The slightest crease appeared in Sarah’s normally serene brow. “I can’t help but wonder if these terrifying apparitions are signs from the Lord that we should return to old-fashioned values. And turn away from Diviners.”
Sarah pointedly ignored Evie and looked toward those tables of overly powdered rich women and the reporters furiously jotting down her words. “It’s all very entertaining to read secrets in a handkerchief or ring, I suppose. But dancing in nightclubs won’t fill the bowls of the hungry. Telling fortunes above a tea shop won’t help the man who’s out of work or worried about losing the family farm. There’s only one power I believe in, only one true Diviner, and that is Jesus Christ Almighty.”
“Sounds like you’re taking a page from Jake Marlowe, Miss Snow. He’s not including Diviners in his Future of America Exhibition. He says they’re un-American.” Harriet cast a furtive glance Evie’s way.
I’ve been set up, Evie realized.
“I’m afraid I must agree with Mr. Marlowe,” Sarah said with a gentle shake of her head. “These are frightening times. Americans are frightened of threats from without and within. I can’t help but wonder: What if any of these so-called Diviners were anarchists? What if their loyalties were not to America first? Why, with their special powers, they could be very dangerous, indeed.”
“Say, I hadn’t thought about that,” one reporter muttered, taking down notes.
Evie knew this jaded lot; most of them had a secret flask and a betting form in each pocket. They weren’t usually the sort to fall for this, but not one of the reporters pushed back.
Sarah beamed. “But here’s our Mr. Marlowe now! I’m sure you’d much rather hear his thoughts than mine. Jake, join us, won’t you?”
Sarah beckoned Marlowe, and the crowd erupted with cries of “Speech! Speech!” Evie could feel the night slipping away from her. The crowd sang “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow” until an abashed Jake Marlowe took the stage. Sarah laid her hand on his arm and gazed up at him with adoration again, and Evie wondered if she practiced that expression in her mirror each night as she slathered on her cold cream.
“I didn’t know you went in for that old-time religion, Mr. Marlowe,” a reporter said.
“Well, I didn’t realize just how pretty some of God’s missionaries were,” Jake said, and Sarah pretended to be embarrassed, but Evie knew she loved it. The audience loved it, too.
“When’s the wedding?” someone shouted to much laughter. Sarah and Jake were giving them quite a show.
“Like Miss Snow, I care very much about this country,” Jake said, turning serious again.
“I care about our country, too!” Evie said feebly. She put extra polish on the silver-tongued vowels she’d been practicing an hour each day, but the whiskey was catching up to her. Her words weren’t as crisp as she’d like. “Diviners help all sorts of people. Why, just last week, a little girl came to me with the collar of her dog. Poor little thing was all brokenhearted. I got a read off the collar, and within the hour, she’d found little Fifi.”
“Our lady of lost pets,” a reporter joked just loud enough to be picked up by the microphone. This got a roar of laughter from everyone, and Evie’s cheeks burned. She also wished her head weren’t quite so fuzzy. Woody’s booze had been much stronger than her usual. She shouldn’t have drunk it so quickly on an empty stomach. It had hit her hard and fast.
“My brother died serving this country,” Evie blurted out, and immediately regretted it.
There was a glint in Marlowe’s eye.
“Say, weren’t you and Miss O’Neill’s uncle once best friends?” a reporter asked.
It was the first time that Jake Marlowe’s smile faltered. “Once,” Jake said meaningfully. “But we’re very different fellas. He has an obsession with our history, with our ghosts.” Jake Marlowe shook his head. “We’re a country of the future. We’re not haunted by anything.”
“But, Mr. Marlowe, they say that those who don’t heed the lessons of the past are doomed to repeat them.”
“Not if they’re Americans!” Marlowe said, the microphone echoing his words into the crowd in split-second waves that met with thunderous applause. “But these Diviners, well, what if they could know secrets about us they shouldn’t? I think that’s a real threat. I’m afraid I find the entire idea of Diviners unseemly. And Un-American.”
Evie couldn’t hold herself in any longer. “I hear the Ku Klux Klan feels the same way. So you’re in fine company, Mr. Marlowe!”
There were gasps in the crowd.
“Uh-oh. Trolley’s off the tracks,” Theta whispered to Woody at the back of the room.
Onstage, Marlowe’s eyes glittered with something hard. Seeing his expression was like hearing a shot half a second before seeing the gun. “Is that so? From what I hear, your brother wasn’t a war hero but a deserter.”
“That’s a lie and you know it!” Evie slurred.
“What did she say?”
“She called Jake Marlowe a liar!”
“The nerve!”
“Terrible girl.”
Terrible girl. Evie might as well have been back in Ohio, listening to the small-minded gossips. That nasty smallness was everywhere, it seemed. The whiskey had been a mistake. It had made her dizzy. It had also made her bold.
“You know what happened to my brother,” Evie said through clenched teeth. “It was you. You and the Founders Club and those terrible Shadow Men and—and Project Buffalo!”
“Dammit,” Woody muttered under his breath.
Jake smirked. “My, even the United States Army was in on this supposed conspiracy? It seems I’m in excellent company.”
The room roared with laughter. At her.
What could Evie say? That they had a telegram proving James’s death? That was a lie. She was telling the truth, even if she had absolutely no proof of it. It was her word against his, and he would win.
“James was no deserter,” was all she could say. Her face was hot.
“I would have liked to have spared your poor parents the truth, but very well, Miss O’Neill. You’ve pushed me to this: Your brother, James O’Neill, was a deserter. He was shot and killed trying to desert his post by a real war hero, Luther Clayton. And now Luther Clayton is dead. Why, if I were as conspiracy-minded as you are, Miss O’Neill, I might suspect that a Diviner with a radio show paid a poor, shell-shocked veteran to stage a shooting just to keep her in the public eye. And then I might wonder why that poor soldier died after that same Diviner visited him.”
Evie was reeling. “That isn’t true and you know it!” She grabbed for the microphone and stumbled, nearly tumbling off the stage, until Sarah righted her. She sniffed, frowning at Evie.
“Why, Miss O’Neill,” Sarah said in a whisper she had to know would be picked up by the live microphone. “Have you been drinking?”
The audience was booing Evie openly now. “Get her off the stage!”