Whoever it was remembered Theta from her days on the Orpheum Circuit, when she played the vaudeville theaters all across the country as Little Betty Sue Bowers, “The Ringleted Rascal.” Betty Sue Bowers wore a pinafore dress, tap shoes, and sweet, girlish curls. Betty Sue Bowers had a stage mother from hell and, later, a handsome husband named Roy who took out his anger at the world on his young wife with his fists. And one night, Betty Sue Bowers had killed him with a power she didn’t know she had: a dangerous ability to start fires with her emotions. As far as anyone else knew, Betty Sue Bowers had also died in the inferno that night. They didn’t know that Theta had hopped a freight car out of Kansas, bound for the bright lights of Broadway. In New York City, Theta had met Henry, cut her hair, traded in Kansas homespun charm for sleek glamour, and become a reinvention: Theta Knight, Ziegfeld Follies girl.
Someone did, though. And now they were in her city, leaving her cryptic notes. Was it Mrs. Bowers? It would be just like her adoptive mother to try for a payday through blackmail. Could it be one of Roy’s former pals at the soda shop? What about the neighbors—would any of them have seen Theta running for her life toward the railroad tracks? (Not that any of the neighbors had ever bothered to come upstairs during the shouting and screaming; not one had ever asked about the bruises and black eyes.) Could one of the hoboes she’d shared the freight car with have told others? All it would take was one of them to see her face in the newspaper, so different but still a ghost of the old Betty left there—Say, doesn’t that look a little like…? It wouldn’t matter that Theta hadn’t meant to kill Roy and that she had very little memory of that night. The world would see a cold-blooded murderess. They’d call Roy a good fella who got involved with the wrong girl. She’d seen such things play out before. She knew the world was stacked against girls like her.
Theta finished her cigarette. She took a bath. Combed out her sleek bob and short bangs. She drew on her pencil-thin eyebrows and painted a Cupid’s bow mouth in crimson. As the dawn inched up along the Manhattan skyline, Theta chose her outfit—a deep blue silk dress, a long strand of knotted pearls, and a gray velvet cocoon coat with a fat fur-trimmed collar that she’d “borrowed” from the Follies costume shop for the day. She stuck out her hand for an imaginary shake. “How do you do?” she said in her smoky purr of a voice. “I am Miss Theta Knight.”
Yes. She was Theta Knight. Not Betty Sue Bowers. Nobody could threaten her back into being that girl. That girl was dead and buried. Theta Knight had a screen test today at Vitagraph. Theta Knight would get that contract and run all the way to Hollywood with Memphis if she had to. She took the elevator down to the lobby.
“Sure look nice today, Miss Knight,” the elevator operator commented.
“Thanks, Tom.”
“You going somewhere special?”
“Vitagraph,” Theta said, enjoying the feel of the word on her tongue.
“Oh, well, good luck. You might say a wish to Mr. Bennington on your way out, then.”
“Come again?”
“That picture of Mr. Bennington that hangs there in the hallway? I heard he looks after the Bennington guests if you ask him to.” Tom shrugged. “Can’t hurt. Here’s the lobby now.”
Theta stopped before the large framed photograph of a somber Reginald Bennington seated at a table in the dining room back when it had been a showplace and not just a shabby spot that served weak coffee. She’d passed the photograph daily, but never really thought to look at it. Reginald Bennington looked to be about sixty, with dark curly hair going to gray, and a salt-and-pepper beard and mustache. Put a cap on his head, and Theta could imagine him as the captain of a grand ship. There were all sorts of stories about him: He was a magician involved with the occult. He performed pagan ceremonies in the basement. He ran naked through Central Park. It was said that he’d had the Bennington constructed according to magical specifications, as both a beacon to the otherworldly and as a protection against evil. Theta glanced up and down the hall. Empty. Feeling the fool, she stepped forward. “Hiya, Mr. Bennington,” she said very softly. “Listen, I, uh, don’t know if you’re really in the wish-granting business, but if you are, I sure could use some luck today. Okay. Thanks. I’m Theta, by the way.”
Theta shifted from one foot to the other, waiting—for what, she couldn’t say. From his chair in the Victorian-appointed dining room, Mr. Bennington stared back, a lost relic from another generation.
“Yeah,” Theta said on a sigh. “It’s okay. I’m embarrassed for myself. You don’t have to say a word, pal.”
On her way out of the Bennington lobby—I am Theta Knight, I am Theta Knight, I am Theta Knight—Theta bumped into Miss Addie. The old woman looked terrible. Dark shadows ringed her bright eyes, and her frizzy white hair was more of a mess than usual.
“Oh, my dear, can’t you feel it?” Miss Addie said.
“Feel what?”
“Him. He’s coming. He’s coming for us. I fear we shall have to stage quite the battle to beat him this time, for he grows more powerful by the day,” Miss Addie said, her pitch rising in concert with her sparse eyebrows.
Theta fumbled nervously with her handbag. “Sorry. I-I’ve gotta ankle, Miss Addie.”
“Yes. Of course. You know there’s a ghost after you, my dear, don’t you?” Addie blurted.
“A ghost?” Theta said, her voice barely a whisper.
Miss Addie nodded. “It means you harm, I’m afraid. Be careful, my dear girl.”
I am Theta Knight.
Theta shook her head as she pushed angrily through the Bennington’s revolving door. “Terrific. This day just gets better and better.”
A BORN STAR
By eleven o’clock, Theta, Ling, Evie, and Mabel were huddled together in their seats on the elevated Brighton Beach line out to Brooklyn and Vitagraph Studios, hands clapped over giggling mouths as Evie kept everyone entertained with a risqué story about a secretary at WGI who’d been caught petting with an auditioning act.
“Well, she didn’t realize the man had a parrot who’d seen the whole thing—Polly wanted more than just a cracker, and how!” she said to scandalized laughter from Mabel and Ling.
The story was rude, and it was clearly shocking the Blue Noses within earshot, which, with Evie, was the point. Evie loved scandalizing the hypocrites, of course, but more than that, Theta knew, Evie was telling her naughty stories to distract Theta from the butterflies in her stomach. And after her strange morning asking the spirit of Reginald Bennington for luck and then getting a creepy warning from Adelaide Proctor, Theta needed it.
“Brooklyn. Huh. It’s like being in Kansas,” she said, peering out the window at the borough’s low, sleepy houses flying past. Up ahead, she could see a tall smokestack at the corner of Avenue M and Fourteenth Street with black letters down the side spelling out VITAGRAPH.
The girls crowded together at the window to get a good look. The train pulled into the station, and they stepped out onto the platform. “Hold on,” Evie said, fluffing the fur collar to frame Theta’s face. “There. You look like a proper film star now.”
Theta put a hand to her fluttering stomach. “Well. Here goes nothing.”
“Sure is impressive,” Mabel said as they approached the giant brick studio, which took up an entire block. “You think we’ll see any movie stars? Like Harold Lloyd. Oh, I love him!”
“Harold Lloyd!” Evie and Theta complained together before bursting into giggles.
Mabel grinned. “I like his big round glasses! Fine. Who do you like?”
“Gary Cooper, of course,” Evie said, swooning. “Or Ramon Novarro.”
The girls all sighed except for Ling.
“You don’t find him handsome?” Mabel prodded.