“What’s that?” Evie said, putting out two glasses.
Theta smirked. “You whisper ‘vermouth’ over the glass, then fill the rest with whiskey.”
“Say, I like your Manhattans! But what’s the ice for, then?”
“For the headaches we’re gonna have later.”
“Ah.”
Theta raised her glass to Evie’s. “Here’s mud in your eye.”
They each knocked back a generous swig, and Theta welcomed the burn and the booze. She needed its courage. “Say, uh, you remember when you read my bracelet that time?”
“Sure,” Evie said, squinting. “You were running. You looked scared.”
“Because I was scared. I was running from my husband, Roy.”
Evie halted her drink at her lips. “Go on.”
“He wasn’t a good man.” Theta told Evie everything then. About Roy’s rages and the beatings. About the fire she started that she thought had killed him. About the menacing notes, the terrible shock of seeing Roy again after thinking he was dead, and Roy’s threats. By the time the whole story had come out, Theta had nearly finished her drink, and she wasn’t sure if it was the hooch or the confession that had made her feel looser.
“He was waiting for me outside the Bennington today.”
“Oh, no!”
“He wants things between us to be like they were, and he wants that meeting with Flo. I managed to stall him—told him Flo’s all broken up about a sick aunt—but I can’t do that forever. At some point, you run outta sick aunts.”
Evie slammed her glass down, sloshing whiskey over her wrist. “He can’t do that to you! Why, I’ll march over there right now and—”
“Nothin’ doin’, Evil. This is my mess to sort out.”
“But you don’t have to do it by yourself, Theta. You have friends.”
“I know. But you don’t get Roy like I do. He’s dangerous. You gotta handle him just right. I can’t let this blow up.”
Evie glanced sidelong at Theta. “Is that why you broke it off with Memphis?”
Theta glugged back a little more of her whiskey. She nodded, miserable. “I didn’t want Roy to hurt him. He hates me now—can’t say I blame him. But I miss him something awful.”
Evie scooted close and put her arm around Theta. “Oh, gee, honey. Did you tell Henry?”
“I don’t wanna worry him. He’s still getting over Louis. I just needed to tell somebody or I’d go crackers.” Theta stared at her hands. They were quiet, no hint of the raging fire coiled inside. “Sometimes I think maybe I would like to burn it all down. Start over. Make different rules for the world.”
Evie clinked Theta’s glass with hers. “Hear, hear. Well, once we stop supernatural evil from leaking into our realm and taking over.”
Theta shook her head. “You can’t stop evil. You can only push back as hard as you can. Another?”
“And how!”
They drank until they could blot out the ghosts. But they slept with the lights on.
Ling had taken on a dream-walking job from one of her neighbors in Chinatown, Mr. Moy. “I want to propose and I need to make sure this is an auspicious match. I want you to ask my grandmother,” he said, handing over his grandmother’s delicate ivory fan.
“That will be five dollars,” Ling said.
Snorting, Mr. Moy gave her three. “The gossip is that you have failed the last two times. The spirits didn’t speak to you. I am willing to take the chance that your luck holds. So, three for now. Two more if you deliver a message from my grandmother.”
That night, Ling entered the dream world with apprehension. The gossip was true. She’d not heard a peep from the spirits lately, and she was beginning to feel desperate. This was her gift. This was what she could do that set her apart, and as her muscles had atrophied, she had come to rely on that skill more and more to make her feel important. When she reached a place that she recognized as being a memory of Auntie Moy’s—the village in China she had left as a young bride—she called respectfully for the dead woman, her panic rising when her calls went unanswered. Then, suddenly, storm clouds moved in over the village. And along the edges, ancestral spirits shimmered. Their faces were grim. Auntie Moy was among them, and Ling felt great relief. She bowed her head with respect and opened her mouth to speak.
The spirits turned their backs to her, and then they were gone.
Isaiah was drawing when the vision came over him. He found himself standing at the crossroads near the farmhouse he’d seen before. But when he looked to his right, Conor stood in the cornfields, and behind him was a shimmering hole showing that terrible place where the King of Crows lived.
“Isaiah,” Conor called.
“I’m here,” Isaiah said. The wind whistled in his ears something fierce, and he heard a swarm of wasps screaming inside it. “Where are you?”
“I’m in his world,” Conor said. “I could go back and forth. That’s why I hadda keep my mind shut. So he couldn’t get in. The longer he holds me, the more of my power he can suck up. You gotta find the Eye.”
“We’re trying. Is… is my mama there?”
Conor looked over at Viola’s sleeping form under a quilt of feathers.
“What happens once we find the Eye?” Isaiah asked.
“You hafta destroy it. You gotta heal the breach so he can’t come in with the dead. Watch out for her.” Conor pointed behind Isaiah.
Isaiah turned and saw the strange girl with the crumpled peach hair ribbon. She was watching him from the sagging porch. In the vast dark woods stretching behind Conor, the night had a thousand of those burning eyes.
“Gotta go,” Conor said, and he wrapped his arms around his knees. “Onetwot’reef-f-four…”
And then the vision was gone. When Isaiah looked down, he’d drawn it all. Just like Conor.
THE CARD READER
“I know you don’t want me to leave the grounds,” Jericho said to Marlowe over a lunch of roast beef and potatoes. “Would you mind if I had a guest? I haven’t seen anybody under the age of thirty since I got here.”
Marlowe sipped his milk. “Who did you have in mind?”
Jericho concentrated very hard on cutting his beef. “Evie O’Neill,” he said, sneaking a surreptitious glance at Marlowe.
Marlowe was silent but frowning, and Jericho feared he had lost already.
Jericho cleared his throat. “I, uh, also wanted to bring Ling Chan. She wants to be a scientist, too. You’re her idol. She thinks the world of you!”
“That so?” Marlowe said, warmer.
“Yes, sir.”
Marlowe added another lump of sugar to his coffee. He squinted against the sun streaking through the dining room’s faultlessly clean windows. “Fair enough. Tell them to come up on Friday, then. I’ll send a car to meet their train. They can stay the weekend.”
“Really?”
Marlowe’s eyes twinkled. “Yes, really. Why not? We’ll need to continue with your training, of course.”
“Of course. Gee, that’s swell. Thank you,” Jericho said. He was ecstatic about getting to see Evie again and guilty for the deception.