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A giant hand pushed the skies apart. It was made of thousands of dark, screaming birds. The hand reached toward the children as if to scoop them up.
“What is that?” Ling said.
“We’re not waiting to find out. Run,” Henry said. He had just grazed Ling’s fingers with his own when the scene shifted like machinery, sending them toppling through layers of dream time. When everything settled, Henry was alone in a room he didn’t recognize. It reminded him of a hospital except that there were bars over the windows. There was a piano in the corner.
“At least there’s a piano,” Henry said, sitting to play. “Ling Chan, Ling Chan, oh, where can you be? I’m lost here without you and it’s mighty… spook… y.…”
“You should go.”
Henry nearly jumped off the piano bench. There was a boy in the room. He was skinny, with dark hair and eyebrows. He wasn’t fully awake like Henry. But he was aware of Henry’s presence somehow. And in the corner was a man in a wheelchair, his back turned toward Henry. The man in the wheelchair was dreaming, Henry knew. And he talked in his sleep: “The time is now. The time is now. We are the one forty-four!”
“He’ll be looking for you,” the boy said, drawing Henry’s attention again. “He’s looking for all of us. You should go now. Before he sees you. Before he finds you.”
“Who?” Henry asked.
The boy held out his palm. In the center was the faint outline of a symbol Henry had seen many times in his dreams: an eye with a jagged lightning bolt underneath.
“The man in the hat,” the boy said. “The King of Crows.”
RISING STARS
As Evie entered the radio station the following day, a group of whispering secretaries scattered to their typewriters, leaving one unlucky girl to take the lead.
“Mr. Phillips wants to see you, Miss O’Neill,” the secretary said, averting her eyes.
With a knot in her stomach, Evie approached Mr. Phillips’s imposing office. Usually, she loved coming in here. She thrilled at being up so high—there were no buildings this tall in Zenith, Ohio—and looking through the corner windows at the city spread out like a modern kingdom.
“Eevvieeee!” Mr. Phillips said. “Come in and take a seat.”
Evie perched on the edge of a chair as Mr. Phillips laced his fingers together and looked her straight in the eye. “Evie. You know I think you’re strictly top-drawer, don’t you? And your show has been a terrific asset for WGI.”
“Gee. That’s swell, then,” Evie managed. Listening to Mr. Phillips’s speech was like watching storm clouds rolling in and knowing she’d forgotten her umbrella.
“But it seems that not everybody feels as I do. Pears soap may be switching their advertising sponsorship to Miss Snow’s program.”
“Sarah Snow? But why?”
Mr. Phillips pushed forward the day’s paper, open to the gossip pages. There’d been more and more of them cropping up these days, scandal mongers intent on making and breaking Broadway, radio, and motion picture stars. With a little ink and insinuation, they could plant a story—We hear so-and-so is the top choice for Charlie Chaplin’s leading lady in his latest picture—or ruin a reputation. The worst of them was Harriet Henderson and her column, “Rumor Has It.” Harriet had her favorites, whom she protected and promoted. Sarah Snow was one of those favorites. Evie was not. The picture of Evie had landed squarely in Harriet’s column, and it was a shot of a post-party Evie sprawled across the giant planter in front of her hotel, her legs up in the air. The headline read, SWEETHEART SEER GETS POTTED. Evie felt a little queasy. She had been pretty drunk. After the meeting at the museum, she’d wanted nothing more than to forget for a while about everything Will had told them. So once her radio show came to an end and all the autographs had been signed, she’d set out to do just that. It had been a wonderful party; there’d been a lavish buffet, a ballet troupe twirling on the tables, and loads of
fascinating people she never would’ve met back in Ohio. She had a vague memory of taking off her shoes and jumping through a wreath of fire on a dare after her fourth glass of champagne. But she could barely remember getting back to her suite at the Winthrop Hotel, and now there was photographic evidence of her wild night. Harriet Henderson and Sarah Snow were taking all the fun out of Evie’s nightlife.
“Well, I admit, it’s not my best side,” Evie said, trying to save face, though she was mortified.
“Our advertisers are afraid that your antics may reflect badly on them. After all, who buys soap? Mothers. Mothers with unruly daughters they’d like to keep in line.”
“I thought Pears wanted to be the ‘modern soap for the modern girl’: ‘Keep your complexion flapper fresh!’”
“That thinking has changed. They want to associate their product with someone of Sarah Snow’s reputation—good, pure, likable, a paean to real womanhood.”
For months, they’d all said they loved Evie. In fact, the cheekier she was, the more they loved her. She’d acted out what they couldn’t—or wouldn’t dare. And now they were throwing her under the car wheels for it like a bunch of cowards. “I see.” Evie bristled. “Is there anything else? Would they like me to turn gin into Ovaltine or start a home for feral kittens?”
“Evie…” Mr. Phillips warned.
Evie cast her eyes downward. “Sorry.”
“It’s this whole Diviner business these days. It’s begun to unsettle people.”
Evie’s head popped back up. “You said you loved my show!”
