Before the Devil Breaks You

by Libba Bray

“Mm-hmm?” Evie said, chasing the object’s thoughts from her mind.

  “Maybe you’d like to go to the pictures sometime? Or for a walk. Or anything, really.”

  “Maybe,” she said. “Sure.”

  “Sure?” Jericho smiled.

  Evie bit her lip and nodded. “Sure,” she said.

  “Say, I was just looking for you. Are you okay?” Mabel asked as Evie breezed back into the library and took a seat.

  “Of course! Why wouldn’t I be?”

  “I don’t know. You’re all flushed. And your voice is really high. Are you sick?”

  “I… I think it’s just been too much excitement,” Evie managed.

  Mabel laughed. “You? Too much excitement? I never thought I’d hear those words come out of your mouth!”

  The pocket doors slid open again, and Jericho let himself in silently. He looked over at Evie, smiling shyly, guiltily. Evie did her best not to return the glance but failed.

  Mabel saw it all.

  RABBLE-ROUSERS

  Why?

  That was the question on Mabel’s mind as she crossed Sixth Avenue, her bones rattling as the elevated train rumbled far above her head.

  Why did Jericho like Evie and not her? (It was painfully obvious and had been for some time. Mabel just couldn’t seem to let go.)

  Why did some people have special powers but not her?

  Why did she let it bother her so?

  Oh, Mabel knew that she and Jericho weren’t a good match. Not really. But it stung that he hadn’t wanted her. Just once in her life, Mabel had wanted to come first. She’d wanted to be the chosen one instead of the chosen one’s reliable, unexciting best friend. A kid tried to sell her a newspaper. “No, thank you!” Mabel barked. Then she felt guilty for it and tossed him a nickel at the last minute, taking the newspaper she hadn’t even wanted in the first place.

  Why had she done that? Why did she feel like she had to be so good all the time?

  As Mabel turned the corner onto Bleecker Street, she noticed the man in the brown fedora at the bottom of the train steps. He was just standing there, watching her. Her stomach fluttered. Quickly, she tucked her purse and the newspaper under her arm, walking up Bleecker Street. She glanced behind her. The man followed. She couldn’t lead him to Arthur’s place. Mabel took a sharp left onto Macdougal Street and stopped in front of a bakery window, pretending to admire a pastry display. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the man stop a few windows down, pretending to check his watch. That was all the confirmation Mabel needed. Heart beating fast, she walked briskly toward Washington Square Park, trying to lose herself among the throngs of people. She let the newspaper fly. Its pages scattered on the wind, a distraction Mabel used to duck into a drugstore and sneak out the back door into an alley, practically running to the Bohemian Reader and up the back stairs to Arthur’s garret. The others were already there, gathered around the small, scuffed wooden table, smoking cigarettes and knocking back coffee.

  Mabel fought to get her breathing under control. She didn’t want to come off half-cocked.

  “Ah. Mabel. How is your little Italian friend? Any more visions?” Aron joked, and everything about Mabel’s rotten day came crashing down inside her.

  “Maybe you should ask the man who’s been following me,” Mabel blurted.

  “What do you mean? What did this man look like?” Arthur asked, coming toward her.

  “Like a Pinkerton trying not to be seen. I have spent my whole life on the lookout for just that sort of thing, you know, and I can spot it.”

  “Did he follow you here?” Luis asked.

  Mabel shook her head. “I did my best to lose him. It’s why I was late.” Mabel told them everything that had happened. “And then I managed to lose him,” she said, sinking into a chair, all the earlier adrenaline washing away, leaving her feeling loose and sleepy.

  Gloria rushed to the window, yanking up the blinds.

  “Hey!” Arthur said. He lowered the blinds again. “We’ve gotta be careful now. If any of you think you’re being followed, take another route, like Mabel did, or buy a book from Mr. Jenkins downstairs for our ‘book club.’ You all remember the Palmer Raids. If we’re caught with radical publications, we could all be arrested. Aron could be deported to the Soviet Union, and Luis to Mexico.”

  Arthur peeked out through two of the slats. “No one there now.”

  He squatted at Mabel’s side, looking up at her. “You sure you’re all right?”

  “Fine,” Mabel said, but she liked that Arthur had asked. Most people didn’t.

  Satisfied, Arthur took a seat on the edge of the battered steamer trunk. “On to business, then. No one’s paying attention to the striking workers. The press has lost interest. They only want to talk about Marlowe’s Future of America Exhibition.”

  Luis untied a handkerchief full of roasted nuts, offering them to all. “I hear management has hired local thugs as militiamen. They beat one of the miners last night and sent him to the hospital. Word is those militiamen are driving around the camp in trucks with Gatling guns mounted in the back to intimidate them.”

  “And the radium and uranium they’re mining is making the men sick. They can scarcely breathe,” Gloria said.

  “Why do you suppose Marlowe needs so much uranium?” Mabel asked, echoing Ling’s earlier question.

  “He probably sells it,” Gloria said. “It’s just pure, old-fashioned greed.”

  “Well, if everybody could see what’s happening in the camp, surely they’d be horrified; they’d have to do something to stop it,” Mabel said.

  “People choose not to see,” Arthur said in his gentle way.

  Mabel thought for a moment. “What if we made a newsreel? Marlowe makes them all the time to tout how great he is. But we could show people how sick his miners are and how bad the conditions are in the tent camp. If people could see it for themselves, they couldn’t ignore what’s really happening.”

  Aron snorted. “Where are we going to get a movie camera? Who’s gonna pay for that? Vitagraph Studios? They have pictures to make with Clara Bow. They’re not going to bring trouble on themselves making newsreels for socialists about immigrant workers they don’t see as Americans—or even as people.”

  “I don’t see you coming up with any bright ideas,” Mabel snapped.

  Aron chuckled and put up his hands. “Now, don’t get mad—”

  “Too late. I’m already there,” Mabel said.

  Gloria put out her cigarette and linked her arm through Mabel’s. “Hear, hear, Mabel. You boys act like you run the revolution. If you think we’re going to iron your shirts while you spout slogans, you’re all wet.”

  “You’re putting words in my mouth,” Aron grumbled.

  Mabel ignored him. “What if I could get us a camera?”

  Gloria arched an eyebrow. “You have an uncle at Vitagraph?”

  Mabel smiled. “Let’s just say that I know someone who has a talent for borrowing.”

  “We need guns, not film,” Aron grumbled.

  “Just like them?” Mabel shot back. She’d seen this argument unfold at countless meetings. There was always one organizer eager to escalate the fight. “My mother says the minute we pick up guns we become the enemy we’re fighting.”

  Aron scoffed. “Your mother, your mother. Do you have your own thoughts?”

  Mabel’s cheeks burned. “Yes. I’m having a thought about you just now.”

  “Nobody’s picking up a gun. And we’re not here to fight with one another,” Arthur said, staring at Aron until he looked away.

  “Sorry, Mabel,” Aron mumbled.

  “Thank you,” Mabel said.

  Arthur smiled at Mabel. “All right, then. Mabel Rose, you are officially the director of the Secret Six motion picture division. Now, let’s talk about the rally for Sacco and Vanzetti downtown tomorrow.…”

  They talked well past suppertime, and Mabel found herself growing more excited by the hour. It was so different from the museum
. There, she felt out of place. She had no special powers like Evie and the others. Her place was firmly rooted in fighting the evils of this world, and there were plenty of them to fight. That’s what the Secret Six was about—changing the world for good. For fairness. For justice. That, she was realizing, was something she could do, something she had to do.

  As the others trickled out, Mabel stayed behind. She was alive with a sense of purpose, and she didn’t want to put that excitement away just yet. She began gathering plates.

  “You don’t have to clear the dishes, you know,” Arthur said as Mabel loaded the tiny, chipped sink with sudsy water.

  “I know,” Mabel said, smiling. She removed her gold watch and laid it on the drainboard.

  Arthur whistled. “That doesn’t look like a socialist’s watch.”

  “It was a gift from my grandmother,” Mabel said, somewhat apologetically.

  “Ah, yes. The famous Newells of the Social Register, one of New York’s oldest and wealthiest families.” Arthur shook his head and dried the clean plate Mabel had handed him. “Must be strange. Do you ever see your mother’s family?”

  “At Christmas. And on my grandmother’s birthday.”

  “I’ve always wondered: What’s it like with the very rich?”

  What was it like? When Mabel visited Nana Newell, white-aproned servants moved in and out of the rooms silently with tiered plates of finger sandwiches and hot coffee in china cups. Everyone in the house called her Miss Mabel. Her confident mother seemed to shrink in that huge house. Often, the visits ended with Mabel’s grandmother silent, offended, and Mabel’s mother in angry tears. Mabel did love the house, though. She couldn’t help running a finger across the shining, monogrammed silver or admiring the well-polished grand piano. Mabel had always wanted to take lessons, but there hadn’t been money for it, and Mabel’s mother felt that such pastimes were too closely aligned with the idle rich. It was better, in her mother’s mind, for Mabel to have a solid education.

  “She always serves petits fours,” Mabel said after a pause.

  Arthur grinned. “Well, I suppose that’s something. Do you love your grandmother?”

  “Well, I really love her petits fours.”

  Arthur barked out a laugh, which made Mabel laugh, too.

  “What about your family?” she asked.

  For the first time, Arthur seemed sad. “I grew up poor.” He gestured to the cramped, leaky garret. “Now I live in luxury. Petits fours all the time.” He reached into the soapy water for a cup and his fingers brushed Mabel’s.

  Mabel’s cheeks flushed. She kept her eyes on her task.

  “My mother died when I was five. My father when I was eight. My older brother, Paul, raised me after that. I went to school till I was eleven, and then I left school and worked in the textiles factory with him. Twelve hours a day. It was Paulie who started the Secret Six.”

  Mabel passed Arthur a cup. “He did?”

  Arthur nodded.

  “Where is your brother now?”

  “In prison.” Arthur wiped the towel across the coffee cup with care. “He was tired of seeing friends living in two-room shacks with their families while management fat cats lived well. The Bureau was after him for every little thing—he couldn’t walk to the corner store for bread without being followed. He got fed up. So he sent a bomb to a congressman. The congressman’s secretary opened the package, though. It blew off her hands.”

  Mabel grimaced, imagining the poor secretary. It was all coming back to her now. “I remember. It was in all the papers. My parents were very upset. They said violence like that gives radicals a bad name. Oh, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have…”

  “It’s okay.” Arthur pulled the plug from the sink and watched the dirty water swirl down.

  “Isn’t he to be executed?” Mabel asked gingerly.

  “By firing squad,” Arthur said, gently drying Mabel’s soapy hands with a rag. “Unless his appeal goes through.”

  “Is there anything I can do to help?”

  Arthur smiled. “You can come back tomorrow.”

  Mabel’s stomach did a flip-flop. “Of course. I’m sure there’s all manner of, um, plans to make. With the Six. Of course.”

  Arthur still smiled. “Mm-hmm.”

  Mabel was so nervous she backed up and bumped into the table. “Sorry.” She reached for her gloves. Blueprints peeked out from underneath a workers’ newspaper. “What’s this?”

  Quickly, Arthur grabbed the blueprints away, rolling them into a tight paper club. “It’s nothing.”

  And suddenly, Mabel felt dumb again. After they’d opened up to each other, she’d assumed a closeness; she’d overstepped. “Gee, it’s late. I-I’d better go,” she said, walking briskly to the door.

  “Mabel, wait! I’m sorry. I’m just… not accustomed to trusting people.” Arthur took hold of Mabel’s hand, and a tingle traveled up her arm and made her neck buzzy. “With my brother’s situation, you can understand. See, I want to stage a protest. At the Future of America Exhibition. Jake Marlowe is a symbol of everything that’s wrong with American capitalism. That exhibition is a wicked lie—it’s amoral—when good men are dying in his mine with no hope of participating in the pretty future he’s building.”

  Mabel liked how passionate Arthur was. He wasn’t the most handsome man she’d ever seen, not like Jericho. But Arthur had principles and courage. That was attractive. “I could help you spread the word about the protest.”

  “Not just yet,” Arthur said, locking the blueprints in a trunk. “Let’s get you home. Wouldn’t want your parents to have another reason to hate me.”

  “You don’t have to see me home,” Mabel said.

  Arthur raised an eyebrow. “You said there was a fella following you.”

  “Maybe I was wrong. I don’t know.” Mabel felt a bit silly now. Perhaps he’d only been walking the same direction she had.

  “Well,” Arthur said, reaching for his coat, “I’m not taking any chances.”

  “Extra! Extra! Two Men Drowned in Hell Gate Waters Off Ward’s Island!” a newsie called as they neared the Sixth Avenue train. “Ghosts in the Asylum, Patients Say! Haunted Hospital! Monsters in the Madhouse!” Eager readers swarmed the boy, tossing their nickels and grabbing the hot sheets.

  Arthur jerked a thumb at them. “That’s what sells newspapers these days,” he said, and shook his head as they climbed the steps to the train. “Do you know why people make up ghost stories?”

  There were many things Mabel could say to that, but she didn’t want Arthur to know about her work at the museum and think her foolish. She settled on, “Why?”

  “Because it’s easier than believing that ordinary people can be cruel and downright evil,” Arthur said.

  The minute she got home to the Bennington, Mabel knocked on Will Fitzgerald’s door.

  “Mabel!” Sam said. “Say, this is a nice surprise.”

  “Sam, could you steal me a movie camera?”

  Sam’s eyebrows went up. “That is, without a doubt, the most interesting question I’ve been asked today. And considering the day involved talk about ghosts and the end of the world, that’s saying something.”

  Jericho came up behind Sam, and Mabel caught her breath. She wished she could just stop liking him. It would be so much easier. “Why do you need a movie camera?” he asked.

  “I can assure you, it’s for a good cause.”

  “You wouldn’t take on a cause if it weren’t good,” Jericho said, and Mabel wasn’t entirely sure it was meant as a compliment.

  “You don’t really have to steal it, but I figured you might know somebody,” Mabel said. “You always know somebody, Sam.”

  Sam stroked his chin. “That’s true. Come to think of it, I do know a fella owes me a favor. If he’s not in jail or hasn’t been shot by a jealous girlfriend, I can get it for you.”

  “Thanks, Sam. I owe you.” Mabel kissed Sam on the cheek, stealing a glance at Jericho as she did. Take that, Jericho.


  On her way back to her apartment, Mabel reflected on Arthur’s comment about the human capacity for evil. She wasn’t naive; she’d seen plenty of bad. What Jake Marlowe and his management were doing to the workers in the name of profit was certainly cruel, if not evil. But sometimes evil was made up of small acts: cheating someone out of their due or ignoring a wrong, like during the Palmer Raids, when agents had pulled people from their homes to deport them and their neighbors had looked the other way. The longer those smaller acts of wrong went unchallenged, the more they compounded into a monster. But there had to be a counterbalance to that, and it was the human capacity for good. For kindness and self-sacrifice and justice. Toward helping your neighbor because, after all, weren’t we all in this world together? Those, too, were often small acts. Like Arthur leaving his garret to travel uptown—far out of his way—just to make sure that Mabel got home all right. That was good. That was unselfish. It made Mabel like Arthur all the more. It made her want to be an even better person. And those small acts of good carried forward with a breathtaking momentum. Over time, they could change the world for the better. Mabel believed that, perhaps more fervently than any prayer.

  Before she’d even reached her apartment, Mabel could hear her father’s typewriter keys clacking away.

  “Hello, Papa,” she said, breezing through the door, stopping to kiss his cheek.

  Smiling, her father cupped her chin in one hand. “Shayna Punim.” Her father’s Yiddish came out when he was feeling sentimental or whenever he couldn’t quite find the words he was looking for in English.

  Mabel rolled her eyes at her father’s sentimentality. “I do not have a beautiful face, Papa. I have a serviceable face.”

  She didn’t say, Mama’s the beautiful one. I take after you.

  “I know shayna when I see it,” her father said, as if that settled the matter. He pecked out another sentence on the typewriter using just his index fingers and returned the carriage with a cheery ting!

  “Papa…” Mabel began.

  “Yes, dear heart,” he said without looking up.

  “Nothing.” She sat to remove her shoes, letting her toes breathe.