In her hotel room, Evie paced, stopping only when she realized she was acting just like Will. Where was Sam? He’d promised to be there by ten, and it was now nearly ten thirty.
She was furious with him. And worried. Once upon a time, Sam might’ve run off, chasing after some lead by himself, leaving her in the lurch. But he’d never do that to her now, not this morning, not after what they’d shared last night. That had been very real. She knew it. She felt it deep down.
But what if something had happened to him?
There was a knock at the door, and Evie ran to it, relieved.
“Finally! You’d better have a good excuse, Sam—oh.”
It wasn’t Sam at the door but a kid. His fingernails and shirt were stained with shoe polish. “Miss O’Neill?”
The boy looked scared, Evie noticed. “Yes. That’s me.”
“Lefty Cunningham. I come about a friend of yours, Sam Lloyd.” The boy reached behind him and brought out Sam’s hat. “He’s in some trouble, Miss. Bad trouble.”
Lefty told Evie about the men who’d come and taken Sam away in the brown sedan. By the time he’d finished, Evie was more frightened than ever. She gave Lefty a dollar and asked him to keep what he knew quiet for his own protection.
Sam’s hat sat in her hands. She could feel it wanting to whisper its messages to her.
“Show me where you are, Sam,” she said, and pressed into its secrets for all she was worth.
Mabel examined Anna Provenza’s drawings. What was it Maria had said? That Mabel would help people. Not guns. Not violence. Her stomach hurt. What would her parents say when they found out? All her life, her parents had advocated for change without violence. I trust you to make the right choices, shayna.
She sank to the floor and pressed her palms against the sides of her head.
Arthur and the Six were going to kill Jake Marlowe. And if she knew about it and did nothing, she had blood on her hands. Jake Marlowe was the emblem of everything Mabel and her parents fought against. He was an arrogant genius whose wealth had protected him from life’s pain and unfairness, a man whose ignorance made him careless with other people. He was ruthless and self-centered and callous. He still didn’t deserve to die.
Mabel had always trusted she would do the right thing. It was her greatest vanity, her belief in her own goodness. She was as blindly arrogant as Marlowe.
“What have I become?”
There was still time to fix it. Mabel grabbed her coat and raced toward the door.
“Mabel! Where are you going?” her father called.
“To fix something, Papa,” Mabel said. “I love you.”
She kissed him quickly on the cheek and ran down the stairs, taking them two at a time.
She just hoped she wasn’t too late.
By noon, thousands waited outside the gates, and more streamed across the flat land. Cars were parked wherever they could find a spot. As they waited, the people were full of good cheer. They basked in the day’s warmth and stunning beauty—“Have there ever been such blue skies? Why, that Marlowe can even arrange fine weather!” At last, the gates were opened and the people poured in, pushing toward the many wonders wrought by Jake Marlowe. The fairgrounds were awash in music. On a bandstand to the left, a sign proclaimed, THE DONNER FAMILY—a mother and father and their three daughters, singing old-fashioned, gospel-tinged American folk songs. A little farther on, the Goodrich Zippers, a banjo ensemble, performed an athletic jazz tune: “Everything’s JAKE—now-a-daaaays!” Children ate popcorn from red-striped paper cones or chased after adventurous balloons they’d accidentally let slip. Isaiah gawped, wide-eyed, at everything. His smile was so big Memphis and Theta couldn’t help smiling, too.
“Memphis! Can we have popcorn?” Isaiah asked.
“’Course we can,” Memphis answered.
“You want popcorn, Theta?” Isaiah asked.
“I never say no to popcorn.”
“Looks like quite a line. Go on with Theta. I’ll find you,” Memphis said, peeling off.
“Where should we go first?” Isaiah asked.
They were passing by a Fitter Families for Future Firesides tent. A nurse with a clipboard called to passersby, “Do you have a goodly heritage? Come and find out! You there! Wouldn’t you like a shiny medal, hmmm?”
Isaiah’s eyes lit up. “I surely would!”
The nurse’s smile wavered. She’d clearly been angling to get a young, fair-haired couple inside, not Isaiah.
Theta glared at the nurse. “C’mon, Isaiah. Looks dull in there.”
“But I want a medal,” Isaiah said.
“He wants a medal,” Theta said to the nurse. She put a hand on her hip and stared the woman down.
The nurse nodded tightly, resigned. “Very well, then.”
It was warm inside. Several desks lined each side of the tent. White-capped nurses bustled about with medical forms while a doctor peeked his head out of a curtained area in the back that had clearly been set up for physical examinations.
“Wait here. We’ll be right with you,” the nurse said.
Theta took a seat beside a family of four. The mother bounced a baby gently on her knee.
“Can I look around, Theta?” Isaiah asked.
“Sure. Just be careful.”
A moment later, a nurse handed Theta a form.
“Oh, it’s not for me,” Theta said.
“It won’t take a minute. What is your name?”
“Theta. Theta Knight.”
The nurse’s head shot up. “Say, aren’t you with the Follies?
“Was,” Theta said sadly.
“Why, I remember now—you’re friends with Evie O’Neill and those Diviners. Oh, I’m sure Dr. Simpson would like to talk to you personally. He’s in the back. Now, you wait right here. I won’t be a moment.”
The nurse walked briskly toward the curtained-off area. At the desk next to her, Theta overheard a nurse interviewing a girl about Theta’s age. “And have you ever experienced any unusual gifts, like premonitions or feeling awake inside a dream?”
“Gee, sometimes I know when the telephone’s about to ring.”
The nurse smiled. “And have you ever seen in your mind or dreams a vision of a man in a tall hat?”
The question made Theta’s stomach tighten. At the back of the tent, the nurse was speaking with a bespectacled doctor and nodding toward Theta. Theta’s fingers began to tingle, a warning. They needed to leave. Now.
But where was Isaiah?
In the middle of the long tent was a roped-off area with a big sign with a picture of Uncle Sam. The sign read, AMERICAN EUGENICS SOCIETY: THE SCIENCE OF HUMAN BETTERMENT. Underneath, there were all sorts of exhibits. One drew Isaiah’s attention. It was a board called INHERITANCE OF COLOR, and it had a bunch of dead mice pinned to it by their tails. There were formulas, like in math: PURE WHITE + PURE WHITE = PURE WHITE. Apparently, the worst thing was mixing white and black or normal with abnormal. Then you got what the board called “tainted.” It said that tainted was very bad. Tainted and abnormal were what the eugenics people wanted to breed out. People who were feebleminded or prom-i-scuous, whatever that meant, or who were like Conor Flynn. People who had fits, like Isaiah had.