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Will disagreed. He believed eugenics was bigoted nonsense. Margaret Walker called it an abomination and the seeds of genocide—one had only to believe a race or ethnicity inferior in order to justify murdering them.
While Jake was busy working for the Department of Paranormal, his parents nursed their wounds with a tour of Europe. In April, they cabled that they would return to New York from Southampton via an elite ocean liner, and expected Jake to meet them when they docked. They’d catch up over luncheon at the Plaza.
It was Miriam Lubovitch who warned Jake. The Russian fortune-teller, a Diviner of great skill, had brought her young son, Sergei, up to Hopeful Harbor for his assessment. During the meeting, Miriam went rigid, her face contorted with fear. “Your mother and father, they travel by sea?”
“Yes.”
“This they must not do,” Miriam had said in her broken English. “Is bad voyage.”
Jake had chuckled at this. “It’s an unsinkable ship, Mrs. Lubovitch.”
Miriam shook her head sadly. “No such thing.”
Four days later, the Titanic struck an iceberg in the North Atlantic, four hundred miles off the coast of Newfoundland. Of the more than two thousand, two hundred passengers aboard, more than half were killed, including John and Martha Marlowe.
Jake was now alone in the world. Some said the Marlowes were cursed. Jake pushed back against such superstition: What if he could keep disaster from befalling the nation? What if he could ensure the safety of others and promote their well-being through medicine, inventions, or machines? What if Diviners and their connection to the unseen world were the key to these wonders? What made a Diviner, was the question. For Jake, it came back to blood.
But the more he worked with these fascinating Diviners, the more he became unsettled. How could you ever fully trust a person who might be able to read your history in an object or see the future before it happened? And what about all these immigrant Diviners? Were they loyal to the United States or to the countries of their birth? Diviners were useful, but they were also dangerous, and their powers had to be carefully monitored and controlled. Only the right sort of person should be entrusted with such gifts. If a new breed of Diviner was going to be developed in the laboratory, that Diviner must be of superior stock. The future should belong to people just like Jake Marlowe.
Of course, Jake had experimented on himself first. He’d wanted to be the Adam of this new genus. The injection had burned in his veins, and a deep purple bruising had bloomed immediately at the injection site, frightening his fiancée, Rotke. “I’m a pioneer on the new frontier,” he had said, and then he waited through the shakes and sweats that raged through him for hours. The next day, when Margaret had him guess at a series of cards, Jake got only one right, as anyone might.
“Don’t take it on the chin,” Will had said. “I didn’t fare much better.”
“You are not me,” Jake had snapped.
He changed the formula and tried again. And again
. It had never taken. Not once. Jake Marlowe could not become a Diviner. He’d never been denied anything but this. The unfairness of it enraged him.
The war had come on, and the government had pushed for more experimentation with Diviners. With funding from the elite Founders Club, Jake had perfected his serum, he felt sure. He was ready to prove it with Unit 144. Jake had built a prototype for the Eye of Providence when he began receiving messages from the mythical being of which all Diviners spoke, the man in the stovepipe hat, about whom Cornelius Rathbone had told them. The King of Crows. He was sending messages only through Diviners, however. Once again, Jake Marlowe, the golden son, had been denied. The King of Crows, it seemed, only wanted to bargain with Diviners. For once in his life, Jake had no power, no influence.
But things had changed. The King of Crows was communicating with Jake now, through the Eye. And once Jake Marlowe burst through to that other world and stabilized the breach, he would march into the land of the dead with the world’s mightiest army and take what had been denied him. Jake Marlowe would own the most powerful Diviner of all.
But only if he could find Evie O’Neill, Memphis Campbell, and the others.
The Shadow Men had returned yesterday afternoon with a girl they’d procured via one of the Fitter Families tents, at a county fair somewhere in Pennsylvania. The girl didn’t have much Diviner in her, but Jake couldn’t afford to be picky. The Eye needed her energy to keep the portal open. They were running out of prospects. They were so close. Nothing could be allowed to jeopardize the mission. Most of the subjects brought to Hopeful Harbor were awed by the grandeur of the mansion—for a time, at least. But this girl had not stopped crying. When Marlowe instructed the bigger Shadow Man to strap her down, he’d hesitated.
“Mr. Marlowe, she’s only eleven. I’ve got a niece who’s eleven.”
Marlowe had done the job himself, placing the cap on the frightened child’s head, assuring her that she was being very brave, that she was making a great contribution to her country. Miriam had refused. Even in her chains, she’d resisted fiercely, bucking and scratching and spitting Russian curses at Marlowe and the Shadow Men as they forced her into the chair.
The girl had delivered a brief message from the other side: Death Valley. May 27. All shall be ready for you. She’d screamed as her head caught fire.
The hour was late now, half past eleven. Jake wandered through the dark, empty house. He’d be leaving for California soon and did not plan on coming back for some time. The servants had covered the furniture in sheets. It was a house full of ghosts. When he reached the ballroom, he had the strangest feeling he was not alone, even though he’d sent the servants home.
He nearly dropped his glass of milk.
“Will…” Jake said no louder than a whisper.
The ghost of his former friend was a pale reflection in the gilt mirror.
Words appeared on the glass.
Destroy the machine.
Break the cycle.
Heal the breach.
