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“Yes. But I understand he’s very, very busy,” Evie said through smiling teeth.
“Do you place yourself on par with the Almighty?”
“No. I’ll leave that to you,” Evie shot back. It was a misstep to bait Sarah like that, but Evie was tired of Sarah’s holier-than-thou routine.
Sarah looked at Evie like a judge from on high. “I do worry about what you and your kind might be unleashing on our nation.”
That goes both ways, Evie thought.
The very next morning, Harriet Henderson had a column devoted to Sarah Snow, complete with a staged photograph of Sarah surrounded by adoring children at an orphanage.
“I worry that Diviners play on people’s fears. You shout, ‘Ghost!’ and suddenly, people see ghosts,” Sarah was quoted as saying.
Hear, hear, Miss Snow, Harriet Henderson wrote. Perhaps it’s not ghosts who are the trouble but Diviners: For if there truly are restless spirits haunting the streets of New York, causing mischief and meaning us harm, how do we know it wasn’t these very Diviners who’ve brought them to us? Perhaps it isn’t ghosts we should be afraid of but Diviners themselves!
“Told you she doesn’t like you,” Mabel said, reading over Evie’s shoulder.
“It’s no time for smugness, Mabesie.”
“There’s always a little time for smugness,” Mabel said, shrugging on her coat. The phone was ringing again.
“Mabesie, could you…?”
Mabel gave a toss of her bobbed hair. “Believe it or not, I do have a life outside this room. Get it yourself.”
“Diviners Investigations,” Evie said, and scrabbled for a pencil.
That night, the Diviners were called first to a small hotel in the Theater District, where the ghost of a general sat at the white-clothed table in the private dining room. His uniform was splashed with blood spilled in some long-ago war.
“Why are the ghosts coming?” Ling asked.
“We come through the breach,” the general ghost said so emphatically his bushy sideburns puffed out with his cheeks. “It is unstable, though. Once the Eye is complete, it will be our time.”
“What can you tell us about the Eye?” Ling demanded. “Is it a place?”
“It is a great heart of gold humming with industry.”
“Is that where Conor is?”
“No. It’s where the others are.” The general’s eyes began to pearl. The rot of the grave bloomed on his lips, eating them down like acid.
“He’s starting to turn,” Memphis warned. “Get ready.”
A long exhale of curling black smoke poured from the general’s mouth on a guttural whine of a l
augh that stank of death. “He keeps you busy with his questions, doesn’t he?”
“What do you mean?” Ling asked. But it was too late. The general stood, drawing his sword from its scabbard. “I charged upon them in the field, and I would charge upon a thousand more, for I am hungry! Your days are numbered. The Eye will see to it. We are coming!”
“Now!” Sam commanded, and they watched as the general was torn from the world for good.
“Anybody else feel kinda… good after that?” Sam asked as they hurried to another ghost sighting, this one out in Green-Wood Cemetery.
“Like for just a minute you’ve plugged yourself into the sun?” Ling asked.
“Yes,” Henry agreed, and the others nodded.
“Memphis? You’re awfully quiet over there,” Sam said.
