Lair of Dreams (The Diviners #2) (54 page)

A terrible uneasiness weighed on Ling as she made her way to see Uncle Eddie at the opera house. She shouldn’t have let Henry go like that. She should’ve made him stay and drink some tea until he’d sobered up a bit. Maybe if he’d stayed, they could’ve talked about what was really happening inside that dream world and what they needed to do to stop the veiled woman before it was too late.

“Where are you going?” a policeman said, putting up his hand. “Nobody leaves the neighborhood tonight, Miss. Mayor’s orders.”

“I’m just on my way to see my uncle down the street.”

The policeman noted her crutches. He nodded her on. “All right, Miss.”

The opera house was noisy with the banging of hammers. Two of Uncle Eddie’s apprentices pounded the edges of a painted canvas to a wooden frame. The doors of the large wardrobe were open, and Uncle Eddie brushed lint from the colorful costumes inside. Ling ran a finger down the curving pheasant feather of the Da Dao Man’s headpiece. “Uncle, how do you get rid of a ghost?”

Uncle Eddie stopped, mid-brush. “That is a very odd question.”

“Hypothetically,” Ling added quickly.

“Hypothetically? For the sake of science?” Uncle Eddie said, not missing a beat. Ling kept her expression neutral, and after a moment her uncle went back to brushing the costume clean. “Is your ghost Chinese or American?”

“I don’t know,” Ling said.

“Well, for us, we say you have to give a proper burial. In Chinese soil. You must perform the proper rituals and say the prayers to give the spirit rest.”

“What if that isn’t possible?”

“You put a pearl in the corpse’s mouth. For an American ghost…” Uncle Eddie’s eyes twinkled. “Tell it there’s no money in haunting and it will go away. Careful!”

Uncle Eddie’s attention was diverted to the stage, where the two stagehands struggled with the large canvas flat. It wobbled and threatened to fall over.

“Ling, do you want to see something special?”

She nodded and followed her uncle to the edge of the stage. The men had averted disaster, but the canvas flat faced backward now.

“Everyone needs training.” Uncle Eddie sighed. “Turn it around, please! This way!”

The two men turned very slowly, positioning the flat against the stage wall, painted side out.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Uncle Eddie said. “It’s the original canvas from the last time the opera was performed. They wanted to have an American audience, so they made it more like an American play, with scenery.”

The room seemed to come to a point on the stage. Ling’s chest squeezed tight, as if someone were wringing the air from her lungs. She stared at the painted scene, barely comprehending what she saw: Golden hills. A meadow of colorful flowers. Bright sunshine. The red roofs of a Chinese village and a mist-shrouded forest.

Just as Ling had seen them every night in her dream with Wai-Mae.

They had the most beautiful opera there. I escape to it in my mind whenever I need to.

All of Ling’s uneasy questions shifted into chilling answers: Wai-Mae was waiting for them when they arrived each night. She was never in the station or up above on the streets outside Devlin’s, as Ling and Henry were. When Ling had asked about the dreamscape, what
had Wai-Mae said?
I made it.
She’d talked about Mulberry Bend and Bandit’s Roost, which were nothing more than blighted memories of Five Points, a slum wiped away and replaced by the greenery of Columbus Park. And then there were O’Bannion and Lee. The matchmakers who Wai-Mae insisted were bringing her over had been dead and gone for fifty years. Murdered in 1875.
Murder! Murder! Oh, murder!
They’d been murdered by the girl in the veil.

The clues had been there for them all along. George had tried to make her see them. In the tunnel, he’d told her to wake up. He’d wanted her to know about the ghost, to see who it really was.

And who had warned them against going inside the tunnel? Wai-Mae. Wai-Mae was the ghost.

But what if some part of Wai-Mae didn’t know that? What if the dream was her way of fighting that knowledge? Ling needed to talk to Henry, desperately. She wished he weren’t drunk. He’d been so upset about Louis… because Louis never showed up.

Louis, too, never appeared aboveground, Ling realized. Like Wai-Mae, he was always waiting for them in the dream world, shimmering in the sun. Shimmering. Ling’s head went light as she realized at last what had been poking at her these past few days. It was Henry’s comment about the hat. She’d thought it was his. But it had been Louis’s first.

She’d told Henry from the start: She could only find the dead.

A chorus of police whistles shrilled in the streets. They were answered by loud sirens. Through the windows, Ling saw a herd of police marching up Doyers Street.

“What’s happening?” Ling asked.

“Shhh.” Uncle Eddie turned off the lights and they kept watch at the windows. Across the way, the police battered down the door of an apartment building. There was shouting as people were forced outside and into police wagons. A truck with a searchlight mounted on its back slunk around the narrow curve. Its white-hot sweep illuminated frightened faces peeking out from behind curtained windows. Two men attempted to escape from an apartment window onto
a second-floor balcony. They were met on the fire escape by policemen with clubs at the ready. Police were everywhere in the streets, whistles blowing, as they rounded up the citizens of Chinatown. Many weren’t going willingly, some shouting, “You cannot treat us this way. We are human beings!” A man’s voice came over a megaphone in English telling everyone not to move, that this was a raid.

Ling spied Lucky moving in the shadows. He was making a run for the opera house through the chaos on the streets. Uncle Eddie spirited him inside, and he and Ling waited for the Tea House waiter to catch his breath.

“The mayor has issued a full quarantine,” Lucky managed to tell them. “They’re taking us to a detainment camp.”

“Where are my parents?” Ling pleaded.

“Your father told me to go quickly out the back and come to you. I barely escaped.”

“Is Baba all right?” Ling begged.

Lucky hung his head. “I am sorry, Ling. They took your father. He couldn’t find his papers.”

“I will go to the Association and see what I can find out from the lawyers,” Uncle Eddie said, racing for his coat and hat.

“They’ll take you, too, Uncle,” Lucky said.

“So be it. I won’t wait like a dog.”

Lucky nodded at Ling. “Mr. Chan wanted to make sure they didn’t get Ling.”

Ling was torn. She wanted to go with Uncle Eddie, to be with her mother and father. But she also needed to get to Henry and tell him what she’d come to realize about the dream world.

“Uncle?” she said. Her eyes brimmed with tears.

“You must wait here,” Uncle Eddie said, opening the costume wardrobe. “I’ll come back for you once I’ve spoken to the Association.” He helped Ling climb inside. She sat on the floor of the closet, cradling her crutches, hidden under a mound of heavy costumes. “You’ll be safe in here,” her uncle said and shut the door.

But Ling knew she wasn’t safe anywhere. Not when people could
hate the very idea of you. Not when there were ghosts in your dreams. Ling shut her eyes and listened to the sounds of her neighbors being taken away in the night. She held her breath as the police broke into the darkened opera house and searched it. They opened the wardrobe but, seeing nothing but a rack of costumes, closed it again and left. For what seemed like an eternity, Ling lay on the floor of the wardrobe, feeling the cramps in her legs. When it was quiet, she let herself out. For a moment she stood, not knowing what to do or where to go. Then, quite decisively, she yanked a pearl and a pheasant feather from the headpiece of the Dao Ma Dan, hoping her uncle would forgive her for it, and shoved both objects deep into her pocket. She peeked through a crack in the opera-house doors and, seeing no one, let herself out, watching for police as she walked the eerily empty streets of Chinatown, which reminded her once more of her dream. Stifling a sob, Ling sneaked into the Tea House, stepping over broken dishes on her way to the telephone directory, where she found the address for the Bennington. She grabbed Henry’s hat, placing it on her head.

Then, keeping to the shadows, she made her way to the El for the long ride uptown.

The wind had picked up in advance of the predicted nor’easter. It whipped at the hand-painted banner Mabel and Jericho had hung above the museum’s front doors so that it appeared to spell out
TIGHT! DIVERS BIT!
Inside, Jericho and Mabel put the finishing touches on the Diviners exhibit. Mabel arranged the small triangles of watercress sandwiches she’d made on silver trays she’d borrowed from the Bennington’s dining room while Jericho put the last of the exhibit’s cards in place.

“Looks nice,” Mabel said, coming to stand beside him.

“It does at that,” Jericho agreed. “I couldn’t have done it without your help, Mabel. Thank you.”

You’re right
, she thought. “You’re welcome,” she said.

Sam arrived, shaking the damp from his coat. “Getting ugly out there.”

“I hope it doesn’t keep people away,” Mabel fretted. “You look swell, Sam.”

“Thanks, Mabel. So do you. Where’s Evie?”

“I thought she was coming with you!” Mabel said.

Sam was half out of his coat. With a sigh, he shrugged it back on and buttoned up. He swiped a sandwich triangle from a tray and stuffed it into his mouth. “Keep the exhibit on ice. I’ll be back with the guest of honor.”

“You know where she is?” Mabel asked, rearranging the hole left by Sam’s sandwich grab.

“I got a pretty good idea.”

A short while later, Sam burst into the speakeasy beneath the Winthrop, threading quickly through the crowd. A knot of soused revelers bent over a fountain where someone had dropped a small hammerhead shark into the water. It lurked in the shallows, lost, as the partiers pointed and laughed. Evie held court at a table full of fashionable swells, men and women of facile smiles and fickle allegiances who seemed to be eating up every elocution-perfected word out of her mouth. The man sitting too close to her interrupted, spinning out a story that Sam was certain was a bore. He marched over and tapped Evie on the shoulder.

“Why, hello, Sam,” Evie said too brightly, and Sam knew she was halfway to drunk already.

“Evie, can I have a word?”

“See here, old boy, can’t this wait?” an older man with a thin mustache broke in. “Bertie was just telling us the most amusing story about—”

“I’m sure it’s a real knee-slapper, pal. I might need to go make out a will in the event I die of laughter. Evie, a word?”

“Well, I
never
,” one of the girls tutted.

“Doubtful,” Sam shot back.

Sensing trouble, Evie hopped up with a blithe “Keep my seat warm and my drink cold, darlings!” and followed Sam to a corner. Her beaded dress had come unstrung and she trailed tiny glass beads like an exotic, molting bird. “What’s the big idea, Sam? Why were you so rude to my friends?”

“Those are not your friends. Your
real
friends are wondering where you are. Did you forget?”

Evie’s blank expression told him that she had.

“The Diviners exhibit party at the museum. It’s tonight. You’re the guest of honor.”

Evie bit her lip and rubbed at her forehead. “Honestly, Sam. I can’t tonight.”

“Why? You sick?”

Sam pressed his lips to Evie’s forehead, and Evie’s stomach fluttered.

“No. But I… it was a bad show, Sam. Very bad.”

“You’ll have a better show next time.”

“No. You don’t understand,” Evie mumbled.

“I understand that you promised, Evie.”

“I know. I know I did. And I’m sorry. Truly, I am. But I—I can’t.”

Sam crossed his arms. “Why not?”

“I just can’t. That’s all. Oh, excuse me!” Evie called, flagging down a passing waiter. “Could you be an absolute darling and get me another Juice of the Venus de Milo?”

“Certainly, Miss O’Neill.”

“Do you know why they call it that? Because after two, you can’t feel your arms,” Evie said, trying for a smile though her head ached and her soul was weary. And now she was letting everybody down. Well, they’d get past it. It would all go fine without her. She couldn’t face all those people at the museum, not after tonight’s show. She could barely face Sam. He was staring at her with something bordering on contempt that pierced through the alcoholic fog she’d been sinking herself into for the past few hours.

“Is this all you want?” Sam asked bitterly. “A good time?”

“You’re one to talk!”

“I like a good time. But not all the time.” He held her gaze.

Evie blushed. “If you came here just to get a rise out of me, mission accomplished. You can scram.”

“Your friends are counting on you.”

“Their mistake,” Evie whispered. “You want me to go back to that museum? To talk about ghosts? You weren’t there in that house with that… that thing. You don’t know how it was!” Her eyes brimmed with tears as she spat out the words. “Ask Jericho. He knows. He understands what it was like.”

She wanted to wound now, and Sam’s flinch registered as one more sin she’d hate herself for come morning, but now that her tongue was loose, she couldn’t stop the words from tumbling out.

“I can see those… hideous beasts coming out of the burning walls. I hear Naughty John telling me—warning me—about my own brother! He knew about James, Sam. When I stand still, I see all of it. So I don’t stand still, and I certainly don’t go looking for more. And every night before bed, I pray for those pictures to go out of my head. When the prayers don’t work, I ask the gin to do it.”

Evie could feel a headache threatening. She’d let Sam lead her to this. That was her mistake.

“I’m sorry I’m not Jericho,” Sam said coolly.

“I’m sorry for everything,” Evie mumbled.

“That include last night?”

Evie didn’t answer.

“Evie, my dear!” a mustachioed gentleman called to Evie from the periphery. “You’re missing all the fun!”

“Don’t you dare start without me!” she shouted, wiping away tears with her knuckles.

With her smudged eyes and her dainty red Cupid’s bow lips, Evie reminded Sam of a sparkling party favor on the cusp of New Year’s, just this side of discarded. The comment about Jericho had hurt. Badly. He tried to swallow it down. “Evie,” he said, taking gentle hold of her hand. “The party can’t go on forever.”

Evie looked up at Sam, defiant but slightly pleading, too. Her voice was nearly a whisper. “Why not?”

She pulled her hand free of Sam’s grasp, and he let her go, watching as she ran headlong toward the hedonistic throng.