the faint outline of a symbol Henry had seen many times in his dreams: an eye with a jagged lightning bolt underneath.
“The man in the hat,” the boy said. “The King of Crows.”
RISING STARS
As Evie entered the radio station the following day, a group of whispering secretaries scattered to their typewriters, leaving one unlucky girl to take the lead.
“Mr. Phillips wants to see you, Miss O’Neill,” the secretary said, averting her eyes.
With a knot in her stomach, Evie approached Mr. Phillips’s imposing office. Usually, she loved coming in here. She thrilled at being up so high—there were no buildings this tall in Zenith, Ohio—and looking through the corner windows at the city spread out like a modern kingdom.
“Eevvieeee!” Mr. Phillips said. “Come in and take a seat.”
Evie perched on the edge of a chair as Mr. Phillips laced his fingers together and looked her straight in the eye. “Evie. You know I think you’re strictly top-drawer, don’t you? And your show has been a terrific asset for WGI.”
“Gee. That’s swell, then,” Evie managed. Listening to Mr. Phillips’s speech was like watching storm clouds rolling in and knowing she’d forgotten her umbrella.
“But it seems that not everybody feels as I do. Pears soap may be switching their advertising sponsorship to Miss Snow’s program.”