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“Really? You will?”
It was her smile that did it. Jericho would do anything for that smile. Hadn’t he wanted to make his mark? This was a start. Instead of shelving books filled with adventures, he’d be living one. “I’m almost out of serum. I have to do something. At least if I’m spying on Marlowe and getting answers about Project Buffalo, I won’t feel like he holds all the power over my choices.”
Sam waved his hands. “Is no one gonna tell me what this is about?”
“Okay if I fill Sam in?” Evie said.
“You’ll have to. Otherwise, he’ll never shut up. You’ll wander the streets hearing only his annoying voice in your head. I can think of no greater torture,” Jericho deadpanned.
Sam clipped Jericho’s arm playfully with his fist. Jericho didn’t even flinch. Wincing, Sam shook out his hand. “Holy smokes, you are solid.”
“You can see me out, Sam. I’ll tell you on the way,” Evie said, putting on her hat.
Sam nodded at Evie’s hat. “It’s called a tam,” Sam whispered to Jericho. “Whatever you do, don’t insult it.”
“I don’t know what to say to Will, though. He and Marlowe hate each other, and Marlowe hates Diviners. If Will hears I left to join up with Marlowe’s exhibition, it’ll feel like a betrayal,” Jericho said, the thought weighing heavily on him.
“Will could never hate you. It’s only for a few weeks, and then you can let him know the truth,” Evie promised. “Oh, thank you, Jericho!” She hugged Jericho, and Jericho didn’t say what bothered him most about their plan: He’d be away from Evie.
Evie shrugged on her coat and made a beeline for the telephone.
“Thought we were leaving. What are you doing now?” Sam asked.
“I’m calling an emergency Diviners meeting.”
“Now? Here?” Sam asked.
Evie made a face as she dialed Theta’s number. “Don’t be silly. At the Hotsy Totsy. I’m not having this discussion without jazz and gin.”
THE HOTSY TOTSY
While Cal Cooper and the St. Nicholas Playboys pounded out a stomping jazz number onstage behind the shimmying Hotsy Totsy chorus girls, and Harlem’s hottest nightclub swirled with dancers hopped up on bootleg booze served by waiters carrying silver trays high in the air, the Diviners, along with Mabel and Jericho, crowded around a corner table partially obscured by the splayed fronds of a potted palm.
“What did you want to talk to us about?” Memphis asked, keeping one eye on the floor. He wanted to make sure Papa Charles didn’t see him camped at a table with his friends when he was supposed to be working.
“This,” Sam said, unloading onto the table his secret cache of coded punch cards they’d found in the abandoned office of the Department of Paranormal.
Henry held one up, peering at the holes. “Is this your failed attempt at making Swiss cheese?”
“It’s code, remember?” Evie said. “These are all files on subjects from Project Buffalo.”
“I thought you only found one of these,” Ling said, turning the card over, peering at it.
“We only showed you one before the professor and Sister Walker came in. I didn’t want to tip our hand that we had a lot of ’em,” Sam said. “These cards? They’re proof.”
“Proof of what?” Theta asked.
Evie nodded at Sam. “Tell ’em.”
“We are not a fluke of nature. We Diviners were made. Engineered right in our mother’s wombs through Project Buffalo,” Sam said. “And Will and Sister Walker and Jake Marlowe all had something to do with it.”
He and Evie told them everything then—about how they’d broken into an abandoned Department of Paranormal office a few weeks earlier and found the cards. How they’d had to hide under a desk from the two Shadow Men who’d come sniffing around for a prophecy. The map on the wall with thumbtacks stuck into different towns and the cryptic notations written beside each marked town: Subject #7, Subject #59, Subject #122. Finally, they told them everything Moony had just admitted to them on the Kill Devil. When they’d finished, there was a sick stillness around the table that was at odds with the nightclub’s fizzy glamour.
“We were made?” Ling repeated, as if she were trying to convince herself.
“Yeah. Didn’t you ever think it was funny that we’re all the same age? There’s a good chance every one of us is a test subject, and the secrets we need to know are on these cards,” Sam said, tapping the tip of his index finger on the stack. “Trouble is, we need a special tabulating machine to read them, and we don’t have it.”
Ling examined one of the cards. “It’s not at the museum somewhere?”
