Lair of Dreams (The Diviners #2) (49 page)

“Hen!” Theta raced after him in her skimpy dancing costume and no coat. “Hen! Whatsa matter with you? Are you crazy? You just lost your job!”

“I am acutely aware of that fact, dear girl.” Henry tried for humor, but his words were as brittle as damp chalk.

“You gotta apologize to Flo. Tell him you haven’t been sleeping and you lost your head. He’ll take you back.”

Henry’s anger was a live thing, a snake in his hands. How many times had he been forced to choke down how he felt in order to make someone else happy? How many times did he put away his own needs to accommodate somebody else’s? Well, he wouldn’t do it anymore. Not this time. Not over something as important as his music. “Is that what I should do, Theta? Walk in there with my hat in my hand, beg for scraps, pretend I’m nothing, be grateful for what I get? Should I spend my hours swallowing it down every time Herbie’s awful songs get into the show instead of mine? Should I be polite when Wally lets that idiot ruin my song without even asking me what I think?”

“It’s just a matter of time—”

“I. Am tired. Of pretending.” Henry bent his head back. The marquee letters blurred with each blink of his eyes. “They’re never gonna let me in, Theta!” Henry shouted. He was unused to shouting. A lifetime with his father had taught him to hold everything in. But now it tumbled out like the contents of an overstuffed closet. “Don’t you get it? I don’t fit. The songs I want to write aren’t the songs they want to hear. All this time, I’ve been trying to figure out what they want and give it to them. I don’t want to do that anymore, Theta. I want to figure out what I want and write those songs. Songs I care about. And if I’m the only one singing ’em, so be it.” Henry wiped his eyes quickly with the heel of his hand. He tucked his hands under his armpits and turned away from Theta.

“Hen, nobody believes in you more than me. But right now, you gotta have a job. I’m just being honest.”

It was direct, like Theta usually was. That was one of the qualities he had always loved about her. But right now, it infuriated him.

“If that’s true, if we’re just being honest here,” he said, giving
honest
a bit of snarl, “why don’t you go in and tell Flo all about Memphis? In fact, why don’t you call up the papers and give ’em an exclusive: ‘Fake Russian Royalty in Love with Harlem Poet.’”

For a moment, Theta’s mouth opened just slightly. He’d struck a blow. Wounded her with her own weapon. But then the practiced cool slid down her features like a gate over a closed shop. “We don’t all get to live in dreams, Hen. Some of us gotta live in this world. No matter how unfair.”

With that, she stormed back into the theater, slamming the door behind her.

“Goddamn it,” Henry muttered.

The train started with a jolt, and then it was snaking through the dark miles underground. Henry leaned his head against the window. Had he just walked out on the Follies? He had. Every muscle in his body ached. The taste of blood soured his lips, and he ran a tongue over a chapped mouth. When had he gotten so run-down? He needed more sleep was all. The gentle rocking of the train, the darkness, and the exhaustion made Henry’s eyelids flutter.

His head snapped up. A spot of drool cooled against his chin. He wiped it away, and the matron next to him smiled. “You should get more sleep, young man,” she said kindly.

“I suppose you’re right, ma’am.”

The train stopped suddenly between stations, and Henry sighed as they waited for whatever the trouble was to be cleared. The droning hum of the train crawled up Henry’s spine. It was an odd sound—not really mechanical. More… animal, like a swarm far off in the tunnel. A flicker of movement drew his eye to the train window. The lights inside the train bleached the darkness outside so that, at first, Henry saw only his reflection. He pressed his face against the glass. There was a girl on the other set of tracks. She was crouched down, knees to the sides, arms resting on the tops of her bent legs as if she was ready to spring. In the dim work light, she was nearly gray.

Henry looked around, but no one else on the train seemed to
notice the girl outside the window. He turned back to the window, cupping his hands on either side of his face to cut the glare. The girl’s head snapped up. She saw him, and her jaws opened and shut, her rotted needle-teeth coming together each time in a fierce bite.

The droning hum he’d heard earlier had increased to a fast war cry.

“D-do you see that?” Henry asked the other passengers.

“See what, Henry?” the matron asked.

“That girl on the…” Henry’s heart thundered in his chest. “H-how do you know my name?”

The matron transformed into the veiled woman.

“
Dream with me…
” she growled.

In the dark of the subway, the wraithlike girl’s mouth unhinged, and from deep in her throat came an inhuman shriek as she sprang toward the train.

“Get away from me!” Henry shouted, jumping from his seat.

A businessman backed away, hands up. “You were having a bad dream. I tried to wake you.”

Quickly, Henry reached out and grabbed the man’s sleeve, testing it.

“Now, see here!” the man said, yanking his arm back. “That’s quite enough, young man.”

“You’re not a dream. You’re real,” Henry said and laughed, relieved. His shirt was sweated through.

The other passengers stared. A mother pulled her son closer.

“… Must be drunk…”

“… Or he might be sick…”

The train hissed into the Fulton Street station, and Henry realized he’d slept through his stop. But he couldn’t stay on the train another minute. When the doors opened, he bolted and ran up the steps to the streets, welcoming the cold blast of air that greeted him, hoping the entire time that he was awake.

“Extra! Extra!” a newsie shouted. “Park Avenue Princess Catches Sleeping Sickness! Mayor Orders Crackdown!”

Henry tossed a nickel at the newsie. “Hey, give me a little punch to the gut, will you?”

The newsie blinked. “You tryin’ a get outta work or somethin’, Mister?”

“Just land one, will you?”

The newsie buried his fist in Henry’s gut and Henry reeled, coughing. “Yep. Definitely awake. Thanks, kid. I owe you.”

The newsie shook his head. “If you say so.”

By the time Henry made it to the Tea House, he was trembling.

“What happened to you?” Ling said, pouring him tea.

“Bad dreams,” Henry said, warming his hands on the hot cup. “I found out about our mystery woman, though.”

Henry told Ling about his revelatory afternoon with the Proctor sisters.

“Anthony, Orange, and Cross were streets,” Ling said in wonder. “George led me to that intersection, too.”

“Very well. I’m all ears. What does it mean, Mademoiselle Chan?”

Ling tapped her spoon absently against the side of her cup. “Wai-Mae’s ship docks in San Francisco tomorrow. I think George has been trying to warn me that she’s in danger of suffering the same fate. That she needs my help to avoid it.”

“What should we do?”

“I have to tell Wai-Mae. Tonight. She needs to know.”

“I don’t envy you that task,” Henry said, slipping back into his coat.

“She’ll be heartbroken,” Ling said.

“Somehow, I think she’s not the only one,” Henry said gently, and Ling felt near tears. She had grown very close to Wai-Mae and hadn’t realized how much she’d been looking forward to having her as a friend in New York. Now it was all in jeopardy.

At the door, Henry stopped. “I still don’t understand what the Beach Pneumatic Transit Company has to do with all of this, though. An old train station? Doesn’t make sense.”

Ling shook her head. “I can’t know everything.”

Henry grinned. “That’s a relief.”

“Henry…” Ling started. She had a terrible feeling of misfortune that she couldn’t place.

“Yes, darlin’?”

She shook her head. “Nothing. Same time tonight?”

“Pos-i-tute-ly,” Henry said, enjoying Ling’s pursed-lip annoyance.

In the dream that finally found her, Adelaide was a girl of seventeen, with hair gilded by summer sun. There was the big house and the well and the wagon Papa would use to drive them into town on Sundays. It was all just as she remembered it, when she allowed herself the luxury of remembering. Nostalgia, like morphine, was best in small doses. Drifting through the dream was the sweetest girlish singing she’d ever heard, something exotic to her ears. It was exquisite pain, this song, as if the string of notes had crawled inside her like a long vine, twining itself to her longing. Addie’s heart was full of want. She could burst from it.

“Elijah,” Addie said, naming the desire.

And then, like magic, he was there, shadowed on the edge of the cornfield with the old church steeple rising in the distance.

“Free me, Addie,” he whispered.

There was a reason Addie couldn’t do this before, but she couldn’t think of it now, not with her lover so close and her need so strong.

“Will you do that for me, Addie? Will you?”

“Yes,” Addie whispered. Her face was wet in the moonlight. “Anything. Anything.”

In her sleep, Adelaide Proctor rose from her bed and walked to her dressing table. She opened the cabinet and took out her music box. She wound the key at the back and smiled as the tiny French dancing girl twirled round and round to the sweetly tinkling bells of a song that
had been popular before the Civil War. Addie remembered her last dance with Elijah, when he took her hand and promenaded her down the center. Oh, how handsome he was, smiling across the aisle at her as they waited for the other couples to take their turn at the reel. How impatiently she waited for the excuse to hold his hand once more.

Addie passed into the night-shadowed parlor. The man in the stovepipe hat sat in the Morris chair. His broken, dirt-caked fingernails clicked against the chair’s wooden arms, one, two, three, one, two, three. He nodded at Adelaide.

In her head, she heard Elijah:
“Free me, my love.”

A sleepwalking Adelaide Proctor left her apartment carrying the box in her arms. The hall lights flickered as she passed. At the end of the hall was a garbage chute, which led down into the incinerator. She tugged down the handle. Its metal maw gaped open, hungry. Adelaide removed the iron box’s lid. One by one, she tossed in the contents—first the finger bone, then the tooth and the lock of hair. She rubbed her thumb across the tintype of Elijah, reluctant to part with it even in sleep. Finally, she threw it in, listening as it clattered down the chute.

Humming the music-box tune, Adelaide slipped back into her moon-drenched apartment, stumbling past the mewling cats circling her ankles anxiously and into her bed, where she could embrace that perfect world she’d been promised on the other side of sleep. And then she was dreaming of soldiers and of light streaming through the trees like electric rain, and the man in the stovepipe hat was laughing as they screamed, and everywhere, everywhere was death.

New York is a city short on patience, cleanliness, clement weather, and citizens who hold faint opinions. It is not a city short of people trying to make a career of being famous, no matter what the opportunity. The ribbon-cutting ceremony exists for just this sort of thing. Mr. Ziegfeld had recruited New York City’s most famous Diviner and her beau to cut the ribbon on his dazzling new Ziegfeld Theatre, trumpeting the Follies’ new revue,
Diviners Fever
. Mayor Jimmy Walker was on hand, as well as some of the Follies’ biggest stars. So was a smug-looking T. S. Woodhouse.

“Hiya, Sam,” he said, sauntering up. He licked the tip of his pencil. “Beautiful day for a ribbon cutting. Why the long face? Say, you and your fianceé aren’t on the outs, are you?”

“Why would we be?” Sam said. He didn’t trust T. S. Woodhouse a bit.

“Oh, I don’t know. Young love is restless love.” Woodhouse smiled. It was not a warm smile. “Say, how’d a fella like you end up with a dame like Evie O’Neill?”

“Whaddaya mean by that?” Sam said. He matched Woody’s smile, but his eyes were hard.

“I figured her for riding in cars with pretty boys from Harvard or oil barons from Texas with a lotta money and only a little sense.”

Sam shoved his hands in his pockets and glared. “Guess Lamb Chop doesn’t go for that after all.”

Woodhouse held Sam’s gaze. “I suppose you’re right. Say, there’s a pretty interesting rumor going around about you and your Lamb Chop,” he said.

“Yeah? What’s that?”

“That the whole romance was cooked up by WGI’s publicity hounds.”

Sam had had enough. “Get lost, Woody. If you were anybody worth knowing, you’d be higher up on the masthead and wouldn’t have to make chump change writing gossip about Sheiks and Shebas for the
Daily
. Radio’s gonna put you news boys ten feet under soon enough, anyway. You might wanna hustle yourself a new job.”

Woodhouse’s self-congratulatory smile turned cold. “That so? What do you think I should be writing about instead? Bootleggers and bookies? Or maybe secret government programs, like Project Buffalo?”

Sam felt squeezed of air. “Whaddaya know about Project Buffalo?”

“Ah, gee, sport. What would I know, a bum like me?”

“Where’d you hear about Project Buffalo?” Sam pressed.

“What are you two talking about over here?” Evie said.

T. S. Woodhouse’s gaze flicked from Sam to Evie and back again. He smiled. “I was just wondering which headline would be more interesting tomorrow: ‘Sam ’n’ Evie: Still Sparking’… or ‘Splitsville’?”

Sam glared at Evie. “You told him about Project Buffalo?”

“I-I… it isn’t what you think, Sam.”

“Oops. Looks like I’ve sparked a lover’s quarrel,” Woody said, triumphant. He took out his pencil. “Anything you’d like to say for the late edition?”

Sam took Evie’s hand, pulling her over to a corner of the dais. “How could you do that? I told you: no reporters. You promised to keep it a secret between you and me, Evie. I trusted you,” Sam said, his words quiet but angry.

“Sam, could we talk about this later?” Evie matched his tone. “I’ll explain everything, but…” She nodded toward the large crowd. “People are watching.”

“Oh, sure. I see. Wouldn’t want to disappoint your adoring public,”
Sam said, hurt joining the anger. He didn’t trust many people, but he’d trusted her. “Well, I don’t care anymore, Evie. I’ve had enough. You know what? Maybe I’ll just blow this whole thing wide open. Tell you the truth, I’m tired of going to parties every night, anyway. I’m tired of playing your pretend fiancé. Tired of you. Just tired.”

A secretary gestured for them. “Miss O’Neill? Mr. Lloyd? You’re needed.”

“Sam… please.” Evie reached for Sam, but he shoved his hands in his pockets.

“Come on. Let’s get this over with,” he said and walked away.

The Ziegfeld girls danced their way through a Diviners-inspired musical number. Theta was giving it her all, but even her talent couldn’t save the lousy song, and Sam hoped Henry hadn’t written it. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Evie glancing over at him nervously. She looked miserable. Maybe he shouldn’t be so hard on her, but he couldn’t help it. He was furious with Evie. Project Buffalo was his life, not hers. She knew what it meant to him. How could she be so cavalier about it?

The dancers cleared off. Mr. Ziegfeld spoke a few words, and then Sam and Evie were on.

“Gee, that was swell, Mr. Ziegfeld,” Evie chirped into the WGI microphone. “It doesn’t take a Diviner to see that this show will be the elephant’s eyebrows!”

“Isn’t she terrific, folks? And how about a hand for that lucky fella of hers, Sam Lloyd?” Mr. Ziegfeld gestured to Sam, who gave a halfhearted wave. He came and stood next to Evie, but they were miles apart.

“Evie! Sam! Evie!” the reporters called. T. S. Woodhouse raised a finger again and again. Evie answered the other reporters’ questions but refused to call on him.

“Gee, Miss O’Neill, I’ve got the distinct impression you’re ignoring me, and I’m all balled up about it,” Woodhouse shouted, garnering chuckles from the crowd.

“Why, Woody, I couldn’t ignore you if I tried,” Evie said pointedly.

“It’s about this silly rumor I heard floating around town that maybe this romance is a buncha hooey.
Daily News
readers want to know: You two lovebirds on the level, or is this some kinda scheme cooked up by WGI to keep the ink wet on headlines and make the radio station money?”

There was murmuring in the crowd.

“I wouldn’t expect you to understand about true love, Mr. Woodhouse. You manage to cheapen everything,” Evie spat back, defiant, but Sam could hear the panic in it. “Sam and I happen to be mad for each other.”

“Yeah?” Woodhouse sneered. “I guess that’s why you’re standing so close together.”

As if on command, Evie’s hand shot out for Sam’s. Sam didn’t return the gesture.

“Ah, yes. True love,” Woodhouse said, just like W. C. Fields. The remark had done its work, though.

“When’s the wedding?” a man in the crowd shouted, a challenge.

“Yeah, when’s the wedding?” a reporter chimed in. “You never say. Or maybe there’s not gonna be a wedding?”

“Sam, are you excited about the big day?” another reporter asked.

For the first time, Sam looked over at Evie. Her eyes were wide and she clutched a handkerchief tightly in one fist. This charade meant everything to her, he knew. She bit her lip, and he knew she was pleading with him silently:
Please don’t spoil it with the truth.
He’d gone into this phony romance scheme with his eyes open. But somewhere along the way, his feelings had changed. He’d wanted more. He’d let his guard down. And now she’d gone and sold him out. He could do the same to her right this minute. He could tell everyone the truth about their cooked-up romance. It would serve her right.

“Sam?” the reporter prompted. “I said, are you excited about the wedding?”

“What fella wouldn’t be?” Sam said, looking away.

They played their parts, waving to the crowds shouting their
names and pressing themselves against the police barricades hoping for a closer look, hands reaching, needing that reflected glory.

“Miss O’Neill, I certainly hope you can’t read anything bad in these,” Mayor Walker joked as he handed Evie the ribbon-cutting scissors for the new Ziegfeld Theatre.

“Here goes!” Evie said. She snipped through the bow and the ribbon fell away. The onlookers cheered.

Down in the throngs of people, a haunted, hollow-eyed man in a tattered soldier’s uniform pushed his wheelchair toward the platform, muttering to himself. People stepped back as he knocked into them.

“Watch it, buddy,” a man growled, but the broken soldier didn’t hear him.

“The time is now,” the soldier said, over and over.

Onstage, Evie moved to the right and accepted a bouquet of flowers from a fan.

“The time… the time is now,” the soldier whispered fervently as he reached into his pocket for the revolver. All eyes were on Evie, who lifted her arm in a wave, blowing kisses to the crowd.

The soldier raised the gun. It shook in his hand. “The time is now,” he moaned.

Evie’s smile was still bright as she turned in the soldier’s direction. Her eyes saw the gun in his hand but couldn’t quite make sense of it, as if he might be holding a fish or an albatross. Sam was quicker. Time slowed and sharpened at once. Blood thrummed in his ears, blocking out the gasps of the stunned crowd. These people receded in Sam’s mind. There was only Evie, the man, and the gun. Sam wasn’t close enough to tackle the man before he could get a shot off. There was no time to think it through. Sam pushed Evie aside and thrust his hand toward the man with the gun. “Don’t see me,” he growled. He poured every ounce of will into that one movement. Sam felt as if he’d been struck by a tuning fork. His body trembled from the effort. His knees buckled, but Sam held on.

“Don’t. See. Me.”

The soldier’s haunted eyes emptied of all consciousness, like a sleepwalker’s. Sam lunged forward and pried the revolver from the man’s grime-coated fingers. Several people closest to the man with the gun had also gone slack, heads cocked toward the sky, lost in some private reverie.

But the rest of the sizable crowd watched it all.

Police raced to the stage and surrounded the still-dazed soldier. In the mass of onlookers and reporters, incomprehension gave way to astonishment—had they really seen what they thought they had? Murmurs became shouts. People raced forward from everywhere at once.

“What’s happening? What is it?”

“Sam Lloyd is what happened! He saved Evie O’Neill’s life!”

The story passed from one person to the next with breathless excitement, drawing still more people. They overflowed the banks of the sidewalks, snarling traffic. Taxi drivers honked their horns and shook their fists through their open windows while the cops tried to contain the swelling crowd before things got completely out of hand.

“Did I just see what I think I saw?” one reporter asked

“He put a hex on that fella, like hypnotizing him!” another answered.

“He’s a Diviner, too!” a lady shouted from the back.

“He’s a Diviner! A Diviner! A Diviner!” They were all shouting questions now, pressing closer, cheering, clapping, calling Sam’s name. A flashbulb popped, and then another. Evie put up a hand to keep the light from hurting her eyes. T. S. Woodhouse’s sneer had been replaced by an expression of surprise.

“Evie, did you know? Did you know your fella was a Diviner, too?” a society reporter asked.

A teary Evie stared at Sam. “I…”

“She’s had a shock—give her some air!” somebody shouted.

“She didn’t know,” T. S. Woodhouse said, loud and firm. He moved his hand through the air as if he were blocking out tomorrow’s big headline. “‘Seer Didn’t See This Coming for Sweetheart’!”

“‘Their Love is Diviner and Diviner!’” another reporter yelled.

The flash again. Knifepoints of white.

“Come on, Sam, put your arm around her!”

Evie had never seen Sam like this. Bewildered. Frightened. A little lost. His shirt was sweated through, and he looked ill and possibly ready to faint. She was still reeling from all the excitement, but she understood this much: Sam had done it for her. He’d risked his life to save hers. Evie slipped her arm through his, anchoring him. No one could see her gently easing the tension from his fist. No one else could see her fingers gripping his, keeping him close. The crowd swelled onto Sixth Avenue, causing a traffic jam. The policemen had given up and were redirecting traffic to the side streets. The mayor had his hands up, reassuring people, asking for calm.

Beside Evie, Sam trembled.

“I’ve got you,” Evie said. She reached over and wrapped his arm around her waist, letting him hold on to her as if she were a buoy. This pleased the people, who cheered and clapped and whistled. She could feel Sam’s pulse thumping.

“He was going to shoot you,” he whispered, dazed. “I had to stop him.”

A reporter got up in Sam’s face. “Hey, big hero! Look this way!”

Evie gave the shutterbug a push. “Leave him alone!” she growled.

“C’mon, Evie. Your fella is big news.”

“He’s not your story right now!” Evie tried to protect Sam, but there were too many people surging forward, and she lost her grasp on his fingers.

“Sam!” Evie shouted, reaching out, but the celebrating crowd had him. Strong men lifted Sam up in the air on display, moving down Sixth Avenue like a saint’s procession on feast day.

The broken soldier had come to as the police dragged him away through the streams of people, who booed and hissed and spat at him.

“They never should’ve done it,” the soldier cried over and over.

“Evie! Evie! Hey, outta my way—that’s my pal over there!”

Evie turned to see Theta running toward her, frantic. “Oh, Evil, you okay, kid?”

And with that, Evie burst into tears and let Theta hold her.