“Mi… chael,” the ghost answered with considerable effort.
“Michael. You’re Michael,” Memphis repeated. The ghost’s eyes edged the slightest bit toward brown. The outline of a scar appeared across a faint chin.
“Michael Donelly. I died in the gutter, stabbed through, with no one to mourn me.”
The mood of the Forgotten shifted, as if it were a person at war with himself.
But then, one by one, they began to speak:
“My name was Josiah Stelter. I had a family, but they didn’t look for them, just buried me alone in this cold, hard ground, as if I were no man a’tall but an animal.…”
“Thomas Kincaid. I couldn’t give up the drink. Died in the inebriate house with my guts bleeding…”
“Old Bess, they calls me—and they calls me to midwife. Consumption put me here, in the refuge. Died there, too. But the babes I delivered, most grew up fine and strong.…”
“… My crime? ’Twas to be poor…”
“… Worked for that family till my fingers bled and what did it get me? Nuttin’ but…”
“… Erased…
“Erased…
“Erased…
“Erased…
“Erased…
“We have been erased, erased, erased…”
The ghosts were becoming much more distinct. A touch of bloom on a cold cheek. Wire spectacles perched at the end of a nose reddened by drink. Faces thinned by constant hunger. Skin bruised or pitted with smallpox scars.
Names filled the night:
“My name was Emily Cousins…”
“… Raphael Munoz…”
“… Anthony Esposito…”
“… Rebecca…
“… Charlotte…
“… Big Sal…”
“… They called me Silver Tongue, for I could charm any lady I fancied.…”
“… They called me No-Name, for I was stolen from my people.…”
“… Was was…
“… Was was…
“I am…
“I am…
“We were the Forgotten. Do not let us be forgot.”
“We won’t,” Memphis assured them. “It’s okay. You can move on now. You can be at peace.”
“You lie!” The accusation came from a man at the end. “He has told us the truth of you! You will lie and lie and lie to keep us from our power!”
The Forgotten began to lose shape again, speaking with one voice: “We will eat you down to the bones. We will suck the magic from your souls and have it for ourselves!”
“What’s happening?” Ling asked. “What did we do wrong?”
“It’s him,” Conor said. “He’s doing it.”
There was a slight wobble in the air, as if the night were made of water. The wraiths shrank back.
“What just happened?” Evie asked.
“Wait! Do you remember the day at the museum when we created an energy field and nearly melted the credenza?” Ling asked.
“Odd time for a trip down spooky memory lane, Ling!” Sam said.
“We need to try to do that again.”
“How? We don’t know how we did it the first time,” Theta said.
“It’s that or be eaten by those things in the fog.”
“When you put it that way…” Henry said. “What did we do then?”
“Stand together,” Ling said.
“The Diviners must stand or all will fall,” Evie said, Liberty Anne’s words suddenly making sense.
“The time is now. The time is now!” Luther cried.
The Diviners quickly joined hands. The steady pounding of the rain gave way to a sinister drone, like the massing of a million flies hovering above a battlefield of screaming wounded.
“Oh, god…” Theta said, shaking her head as if she could shake the sound from her ears.
“Concentrate!” Ling shouted above the din. “Think of… think of sending them back.”
“Here goes…” Sam said.
He could feel the others, then, as if they moved with one body, one mind. The air rippled again. It pressed against the Diviners like a storm moving in, till they felt they might be ripped apart. And then the edges of the night peeled back, as if reality were nothing but a dream. The Forgotten screeched. “But he has promised—no!” There was a thunderous boom. And then there was nothing. The fog had cleared. The graveyard was quiet except for the soft, steady patter of rain and wisps of light falling like incandescent ash.
“Everybody okay?” Memphis asked, pulling Isaiah into a tight hug.
“Yes,” Evie managed. They’d destroyed the ghosts. They’d saved people. But she couldn’t deny that there had been something darkly exciting about the incredible power of that moment. Her skin still hummed. She felt slightly euphoric, as if she’d drunk the perfect amount of champagne.
“They’re gone. We got rid of ’em,” Sam said.
“But where did they go?” Ling asked, mostly to herself.
“Onetwot’reefourfiveseven. Onetwot’reefourfiveseven…” Conor repeated. Except for his mouth, he’d gone as still as a cornered rabbit.
“No. No!” Luther cried out. His head rolling right and left. “Don’t let him in!”
Evie took Conor by the arms. “Conor? Conor!”
Conor tapped his fingers nervously against Evie’s arm in a counting sequence. “It was a test,” he said. “He… he set up the Forgotten. He wanted… he wanted to see what you can do. Now he knows. He knows!”
The rain reversed, sucked back up into the night. There was a roar in their ears, as if they stood at the top of a mountain. The sky flashed with strange blue lightning, and in it, they could see the imprint of a great wound-like gash that flared and faded. And then it felt as if they were falling through time, and when they landed at last, they stood in a denuded circle surrounded on all sides by a nightmarish wood where a silent army of the dead waited. A cold moon bled its glow into the thready gray clouds of a starless night sky.
A sudden breath of wind rustled the brittle leaves on the ground. The dead things in the dark whispered with reverence: “He comes! The King of Crows!”
A creature emerged from the woods, a sticklike man, with the air of a praying mantis, but the enormous blue-black feathered coat he wore gave him the bearing of a usurper king. On his head was a stovepipe hat that swirled with shadows. Lightning crackled all around him. A Gordian knot of black silk rested at the stiff, rounded collar of his shirt like an undertaker’s tie. The center was stuck through with a shining gold pin, a radiant all-seeing eye shedding a lone lightning bolt tear. There was an agelessness to the man. He might’ve stepped through any door in time. He had skin like a drought, gray and cracking. In some spots, the flesh was almost threadbare, with a diseased shine to it. Faint red veins moved across that flesh, borders shifting constantly. His fingers were long, his nails sharp and yellowed. His eyes were black as a bird’s and utterly soulless. To look into them was to feel as if you were standing at the edge of a tall cliff. Vertiginous.
He smiled. “Greetings, Diviners. We meet at last.”
THE KING OF CROWS
The night seemed to move with the frantic rhythm of an impaired heart.