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“You might use the cellar door. So no one sees.”
Evie passed through the house one last time, stopping next to a side table that held a picture of James in his uniform. He was so beautiful, and so young. Evie renewed her determination to save him from the Eye’s awful torments. There were bare spots on the wall, and Evie real
ized that those were the places where pictures of her had once been displayed. They were all gone. She had been erased from the family story.
Evie cried the whole way back to the circus camp. When she arrived, Sam was sitting on the steps of Zarilda’s wagon in an undershirt and trousers. “Hail, hail, the conquering Zenith hero!” he called. “Did they give you the key to the city? Better yet, did your folks give you any rubes for the road?”
Evie kept walking.
“Aw, c’mon, Pork Chop. I was only teasing. Hey, Baby Vamp?”
Evie did not break stride. The circus went blurry. She blinked but it only happened again. She didn’t know where she was going. The fields were loud with barkers enticing folks into tents. All these people. Did any of them feel truly loved?
“Baby Vamp?” Sam had caught up to her outside the empty elephant cage. “Aw, Sheba. You’re crying.”
“You’re very observant,” she shot back, and then she couldn’t stop herself from sobbing. Sam pulled her to him and wrapped her in a hug.
“It’s okay, Doll. It’s okay,” he murmured and kissed the top of her head.
“What’s the matter?” Theta’s voice.
Evie was still crying and so didn’t know what Sam whispered to Theta over the top of her head. She only knew that now there were two sets of arms around her, holding her close, holding her up. She only knew that she had family after all.
ONE OF THEM
The towns began to blur together. Evie read so many objects she lost count. Time and again, she was struck not by the specifics of the object itself—bought on a whim at a department store, inherited from a beloved grandfather, given in love, given begrudgingly, stolen from an enemy, stolen from a complete stranger—but by what the objects meant to those who held them. How the objects revealed the yearning of those people who were so much more alike than they ever realized. If they had, Evie wondered, would it have made them kinder to one another?
Sometimes, though, reading objects had the opposite effect. Artie Wilson’s pocket watch was just such an example. Evie had lifted it as part of her act with Zarilda; making a show of pretending not to understand how a pocket watch worked, she swung it in front of her face, pretending to hypnotize herself, much to the amusement of the audience. The entire time, she read for information she could pass along to Zarilda. Artie Wilson was a loan officer at a bank in Marion, Indiana. He was also a Grand Exchequer for the Marion KKK. There’d been a meeting recently, and at that meeting, they’d discussed the manhunt for the Diviners. She could see Artie Wilson palming that pocket watch as he talked with the other men. “One of our brotherhood is looking for his wife. Seems she fell in with those Diviners on that manhunt list. He wants her back—wants to clear her name and help her get right again. Theta Knight. Pretty. Be on the lookout.”
Evie came out of her trance. Artie Wilson was laughing at her antics along with everybody else. She forced herself to look deep into his eyes and found that the most terrifying thing of all was just how completely ordinary he looked.
Evie grabbed Theta as she was on her way into the Big Top. “There’s a fella here. I read his watch. He’s with the Klan.” Evie took in a couple of steadying breaths. “Roy’s put out the word to the Klan everywhere. They’re looking for you. They’re looking for you here!”
Fear flooded through Theta, making her want to curl up in a ball like a frightened child.
“If they try to touch one hair on your head,” Evie was saying, “I will… I will… pos-i-tutely do something they will not like!”
“You’re in a clown suit,” was all Theta could say.
“I will do something, Theta. I don’t know what, yet. But mark my words, I’ll do it.”
Petite Evie looked so thoroughly ridiculous in her baggy clown costume with the painted face and straw hat that it sideswiped Theta’s fear for a moment. More than that, though, she was struck by the love and fierceness of her friend. She knew Evie meant it. Evie would fight by her side to the death. Theta hoped it wouldn’t come to that.
“I love you, Evil,” she said.
Evie grinned and squeezed Theta’s hand. “Oh, mercy! I’m almost on! My big entrance!” Evie said and ran off to take her place inside the tent.
“Ya know, you’re supposed to say ‘I love you, too,’” Theta called after her.
Roy was hunting her. It made Theta’s palms catch like kindling. She couldn’t possibly go into the Big Top just yet. Not like this. A quick walk would calm her down. She marched toward the animal cages when she heard a woman cry out.
“Please, Billy. Don’t. Please!”
The woman’s pleading, frightened voice lit a fuse inside Theta. She’d said those words, in that tone, enough to Roy to know that this woman was in trouble. Theta came around the side of the tent. The woman wasn’t much older than Theta. She was on the small side, and already a bright red splotch marked her face where he’d slapped her. The man, bigger, older, still had his hand raised. With the other, he held the woman tightly by the arm.
“Please,” the woman whimpered.
“You’ll do as I say, Wilma!” the man said through his teeth.
