“Go away, Sam.”
“And leave you in a time of crisis? Huh-uh. You need me. More than you know. Wait right here,” Sam called as he raced toward his room. Jericho heard drawers opening, and a moment later Sam returned with a very fashionable gray-striped necktie. “Here. Borrow one of mine.”
Jericho regarded it dubiously. “Who’d you steal this from?”
“Fine,” Sam said, holding it out of reach. “Go out in your grandpa’s tie. See if I care.”
“Wait!” Jericho swiped the gray-striped number from Sam. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. So, ah, who’s the lucky girl?” Sam asked, waggling his eyebrows suggestively. When Jericho ignored him, Sam grabbed one of Jericho’s Civil War soldier figurines and held it up to his mouth. “Oh, Jericho,” he said in a high-pitched voice. “Take me in your arms, you big he-man, you!”
“Please put General Meade back in Gettysburg. You’re changing the course of the war. And it’s just a date.”
“With girls, it’s never just a date. First lesson, Freddy,” Sam said.
“As always, I’m grateful for your sage advice,” Jericho said, finishing the knot.
Sam nodded approvingly. “You clean up nice, Freddy. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.” Sam grinned as he dropped into Will’s chair.
“Such as behave like a decent human being?” Jericho said, reaching for his hat and scarf from the hall coatrack.
“Who just gave you a proper tie?”
“Get out of Will’s chair.”
“You’re welcome!” Sam shouted as the door closed.
“I’m sorry about my mother and father and all those questions they asked,” Mabel said as she and Jericho sat in a leather booth inside the Kiev. “For radicals, they’re practically Republicans about my suitors.”
“It’s all right,” Jericho said, watching couples old enough to be their grandparents glide across the worn parquet floors to the tepid strains of a second-rate orchestra. It was a far cry from the sort of nightclubs Evie and Sam attended every night. He hoped Mabel wasn’t too disappointed with this choice.
“Nice place,” Mabel said, just like the good sport she was.
“Mmm,” Jericho said around a mouthful of gooey pastry.
“It’s nice that they have dancing.”
“Yes. Dancing is… um, nice,” Jericho said. He felt like a horse’s ass. And Sam’s necktie pinched.
Mabel sipped her spicy tea, her stomach churning with nerves as she tried to think of a conversation starter that would turn the evening around, and fast. “Say, I’ve got a fun game!” she said, finally. “If you were a Diviner, what power would you want to have?”
“I’m not a Diviner,” Jericho answered.
“Neither am I. That’s why it’s a game.”
“I’m not good at these sorts of games.” Jericho ate another bite of blintz.
I’ve noticed, Mabel thought, and stirred her tea for the twentieth time.
“Fine. What sort of power would you have?” Jericho asked.
“Oh. Anything would do, I suppose. It would just be nice not to be so hideously ordinary.” Mabel laughed and waited for Jericho to disagree with her: Why, don’t be silly, Mabel—you’re anything but ordinary. Why, you’re extraordinary all on your own!
“There’s no such thing as hideously ordinary. If something is hideous, it’s automatically extraordinary. In a hideous way.”
“Never mind. Let’s change the subject,” Mabel grumbled.
“I told you I wasn’t good at this game,” Jericho said. “Besides, the more I read about Diviners, the more I think it’s a curse as well as a gift.”
“What do you mean?”
“Diviners are truth-tellers. But people rarely want the truth. We say that we want it when, really, we like being lied to. We prefer the ether of hope.”
“But hope is necessary! You have to give people hope,” Mabel insisted.
“Why?”
“Why what?”
Jericho folded his arms across his chest. “In an amoral, violent world, isn’t it unconscionable to keep offering hope? It’s like advertising for soap that never gets you clean.”
“Now you’re just being cynical.”
“Am I? What about war? We keep grappling for power, killing for it. Enslaving. Oppressing. We create ourselves. We destroy ourselves. Over and over. Forever. If the cycle repeats, why bother with hope?”
Lair of Dreams
Libba Bray's books
- A Spool of Blue Thread
- It's What I Do: A Photographer's Life of Love and War
- Between You & Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen
- The Light of the World: A Memoir
- The Dead Girls of Hysteria Hall
- The House of Shattered Wings
- The Nature of the Beast: A Chief Inspector Gamache Novel
- The Secrets of Lake Road
- Trouble is a Friend of Mine
- The Appearance of Annie van Sinderen
- Dance of the Bones
- The House of the Stone