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From Immigrants! Bootleggers! Negro Agitaters! Anarchists! Diviners!
The Invisible Empire and the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan
invite all White Protestants
to a lecture and rally to discuss the dangers to America’s Great White Race.
Pillar of Fire Church, Zarephath, New Jersey. April 15, 1927.
Meet at the sign of the fiery cross.
The KKK: Yesterday, Today, and Forever!
“So Roy’s in with the Klan now,” Jericho said.
“Bullies need other bullies,” Theta said bitterly.
“They misspelled agitators. Maybe America is in danger from bigots who can’t spell,” Henry said.
But Theta couldn’t laugh. Roy was a threat who’d aligned himself with an even bigger threat.
Up on the stage, pugnacious preacher Billy Sunday delivered a prayer that made God sound like a boxer against sin. Memphis searched the crowd for Sister Walker again. It was odd that she hadn’t shown up yet. Now, at last, Jake Marlowe took the stage. The young girls in corsages lifted their arms to him. “We love you, Jake!” they cried.
“Oh, I wish I could comfort him,” one tearstained girl sobbed.
“I’ll bet you do,” Theta grumbled under her breath.
With his sleek hair and blue eyes, Jake Marlowe was the son every mother was proud of, the man every other man wanted to be, the lover every girl desired. He stood now at the microphone and looked out over the crowd, two hundred thousand strong, and paused, gathering his words. His voice echoed over the heads of the people packed into Times Square: “Sarah Snow was the best girl I ever knew. She was a saint. My very own angel.”
A collective cheer rose up from the people: “Sarah, Sarah, Sarah!”
“Brother,” Evie grumbled.
“We just gotta stick it out and then we get a private audience with Marlowe,” Theta whispered.
Jake raised his hands. The crowd quieted, eager to hear whatever the great man would say next.
“An evil deed took her away from me. Took her from all of us. But evil deeds do not arrive in the air like songs on the radio. Evil deeds are perpetrated by evil people. Like those anarchists, the Secret Six. People like Arthur Brown and Mabel Rose.”
Evie swallowed down her anger. In her heart, she knew that Mabel had been every bit as good as Sarah Snow—better, even. She did good things just because it was the right thing to do, without expecting any adulation for it. That she had been part of the terrorist group who’d bombed the exhibition was hard for Evie to accept. Her best friend, who had lived her life with a strong moral code, had died violating that code to the worst degree. Evie felt like she was grieving Mabel twice—both the person she loved and the person she thought she knew.
At the microphone, Jake Marlowe was gathering steam. “Or how about this Memphis Campbell? He dares to call himself the Harlem Healer, but at Miss Snow’s last revival, he laid hands on a man who died that very same night! Did he also place a curse on Miss Snow?” Jake removed his pocket square and dabbed evenly at his forehead before returning it to its place.
“Or what about the Sweetheart Seer, Evie O’Neill? Did you know that she refused to sign a loyalty pledge with WGI? Now, why would any decent, law-abiding American citizen be afraid of signing such a loyalty oath? Is it, perhaps, because Evie O’Neill was close friends with Mabel Rose, the bomber herself?”
Angry boos erupted in the crowd. Theta squeezed Evie’s hand.
“That bum. That lousy bum,” Theta muttered.
Evie was frightened. This crowd had once adored her. Now they hated her. And Jake was egging them on. She wanted to leave. But she needed to get Marlowe to see reason about the Eye.
“I’d like you to hear from a man who knows firsthand about the dangers of Diviners,” Marlowe said through the microphone. “Mr. Roy Stoughton.”
Theta gasped as Roy, in all his awful beauty, took the stage. Around her, women’s eyes shone when they looked up at his muscular physique and sensual pout and took no note of the fists that had bloodied Theta so many times.
Roy stepped to the microphone. “Thank you, Mr. Marlowe. Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. I stand before you as a simple man from Kansas. I came to this big city looking not for fame or fortune, but for my wife.”
“I stand before you as a man. Who sounds. Like he is reading. From. A. Card,” Henry zinged to Theta under his breath.
