Ling rolled her eyes. “Mim. Your parents are immigrants. So are mine,” Ling said. She had very little patience for Mim and her prejudices.
“Those people are different. Not like us,” Mim sniffed.
It was almost time to cross again. “I have to go to Staino’s for my mother,” Ling said. She suddenly wanted away from Mim and this upsetting gossip that didn’t feel like gossip, but like a train bearing down on Ling, who had one foot stuck in the ties.
“Say, you know that Evie O’Neill, don’t you? The one who was best friends with the bomber?” Mim said, a parting shot.
Mabel. Her name was Mabel, Ling thought, feeling a tightness in her chest.
“You ought to be careful, Ling. You don’t want them to come for you.”
And Ling could tell there was a hint of glee in the warning.
The spring day had begun to sour. Ling crossed Canal into Little Italy. On Mulberry Street, a crowd had gathered in front of a shop nestled between a pasticceria and a tiny cafe. Several men surrounded a dark-haired woman in a long flowing dress and shawl, preventing her escape. One of the men gripped an ax. Ling could feel the woman’s terror as if it were her own. In the street, people looked on, doing nothing.
“Please—this is my shop! My business,” the woman pleaded as two men smashed in the front windows with baseball bats, right across the gold-leaf lettering that read FORTUNES TOLD.
Ling froze, unsure of what to do, of what she could do. She’d seen a mob turn before. Not long ago, a man had been openly taunting her on the street in front of witnesses who did nothing to stop it, and if Henry hadn’t come along at just that moment, well, she shuddered to think what could have happened to her. Now, though, she was one of those mute witnesses.
“Why are you doing this?” Ling said, sounding every bit as frightened as she felt.
The man with the ax turned to her, his face ruddy with rage. “Stay out of it.”
Two big men emerged from the shop carrying a large wooden barrel. “There’s at least eight more in there,” one of the men grunted. The ruddy man stepped forward and swung the ax. The blade bit into the wood again and again until the barrel broke open and a rush of amber liquid swooshed into the gutters. The pungent smell of whiskey flooded the streets. This woman wasn’t even a real Diviner, just a bootlegger using a fortune-telling shop as a front. It didn’t seem to matter, though.
“La strega!” one of the onlookers shouted and spat at the woman’s feet.
Ling knew that word. La strega. Witch.
“Oughta lock ’em all up, every last one of those Diviners,” someone said as Ling continued up the street, keeping her gaze firmly on the sidewalk as if the only things that could hurt her lived there.
FAIRY TALES
Theta, Evie, and Henry strolled arm-in-arm among Central Park’s budding trees. Spring had come to the city almost overnight. Pink-and-white blossoms bowed in the breeze. Spring had been Mabel’s favorite season, Evie remembered, and she ached not to be able to share it with her. She picked up her pace, eager to question Will about the Shadow Men. It was high time they knew everything about them. Sam’s life depended on it.
The three of them passed a governess scolding a little boy in short pants who refused to go home for a nap, but they were too immersed in conversation to hear the child crying, “But I see him when I fall asleep. He’s all covered with worms and he says he’s going to eat up Mummy and Daddy first and then he’s going to come for me!”
“Now, now, that’s only a bad dream. Buck up.”
A car backfired coming up Central Park West, and Theta jumped.
“Gracious! Just an old flivver breaking wind.” Evie giggled.
“Sure. Of course,” Theta said, dropping her shoulders. That’s what living with Roy had done to her. If you never knew when a smile might turn into a slap or a punch, you stayed on alert. Theta hadn’t heard from Roy lately, and that troubled her. She knew she should be relieved, but Roy wasn’t the type to let something go. He’d promised he’d get even, and Roy was a man who kept his promises, not out of love but out of spite.
“Oooh, look—a crocus! It truly is spring,” Evie said, breaking away to admire the new flower.
Henry leaned in to Theta. “It was only a car, darlin’,” he said, sensing her worry. “You showed him—that’s why he’s made himself scarce. What can he do against your power?”
“A lot, Hen. My power’s unpredictable. You know that. I almost set Sam’s hat on fire this morning. What if Roy goes after the people I love? For the first time in my life, I got something to lose.” Why hadn’t she heard from Memphis yet?
But Evie was back now, going on about a pair of shoes she’d seen in exactly that shade of crocus, and for once, Theta was happy to let Evie prattle on if it meant Theta didn’t have to talk.
When they turned onto Sixty-eighth Street, they slowed. Police guarded the entrance to the Museum of American Folklore, Superstition, and the Occult, where a small flock of reporters shouted rapid-fire questions at them.
“Is today ‘Win a Free Skeleton Day’ at the museum?” Henry joked.
“Hey. There’s Woody,” Evie said, spying her friend and occasional nemesis, T. S. Woodhouse of the New York Daily News, in the scrum. “He’ll know the business.”
Theta grabbed Evie’s sleeve. “Don’t call to—”
“Mr. Woodhouse! Oh, Mr. Woodhouse!” Evie bellowed.
“Him,” Theta finished as every head swiveled their way.
“It’s the Sweetheart Seer!” somebody shouted, alerting the reporters, who now rushed toward Evie and her friends. It had been a while since Evie had enjoyed the bright spotlight of the press’s attention, and for just a moment, it felt so good that she quite forgot why she had come to the museum in the first place.
“Golly, is it Win a Free Skeleton Day at the Creepy Crawly?” she quipped, moving quickly ahead of Henry, who complained, “Hey, that was my line.”
But when she got closer, she saw the broken windows and the word Murderers splashed in red paint across the neat, hand-lettered sign for the museum. Woody was pushing his way toward her, his expression grim. “Evie! Evie!”
“Say, Woody, what’s happened?”
“You don’t know, Sheba? Didn’t anybody telephone you?”
“I was at Theta’s last night,” Evie said feebly. She didn’t like the cold she suddenly felt in her belly. It was the same cold she’d felt when Mr. Smith from the telegram office had come to deliver the telegram about her brother, James, during the war: We regret to inform you…
“You’d better brace yourself for a shock, kid.” Woody reached inside his jacket pocket for his flask. Evie took note of the reporters watching her. She shook her head and he put it back.
“What is it, Woody?”
“Your uncle’s dead. He’s been murdered.”
Will. Murdered. The street swam and Evie stumbled a bit. A cameraman’s flash went off, capturing her in her shock.
“Who would do that? Who would kill Uncle Will?” was all Evie could seem to say.
“Nobody’s said anything yet. Say, uh, you wouldn’t have any ideas, would you, Sheba?” Woody lifted his pencil from over his ear and opened a fresh page on his notepad.