The Diviners (35 page)

The dumbwaiter had reached the top. Grunting, Evie pushed against the door with her fists, then her feet, but it was hopelessly stuck.

“Hello?” she whispered. “Hello? Anybody there?”

A moment later, the door opened. A man’s hand appeared and Evie took it gratefully, slowly unbending her arms and legs and stepping out of the cramped box, still holding fast to the champagne bottle.

“Oh, swell! Thank you, baby!”

“You’re welcome, sweetheart,” the policeman said, slapping handcuffs on her. “You’re also under arrest.”

Sam slipped easily through the crowd and back through the corridor into the building next door. Whenever a policeman looked his way, Sam would think that same thought—
Don’t see me
—and before the cop could figure out what had happened, Sam would have moved on, leaving him to shake his head and chase after someone else. He hoped Evie had managed to escape. He had to hand it to her, she had moxie. He liked girls with moxie. They were trouble. And Sam liked trouble even more than moxie.

“Did we lose them?” Theta panted. Her legs shook and the white fur of her coat was grimed with dirt.

“I think so.” Memphis held up the pulp of the book and sighed. “Mrs. Andrews is gonna kill me.”

“At least you’ll have something to write about,” Theta said and laughed. It was a solid bray of a laugh, completely at odds with her jaded demeanor. The cool she’d shown him earlier was gone. Their narrow escape had made them giddy, and they stood on the corner of Seventh Avenue laughing at their good fortune like a couple of kids on Christmas morning. Theta tilted her head back and caught the breeze. In that moment, she was so beautiful that Memphis wished they could keep running.

“You jake, Poet? You look like someone slipped you a mickey,” Theta said.

Memphis forced a smile and spread his arms wide. “Me? I don’t wear worry.”

“Let’s go sneak a peek.”

They crept down the block and crossed the street to where they had a good lookout for the action at the club. Sirens wailed on the street and police wagons lined the block in a long line. The men in blue pulled patrons from the club while the neighborhood looked on. The press had arrived, and the flashlamps popped; they could smell the burning magnesium in the night air.

“Papa Charles isn’t gonna like this,” Memphis said. “He pays the cops enough not to raid his clubs. I hope your friends got out all right.”

“Me, too,” Theta said. She still held Evie’s handbag. “I suppose I’d better blow home and see if they did.”

Memphis felt his heart sink. He didn’t want the evening to end. “I could take you for a cup of coffee first, if you like. I know
I
could sure use one.”

Theta smiled. It was a sweet smile, almost shy. “Thanks, Poet. But I should get my beauty sleep.”

Memphis started to say something clever—“Why? You’re already the best-looking girl in town”—but didn’t. It would seem like charm, and he didn’t want to charm this girl. He wanted to know her. But the magic of their escape couldn’t extend everywhere.

“Maybe I’ll see you in my dreams tonight,” he said instead. “On that road.”

Theta’s smile faltered just a bit. “I suppose I’d feel less scared if you were there.”

The cops patted the doors of one of the wagons and sent it on its way. The streets were clogged with people now. Theta stuck out her hand. “Thanks for the daring escape, Poet.”

Memphis shook Theta’s hand, marveling at the softness of it. “Anytime, Creole Princess.”

Theta ran toward the subway. At the corner, she turned to see
Memphis still watching her. He wasn’t watching her the way that audiences or the occasional fan on the street did. It didn’t make her feel odd or imagined; on the contrary, she had never felt more real. “Hey, Poet!” she called back to him. “It’s Theta!”

“Pardon?” he shouted.

“My name. It’s Theta—”

The crowd thickened between them just as someone pulled Memphis into a choke hold from behind. He whipped around, ready for a fight. Laughing, Gabe put his hands up in surrender, backing away. “Easy, brother. Just me. Can you believe they raided the club? Somebody’s putting the squeeze on Papa Charles. I’d gone out back for a smoke or I’d be in one of those wagons, too. Hey, Memphis—you even listening to me?”

Memphis had turned away from Gabe and was craning his head, searching for some sign of Theta, but she was already gone. How would he find her again? Beside him, Gabe was talking a mile a minute, but Memphis wasn’t listening. Something had shifted in the cosmos. His future seemed to have thinned to a point of destiny, and it had a name: Theta.

When Memphis let himself into Octavia’s apartment, he found Isaiah standing at the foot of the bed in a pale wash of bluish moonlight. The boy stared into the gloom of the bedroom, his head shaking slightly.

“Hey, Ice Man. Whatcha doin’ up?” The boy didn’t answer. “Isaiah? You all right?”

Isaiah’s eyes rolled back until only the whites were visible. His eyelids fluttered wildly.

“The seventh offering is vengeance. Turn the heretics from
the Temple of Solomon. And their sins shall be purified by blood and fire.”

“Isaiah?” Memphis whispered. Hearing these strange words coming out of his brother’s mouth made him cold with fear.

“Anoint thy flesh and prepare ye the walls of your houses to receive him.” Isaiah’s thin body jerked with small spasms.

Memphis gripped his arms. Should he run for Octavia? The doctor? He didn’t know. “Isaiah, what are you talking about?” he whispered urgently.

“They’re coming. The time is now.”

“Isaiah, wake up now. You’re having a nightmare. Wake up, I say!”

Isaiah went limp and calm in Memphis’s hands. His eyelids closed as if he might drift back to sleep. Suddenly, he stiffened. His eyes snapped wide open. He stared at Memphis as his small body shook. His words were a choked whisper: “Oh, my son, my son. What have you done?”

Isaiah swayed, but Memphis caught him in time and put his little brother into his bed, where he resumed sleeping as if nothing had happened.

Memphis sat shivering on his own bed. Unable to rest, he watched the rise and fall of his brother’s chest for some time, until early dawn filled the room with a weak, milky light. How could Isaiah have known? No one knew except Memphis. It was what he’d seen when he was under the healing trance in those last moments with their mother on her deathbed. As he’d walked in that other place, a misty land between waking and death, he’d seen her spirit, mournful and afraid, her hands reaching out toward him just before she was swallowed by some vast dark, her last words both a benediction and a warning:

Oh, my son, my son. What have you done?

Eugene Meriwether let himself into the imposing white edifice of the Grand Masonic Lodge on West Twenty-third Street, near the rattling thunder of the Sixth Avenue El, and climbed the steps to a small office on the third floor. He’d enjoyed a dinner out with his Brothers following a meeting on a charity endeavor they hoped to get under way. Now, by the soft glow of his banker’s lamp, he worked up a proposal for the Grand Master to review.

In the quiet of the office, he opened the jeweler’s box secreted inside his jacket and brushed a finger across the cuff links nestled into the dark velvet. Tomorrow was Edward’s birthday. He smiled, imagining Edward saying, “What is this?” as he opened the box and beheld the fine workmanship of the cuff links, which featured a scrolled
E
, the initial they shared. He could practically feel Edward’s sweet kiss on his lips. Edward, his great love; Edward, his great secret.

A sudden sound drew Eugene’s attention—a jovial whistling. He thought with consternation of old Mr. Saunders, who liked to drink and might have stumbled in.

He called out: “Saunders, old boy, is that you?”

The whistling stopped. Satisfied, Eugene went back to his work. But a few moments later, there it was—an irritating ditty echoing through the empty lodge. More than irritating… uncomfortable. There was a telephone on the desk, and Eugene struggled with whether or not to call the police. How foolish would he feel if it turned out to be old Saunders after all? And how humiliating for Saunders, who was very close friends with the Grand Master himself. Why, Eugene might ruin his own standing in the Brotherhood and never rise above Junior Warden. No, he couldn’t risk the taint of shame or ridicule. He’d like to be Grand Master himself one day. Yes, better to handle this on his own. If he took care of this trouble with Saunders carefully, discreetly, the old man might take a shine to him. This was the sort of opportunity disguised as obstacle the inspirational books talked about! He would meet the challenge head-on. How proud Edward would be when he told him later.

Again he called out: “Saunders? Can you hear me?”

Nothing but that damned whistling.

Straightening his tie, Eugene Meriwether left the comfort of his desk and poked his head out of the office. At the far end of the darkened hall, golden, shimmering light spilled out from around the slightly open door of the Gothic Room. Curious, the Mason moved toward it, passing the framed portraits of departed Masonic brothers. As he walked the dim corridor, something in Eugene Meriwether’s belly sounded a silent alarm that pulsed through his blood. Something that snaked back to his primitive ancestors and their need to huddle in caves around fires, the kind of warning that no amount of civilization could ever completely eradicate. He almost wished he had called the police, but his ambition kept him moving forward, toward the glowing room. He grabbed the knob and pushed open the door.

Fire. The golden glow had come from a fire burning on the center altar. And as he tried to piece together what was happening—
A fire? In the Gothic Room? How?
—the door slammed shut behind him. He pulled on the doorknob, his mind whirring with logical explanations:
It’s a prank. Some hooligans in need of a lesson. They’ll be very, very sorry for this. Holding this door shut from the outside, they are. Youth today—no respect. Hooligans, all.

The whistling stopped. A deep, resonant voice echoed in the room. “ ‘For they did not walk in the path of righteousness and lo, was the Lord’s anger sorely provoked.’ ”

A dark shadow passed across the wall. It seemed at first glance to be the long shadow of a man. But as the shadow drew closer, it became clear that whatever lurked behind Eugene Meriwether was far from human.

“ ‘And for the seventh offering, it was commanded: Turn the heretics from the Temple of Solomon under the watchful eye of God and purify their sins with an offering of blood and fire. For there is no expiation of sin but by blood….’ ”