Lair of Dreams (The Diviners #2) (57 page)

By the time Theta, Memphis, Evie, and Sam reached City Hall Park, the rain was coming down steadily. Gutters ran with leaf-clogged, muddy rivers, all of it pouring down into the sewers and drains. From here, they could see the police lights still shining on Chinatown, but the park was empty.

“Remember, people have been disappearing in these tunnels,” Memphis said. “Keep your wits about you.”

“If that’s supposed to make me feel better, you better find another line of work,” Sam said.

“Then here’s something else to cheer you,” Memphis said. He held the lapels of his coat close to his neck and looked up at the stormy gray clouds in the night sky. “We better hope those tunnels don’t fill up.”

“Let’s ankle. I want this over with and Henry safe,” Theta said, shivering in the cold rain.

“I’d say our best bet is to try getting there through the City Hall station,” Memphis said.

“We really gotta go through those tunnels?” Theta asked.

Memphis offered an apologetic shrug. “I don’t see any other way.”

They hurried down the steps of the City Hall station and pushed through the turnstiles. The platform was deserted.

“Gee. Like a library in here. Hello!” Evie called, letting her voice echo down the tracks.

“Can it, Evil!” Theta snapped. “If those… things… are down here, you really want ’em sniffing after us?”

Evie bowed her head, cowed. “I just like how my voice sounds.”

Theta rolled her eyes. “Ain’t that the truth.”

“This way,” Memphis whispered, and they followed him to the end of the platform, peering over the railing to the tracks below.

Theta stared down at the drop. “You gotta be kidding me.”

Memphis held her hand. “I’ll help you, Princess. Just stick with me.”

“Poet, I’m gonna stick so close to you you’ll think you gained a hundred and two pounds.”

Memphis climbed over and jumped down first. He caught Theta, enjoying the weight of her in his arms. “Piece of cake,” he said, smiling. “Come on down, Evie.”

Evie attempted to clear the railing, but her heel caught. She took a flying leap, nearly flattening Memphis as she tumbled. “Careful, there,” he said, catching her.

“Which way?” Sam asked, jumping down and wiping his hands on his trousers.

“Ling said Beach’s pneumatic train station was near Broadway and Warren Streets, so that way.” Memphis pointed straight ahead to the long curve of tunnel, lit only by a series of work lights high on the walls. It was dark and filthy and dangerous—no ledge, just wall and track. If a train were to come now, they’d be trapped. The third rail thrummed with electricity they could feel in the air and on the backs of their teeth.

“Watch out for that. That’s the one with all the juice,” Sam warned.

“It’s freezing down here,” Evie grumbled, the edges of her words still a bit messy. The coffee and the bitter cold had managed to take her from very drunk to less drunk with shades of irritable and belligerent.

“You’ll live,” Sam said. “Unless those hungry wraiths get us, in which case you won’t, but you also won’t have to worry about being
cold anymore. So all in all, it’s a grand night in Manhattan. Hip, hip, hooray.”

“You’re in a very funny mood,” Evie said.

“I’m a funny guy,” Sam grumbled and kept his flashlight trained on the path ahead. “Just keep walking.”

Memphis lifted his eyes, taking in the grimy grandeur of the underground. “It’s sort of beautiful, though, isn’t it? Like a city below the city.”

“If you say so, Poet. How much farther?” Theta asked, keeping her eyes on the edge of the ties; she didn’t want her shoes getting caught between them.

Memphis bounced his flashlight beam across the concrete archways. “If Ling’s right about the location of Beach’s station, maybe a hundred feet?”

A rat scuttled quickly along the tracks, making Theta gasp. Memphis put his arm around her. “It’s more scared of us than we are of it.”

“It must be pretty scared, then,” Theta said.

The passageway took on water as they walked. It smelled of sulfur and rot. They covered their noses, breathing through their mouths.

“Sam,” Evie said a moment later, “I don’t know what’s happening.”

“How drunk are you?”

“No. I mean… I mean ’bout any of this. About the dead and John Hobbes. Will. Rotke. Those cards we found. Project Buffalo,” she said, the last word tripping off her booze-thickened tongue. “I need to tell you something, Sam. It’s about tonight and what happened at the show.”

Sam gestured to the dark underground, his flashlight beam bouncing off the metal and earth. “You want to have this conversation now? Here?”

“Shhh, listen. This fella brought a comb for me to read. Sam, it was James’s comb,” Evie said, keeping one hand on his back to steady herself.

“What are you talking about?”

“The comb. He said it belonged to his pal, but he was lying. That comb belonged to my brother. When I was under? I saw James.”

Sam kept the flashlight trained on the path ahead as he took in what Evie was saying. “Did you know this fella?”

“Not from Adam. I swear.”

“So how’d this Abe Stranger get your brother’s comb?”

“He told me these men paid him to bring it to me. Men in dark suits.”

“You think they’re the same guys who busted in while we were in the post office?”

“I don’t know, Sam. I don’t know anything anymore.” Evie swallowed. “Like you and me, for instance.”

“There is no you and me. You made that pretty clear tonight,” Sam muttered. “Listen, you asked me to play a part, and I did. From now on, I travel solo.”

“Now who’s lying? You forget. I read your personal effects. I know you.”

“You know bupkes.”

But the gin had loosened the last of Evie’s restraint. “I’ve seen you. The true you. I’ve held your secrets in my hands. You’re scared, Sam. You pretend you’re not, but you are. Just like the rest of us.”

Sam whirled around. “All you know about are parties, good times, and telling people what they wanna hear on the radio. And breaking hearts.”

Sam pushed on, shining his flashlight ahead of them in the darkness. He hated that Evie had unsettled him like this. That was the trouble with letting people in—once you’d taken off the armor, it was hard to put it back on.

Evie stumbled after him. “Right! I forgot. I’m just a girl on the radio. Well, I only read what people choose to give me, Sam. You steal whatever you like and never think about what it costs anyone,” Evie said, eyes brimming with tears.

“Don’t cry,” Sam said. He was all balled up inside. “Please don’t cry. I got no defenses against girl tears.”

“You can’t have my tears, Sam Lloyd. I revoke them,” Evie said through chattering teeth. “But don’t go tellin’ me what I know. ’Cause you don’t know.”

“I don’t even know what we’re arguing about anymore.”

“Let’s just put the ghost to bed. I want a bath. I want twelve baths. And then, tomorrow, we can announce the tragic end of our engagement. You wanna be alone? Be alone,” Evie said, and she and Sam walked on in silence.

The water was now shin-deep. It sluiced up the sides of the tunnel as they walked and splashed up onto their clothes, chilling them through. Evie glanced through the arched steel supports of the subway tunnel toward the other side of the tracks and the platform heading in the opposite direction. The dark lit up for a second, revealing the bleached form of a man wearing a miner’s hat. But there was something not quite right about him. He fell into a squat, his mouth opening and closing, opening and closing.

Evie gasped.

“What’s the matter now?” Sam asked.

“Did—did you see that?” Evie whispered.

“See what?”

Evie pointed through the archway to an empty space. “Nothing,” she said. “Nothing.”

“Hey! I think I found it!” Memphis called. He stood in front of an old gate adorned with gilded flowers, markers of an age long past. The rust couldn’t obscure how beautiful it had once been. Memphis and Sam tugged the gate open against the tide of water, the hinges protesting the sudden use after so many years asleep.

“We’re in,” Memphis said.

The flashlights weren’t much help in the deep, velvet darkness of underground, but eventually everyone’s eyes adjusted to the gloom. Memphis swept his flashlight beam around the forgotten station, briefly illuminating its decayed beauty.

“Holy smokes,” Sam said, angling his head back to take in the high, arched ceilings. The stained-glass window was caked in decades
of dust. A tarnished chandelier dangled precariously from its broken chain. Sam cleared cobwebs from the chipped piano keys. He plinked one, but it made no sound. It was like being inside a shipwreck on land. Down below lay the rotting remains of New York City’s very first subway train.

“Careful on the stairs,” Memphis cautioned as they stepped down to the lower platform. He stuck his head inside the car. “Nothing here but a bunch of dust.”

Memphis’s flashlight beam fell across the broken bulbs ringing the station’s entrance and the etched lettering of the plaque there:
BEACH PNEUMATIC TRANSIT COMPANY.

“Just like Isaiah’s drawing,” Memphis murmured.

“I don’t like the feel of this place,” Theta said.

“Why can’t ghosts ever haunt some place swell, like the 21 Club?” Evie sneaked a drink from the secret flask she kept hidden in her garter.

“Evil!” Theta wrestled the flask from Evie’s grip. “I’m gonna murder you.”

“Oh, please, Theta! It’s awful down here.”

“Mine,” Theta growled. She took a quick belt and handed it over to Memphis. “Don’t let her have that back.”

“I. Had. A very bad daaaay!” Evie yelled, and it bounced off the walls of the station.

“Shhh!” Theta whispered. “You wanna get us killed?”

Sam marched over to Evie. “You’re on the air, Sweetheart Seer. Time to find something to read so we can find out what gets rid of these ghosts, save our friends, and get out of here.”

Evie’s face twisted into an expression of disgust. “I’m an object reader, not a compass. You can’t just point me north.”

Theta glared. “I’d love to point my foot right up your—”

“Can’t she just read one of these lamps, or a piece of brick?” Memphis interrupted.

“I could. But it would be too much. It’s not particular to any one person,” Evie said, her mouth having to work hard to pronounce
particular
. “No one appreciates the artistry.”

“If it’s all the same to you, I don’t wanna be here any longer than I have to be. The quicker we find something that looks like it belongs to our ghost, the better,” Memphis said.

While Theta and Evie stood nearby, Theta moving her flashlight around the empty station, Sam kept his flashlight trained on Memphis as he poked into crumbling crevices of brick, looking for any object that might be helpful.

“Nothing,” Memphis said after a while, and wiped his hands on his trousers. “Let’s look down below.”

The four of them walked the dusty tracks, shining their lights along the rocks piled there, kicking at mounds of dirt and watching the bugs scatter.

“There’s nothing here, Memphis,” Sam said.

“Only one place left,” Memphis said, nodding toward the tunnel. “I suppose we’d better go in there.”

“I was afraid you’d say that,” Theta said.

The dark was oppressive. The flashlights did very little to cut the gloom. Theta kept one hand out in front of her for guidance.

“You would not believe the secrets I have to hold back on the radio,” Evie said, as if the booze had unlocked the cabinet that held all her thoughts and they just kept tumbling out. “People are so lonely so much of the time. Mostly, that’s what I feel, lurking under everything they put in my hands: how utterly, terribly alone people think they are when all they have to do is just reach out and touch someone…”

Evie’s fingers grazed Theta’s shoulder. Theta screamed, and Evie scrambled backward.

Memphis whirled around, knife at the ready. “What is it?”

Theta rested a hand on her heart. “Evil! You wanna give me a heart attack?”

“I was… I was just…” Evie panted. “Making a point.”

“Well, don’t.”

“It’s like that time I read your bracelet,” Evie said. “I didn’t want to tell you what I saw, because what if it upset you? Some people never
think about that,” Evie said too loudly, with a hard glare at Sam. “About the stuff I carry around with me all the time.”

“What did you see when you read Theta’s bracelet?” Memphis asked.

“She didn’t see anything, Poet. Shut up, Evil!” Theta growled, but she sounded more frightened than angry.

“I did see! I was scared for you, Theta,” Evie said. “All that fire.”

“What’s she bumping her gums about now?” Sam asked.

“She’s drunk. But she’s shutting up now, right, Evil?” Theta said.

“Aye, aye, Captain.” Evie saluted. She turned and tripped, falling onto her backside in the dirt. “Ow.”

Memphis helped Evie stand. His fingers grazed something solid in the spot where Evie had been sitting. “Sam, would you kindly shine that light over here?”

The beam of light caught the gleam of polished gray in the dirt. Memphis crouched down and brushed away the years of dust. “I think we might’ve found what we’re after.”