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“Not if they’re Americans!” Marlowe said, the microphone echoing his words into the crowd in split-second waves that met with thunderous applause. “But these Diviners, well, what if they could know secrets about us they shouldn’t? I think that’s a real threat. I’m afraid I find the entire idea of Diviners unseemly. And Un-American.”
Evie couldn’t hold herself in any longer. “I hear the Ku Klux Klan feels the same way. So you’re in fine company, Mr. Marlowe!”
There were gasps in the crowd.
“Uh-oh. Trolley’s off the tracks,” Theta whispered to Woody at the back of the room.
Onstage, Marlowe’s eyes glittered with something hard. Seeing his expression was like hearing a shot half a second before seeing the gun. “Is that so? From what I hear, your brother wasn’t a war hero but a deserter.”
“That’s a lie and you know it!” Evie slurred.
“What did she say?”
“She called Jake Marlowe a liar!”
“The nerve!”
“Terrible girl.”
Terrible girl. Evie might as well have been back in Ohio, listening to the small-minded gossips. That nasty smallness was everywhere, it seemed. The whiskey had been a mistake. It had made her dizzy. It had also made her bold.
“You know what happened to my brother,” Evie said through clenched teeth. “It was you. You and the Founders Club and those terrible Shadow Men and—and Project Buffalo!”
“Dammit,” Woody muttered under his breath.
Jake smirked. “My, even the United States Army was in on this supposed conspiracy? It seems I’m in excellent company.”
The room roared with laughter. At her.
What could Evie say? That they had a telegram proving James’s death? That was a lie. She was telling the truth, even if she had absolutely no proof of it. It was her word against his, and he would win.
“James was no deserter,” was all she could say. Her face was hot.
“I would have liked to have spared your poor parents the truth, but very well, Miss O’Neill. You’ve pushed me to this: Your brother, James O’Neill, was a deserter. He was shot and killed trying to desert his post by a real war hero, Luther Clayton. And now Luther Clayton is dead. Why, if I were as conspiracy-minded as you are, Miss O’Neill, I might suspect that a Diviner with a radio show paid a poor, shell-shocked veteran to stage a shooting just to keep her in the public eye. And then I might wonder why that poor soldier died after that same Diviner visited him.”
Evie was reeling. “That isn’t true and you know it!” She grabbed for the microphone and stumbled, nearly tumbling off the stage, until Sarah righted her. She sniffed, frowning at Evie.
“Why, Miss O’Neill,” Sarah said in a whisper she had to know would be picked up by the live microphone. “Have you been drinking?”
The audience was booing Evie openly now. “Get her off the stage!”
Mr. Phillips was motioning for Sarah to sing. “Ladies and gentlemen, at this celebration of our great nation, won’t you join me in a favorite hymn?”
As Evie left the stage, some of the men at the expensive tables still booed her while their wives looked at her with contempt. And Evie realized that Sam had been right—no matter how much she tried to make herself fit, eventually, the real, smart-mouthed Evie would come bursting out of the confining party cake with all of her opinions and wounds on display.
Onstage, the Crusaders played Sarah’s signature hymn while she sang along in her sweet soprano: “Onward Christian soldiers, marching as to war, with the cross of Jesus, going on before…”
One by one, the people at the tables took up the song. They sang as one voice. Inside, Evie was crumbling. Tears coursed down her cheeks. Theta wasn’t singing. And neither was Woody. He offered Evie his handkerchief. “Tide’s turning, Sheba,” he
said soberly.
As the song drew to its close, a man burst into the room, his eyes wild. His shouts couldn’t be heard above the din in the room, though.
“What? What’s he saying?” the guests repeated to one another until the man’s desperate cries could at last be heard.
“Ghosts!” he screeched. “Ghosts in the streets!”
WE WILL BE HEARD
