Mr. Phillips was motioning for Sarah to sing. “Ladies and gentlemen, at this celebration of our great nation, won’t you join me in a favorite hymn?”
As Evie left the stage, some of the men at the expensive tables still booed her while their wives looked at her with contempt. And Evie realized that Sam had been right—no matter how much she tried to make herself fit, eventually, the real, smart-mouthed Evie would come bursting out of the confining party cake with all of her opinions and wounds on display.
Onstage, the Crusaders played Sarah’s signature hymn while she sang along in her sweet soprano: “Onward Christian soldiers, marching as to war, with the cross of Jesus, going on before…”
One by one, the people at the tables took up the song. They sang as one voice. Inside, Evie was crumbling. Tears coursed down her cheeks. Theta wasn’t singing. And neither was Woody. He offered Evie his handkerchief. “Tide’s turning, Sheba,” he said soberly.
As the song drew to its close, a man burst into the room, his eyes wild. His shouts couldn’t be heard above the din in the room, though.
“What? What’s he saying?” the guests repeated to one another until the man’s desperate cries could at last be heard.
“Ghosts!” he screeched. “Ghosts in the streets!”
WE WILL BE HEARD
An ominous fog bank spread across the far end of Wall Street, rolling slowly forward. From inside it came the steady thrum of marching feet and the clanging of chains—a phantom army on the move.
“What is that?” Woody asked from the steps below, his notebook open and his hand shaking.
“That thing people told us not to worry about,” Evie replied.
“Ghosts!” The murmur passed through the crowd, not yet hysteria.
“Stay here. I’m going to call in the troops,” Theta said, squeezing through the crush of curious swells and back into the hotel.
The dark, billowing cloud advanced another block, then stopped. For several long minutes, the ghosts, shrouded in gloom, kept their distance. An electric stillness filled the air, a storm held under a bell jar, just waiting to be unleashed. The crowd burbled with nervous excitement and growing dread: “What are they doing?” “I don’t know.” “Will they hurt us?” “Where are the police?”
Theta raced back to Evie’s side, breathless. “I called Henry and Sam. They’re grabbing everybody and coming down here.”
“How long?”
Theta gave a New Yorker’s shrug.
Sirens rang out, followed by the shriek of whistles as the police arrived. They pushed back the people and set up barricades, as if that could stop what waited in the fog.
“Ling! Over here!” Theta called, spying Alma helping Ling navigate through the gawkers lined up ten deep on the sidewalks. News had spread fast.
“I got here as quickly as I could. Mr. Leong will be upset when he doesn’t get his tea,” Ling said. “What is happening?”
Evie pointed to the end of the street.
“Are the others…?”
“On their way,” Theta confirmed. And not two minutes later, a taxi swerved to the curb, and out jumped Henry and Sam.
“’Scuse us, ’scuse us. Would ya move outta the way, pal?” Sam barked as he and Henry pushed through the crowd to join their friends.
“Where’s Memphis and Isaiah?” Theta asked.
“Uptown,” Henry explained, and Sam groaned. There was no telling when they’d show up. It was a long way through New York City’s infamous traffic.
More whistles sounded as the police fanned out along the barricades and aimed their guns at the menacing fog.
“Fire!” the captain called, and the streets echoed with tight pops of gunfire.
“Hold!” the captain shouted.
The streets smelled of smoke. The fog was still there, unchanged.
“Did we get them?” a policeman asked.
As one, the ghosts screeched. The sound, terrifying, echoed through the canyons of Lower Manhattan. And then they marched forward, terrifying the crowd of onlookers, who screamed and pushed. Some of the guests tried to run back to the hotel, sending others tumbling on the steps. It was chaos.
“We’ll be trampled!” Theta said, trying to help Ling to a safer place. But there was no safer place. The six of them stood in the middle of the street as the police fell back.
“They’re panicking,” Ling said.
“Probably because there’s a ghost army headed straight for us,” Sam answered.
A man in a tuxedo pointed to the Diviners. “Do something!” he shouted, and soon others picked up the call. “Yes, do something!”
“Everybody’s watching us,” Henry said.
“Might be a good time to show ’em what we can do,” Sam said. “To show ’em we’re the real McCoy.”
“Not without Memphis and Isaiah!” Theta said.
“Theta! Theta!” Memphis was running toward them, with Isaiah gasping at his heels. “What’s happening?”
Theta nodded toward the murky ghost army headed their way.
“How many you think?” Sam asked.
“Twenty, twenty-five,” Ling said.
Henry shook his head. “We’ve never tried to take out that many before.”
On the steps of the hotel, people screamed. “Do something! Save us!”
The ghosts were getting closer. Figures emerged in the murk, taking clearer shape.
“Slaves,” Memphis said. “The ghosts of slaves.”
The Diviners came together. Electricity sparked off the sides of the buildings and climbed up the front of the Stock Exchange. The people gaped in awe. “Did you see that? What is that? What are they?”
“Get ready. It’s gonna take a lot of energy to blast ’em,” Sam called.
Memphis stared at the iron shackles around the ghosts’ feet and necks. Something shifted inside him. “I… I don’t know if this is right,” he said to the others.
“But, Memphis, everybody’s watching us!” Isaiah said.
“Doesn’t matter if it’s wrong,” Memphis said. He took a step forward, heart beating fast as he addressed the ghosts. “You need to leave these people alone,” he tried. “Go back now. Go back to your graves.”
The ghosts spoke as one: “And if we refuse, Healer?”
“You… you know who I am?” Memphis asked.
“We know much.”
“Memphis…” Theta warned.
“Get rid of them! Destroy them!” the people shouted. Their voices were a frenzy. A bloodlust.
“Then we’ll have to send you back ourselves,” Memphis said to the ghosts.
“Would you send us back without knowing our story? We will speak. We will be heard,” the ghosts whispered in one groaning voice. “We know this street. We built it. There was the auction block where we were bought and sold. Where our children were torn from us. If we were to cry for ourselves, there would be no land, only an ocean of salt. And when we rebelled, they murdered us. They left our heads to rot upon sticks along Wall Street for all to see.”
The ghosts surged forward quickly and reached their hands into Memphis’s chest. He felt the cold spreading as their molecules were joined. His limbs shook like downed wires in a storm.
“Memphis!” Theta screamed, but Memphis was already under, dragged into the world of the dead.