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On an Upper East Side street filled with lovely limestones, a supper party is under way. The hosts, a young, devastatingly fashionable couple, have invited all their smart-set friends, whom they’ve known simply forever, don’t you know, from their days at the Very Best Schools. The hosts have decided it would be an absolute hoot to bring in one of those Diviner types to conduct a proper séance, especially after hearing the gossip that the Ashtons had conjured a proper ghost at their last party. What a riot. What an ab-so-lute riot, the hostess proclaims between puffs on her cigarette. They sit now, twelve of them, at a round table in the library (books—who has time to read ’em, but my, how they do jazz up a room!) while the Diviner (an actress-turned-soothsayer, don’t you know) shuts her eyes and advises everyone to hold hands. The lights are dimmed and the candles lit before the servants exit, closing the pocket doors behind them. On the other side of those doors, the servants roll their eyes and move through the huge flat, emptying ashtrays.
“Let us call now upon the spirits,” the Diviner intones, using every bit of thespian training she has. She is ready to do her very best work, moaning and writhing. But something is wrong. She can feel something wicked standing right behind her—cold, so cold.
“Turn on the lights!” she screeches. “There is something in the room with us!”
The host leaps up, rushes for the switch. The lights burst their shades with a pop of glass. In the dark, they see him floating there: a man in shimmering waistcoat and riding breeches wearing a severe expression.
“Trespassers…”
The hostess screams to the maid. “Margaret! Margaret! Open the doors at once!”
“Trespassers!” the ghost says again.
“Get out of our house—get out!” the host shouts. He is afraid so he shouts very loudly. His voice is brittle.
“You own nothing,” the ghost answers. “You live on a false inheritance.”
“What do you want?” the hostess screams. She is no longer smug about the Ashtons.
“The Diviners,” the ghost answers.
As the Diviners came to the end of Sixty-eighth Street, they saw a crowd running toward the park. Evie stopped a trio of young men. “What is it?” she asked.
“Ghosts,” they answered, excited. “There’s ghosts in Central Park!”
The Diviners raced with the crowd into the park, toward the Casino restaurant. They could hear the screams before they reached the parking lot, which was overrun by people fleeing. Fancy cars swerved out of park, banging into other cars but driving on without a backward glance. Light spasmed behind the Casino’s pretty windows.
“Are we going in?” Henry asked.
“Of course!” Evie answered.
“I was afraid you’d say that.”
“Wait a minute! What’s our plan?” Ling asked. Bloodcurdling screams rang out.
“Same as always,” Evie said.
“Same as always?” Jericho asked, confused, but Evie was already charging ahead.
Inside, the beautiful restaurant was a shambles, all overturned tables and palm trees uprooted from their ceramic pots. The
orchestra’s instruments were strewn about the stage. The people who had not been lucky enough to escape hid behind those tables, trembling with fear. In the center of the room were three ghosts. They shimmered around the edges, but Evie detected a difference from the others they’d faced. These ghosts seemed more corporeal, somehow, and that made them even more frightening.
The ghosts turned to face the Diviners and sniffed.
“Diviners. You’ve come,” the ghosts said in one voice.
The Diviners fell in, formed a line.
“What are we doing?” Jericho asked Memphis. He felt as if he’d arrived to take an exam for which he’d not studied.
“What do you want? Did he send you?” Evie asked the ghosts.
“He grows stronger. We grow stronger. You will be tested.” The ghosts drifted closer. They were turning. Dark veins crept up their pallid necks, curving around their cheeks and toward their mouths of jagged teeth.
“Hands,” Evie said, joining with the others.
Jericho took hold of Ling’s hand, though he still didn’t know why.
