“Oh, but Mr. Phillips! I’m simply trying to keep the city safe,” Evie said, batting her lashes, all innocence. “My intentions are good. Just like Miss Snow’s.”
“Yes, well,” Mr. Phillips grumbled. “Can you try to make the good seem less… unseemly? We don’t want to scare off your sponsor, remember.”
“Sure, Mr. Phillips,” Evie promised. But how did you make a very real threat seem like anything other than the danger it was?
On the air, Sweetheart Seer Evie kept everything light and breezy and entertaining, just like Mr. Phillips had asked. She helped people find missing family trinkets and reassured them that their lost relatives had truly loved them while they were alive. She told them what they wanted to hear, and they were happy for it. “May the good spirits look after you,” Evie intoned at the end of the show, blowing kisses to the audience as she exited the radio stage to warm applause. That bit she’d stolen from Sarah Snow. When Evie passed Sarah in the WGI dressing room, “God’s foot soldier on the radio” didn’t look pleased.
Sarah caught Evie’s eyes in the mirror as she pinned a fresh corsage to her dress. “The only spirit who can look after us is the Holy Spirit, Miss O’Neill.”
“Yes. But I understand he’s very, very busy,” Evie said through smiling teeth.
“Do you place yourself on par with the Almighty?”
“No. I’ll leave that to you,” Evie shot back. It was a misstep to bait Sarah like that, but Evie was tired of Sarah’s holier-than-thou routine.
Sarah looked at Evie like a judge from on high. “I do worry about what you and your kind might be unleashing on our nation.”
That goes both ways, Evie thought.
The very next morning, Harriet Henderson had a column devoted to Sarah Snow, complete with a staged photograph of Sarah surrounded by adoring children at an orphanage.
“I worry that Diviners play on people’s fears. You shout, ‘Ghost!’ and suddenly, people see ghosts,” Sarah was quoted as saying.
Hear, hear, Miss Snow, Harriet Henderson wrote. Perhaps it’s not ghosts who are the trouble but Diviners: For if there truly are restless spirits haunting the streets of New York, causing mischief and meaning us harm, how do we know it wasn’t these very Diviners who’ve brought them to us? Perhaps it isn’t ghosts we should be afraid of but Diviners themselves!
“Told you she doesn’t like you,” Mabel said, reading over Evie’s shoulder.
“It’s no time for smugness, Mabesie.”
“There’s always a little time for smugness,” Mabel said, shrugging on her coat. The phone was ringing again.
“Mabesie, could you…?”
Mabel gave a toss of her bobbed hair. “Believe it or not, I do have a life outside this room. Get it yourself.”
“Diviners Investigations,” Evie said, and scrabbled for a pencil.
That night, the Diviners were called first to a small hotel in the Theater District, where the ghost of a general sat at the white-clothed table in the private dining room. His uniform was splashed with blood spilled in some long-ago war.
“Why are the ghosts coming?” Ling asked.
“We come through the breach,” the general ghost said so emphatically his bushy sideburns puffed out with his cheeks. “It is unstable, though. Once the Eye is complete, it will be our time.”
“What can you tell us about the Eye?” Ling demanded. “Is it a place?”
“It is a great heart of gold humming with industry.”
“Is that where Conor is?”
“No. It’s where the others are.” The general’s eyes began to pearl. The rot of the grave bloomed on his lips, eating them down like acid.
“He’s starting to turn,” Memphis warned. “Get ready.”
A long exhale of curling black smoke poured from the general’s mouth on a guttural whine of a laugh that stank of death. “He keeps you busy with his questions, doesn’t he?”
“What do you mean?” Ling asked. But it was too late. The general stood, drawing his sword from its scabbard. “I charged upon them in the field, and I would charge upon a thousand more, for I am hungry! Your days are numbered. The Eye will see to it. We are coming!”
“Now!” Sam commanded, and they watched as the general was torn from the world for good.
“Anybody else feel kinda… good after that?” Sam asked as they hurried to another ghost sighting, this one out in Green-Wood Cemetery.
“Like for just a minute you’ve plugged yourself into the sun?” Ling asked.
“Yes,” Henry agreed, and the others nodded.
“Memphis? You’re awfully quiet over there,” Sam said.
Memphis stole a glance at Theta. “Can’t a man be alone with his thoughts?”
“Sure. Except you’re not alone,” Sam said.
Don’t lie to yourselves: We’re all alone, Memphis wanted to shout back.
“I just want to get this done,” he said.
HARVEST SONG
He should’ve known it was doomed from the start, but Memphis had wanted to believe in miracles again, so he’d let himself fall straight toward the fist coming at his heart. A mangled mess lay behind his ribs now. He could scarcely breathe for the pain. Like he’d been torn from happiness in a trail of blood. The only emotion more powerful than the pain was his rage. His anger was a bullet shot indiscriminately, flying through space, in search of a target.
“Memphis, did you send in your application yet?” Mrs. Andrews had asked him the day before as he tried sneaking out of the library after dropping off his cache of books.
“No, ma’am. I forgot.”
“Again? Memphis!” she chided, shaking her head. “You’ll miss the deadline.”
“I suppose I will.” He hadn’t meant for it to come out the way it did. Mrs. Andrews raised an eyebrow at him.
“Sorry, Mrs. Andrews,” he said, ashamed.
“No harm, Memphis,” she said a little crisply but not unkindly. Then she placed a hand on his shoulder, looking up at him with clear eyes. “I don’t know what it is, but don’t forget to come back to yourself when it’s finished. Too much good to go throwing it away.”
She stamped a book and handed it to him. Cane by Jean Toomer. “I saved it for you,” she said.
He tried to give it back with a lackluster “’Fraid I don’t have time to read much these days.”
Mrs. Andrews pushed it right back at him. “Make time,” she commanded.
He thanked her. Downstairs, he watched the Krigwa Players blocking out a scene from a new play. Behind them, Mr. Douglas’s powerful scenery soared above the little stage, a story in color and shape. Stories. He cared about those once.
The days numbed him. Around him, Harlem swirled with life: The men laughing on the other side of the Floyd’s Barbershop glass. The trolley rattling down 125th Street. The little girl eyeing the sweets while her mother examined a bin of yams for the best ones. A pretty girl waiting for the bus, singing a song Florence Mills made famous. The Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks parading past in their ceremonial aprons. The world felt like a windup toy he wished he could pinch between his fingers and still.