“—Who asked you?—”
The Metaphysickometer hummed loudly, its needle popping up and down. The radio came on with a sudden squawk and raced through stations in a jumbled jazz of speech, music, and static. A corner of the room seemed to wobble and bend.
“What just happened?” Theta asked when it quieted. The smell of electricity hung in the air.
“I think you just happened,” Sister Walker said, breathless with new excitement.
Ling put her hand on the wall. It was warm. “We created some sort of energy field together.”
“I think we should try again. Right away,” Sister Walker said.
“Nothing doin’! Why should we do anything for you?” Sam said.
“What Sam said!” Evie chimed in.
“I know how angry you are. We made mistakes. We have a lot to answer for. But the threat we face is enormous. I’m asking…” Will looked to Sister Walker, who nodded. “We’re asking, if you can put aside your misgivings long enough to continue the work.”
For a moment, everyone was quiet. There was nothing but the crackling of the fire.
“Maybe we should see what we can do. Not for them,” Ling said at last, nodding toward Will and Sister Walker. “But for us.”
“If Ling’s in, so am I,” Henry said.
Isaiah came and stood beside Sam. “I’ll do it.”
“Isaiah, you don’t know what you’re promising,” Memphis said.
“I do, too!”
“Sam?” Evie asked.
“Yeah, okay. I’m in. But for us,” Sam said.
“Poet? Whaddaya think?” Theta asked.
Memphis let his arms hang at his sides. He took in a deep breath, then let it out. “For my mother,” he said.
“We’ll continue,” Ling said to Will and Sister Walker. “But if you lie to us even once more…”
“We’ll never, ever come back,” Evie finished. She gave Will a hard look. “And I will never speak to you again.”
Will nodded. “Understood.”
“What do we do? Do we stand in a circle and hold hands?” Isaiah asked.
“If you ask us to sing camp songs, I refuse,” Evie said.
“Gather here. On the rug.” Will pushed back some chairs and the Diviners made a circle.
“Now what happens?” Memphis asked.
“I want you to shut your eyes and concentrate.”
“Shouldn’t it be something specific?” Ling asked. “Something we can all see in our minds?”
Evie looked at Henry. “Do not say clowns.”
Henry sighed. “Well, now you’ve done it. Clowns are all I can see.”
“Ling’s right. I want you to concentrate on something concrete,” Sister Walker said. “Think of creating an energy field… around this credenza.” Sister Walker marched over to a long, beautifully carved chest. “Stare at the credenza. Concentrate. Be aware of your energy as well as the energy coming from your fellow Diviners.”
It was very still. Beside him, Sam could hear Henry breathing, and soon, the rhythm of his breath matched the rhythm of Sam’s breathing, and Evie’s matched Sam’s, all the way around the circle. Sitting on the sofa outside the circle, Theta could feel her own restless energy wanting to join the others, like a horse longing to run with the herd. She could feel Memphis’s heartbeat strong inside her, lining up perfectly with hers. A great hum filled Evie’s ears, like a strong wind carrying a million voices inside. An aura appeared around the credenza, the air dancing with pinpricks of light that stretched to the Diviners themselves. The hum became a roar. The chandelier directly above them flared bright and hot, shattering the bulbs and showering the carpet with broken glass. With a shriek, the Diviners dropped one another’s hands.
“Aaah!” Sam said, putting his hands over his ears. “Did you feel that?”
“For a minute there, it was like falling—” Ling said, excited.
“Then floating—” Evie added.
“In a warm bath made of stars that you felt joined to?” Memphis finished.
Sam jerked a thumb at the others. “Uh, what they said.”
“Yes,” Theta said so quietly that no one heard.
Henry’s eyes widened. “Is it just me or is the credenza rather… un-credenza-like?”
Across the room, the antique oak table bowed out in the middle, as if trying to give birth to some other form. And then it contracted and settled back to its proper table shape.
“Will…” Sister Walker whispered.
“I know,” he answered. “Incredible.”
Ling moved as swiftly as she could. She touched the credenza gingerly. It was still warm. “It’s pos-i-tute-ly solid now.”
“You’re using the word!” Henry beamed. “I taught her that word, you know.”
Ling’s excitement bubbled out of her in a torrent of words. “Everything radiates. The radiation we emit isn’t visible to the naked eye, but it’s there. This is incredible. Our combined energy can disrupt electromagnetic fields or create one!” She burst out with a rare full grin. “We’re an unimaginable source of energy!”
“Diviner Industries—powering the nation! Charleston, Charleston!” Evie sang, pulling Henry in to dance with her.
“People who could do that would be pretty valuable,” Memphis said.
“Yeah. And dangerous,” Sam said.
“What do you mean?” Evie had stopped dancing, but she still held Henry’s hand.
“I mean, either everybody would want ’em around, or nobody would. We were created for national security, right?” He looked to Sister Walker, who nodded. “Well, what happens if somebody decides we aren’t so secure? What happens if somebody decides that a bunch of people like us with Diviner powers are a threat to that new, special America they’re trying to build?”
“Ice Man, you okay?” Memphis crouched down in front of his brother. Isaiah was breathing heavily. He seemed frightened. “What’s the matter?”
“Anybody else see something scary while they were under?” Isaiah asked.
Will moved closer. “What did you see?”
“It was real dark. And then I could see there was a rip in the dark, like when I tore my shirt on a branch one time and Octavia fussed at me for it. I could feel that there was something inside the rip trying to get out. Something bad.” Isaiah swallowed. “I heard a voice.”
“What did it say?”
“It called me the clairvoyant,” Isaiah said, sounding out the unfamiliar word. “It said, ‘I see you, Clairvoyant.’”
“Something made contact with you,” Sister Walker said. “We should go back in.”
“No,” Memphis said.
“I understand that you’re concerned about your brother, Memphis. But something from the other side wants to talk with Isaiah. This may be our best chance to talk to that entity.”
“What if that something…” With a glance at his brother, Memphis moved to Sister Walker, whispering, “What if that something wants to hurt him?”
“Do you trust me, Memphis?”
If they were on the street or in church, Memphis would back down from Sister Walker’s imperious gaze with an I didn’t mean any disrespect, ma’am smile. Smile. Nod. Look away. Get along. But Sister Walker had gone to jail for sedition. She and Will had lied to them about their origins, about what Project Buffalo really was. Hadn’t Blind Bill and Aunt Octavia said that Sister Walker couldn’t be trusted? And from what Memphis had heard on those recordings, Sister Walker, Will, and the others hadn’t been able to look out for poor Guillaume, and he was a Diviner—a powerful one at that. But if Sister Walker was right, and this was a chance to find out how to heal the breach Memphis’s mother had talked about, then they had to take it. For now, Memphis needed to believe that once they closed the door between worlds, things would be better. The ghosts would go away. Isaiah’s seizures would stop.
“He’s not going in without me,” Memphis said finally.
“Fair enough.” Sister Walker maneuvered around Memphis, making straight
for Isaiah, and crouched before him. “Isaiah, you remember when you warned me about the chair?”
“Yes, Sister.” It had been a few months ago. Isaiah had been at Sister Walker’s house reading cards. He’d guessed most of them before they were turned over. On the way out, he’d taken hold of Sister Walker’s hand and gotten a strong sense that something was wrong. He saw her standing on the chair to reach into a kitchen cupboard, and then he saw her fall.
“You were right. Not ten minutes after you left, I climbed up on that chair to get some sugar and the chair leg broke underneath me. Let’s see what you can find out from this.”
Isaiah was excited and a little scared. He wanted to show off what he could do in front of the bigger Diviners so they’d see him as one of them, less of a kid.
“Memphis, I want you to sit beside your brother. The rest of you gather ’round. Let’s see if we can increase the strength of Isaiah’s clairvoyance. Okay. Put your hands on Isaiah’s shoulders… that’s it.”
“Feels as if we’re posing for a family photograph. I refuse to put on a Shriner’s hat or hold a monkey.” Evie sighed.
Sam quirked an eyebrow. “What sort of family do you—”
“Shhh, please,” Sister Walker chided. “Memphis, take hold of Isaiah’s hands. Isaiah, I want you to relax as much as you can. When you’re under, concentrate on your surroundings, look around, remember what you see. The rest of you, I want you to think about helping Isaiah.”
Isaiah was nervous. For once, he was the special one. He wasn’t just a kid. But it was scary, too. What if nothing happened? It was odd having everybody’s hands on his shoulders, too.
But slowly, he relaxed. And then he was drifting off somewhere else, like floating down a river on his back, and all around him was the mist and roar of a waterfall. The roar sucked into complete silence. Isaiah found himself on a dusty road. To his left, he saw a farmhouse with a sagging porch. Fields full of corn rotting on their stalks. Crows circled above in a mesmerizing figure eight. And then, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, Isaiah entered the world he saw as simply as entering a new room. He could smell the wind, scented with coming rain. Beyond the farmhouse, out in an arid spot of land, an enormous tree, grayed with age, rose up from the earth like a multi-armed god Isaiah had seen in a storybook his mama got from the library one time. No leaves grew there; none looked as if they could. It was a mighty ghost of a tree. From a fat bough hung a rope swing, and when Isaiah put out his hand toward it, he could tell that it had never been used. It had been tethered to the branch with hope, but sadness hung about it now. There was sadness hanging over the whole farm. Fear, too. Something didn’t feel right. Why was he here? What had happened in this place? What was going to happen in the future?
Dust kicked up on the road ahead like a storm moving in. Isaiah thought he heard Memphis’s voice carried faintly in the blowing dust, and then he saw his brother and another man he didn’t know—a big, strong-looking man with broad shoulders and a face like an African prince. Memphis and this unknown man were whispers of bodies flickering in and out with the wind.
“Memphis? That you?” Isaiah called. But the voice and the vision had gone.
The squawking of crows drew his attention back to the porch. A barefoot girl in a nightgown stood on the warped steps. Her pale hair wanted brushing, and the peach satin bow she wore had slid halfway down, stuck in the rat’s nest of it. She looked to be about the same age as Memphis. Just like the farm, there was something a little off about her. A crop turning bad.
“I know you,” the girl whispered, and her whisper slipped inside him like a bad dream. A crow came to rest on each of her shoulders. A third settled atop her head. It blinked at Isaiah, and he gasped to see it had only one eye, right in the middle of its shiny forehead.
“Isaiah…” the girl said, as if tasting his name. “Isaiah Campbell. The one who sees. The clairvoyant.”
“Where am I?” Isaiah asked.
“Bountiful,” the girl answered. “Bountiful, Nebraska.”
“Who are you?” he asked.
“I see, too. Something’s coming. For you and your brother and your friends.”
Her head jerked, crow-like, toward the horizon. Down the long dirt ribbon of road, the great ball of dust had grown bigger, and Isaiah caught glimpses of sharp white glinting in the filthy gloom. There was a demonic whine in the wind, like a choir singing thousands of clashing parts—keening moans and bird shrieks and a high-pitched, whirring hiss that reminded him of cicadas in tall grass. The sound crawled into Isaiah’s chest. It made him want to run. But he wouldn’t. He had to prove to Sister Walker, Will, and the others that he wasn’t a baby. If he did good, they couldn’t leave him behind anymore.
The crows’ squawking startled Isaiah. He gasped and fell back: The girl was on the road with him! How had she gotten there so fast? He saw now that the left side of her face was like melted candle wax that had cooled into a scarred mound of flesh. She only had one good eye, too—the right—and it was so blue it was nearly silver. “They did this to us, you know. It’s their fault. They deserve punishment for their sins. Don’t tell them anything! But he wants to help us.”
Isaiah stumbled backward, away from the silvery-eyed girl. He felt dizzy with her so close. He tried to right himself. Look around, Sister Walker had told him. Remember what you see. So Isaiah looked hard: At the farmhouse. The crows. The tree with its bare, twisted limbs. The crooked mailbox, number one, four, four.
One forty-four!
He opened his mouth in a gasp and tasted dust at the back of his throat. The whine grew louder; it reverberated through his blood, calling. The girl was so close he could feel her breath. She cocked her head, studying him. “Can you feel him calling to you, Isaiah Campbell?” she asked. Her teeth were as mottled as an old piling in a drought-low river.
Who? Isaiah thought, and he knew the girl heard his thoughts.
“The King of Crows. He loves us and our gifts. And if we help him, he will give us everything we want.”
“What kind of help?”
“There’s another seer. A boy who draws. We need him. He won’t talk to us, though. But he’d talk to you.”
The girl attempted a smile, and that frightened Isaiah more than anything. Isaiah didn’t know if this was a dream or a vision of the future. He only knew that he didn’t want to be here anymore with this girl and the farmhouse and whatever lurked down the road in that dust.
The girl turned her head toward the ball of dust. She smiled her rotted smile. “Ghosts on the road,” she whispered.
“Isaiah!”
On the edge of the cornfield, Isaiah’s mother shimmered in the blue-black feathered cape he’d seen her wear in dreams before. She didn’t look sick and tired like she had at the end of her life. But she didn’t look entirely human, either.
“Mama?” he said.
“Isaiah. Concentrate. Wake up.”
“I’m too scared, Mama.”
“You can do it.” His mother’s voice rasped as if she’d had a bad cough. “I want you to imagine a door that you can walk right through, and then you’ll wake up.”
Make a door. He could do that. Isaiah pictured the open pocket doors of the library a few feet away. The strange girl was back, though, and she was screeching like a flock of mad birds at his mother. “He will punish you! You will not glory in his future!”
“Hush up!” his mother snapped like the girl was acting up in church.
But behind his mama, the dark moved like a living thing, and Isaiah was afraid for her.
“Go now,” his mother commanded in her strange, squawking voice. “Tell the others: Follow the Eye. Heal the breach. Protect Conor Flynn. Don’t let—”
The girl screeched and the sky was filled with black birds. Her hair flew up around her face. Her eyes were wrong. “We will meet again.”
The darkness swallowed his mama, the girl, the farm, everything.
“Mama!” Isaiah cried.
&
nbsp; Isaiah came out of his trance thrashing and gasping. Memphis’s concerned face hovered just above his. “Isaiah? Isaiah!”
“Memphis!”
Memphis let out his breath in a big whoosh. “You okay, Ice Man?”
Isaiah nodded, coming back to himself, and Memphis pulled him in tight for a long minute.
Will checked his watch. “He was under for three minutes.”
“What did you see, Isaiah?” Sister Walker asked.
“It was a place, a farm, I think. The farm wasn’t doing so well. The crops had turned bad. And…” Isaiah licked his lips, trying to work some moisture back into them. He could still taste the dust in his mouth. “I think I saw another Diviner. But she wasn’t very nice. She was kinda scary.”
“Do you know her name?” Will asked.
“Huh-uh.” Isaiah hoped he hadn’t failed the test. “But when I asked where she was, she told me Bountiful, Nebraska.”
At Evie’s gasp, Memphis asked, “What is it?”
“Bountiful, Nebraska, was one of the places with a thumbtack stuck into it on that map Sam and I found,” she explained.
Isaiah looked to Memphis. “Mama was there, Memphis.”
Memphis swallowed hard. “She say anything?”
Isaiah nodded. “Told us to follow the Eye and heal the breach. Or else we’d be lost. And she said we should protect Conor Flynn.”
“Who or what is Conor Flynn?” Ling asked, but no one knew.
“Was there anything else you remember about that farm?” Sister Walker pressed.
Suddenly, Isaiah brightened. “The house had a number. Saw it on the mailbox!”
“What was it?” Sister Walker asked.
“One forty-four.”
“Evie!” Will called. Evie stopped on the steps of the museum and turned to him. “I’m sorry that I didn’t tell you before.”
“You should have.”
“I know. I made a mistake. That formula absolutely saved James’s life. But perhaps I shouldn’t have been playing god.”
Evie tried to imagine what her life would’ve been like if James had died of pneumonia before she was even born. She couldn’t bear the thought of it. “No. No, I’m glad,” she said on a long sigh. “If you hadn’t saved him… I couldn’t imagine not knowing James.” Then: “I suppose that explains Bob Bateman’s comb, then. Maybe James was just like me and he didn’t come into his powers until he was older.”