Before the Devil Breaks You by Libba Bray
Sister Walker placed a hand on Memphis’s shoulder. “You did good. I’m confident that if we can strengthen Isaiah’s powers, the seizures will stop.”
Memphis wanted to believe she was right.
SECRETS
Sam was waiting for Evie on the front steps. He leaned against the railing, arms crossed, that familiar smirk in place. “Well, if it isn’t the former future Mrs. Sam Lloyd.”
“Don’t start with me, Sam,” Evie said tersely. “Oh, and I see the Herald ran with your story last week.” With one gloved hand, Evie blocked out an imaginary headline in the air. “‘Wedding Not in the Cards for Sweetheart Seer and Hero-Diviner Sam Lloyd.’ Hero-Diviner.” Evie rolled her eyes. “And how come you got a first and a last name?”
Sam spread his arms in what was supposed to be an apology but most definitely was not. “What can I say? I lead a charmed life. Look, that’s all water under the bridge. We’ve got bigger fish to fry. Bigger than you and me. Can we agree on that?”
“That depends,” Evie said, striding toward the sidewalk, Sam on her heels. “Will you be speaking in clichés on the primrose path of our glorious future?”
“Evie.”
“Yes. Fine,” she answered with a sigh. “Say, why didn’t you needle Uncle Will and Sister Walker for more answers about Project Buffalo? They know more than they’re telling us.”
“Exactly! You play much poker?”
“Not really.”
“I can tell. We got us a poker game here. You see how they dodged the question? Like career politicians. They keep playing coy, we don’t volunteer what we know.”
Evie thought it over. “I hate to say it, Sam, but you’re making sense. I still think it’s odd that I couldn’t read those coded punch cards we found. It’s almost as if somebody wanted to make sure a Diviner couldn’t do it. I know that sounds funny, but that was the feeling I got. Have you had any luck finding that card-reading machine?”
“Not yet. I keep throwing chum on the water, but everybody’s spooked. Remember my informant on Project Buffalo?”
“Your creepy man?”
“The same. Fella named Ben Arnold. This was sent to me at the museum, no return address.”
Sam handed Evie a small, back-pages newspaper mention of a mysterious death. “He was found dead on an ash heap in Queens. He’d been strangled with piano wire.”
Exasperated, Evie handed the article back. “There’s no need for me to read it if you’re just going to narrate the whole thing, Sam.”
Evie shoved her hands into her coat pockets and charged down Sixty-eighth Street toward Broadway. Sam kept pace beside her.
“Okay. We gonna have this fight now?” he asked.
Evie kept her eyes straight ahead. “What fight? I’m not fighting.”
“You’re the one who wanted that meshuga phony romance for publicity,” Sam reminded her. “I’m just the fella who had the decency to end it.”
Evie stopped so fast Sam had to back up.
“Decency? Decency! Says the fella out every night with a different girl! ‘Jilted Sam Lloyd Finds Comfort with Chorus Girls! Hard-Hearted Hannah Evie O’Neill Breaks Hero’s Heart.’ What a lot of hooey!”
Sam leaned against the light post like he owned it. “What do you care? It’s not like you want me, right?”
Evie drew in a sharp breath. “I-I… don’t care!” she said with a toss of her head. “But it’s embarrassing. And you get to be ‘poor Sam’ while I’m ‘fickle Evie.’”
“Give the papers another few weeks, and they’ll flip the story to ‘Poor Evie, Cad Sam.’ What am I supposed to do, sit at home and fog up the bathroom mirror with lonely sighs?”
“Gee, can you do that? That’s a swell trick,” Evie said sarcastically. “What is it? Why are you making that face?”
“Incredible. You actually worked up a little angry spit in the corner of your mouth right there.…”
Evie batted Sam’s finger away. “Good. It’ll make it easier for me to digest you.”
They squared off under the street lamp. Over Sam’s shoulder, Evie saw Jericho part the drapes at the front window and look down the street to find the source of the commotion. With the light behind him, he was nothing but a shadow, but even his shadow had a pull Evie found hard to ignore.
She tugged at Sam’s sleeve. She didn’t want Jericho to see them fighting. “Let’s keep walking.”
When they’d reached the corner of Columbus and Sixty-eighth, Sam stopped, his tone conciliatory. “Listen, doll, we don’t have to be best friends. But can we call a truce until we solve the mystery of Project Buffalo? I got a feeling we’re getting closer, and the closer we get, the more dangerous it gets. I’d rather have you on my side than against me. Truce?”
He stuck out his hand. Evie had a visceral memory of that hand on her back as they kissed, just the two of them against the world. What had started out as a phony romance had turned far too real before coming painfully apart, leaving wounds on both sides.
“Truce,” Evie said on a sigh, and gave Sam’s hand a quick shake. “Should we tell the others that we’re still looking into Project Buffalo?”
“Not till we find out what’s on those cards. For now, it’s our secret.”
“And Woody’s,” Evie said apologetically.
Sam’s laugh was bitter. “T. S. Woodhouse. How could I forget you told that rat reporter about Project Buffalo? Fine. Let the bum see what he can find. But that’s on you. I’m not paying him.”
Evie shrugged. “Fine.”
There it was: the old battle stations resumed. How long had it taken since the truce—ten seconds? They stood awkwardly on the corner, their breaths coming out in soft wisps. Sam clapped his woolly mitten–clad hands together, his infamous smirk in place.
“Well, this has been fun. I’m headed that way.” He pointed toward Central Park. “Plenty of pockets to pick this time of evening.”
“Then I’m going the other way. Toward civilization.”
“Always a pleasure, Lamb Chop.” Sam saluted angrily and marched toward the park.
“Just remember, Sam Lubovitch Lloyd!” Evie shouted after him.
“What?” Sam called, barely glancing over his shoulder.
Evie’s voice rang down the street: “You still owe me twenty bucks!”
On her way to the New Amsterdam Theatre, Theta relived her stolen kiss with Memphis. She knew their love was trouble. All she had to do was keep it a secret long enough to make it from Broadway to the pictures. There was money to be made in pictures. Louise Brooks, Colleen Moore, Clara Bow—they were raking it in. Once Theta made a bundle, it would be Theta and Memphis and Isaiah in a little Hollywood bungalow with a lemon tree in the yard and a dog yipping at their heels. Memphis would be a famous poet, and Theta would be a mysterious movie star. Henry could live right next door. Together, they’d make their own rules. And then they’d go about changing the rules. Was that too much to hope for?
It would be the family she’d always wanted, the family she’d never had. She could finally bury the horrors of her past once and for all. Theta held out her gloved hands. They were fine. Perfectly normal. It was going to be okay.
At the corner of Forty-ninth Street and Broadway, Theta passed a hysterical woman holding tightly to a policeman’s arms. “I’m telling you, it was a ghost! I saw it!”
“Now, Miss, it was probably just your eyes playing tricks on you in the dark.”
“It was a ghost! There was a ghost in my bedroom!” the woman insisted. “Oh, I can’t go back in that room now. Never, never!”
Theta clutched her coat collar to her neck and walked faster.
Backstage, the theater was in its usual state of preshow chaos. Costumers ran past with gigantic beaded headdresses needing last-minute touch-ups. A few of the young actors flirted with one another in the wings, where they thought no one could see or judge. Two chorus girls passed a bottle of Listerine back and forth. They gargled the pungent mouthwash and spat it into cups.
“Theta! Where’s Theta?”
“In here, Wally,” Theta shouted, and the burly stage manager poked his head into the dressing room.
“Congratulations, kid. You’ve got yourself a screen test with Vitagraph Studios.”
Theta whirled around. “Are you pulling my leg, Wally?”
“On the level. Two weeks from tomorrow in Brooklyn. If this goes well, kid, they might send you out to Hollywood to make pictures with the likes of Charlie Chaplin and Eddie Cantor. Then you can go away and stop being such a pain in my neck.”
Theta grinned. She kissed Wally’s cheek. “I love you, too, Wally.”
Wally blushed. “Ten minutes. Get a wiggle on. Flo wants to run through the ‘Stardust’ number before the show.”
At her makeup table, Theta peered into the lighted mirror and applied a swipe of Dorin of Paris rouge to each cheek as she imagined herself on the silver screen, performing stunts alongside Buster Keaton or playing the poor, dying consumptive opposite John Barrymore. The house. The lemon tree. The little dog. Theta and Memphis. It was that much closer. She could feel it.
She just had to get her awful power under control.
Theta lifted the lid on her box of face powder and screamed. A dead mouse lay inside. A note covered the top of its small, lifeless body. With shaking fingers, Theta lifted the note and read.
Dear Betty: Violets are blue. Red is the rose.
You left him for dead. But somebody knows.
Somebody knows.
Quickly, Theta grabbed the box and ran for the stage door and out into the back alley. Already, smoke was rising from the sides of the box where her hands gripped it. Heat rushed up her arms. As the box caught fire between her palms, she dropped it into the trash can, where it fizzled. Her hands were bright red still. For a moment, she was back in Kansas. She could see the flames crackling up the walls, smell the smoke filling the tiny room. She could hear Roy’s screams.
Her mind went blank then, as it always did.
But somebody else remembered. Somebody who wanted Theta to know, too. The past had found her at last, and it threatened to burn down everything she’d built.
The entire walk home, Isaiah had talked a mile a minute. “So I get to use my powers again, Memphis? Do I? And I can make ’em as strong as I want? Memphis, hey, Memphis!”
“Yes, yes, Isaiah!” Memphis laughed. “But remember: You can’t say nothing to Octavia about it.”
Isaiah grinned. “You mean I can’t say anything to Octavia.”
“Oh, yeah? Put ’em up.” Memphis dropped into a crouch, dukes up, and he and Isaiah pretend-boxed their way down the sidewalk past folks hurrying home to their suppers. Isaiah stopped suddenly. They were in front of Madame Seraphina’s brownstone. A sign hung from a hook: MADAME SERAPHINA, PRIESTESS. A crow flitted above Memphis’s head and came to rest on the hand railing.
“There’s that bird again,” Isaiah said.
“Why, hello, Berenice,” Memphis said, greeting the bird with a grand flourish of a bow that made Isaiah laugh, which was Memphis’s second-favorite sound. The first was Theta whispering his name followed by I love you.
“How come that bird’s always chasing after you?”
“All the ladies chase after me!” Memphis said with mock-umbrage. “Even the birds!”
The crow squawked three times and cocked its small, shiny head toward the partially closed drapes of the basement. Through them, Memphis could see Seraphina’s altar with its offerings to the spirits and ancestors. Seraphina’s face appeared at the window.
“Bet I can beat you home,” Memphis said, and took off running, slowing down at the end to let Isaiah beat him into their aunt Octavia’s apartment. It wasn’t Octavia, but her boarder, Blind Bill Johnson, who greeted them. He sat on Octavia’s prized settee with his guitar on his lap and his cane at his side.
“Well, well, well. Is that the Campbell brothers I hear?” Bill called in his raspy voice.
“Evenin’, Uncle Bill,” Isaiah said. “Where’s Auntie?”
“At church. She left you some pork and plantains in the icebox, though. What you boys get up to this evenin’ that kept you out past suppertime?”
Isaiah looked to Memphis, who shook his head. “Just went to play ball with Shrimpy here,” Memphis said.
“That so? How’d you do, little man?”
Isaiah was uncharacteristically quiet. “I, uh, I threw real good,” he said after a moment’s pause.
The pause told the old man all he needed to know: The Campbell boys had a secret. Bill could just make out the dim shapes of them moving through the endless gray cloud of his vision. But even that tiny slice of sight would fade soon unless he did something about it.
“Well,” Bill said at last. “Good. Good.”
Later, after the boys had eaten their fill of Octavia’s spicy pork scooped up with buttery corn bread, Memphis left for the Hotsy Totsy, to work for Papa Charles and meet up with that girl he was seeing, the girl he didn’t bring ’round to the house. “Don’t you worry. I’ll look after little man,” Bill assured Memphis on his way out. “I got the spoon handy in case he has one of his fits.”
“That happens, you send Brother Julius upstairs over to the club for me.”
“Of course,” Bill said, smiling.
Now Blind Bill sat on the settee with Isaiah listening to a radio show. The show was funny. Two bumbling men chasing after a goat they couldn’t seem to tie up. Isaiah laughed and laughed.
“Say, little man, you really go play ball this afternoon?” Bill asked when the announcer came on to praise the sponsor, the Parker Dental System—Don’t your teeth deserve the very best?
“Mm-hmm,” Isaiah said, but he sounded nervous. Memphis had surely warned his little brother not to say anything about where they’d been.
“I know you’re lying, Isaiah.”
Isaiah’s voice was small. “Memphis told me not to tell.”
“That so? Well, that ain’t fair he done that to you. Run off and made you be the liar to your old pal Bill. Ain’t right.”
“I’m not a liar,” Isaiah grumbled. There was guilt in it, though.
“Sure do hope Memphis ain’t gettin’ you mixed up in something bad.” Bill let that land. Then he shook his head slowly, like a disappointed father. “And here I thought we was friends. Good friends, too. But I guess if you don’t trust your uncle Bill, well…” Bill took his arm away. There was no greater bartering tool with a child than love or the threat of its absence.
“We saw Sister Walker!” Isaiah blurted.
There it was. The Walker woman. And if she was involved, it meant one thing: Diviners. Powers. She was working with them again.
“Don’t tell Auntie. Please.”
“No. I won’t. ’Course I won’t! Who’s your best friend in this world?”
“Memphis. And you.”
“Mm-hmm. It’s just… What that woman want with you?”
Another pause. Being blind had taught Bill to read silences. This one was big.
“Gonna work on my powers.”
Confirmation.
“Didn’t old Bill tell you the same thing? Wasn’t I working with you good?”
“Yes, sir. But…”
“But what?”
“She says it’s not just about me. We gotta keep the country safe.”
“Safe from what?”
“A big storm that’s coming.”
“Hmph. That what she said?”
“Uncle Bill, how come you don’t like Sister Walker?”
“I got my reasons,” Bill said. “Listen, don’t you worry none. You keep telling old Bill everything that happens with Sister Walker, and I promise I won’t let nothing bad happen to you. We got us a deal?”
“Deal.”
“And you don’t hafta tell Memphis one word ’bout our deal, neither. He don’t need to know.”
The boy leaned into Bill as if he were his father. Bill wrapped his long arm around the boy and held him tigh
Bill let the power trickle down from his shoulder to his fingers and into Isaiah, connecting them. The warm coin taste was strong on the back of Bill’s tongue as he sucked energy from the boy. Just enough to bring on one of the boy’s fits. Already, he could feel the faint traces of Memphis’s week-old healing power flowing into him and thinning the gray cloud of his vision as Isaiah convulsed on the family sofa. To see a little better for a day or three was worth it. Wasn’t it? And anyway, it wasn’t Bill’s fault. This was Memphis’s doing. The boy had lied to him all this time, said he still couldn’t heal when Bill knew for a fact he’d gone and healed that old, no-good drunk. And if he could do that, there was no reason he couldn’t heal Bill’s blindness.
What a man couldn’t get through asking, he would take in whatever fashion he needed.
“There, there,” Bill said, turning Isaiah on his side as the boy’s fit subsided. “It’s all gonna be all right.”
Bill shuffled to the door, which he could see as a faint outline now that the fumes of Memphis’s healing flowed through him. He stuck his head out and shouted up the stairs, “Brother Julius! Brother Julius! Come quick! The boy had another one a’ his fits! You better run for Memphis now. Hurry!”
Then Bill sat on the couch, the fallen Isaiah in his arms, and waited.
Jericho opened a desk drawer and shoved in the stacks of letters from the tax office informing Will that the Museum of American Folklore, Superstition, and the Occult needed to pay its back taxes or the entire place would be shut down for good in a little over two months, and a brand-new apartment building put up in its place. Jericho looked around with affection at the odd collections of occult ephemera. There would be so much to pack up when the taxman came for the place. Ever since the day Will Fitzgerald had marched into the hospital and adopted Jericho as his ward, making him an assistant curator, the museum had been Jericho’s only true home.