Before the Devil Breaks You

by Libba Bray

  Evie frowned. “What’s the matter, Jericho? You do look very serious.”

  “He was born that way,” Sam said. “Came out reading philosophy.”

  “It’s these letters. The last one was from Will, dated 1917. It read, ‘You were right. I was wrong. I’m sorry.’ That’s it. No explanation.”

  “Maybe he was sorry for being a chump.”

  “Maybe,” Jericho said. “But what if it was something else?”

  There was a creaking sound, and they all stilled, eyes on the door in case it was Will coming home. But it was only the wind making the Bennington’s Victorian bones moan.

  Evie bit her lip. “Jericho, I feel awful asking this—”

  “But it’s not going to stop her,” Sam said.

  “What if you said yes to Marlowe’s offer? What if you went up to his estate after all?”

  Sam sat up, looking from Evie to Jericho. “What are you talking about?”

  Evie ignored him. “You could spy on him, report back to us.”

  “Spy on Jake Marlowe?” Jericho’s eyebrows shot up. “That’s a tall order.”

  “Wait, why are we spying? What are you talking about?” Sam pressed.

  “Marlowe was part of the Paranormal Department. He knows what happened with Project Buffalo! And that card reader is probably at his house. You could find it for us.” Evie took Jericho’s hand. “Please. We have to know what happened.”

  “All right,” Jericho said. He didn’t want to let go of Evie’s hand just yet.

  “Really? You will?”

  It was her smile that did it. Jericho would do anything for that smile. Hadn’t he wanted to make his mark? This was a start. Instead of shelving books filled with adventures, he’d be living one. “I’m almost out of serum. I have to do something. At least if I’m spying on Marlowe and getting answers about Project Buffalo, I won’t feel like he holds all the power over my choices.”

  Sam waved his hands. “Is no one gonna tell me what this is about?”

  “Okay if I fill Sam in?” Evie said.

  “You’ll have to. Otherwise, he’ll never shut up. You’ll wander the streets hearing only his annoying voice in your head. I can think of no greater torture,” Jericho deadpanned.

  Sam clipped Jericho’s arm playfully with his fist. Jericho didn’t even flinch. Wincing, Sam shook out his hand. “Holy smokes, you are solid.”

  “You can see me out, Sam. I’ll tell you on the way,” Evie said, putting on her hat.

  Sam nodded at Evie’s hat. “It’s called a tam,” Sam whispered to Jericho. “Whatever you do, don’t insult it.”

  “I don’t know what to say to Will, though. He and Marlowe hate each other, and Marlowe hates Diviners. If Will hears I left to join up with Marlowe’s exhibition, it’ll feel like a betrayal,” Jericho said, the thought weighing heavily on him.

  “Will could never hate you. It’s only for a few weeks, and then you can let him know the truth,” Evie promised. “Oh, thank you, Jericho!” She hugged Jericho, and Jericho didn’t say what bothered him most about their plan: He’d be away from Evie.

  Evie shrugged on her coat and made a beeline for the telephone.

  “Thought we were leaving. What are you doing now?” Sam asked.

  “I’m calling an emergency Diviners meeting.”

  “Now? Here?” Sam asked.

  Evie made a face as she dialed Theta’s number. “Don’t be silly. At the Hotsy Totsy. I’m not having this discussion without jazz and gin.”

  THE HOTSY TOTSY

  While Cal Cooper and the St. Nicholas Playboys pounded out a stomping jazz number onstage behind the shimmying Hotsy Totsy chorus girls, and Harlem’s hottest nightclub swirled with dancers hopped up on bootleg booze served by waiters carrying silver trays high in the air, the Diviners, along with Mabel and Jericho, crowded around a corner table partially obscured by the splayed fronds of a potted palm.

  “What did you want to talk to us about?” Memphis asked, keeping one eye on the floor. He wanted to make sure Papa Charles didn’t see him camped at a table with his friends when he was supposed to be working.

  “This,” Sam said, unloading onto the table his secret cache of coded punch cards they’d found in the abandoned office of the Department of Paranormal.

  Henry held one up, peering at the holes. “Is this your failed attempt at making Swiss cheese?”

  “It’s code, remember?” Evie said. “These are all files on subjects from Project Buffalo.”

  “I thought you only found one of these,” Ling said, turning the card over, peering at it.

  “We only showed you one before the professor and Sister Walker came in. I didn’t want to tip our hand that we had a lot of ’em,” Sam said. “These cards? They’re proof.”

  “Proof of what?” Theta asked.

  Evie nodded at Sam. “Tell ’em.”

  “We are not a fluke of nature. We Diviners were made. Engineered right in our mother’s wombs through Project Buffalo,” Sam said. “And Will and Sister Walker and Jake Marlowe all had something to do with it.”

  He and Evie told them everything then—about how they’d broken into an abandoned Department of Paranormal office a few weeks earlier and found the cards. How they’d had to hide under a desk from the two Shadow Men who’d come sniffing around for a prophecy. The map on the wall with thumbtacks stuck into different towns and the cryptic notations written beside each marked town: Subject #7, Subject #59, Subject #122. Finally, they told them everything Moony had just admitted to them on the Kill Devil. When they’d finished, there was a sick stillness around the table that was at odds with the nightclub’s fizzy glamour.

  “We were made?” Ling repeated, as if she were trying to convince herself.

  “Yeah. Didn’t you ever think it was funny that we’re all the same age? There’s a good chance every one of us is a test subject, and the secrets we need to know are on these cards,” Sam said, tapping the tip of his index finger on the stack. “Trouble is, we need a special tabulating machine to read them, and we don’t have it.”

  Ling examined one of the cards. “It’s not at the museum somewhere?”

  “No. We’ve searched that place from top to bottom,” Jericho said.

  “Can’t any old code-reading machine work in a pinch?” Memphis asked.

  Sam shook his head. “Huh-uh. The code is specific to the machine.”

  Ling nodded at Evie. “Why don’t you just read the cards and get the information?”

  Evie bristled. “Why don’t you just dream walk and ask your dead relatives to tell you? Do you think I haven’t tried? I haven’t been able to get much from them. Maybe because they were meant to be read by a machine.”

  “How many of those cards are there?” Henry asked.

  Sam held up one of the cards. “One hundred forty-four.”

  Memphis’s head shot up. “There’s that number again.”

  “What is it, Poet?”

  “In Harlem, we’re superstitious about numbers. A hymn at church or a street number that comes up twice in one day or you have a dream about something, well, there’s a number for that, too. You can look it up in the policy book. One forty-four is the same number my aunt’s boarder, Blind Bill, has been playing for a few weeks now. Calls it his lucky number even though it hasn’t hit for him but once. But it’s also the number Isaiah calls out sometimes when he’s in a trance. That’s an awful lot of coincidence.”

  “Makes me think about what that egghead fella Carl Jung said when we went to visit him,” Theta added. “Something about coincidences being more than that. About them being related.”

  “The eternal recurrence,” Jericho said.

  “Not this again. Pal, can we let Nietzsche have the night off?” Sam protested. “Look around: We’re in a nightclub. People are having fun here.”

  Theta frowned. “Come to think of it, when I dropped Dr. Jung’s book, what page you think it was opened to?”

  “If I say one forty-four, do I ge
t a prize?” Evie asked.

  “Yeah. You get to be right,” Theta said, trying to ignore the itching in her palms. What she didn’t say was that the book had been opened to a picture of a Phoenix rising from the flames. A mythological firebird.

  “We’re also superstitious about numbers in Chinatown,” Ling said, frowning. “Fours are unlucky. The word for four sounds like the word for death.”

  Sam looked from Ling to Jericho and back. “You know what? I’m gonna call you two the spooky twins.”

  “What are we going to do about this?” Henry asked. “Clearly, Dr. Fitzgerald and Miss Walker have lied to us.”

  Ling didn’t like knowing that Miss Walker had lied. She looked up to Miss Walker and had come to see her as a mentor. Now her heart wrestled with a problem: Could you still like someone who had done something so clearly wrong? Could you admire someone for their talents even if you condemned their methods? “Maybe they had reasons for doing what they did. We don’t know everything about Project Buffalo. Why don’t we just ask them about it?”

  “Nothing doing!” Sam said. “Until we get the card reader and find out what’s on these, we’re gonna keep our traps shut.”

  “Memphis Campbell!”

  Ling looked up to see a glamorous chorus girl in a skimpy beaded costume and a glittering headband sauntering toward their table, a red carnation tucked into her cleavage. Her smile was dazzling, and she walked with a rare confidence. The chorus girl threw her arms around Memphis’s neck and kissed his cheek. Ling glanced over at Theta, but she didn’t seem bothered.

  “Where you been hiding yourself lately? And don’t tell me you’ve been going back to that old African graveyard to write,” the chorus girl said.

  “Oh, you know how it is. Here and there,” Memphis said, and Ling could see that they were friends. In fact, they almost seemed like siblings. “Everybody, this is my friend Alma. Alma, I think you know most everybody here.”

  “I surely do. Well…” Alma cocked her head and smiled at Ling. “Not everybody.”

  “Miss Alma LaVoy, may I present Miss Ling Chan.”

  Alma stuck out her hand and offered up her most winning smile. “Charmed. Why, I had no idea Memphis had such a sweet friend.” She dragged over a chair, positioning it between Ling and Memphis. “Mind if I join you all?”

  Memphis snorted. “Like I could stop you.”

  Alma stole a sip from Memphis’s drink and made a face. “Ugh. What is that?”

  “Coca-Cola.”

  Evie slid over her glass. “Bourbon.”

  Alma’s mischievous grin returned. “I knew I liked you. Now. What are you all talking about over here with your heads bent together like pieces of the same dreary puzzle?”

  “Ghosts. Demons. Murder. As one does at the city’s best nightclubs,” Henry said.

  Alma choked on her sip of Evie’s bourbon. “I would say don’t stop on my account. But you can stop on my account.” She shuddered, then turned toward Ling again. “Ling. My, that’s a pretty name,” she purred. “How come I haven’t seen you before? Why has my very good friend Memphis not bothered to introduce us?”

  “You better stop now,” Memphis chided playfully under his breath.

  “I already got one grandmother, Memphis. Don’t need another,” Alma answered in kind through smiling teeth.

  “Alma!” one of the chorines shouted, waving wildly. “Get your crown! We’re on!”

  “You don’t need to tell me when we’re on—I know when we’re on, Minnie!” Alma shooed Minnie away with a flick of her fingers. “Time to shake a leg.” Alma took the red carnation from her dress and plopped it into Ling’s empty cup, enjoying the matching blush that rose in Ling’s cheeks. “Hope you enjoy the show.” Alma winked, then raced up to the stage just as the band broke into a fast-paced number. Ling watched in awe as Alma danced, all arms and legs and joy. Freedom in motion. For a moment, Ling was envious. But then Alma executed a series of steps, tapping out a complex rhythm with toes and heels, and Ling knew that even if she had never had infantile paralysis, she’d never be able to own a stage like that. There was a word for Memphis’s friend Alma: mesmerizing.

  “She’s good. She’s very good,” Ling said, eyes trained on Alma’s shaking hips.

  Henry looked from Ling to Alma and back again. His mouth slid into a sly smile. “Oh my.”

  Jericho accidentally brushed against Mabel. “Sorry.”

  “It’s fine,” Mabel said, and she realized, with sudden clarity, that it was. In fact, for the first time in years, being this close to Jericho didn’t make her stomach quiver or her cheeks flush. It was liberating, like the breaking of a spell.

  “How are you, Jericho?” she asked brightly.

  “Fine, thank you. How are you?”

  “I’m swell!”

  “Well, that’s good news.” He was smiling at her, head cocked, as if he could tell she’d changed. For the first time, she had the upper hand. “I’m headed upstate tomorrow.”

  “Oh? Where?” Mabel was a little disappointed that she’d just developed her not in love with Jericho anymore muscle and wouldn’t have a chance to flex it.

  “Jake Marlowe’s mansion. He’s asked me to take part in his Future of America Exhibition. I leave tomorrow morning.”

  “You’re going to be living in the house of the enemy?” Mabel blurted, her voice going high.

  Jericho sighed in irritation. “He’s not the enemy.”

  “Tell that to his workers.”

  Jericho glared. “It’s more complicated than black and white, good and evil. Don’t forget: Jake Marlowe saved my life once upon a time.”

  “And for that you owe him your blind loyalty?”

  “Okay. You two crazy kids,” Sam said, laughing nervously. “Tell me the truth: What have you both got against fun? Was it a childhood trauma? There is no prohibition against fun. Yet.”

  Jericho stood, pushing his chair back. “You’re right. And since it’s my last night here, I’d like to have some of that fun. Evie, would you care to dance?”

  Evie glanced nervously at Mabel.

  “You don’t need my permission,” Mabel said. “Oh, honestly. Go.”

  “Well, maybe just one dance,” Evie said.

  “On second thought, boo to fun. Really. Best to just stay in and read dead German philosophers,” Sam said, watching them go. “Me and my big mouth.”

  Mabel sipped her soda water and gazed out at the dance floor. Evie and Jericho looked good together, the fancy Diviner and the golden god. For just a moment, the old hurts flared; Mabel tugged at her skirt, feeling plain and too earnest and out of place in this world because she was out of place in this world. But not in Arthur’s garret in Greenwich Village. She had a sense of purpose there, and as much as she loved her friends, she couldn’t help feeling angry that they could come up here and dance and drink while there were miners and their families living in tents. As for Jericho, well, he was no Arthur Brown.

  Mabel gathered her belongings. “Sorry. I’m suddenly very tired. Tell Evie I said good-bye, will you?”

  “Sure. I’ll, uh, tell the giant you said good-bye, too,” Sam said.

  “Don’t bother,” Mabel said.

  On her way out, Mabel passed Papa Charles. He strolled through the club looking dapper in his crisp white dinner jacket, a white rose in the buttonhole of his lapel and his hair slicked back, one of his ever-present cigars wedged between his thick fingers. He moved from table to table, welcoming his patrons, before stopping at Memphis’s table.

  “Evenin’, Memphis. You enjoying the show?” Papa Charles said with a tight smile.

  “Just saying hello to some friends of mine, sir.”

  “Evenin’, everyone,” Papa Charles said, all charm. “Memphis, we have some business to attend to. I’ll expect you in my office. Five minutes.”

  “Uh-oh. Dad’s sore,” Sam said under his breath once Papa Charles had walked away.

  “You don’t know the half of it,” Memphis said.r />
  “Everything copacetic?” Theta asked, concerned.

  “Guess I’ll find out.” Memphis looked longingly at Theta. He wanted to kiss her, but he couldn’t do that here in the club with everyone looking on. The bright young things drinking away their night at the next table kept casting sidelong glances at him and his friends as it was.

  Theta leaned in and whispered in his ear, “Meet me at our lighthouse later.”

  And Memphis didn’t care about the people at the next table or what Papa Charles was going to ask him to do so long as Theta was with him.

  THE COTTON CLUB

  Papa Charles’s chauffeured Chrysler Imperial rolled through Harlem’s neon-drenched streets, past the swells in their tuxedos, the dames in their furs and pearls out for a night of jazz and dancing. After a few blocks, the car stopped in front of the Cotton Club, one of the crown jewels of Harlem nightlife, where Manhattan’s elite came to hear the best of the best and buy overpriced, forbidden booze from the owner and premier bootlegger, Owney Madden. But the Cotton Club had a strict color line—most of the staff and entertainers were black; the clientele was white. Memphis had never been inside, but he’d heard the place was even decorated like a plantation.

  So why the hell was Papa Charles bringing him here?

  “You know Owney’s boys won’t let us come in. They got a color line,” Memphis challenged.

  “Not when it comes to healing, they don’t.”

  Memphis couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “You brought me here to heal? Who? What for? Why are—”

  “Memphis, Memphis: Just follow my lead and everything’ll be fine.”

  At the front door, the attendant held up a white-gloved hand and jerked his head toward the side entrance. Told you, Memphis wanted to say.

  “Doesn’t seem right,” he said instead as they knocked at the service door.

  “I decide what’s right,” Papa Charles said. “Listen here, Memphis, we make friends with these boys, show ’em we can work together, and they’ll leave us alone, stick to their own territory. We make good with Owney, he’ll back us against Dutch and his boys. One of his boys got himself shot up in a turf war with Dutch’s gang. Owney’s outfit can’t take this fella to a hospital without too many questions that lead right back to Owney and the Cotton Club. This healing is a business deal. A peace treaty. You understand?”