Lair of Dreams (The Diviners #2) (64 page)

“What do you see?”

“Their energy draws him,” Miriam said, her voice faraway. Her body shuddered slightly with her efforts.

“Who?”

“The man in the stovepipe hat. The King of Crows.”

“Good. What else?”

The woman’s shuddering had progressed to shaking as her mind flooded with terror.

“No! You can’t let it happen. You mustn’t. Not again.” With a cry, she broke off and fell against her bed, sweating and crying.

“You must tell us where they are, Miriam.”

“N-no.”

The Shadow Man sighed. “Very well. We’ll try again tomorrow.”

The woman wept into her palms. “We never should have done it.”

“What’s done is done,” the Shadow Man said. “You have the thanks of a grateful nation.”

Fear showed in the woman’s eyes, followed quickly by hate, and then she spat in the Shadow Man’s face. The man removed a neat pocket square and calmly wiped the insult from his cheeks. With the same air of calm, he pulled a wrench from his pocket. The woman fell onto her cot, backing into a corner, hands up. The man walked to the other side of the room. He arced the wrench around the knob to the radiator, cutting off the heat.

“It gets rather chilly at night here, I’m afraid,” he said, yanking the blanket from her bed. “When you’re ready to cooperate fully, Miriam, do let us know.”

The man closed the steel door behind him. The lock slid into place. A moment later, the loud babble of a radio flooded the quiet of the small room, growing louder and louder until the woman curled up into a ball and cupped her hands over her ears. But more than the radio, it was what she had seen in her trance that would make sleep impossible tonight.

The Shadow Man had left the newspaper. Miriam smoothed out the front page and placed a hand on the picture of her son and Evie O’Neill.

“Find me, Little Fox,” she whispered. “Before it’s too late. For all of us.”

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While
Lair of Dreams
is steeped in actual history, it is also a work of fiction and, as such, some liberties have been taken for dramatic license. (“Stand back, everyone! She’s got a license for fictional drama!”) The Museum of American Folklore, Superstition, and the Occult is a creation from my imagination, just in case you tried to find it on TripAdvisor. And as far as I know, there are no carnivorous ghosts haunting the subway tunnels of New York City. I’m pretty sure. Well, mostly sure. Okay, not at all sure. You know what? Ride at your own risk.

The Beach Pneumatic Transit Co. really did exist—though, sadly, the little fan-powered train only ran for a few years. Alfred Ely Beach’s subway prototype was long gone by 1927, but with plenty of abandoned tunnels and stations in New York City’s underground, it’s fun to imagine that some ghostly vestige of that old subway station could have existed for our Diviners. If you’d like to know more about Beach Pneumatic, I recommend reading Joseph Brennan’s excellent publication on the topic at columbia.edu/~brennan/beach.

Sadly, the Chinese Exclusion Act was all too real. Passed in 1882, it sharply restricted immigration to the United States from China. Even more restrictive legislation followed, and these discriminatory, xenophobic laws stayed on the books for decades. If you’d like to read more about the Chinese Exclusion Act and its impact, I highly recommend Erika Lee’s
At America’s Gates: Chinese Immigration during the Exclusion Era, 1882–1943
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003). If you’d like to read a personal family history of Chinatown, I also recommend Bruce Edward Hall’s
Tea That Burns: A Family Memoir of Chinatown
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1998). And if you find yourself in New York City, please do visit the wonderful Museum of Chinese in America (mocanyc.org).

The story of America is one that is still being written. Many of the ideological battles we like to think we’ve tucked neatly into a folder called “the past”—issues of race, class, gender, sexual identity, civil rights, justice, and just what makes us “American”—are very much alive today. For what we do not study and reflect upon, we are in danger of dismissing or forgetting. What we forget, we are often doomed to repeat. Our ghosts, it seems, are always with us, whispering that attention must be paid.

This was a Busby Berkeley production of a book, and over the past few years, quite a few folks have seen me through it all. (Thanks for the kaleidoscopic legwork, y’all.) I owe a debt of gratitude, a fruit basket, and a One Direction lunch box to the following lovely people:

The incredibly talented, wise, and patient Alvina Ling, editor extraordinaire, and the also talented and wonderful Bethany Strout and Nikki Garcia. You are the Charlie’s Angels of Editorial. Boo-ya.

The hardworking LBYR team: Megan Tingley, Andrew Smith, Melanie Chang, Lisa Moraleda, Hallie Patterson, Victoria Stapleton, Jenny Choy, Emilie Polster, Stefanie Hoffman, Adrian Palacios, Tina McIntyre, and Barbara Bakowski. “And ya don’t stop.”

Wizard designer Maggie Edkins for the spooky, atmospheric book jacket.

The incredible, laser-eyed copyediting/proofreading/fact-checking team: JoAnna Kremer, Christine Ma, and Norma Jean Garriton, respectively. They probably all have PTSD now.

Agent Barry Goldblatt, who deserves some kind of medal for patience and bravery at this point in our long collaboration. Josh Goldblatt—thanks for the manga and anime breaks and for explaining to people, “My mom’s not crazy; she’s just on deadline.”

Heroic assistant Tricia Ready for keeping the ship upright and for the research help, read-throughs, and reminders to grab my keys on the way out. Researcher Lisa Gold, who is true to her name and who doesn’t flinch at my midnight e-mails. Bill Zeffiro, for the music info and the quick wit.

The Lovely & Amazing Writing Group—the Spanx of good friends (total support): Pam Carden, Brenda Cowan, Anna Funder, Michelle Hodkin, Cheryl Levine, David Levithan, Emily Lockhart, Dan Poblocki, Nova Ren Suma, Robin Wasserman, and Justin Weinberger. I love you guys. And Laurie Allee and Gayle Forman for all of that, plus saving me many times over. xo

The Brooklyn Tuesday Night Writing Workshop: Emma Bailey, Michelle Hodkin, Ben Jones, Kim Liggett, Julia Morris, Susanna Schrobsdorff, Nova Ren Suma, and Aaron Zimmerman.

The “Away” Team: Holly Black, Cassandra Clare, Jo Knowles, and Kelly Link. And the Fourth of July BBQ Brainstorm Trust: Theo
Black, Elka Cloke, Chris Cotter, Eric Churchill, Holly Rowland, Jeffrey Rowland, Emily Seville Lauer, and Josh Lewis. And Kat Howard, for her critiquing service above and beyond.

The Superhero Librarians Club (“Can we find it? Yes, we can!”): Karyn Silverman, Jennifer Hubert Swan, and Sara Ryan.

This book was written in many NYC & Brooklyn cafés: Thanks to the delightful staff at Think Coffee, Four & Twenty Blackbirds, Southside Coffee, and the late, great Red Horse Café, RIP. Thanks, too, to the Brooklyn Writers Space.

Finally, this book could not have been written without the many wonderful, knowledgeable people who kindly gave of their time and expertise. Their guidance was invaluable, and any mistakes, inaccuracies, or willful jazz riffs on factual information are strictly the fault of the author. Thank you a thousandfold to the Museum of Chinese in America, New York City, and to Yue Ma, associate director of collections; Samantha Chin-Wolner, collections assistant; and Kevin Chu, collections and digital archives assistant, at the MOCA archives. Thank you, Professor Shirley J. Yee, Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies (specializing in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries), the University of Washington. Thank you, Zhen Wang Luo and Gabe Law, for the information on Chinese funeral customs. Thank you, Bryan Berlanger, director, National Capital Radio and Television Museum, Bowie, Maryland. Thank you, Carey Stumm and Brett Dion at the New York Transit Authority Archives. Thank you to the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture of the New York Public Library. Thank you, Steve Duncan, badass urban explorer and historian, for gleefully detailing the various ways one could be maimed, killed, or arrested running around in NYC’s miles of rat-infested subway tunnels. Yeah, I’m good topside, thanks.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

Copyright © 2015 by Martha E. Bray

Photograph of tunnel on cover, title page, and epigraph courtesy of the Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, HAER NY, 31-NEYO, 86—49

Cover design by Liz Casal and Maggie Edkins

Cover art by Joel Tippie and Michael-Paul Terranova

Cover © 2015 Hachette Book Group, Inc.

All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher is unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

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First ebook edition: August 2015

ISBN 978-0-316-36488-1

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