by Libba Bray
Evie chanced another peek at the girl’s disfigured face. Nineteen. Only two years older than Evie. She’d been out dancing. Now she was dead.
“This is what I wanted you to see.” Malloy opened the girl’s dress. On her chest, above her dingy brassiere, was a large brand of a five-pointed star encircled by a snake eating its tail.
“What is that, Fitz, some kind of voodoo charm?” Malloy asked.
“It has nothing to do with voodoo. And voudon is simply West African and Caribbean spiritualism, which is nature based,” Uncle Will said with impatience.
Malloy made a gesture of apology. “Okay, okay. Don’t get sore, Fitz. What is it, then?”
Will crouched low to get a better look. Evie didn’t know how he could do it without screaming. “It’s a pentacle, a symbol of the universe,” Will explained. “Many religions and orders use them—pagans, Gnostics, Eastern religions, ancient Christians, Freemasons. The Seal of Solomon is the most famous such symbol. It’s often used as a form of protection.”
“Didn’t help her much,” Malloy said.
Uncle Will walked around the body. “This one is inverted.” Will gestured to the two points up and the one down. “I’ve heard it said that the inverted pentagram suggests a lack of balance, the triumph of the material over the spiritual. Some claim that such a pentagram can be used for darker purposes, for sorcery or forbidden magic—to call forth demons or angels.” Will stood up and faced away for a minute, taking three big gulps of air and blowing them out again. “Fish. Hate the smell of fish.”
“Here, Unc,” Evie said, passing him a tiny compact of solid perfume from her purse. Will gave it a sniff and passed it back. Evie held it up to her nose as well. She felt faint again, and she forced herself to look up at the magnificent span of steel arching across the river to Brooklyn.
“Could the murderer work in a factory, or with cattle?” Jericho said, breaking his silence. She hadn’t even noticed that he’d come to stand beside her.
“We’ve already checked around the city to see if the brand looks familiar. Nothing so far,” Malloy said. “There’s something else.”
Malloy signaled for one of the flat foots, who brought him a yellowed scrap of paper, which he handed to Will. Evie inched next to her uncle, reading from just behind.
“ ‘The Harlot, the Whore of Babylon, was adorned in gold and jewels and worldly treasures, and she did look upon the glory of the Beast in all his raiment and cried out, for now her eyes were opened and she knew the wickedness of the world which must be redeemed through blood and sacrifice. And the Beast took her eyes and cast the Harlot Adorned upon the eternal sea within the Mark. This was the fifth offering.’ ”
“That from the Bible?”
“Not any Bible I’ve read.” Will drew in his notebook and jotted down notes.
Evie pointed to a series of symbols drawn along the bottom of the paper. “What are those?” Her voice sounded foreign to her ears.
Will turned the paper sideways and back. “Not sure yet. Sigils of some sort, I would guess. Terrence, I’d like to ask you some questions. Privately, if you please.”
The men moved away to a windy spot down the pier to talk. Evie looked again at the girl’s body, focusing on her shoes. They were water-damaged and worn, but Evie could tell they were special, probably the girl’s best pair. One rhinestone buckle remained, hanging loose from the strap. It was a final indignity and Evie wanted to right it. She tried to clip it back on, but it wouldn’t stick.
“Oh, please,” she whispered, near tears.
With renewed determination, she gripped it tightly. The object opened its secrets so quickly that Evie had no time to react. The images were fleeting, like a film sped up: A strip of peeling yellow wallpaper. Furnace. Butcher’s apron. A lock turning. The brand. Blue eyes rimmed in red. Terrible eyes, windows into hell. Whistling—a jaunty little tune horribly out of place, like a lullaby on a battlefield. And then her head was filled with screams.
Gasping, Evie dropped the buckle. She staggered to the edge of the pier and vomited up her pie from the Automat. Behind her, the policemen laughed. “No place for a girl,” one said. Someone was handing her a handkerchief.
“Thank you,” she said, mortified.
“You’re welcome,” Jericho said and let her clean up in peace.
On the river, a ferry cut the gray water into undulating peaks that rippled out into smoothness again. Evie watched the ferry chug along and tried to make sense of what she’d just seen. Those horrible pictures in her head were probably clues. But how could she possibly tell anyone how she’d come to know them? What if they didn’t believe her? What if they did believe her and made her hold that buckle and look again into that nightmare? She couldn’t face that. No one had to know about what she’d seen. Uncle Will would sort this out. There was no need for her to say anything.
“Evie. Time to go,” Uncle Will called.
“Coming,” Evie said, forcing strength into her voice.
A strong wind blew off the East River. It caught the edge of the dead girl’s beige scarf, pulling it up like a hand reaching for help. Evie turned and went around the long way, avoiding the sight of her altogether.
KEEPING AWAY THE GHOSTS
“I told you it wasn’t a good idea,” Uncle Will said. They were sitting in a restaurant in Chinatown. Evie’s headache had begun in earnest. All she could do was chase the glistening dumplings in her soup bowl with her spoon.
“Who would do something like that?” Evie asked finally.
“Given the course of human history, the more accurate question is, why don’t more people do things of that nature?” Will said. He expertly navigated a piece of beef to his mouth with his chopsticks.
“It could be a gang killing. Maybe her family owed money to someone,” Jericho suggested.
“But why go to all that trouble, then?” Will mused. “Why make it seem occult in nature—and oddly occult at that?”
Will and Jericho considered various ideas, rejecting most of them. Evie remained silent. She was desperate for a drink.
“Is it taken from the Book of Revelation?” Jericho asked. “The harlot. The Whore of Babylon.”
“Yes, I thought that, too. Revelation does mention the Whore of Babylon. But the harlot adorned… It’s a very specific phrase. I’m not sure I’ve heard that before.” He shook his head and took another bite of his food. “At least it’s not coming to mind.”
Evie stared into her bowl and thought of the terrible things she’d seen while holding Ruta Badowski’s shoe buckle. What if they were important? “Have… have you ever heard this tune?” Evie asked, then whistled the song she’d heard while under.
Will pursed his lips, thinking it over. “What is it, something from a radio program? If you guess it you win a prize from Pears soap or some such?”
Evie shook her head. It hurt to do so. “Just a silly song I heard the other day. I wondered if it might mean something and…” What? What could she say that made any sort of sense? “It’s nothing.”
“As you say. Would you like to try the duck?”
Evie fought a wave of nausea as she waved the chopsticks and offending food away. But she felt a sense of relief, too. Perhaps the disconcerting images she’d seen and the song she’d heard had nothing to do with the girl’s murder. They could have been anything, really. Anything at all.
A quiet commotion up front drew Evie’s attention. The hostess, a girl in a red dress, about Evie’s age, shoved a bundle at a young man, speaking to him in Chinese. Her voice carried the tone of an order not to be contradicted. Under the girl’s penetrating gaze, the young man slunk away, letting the door to the kitchen bang behind him. The girl in the red dress appeared at their table with a silver tray of small fortune tea cakes. Evie noted her pale green eyes. “Will there be anything else?” she asked with a hint of polite annoyance.
“No, thank you.” Uncle Will paid the check while Evie extracted the slip of paper from a tea cake.
&n
bsp; “What does it say?” Jericho asked.
“ ‘Your life will soon change.’ ” Evie tossed it aside. “I was hoping for ‘You will meet a tall, dark stranger.’ What does yours say, Jericho?”
“ ‘To gain trust you must risk secrets.’ ”
“Intriguing. Unc?”
Will left his untouched on the tray. “I never read fortunes if I can help it.”
They exited onto the narrow, winding cobblestones of Doyers Street, known as “the bloody angle” for its bend and the large number of gangland murders committed there. But that night, the street was peaceful. Across the narrow crooked strip of cobblestone, a crowd of men were lighting candles inside small white lanterns and watching them float up into the dusky sky. The smell of incense wafted into the street.
“Mid-Autumn Festival,” Uncle Will explained. “It is an important cultural tradition, a celebration of harvest.”
Farther down, paper lanterns adorned the front of a shop: Mee Tung Co., Importers. They fluttered in the evening breeze. Pieces of paper with Chinese lettering had been pasted on a brick wall beside the shop. Men on the street gave the postings a surreptitious glance as they passed by.
“What’s that?” Evie whispered.
“Listings of which businesses are not aligned with the Tongs.”
“Those silver things for putting ice in gin?” Evie mimed with her fingers. “Adore them!”
“Tongs are brotherhoods or governing associations, and there are two in Chinatown—Hip Sing Tong and On Leong Tong. They’ve run Chinatown for decades and, from time to time, they’ve also engaged in bloody warfare. The businessmen put up these postings as a plea of neutrality, so that they will be left out of the violence.”
“What’s going on there?” Evie asked. A light shone in the window of a shop where a line of men had gathered.
“Sending letters home to their wives, most likely.”
“Their wives don’t live here with them?”
“The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882.” Uncle Will stared at her, waiting for a response. “What do they teach in schools these days? We’re going to have a nation of creationists with no grasp of history.”
“Then I suppose it’s lucky you’re tutoring me.”
“Yes. Well,” Will said uncertainly before settling into lecturing mode. “The Chinese Exclusion Act was a law designed to keep more Chinese from coming here once they’d finished building our railroads. They couldn’t bring their families over. They weren’t protected by our laws. They were on their own.”
“Doesn’t sound terribly American.”
“On the contrary, it’s very American,” Will said bitterly.
They’d passed around the back of the Tea House and saw the boy who’d been browbeaten by the hostess in the restaurant. He was kneeling before a small bowl of fire, feeding thin sheets of colored paper into it.
“What is he doing?” Evie said.
“Keeping the ghosts away,” Uncle Will said. He did not offer further explanation.
A PLACE IN THE WORLD
In the back parlor of Sister Walker’s brownstone, Memphis waited on the pristine blue sofa while his brother, Isaiah, sat at the dining room table concentrating on a spread of downturned cards. Sister Walker held one in her hand so that only she could see the face of it. “What card am I holding, Isaiah?”
“The Ace of Clubs,” Isaiah said.
Sister Walker smiled. “Very good. You got nineteen out of twenty. Very good, indeed, Isaiah. You may help yourself to the candy dish.”
“Next time, I’ma get all twenty, Sister.” Isaiah reached into the candy dish sitting on the lace doily in the center of Sister Walker’s freshly waxed dining room table, fished out two Bit-O-Honeys, and tore off the candy’s blue and red waxed paper.
“Well, we’ll see, but you did a fine job today. And you feel fine, Isaiah?”
“Yessh, ma’am,” Isaiah slurred around the candy.
“Don’t talk with food in your mouth,” Memphis chided.
“Well, how’m I ’posed to answer? Only got one mouth,” Isaiah said, glowering. It didn’t take much to make him hot under the collar, Memphis knew.
“Thank you, Sister,” Memphis said pointedly, looking at Isaiah, who was ignoring him.
“Of course. Now, Isaiah, you remember what to tell your aunt Octavia, don’t you?”
“You were helping me with my ’rithmetic.”
“Which I did, so it’s not lying. You remember that it’s best you not tell your auntie about the other work we do with the cards.”
“Don’t worry,” Memphis said. “We won’t, will we, little man?”
“I wish I could tell ever’body, so they’d know I’m something,” Isaiah crowed.
“You are something, Isaiah,” Sister Walker said and handed him another Bit-O-Honey.
“Something else,” Memphis teased. He put his hand on Isaiah’s head and moved it around. “Got a head like a football. Bumpy, too.”
“That’s my brains!” Isaiah twisted under Memphis’s head-vise grip.
“Is that what it is? Thought you’d been hiding candy up there all this time.”
Isaiah took a swipe at Memphis. Laughing, Memphis dodged it and Isaiah charged again, nearly toppling a lamp.
Sister Walker shooed them both toward the door. “All right now, gentlemen, please take your foolishness outside and leave my house in one piece.”
“Sorry, Sister,” Memphis said. Isaiah was already pulling him out onto the stoop. “See you next week.”
Aunt Octavia was waiting for them in the dusky parlor when they returned. She had on her apron, and she did not look happy. “Where you two been? You know supper’s at six fifteen, and if you’re late, you don’t eat.”
“Sorry, Auntie. Sister Walker wanted to be sure that Isaiah understood his arithmetic,” Memphis said, shooting Isaiah a warning look.
“Margaret Walker,” Octavia harrumphed. She pointed a serving spoon at them. “I don’t know if I want you to keep associating with that woman. I’ve been hearing some things lately about her that don’t set well with me.”
“Like what?” Isaiah pressed.
“She doesn’t go to church, for one.”
“She does, too! She’s a member at Abyssinian Baptist.”
“Ha!” Octavia snorted. “Selma Johnson goes to Abyssinian and says Margaret Walker hardly ever crosses that threshold. The Lord wouldn’t know her if you showed him a picture. You’re more likely to find that crazy old Blind Bill Johnson in church than you are Miss Margaret Walker.”
Memphis hoped he could divert his aunt from what sounded like the beginnings of a tear. She went on tirades sometimes about people for perceived slights and imagined injuries—“ The Lord wouldn’t know Miss So-and-So if you showed Him a picture.” “Barnabas Damson hasn’t got the sense God gave an animal cracker, if you ask me.” “Corinne Collins doesn’t have any business teaching Sunday school. Why, she can’t even keep up with her own children, who run around like a bunch of fools in a foolyard.” “Do you know I saw Swoosie Terell at the grocer’s, and she acted high-hat, and after I made her a plum pie when her mother was sick.” He wondered what trivial sin Sister Walker had committed that had set Octavia off.
“They say Margaret Walker got up to some trouble years back,” Octavia continued. “She was in prison and moved here to start a new life. If she weren’t an old friend of your mama’s, I wouldn’t give her the time of day.”
“Sister Walker was a jailbird?” Isaiah’s eyes were huge.
“You don’t know that’s true, so don’t go repeating it, Ice Man,” Memphis warned.
“You don’t know everything, Memphis John!” Aunt Octavia was in his face. “Ida Hampton told me, and I expect she knows a lot more about what’s what than you do.”
Memphis wondered if Ida Hampton bothered to tell anyone what was what about her little gambling habit.
“I hear she gets up to all manner of things that ain’t right.”
Aren’t,
Memphis silently corrected.
“She might even be into voodoo.”
“Sister Walker is not practicing voodoo. She’s helping Isaiah with his counting and computing.”
“Well, I don’t know if it’s right for you to be associating with her.” Aunt Octavia turned to Isaiah with her hands on her hips, like she meant business. “She do anything like that with you, Isaiah? Make you do magic with cards or put your hands on a crystal ball and talk to spirits? Anything like that?”
Memphis tried to give his little brother a warning with his eyes: Don’t say anything….
“No, ma’am.”
“You look me in my face when you say that. Look me right in my eyes and tell me again.” Isaiah’s head moved just slightly as he tried to peek around Octavia and keep Memphis in sight, but his aunt got wise and moved over, blocking his view. “Don’t you look at your brother. I’m the one asking. You look at me.”
Memphis held his breath. He could hear his blood pounding against his skull.
“She helps me with my ’rithmetic,” Isaiah said.
Aunt Octavia stood for a minute. “Well. You be careful around her, you hear me?”
Memphis let out his breath in a small whoosh. “Yes, ma’am,” he and Isaiah said as one.
“Memphis, I know you wouldn’t get your brother mixed up in the Devil’s business,” Octavia said, fixing him with a stare. “Not after all this family’s been through.”
Memphis’s jaw tightened. “No, Auntie. I wouldn’t.”
Octavia held his gaze for a few seconds longer, then poured iced tea into their glasses. “I promised your mama I’d look after you. I couldn’t live with myself if something happened to either one of you.” Octavia cupped Isaiah’s cheeks in her palms and kissed the top of his head. “Go wash yourself up for supper. Memphis, you say grace tonight. And after dinner, you can get the Bible from the china cabinet for Bible study.” When Memphis didn’t answer, Octavia called loudly from the kitchen, “Did you hear me, Memphis John Campbell?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Memphis grumbled. One day, he’d get the two of them out of his aunt’s house.
