AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Backstage, the theater was in its usual state of preshow chaos. Costumers ran past with gigantic beaded headdresses needing last-minute touch-ups. A few of the young actors flirted with one another in the wings, where they thought no one could see or judge. Two chorus girls passed a bottle of Listerine back and forth. They gargled the pungent mouthwash and spat it into cups.
/>
“Theta! Where’s Theta?”
“In here, Wally,” Theta shouted, and the burly stage manager poked his head into the dressing room.
“Congratulations, kid. You’ve got yourself a screen test with Vitagraph Studios.”
Theta whirled around. “Are you pulling my leg, Wally?”
“On the level. Two weeks from tomorrow in Brooklyn. If this goes well, kid, they might send you out to Hollywood to make pictures with the likes of Charlie Chaplin and Eddie Cantor. Then you can go away and stop being such a pain in my neck.”
Theta grinned. She kissed Wally’s cheek. “I love you, too, Wally.”
Wally blushed. “Ten minutes. Get a wiggle on. Flo wants to run through the ‘Stardust’ number before the show.”
At her makeup table, Theta peered into the lighted mirror and applied a swipe of Dorin of Paris rouge to each cheek as she imagined herself on the silver screen, performing stunts alongside Buster Keaton or playing the poor, dying consumptive opposite John Barrymore. The house. The lemon tree. The little dog. Theta and Memphis. It was that much closer. She could feel it.
She just had to get her awful power under control.
Theta lifted the lid on her box of face powder and screamed. A dead mouse lay inside. A note covered the top of its small, lifeless body. With shaking fingers, Theta lifted the note and read.
Dear Betty: Violets are blue. Red is the rose.
You left him for dead. But somebody knows.
Somebody knows.
Quickly, Theta grabbed the box and ran for the stage door and out into the back alley. Already, smoke was rising from the sides of the box where her hands gripped it. Heat rushed up her arms. As the box caught fire between her palms, she dropped it into the trash can, where it fizzled. Her hands were bright red still. For a moment, she was back in Kansas. She could see the flames crackling up the walls, smell the smoke filling the tiny room. She could hear Roy’s screams.
Her mind went blank then, as it always did.
But somebody else remembered. Somebody who wanted Theta to know, too. The past had found her at last, and it threatened to burn down everything she’d built.
The entire walk home, Isaiah had talked a mile a minute. “So I get to use my powers again, Memphis? Do I? And I can make ’em as strong as I want? Memphis, hey, Memphis!”
“Yes, yes, Isaiah!” Memphis laughed. “But remember: You can’t say nothing to Octavia about it.”
Isaiah grinned. “You mean I can’t say anything to Octavia.”
“Oh, yeah? Put ’em up.” Memphis dropped into a crouch, dukes up, and he and Isaiah pretend-boxed their way down the sidewalk past folks hurrying home to their suppers. Isaiah stopped suddenly. They were in front of Madame Seraphina’s brownstone. A sign hung from a hook: MADAME SERAPHINA, PRIESTESS. A crow flitted above Memphis’s head and came to rest on the hand railing.
“There’s that bird again,” Isaiah said.
“Why, hello, Berenice,” Memphis said, greeting the bird with a grand flourish of a bow that made Isaiah laugh, which was Memphis’s second-favorite sound. The first was Theta whispering his name followed by I love you.
“How come that bird’s always chasing after you?”
“All the ladies chase after me!” Memphis said with mock-umbrage. “Even the birds!”
The crow squawked three times and cocked its small, shiny head toward the partially closed drapes of the basement. Through them, Memphis could see Seraphina’s altar with its offerings to the spirits and ancestors. Seraphina’s face appeared at the window.
“Bet I can beat you home,” Memphis said, and took off running, slowing down at the end to let Isaiah beat him into their aunt Octavia’s apartment. It wasn’t Octavia, but her boarder, Blind Bill Johnson, who greeted them. He sat on Octavia’s prized settee with his guitar on his lap and his cane at his side.
“Well, well, well. Is that the Campbell brothers I hear?” Bill called in his raspy voice.
“Evenin’, Uncle Bill,” Isaiah said. “Where’s Auntie?”
