Before the Devil Breaks You

  It was up to her.

  The weight of the realization paralyzed Mabel for a moment. She leaned against the side of a booth housing a prototype of a giant robot that thrilled its human audience by assembling a radio piece by piece. “That’s right, folks—the future will be fully automated! Robots doing human work!” the inventor crowed.

  The robot answered in its mechanical voice, “I have seen the future.”

  What should she do? Should she go to the police? Would they even believe her? The city had a lot invested in the exhibition going well. No one would want to cause a panic over the wild accusations of some girl, a socialist, no less. They’d think she was only trying to cause trouble, to gain attention.

  Still. She had to try. Mabel stood in the middle of the footpath, ignoring the grumbling from the irritated people navigating around her as she whirled around, eyes searching for a blue uniform. She spotted two cops by the Wonders of Electricity pavilion and set off at a clip, then slowed. What if the police did believe her? Then she’d be turning in her friends. And Arthur. She’d betray Arthur. Every member of the Secret Six would go to prison, Mabel included. She imagined her parents’ bereaved faces. How horrified and hurt they’d be. Aron and Luis could be deported. And Arthur could be sentenced to death. A vision of Arthur being strapped into the electric chair brought Mabel to a stop just a few feet shy of the two police officers.

  One of them gave her a funny look. “You all right, Miss?”

  “Yes,” Mabel said, breathing heavily. “I… I just got turned around is all.”

  “Easy to do. It’s a big place! What are you looking for?”

  “The Grand Pavilion.” Her voice was so small.

  The officer pointed behind her. “Boy, you did get turned around. It’s that way, Miss. But you’d better hurry. I hear Miss Snow is about to start.”

  Mabel nodded her thanks and turned away.

  Her father had always said that persuasion trumped force. Give people the benefit of the doubt, shayna. Appeal to the good inside them. Show them you will work with them. Offer hope in place of hate. Hope and reason gave people a chance to think for themselves, to be a part of the solution. Yes. Hope. She’d go to Arthur and reason with him. She’d get him to see that they were all poised on the razor’s edge of becoming everything they’d been fighting against. There was another, better way. There always was. Yes. Hope. Yes.

  Mabel slipped into the Grand Pavilion. On the broad wooden stage, the Christian Crusaders played a noisy march. The bang of the drum, sharp as a gun, startled Mabel and she jumped. Everywhere she looked there were children. Whole families waving small flags on sticks. A mother bent to wipe the mouth of her little boy. Oh, god. Faster, Mabel! She pushed her way to the back and the door that led down to the housings. A policeman stopped her. “You can’t go that way, Miss. It’s not open to the public.”

  “Oh,” Mabel said, trying not to cry. “I’ve lost my brother. I have to find him. He… he went this way.”

  And then Mabel did cry. The overwhelming fear. The betrayal. There was no stopping her tears.

  The policeman softened. “Aww, now, Miss. Go on, then. But don’t tell anybody I let you back there.”

  “Thank you. Oh, thank you,” Mabel cried.

  Hope. Persuasion. Appealing to the good. It had worked in this moment. She hoped the policeman’s faith was not misplaced. She had to stop Arthur from making a terrible mistake.

  Quickly, Mabel slipped down the stairs. As she came around the corner, she stopped short at the sight of four Pinkerton agents huddled together, smoking. One of them was Brown Hat, the man who’d been following them the past several weeks. Mabel hid in the shadows beneath the stairs and waited.

  “You think he’s on the level?” one of the Pinkertons asked.

  Brown Hat hooked his thumbs underneath his jacket lapels. “That gutter rat? I wouldn’t trust Arthur Brown farther than I could spit.”

  “He’s been your informant for a while, though. If not for him, we wouldn’t’ve been able to catch those anarchists downtown. We arrested that bookstore owner, Jenkins, today.”

  Arthur?

  Arthur was a stool pigeon?

  Mabel’s knees buckled, and she grabbed hold of the stair railing for support.

  Brown Hat tossed his cigarette to the ground and wiggled it dead with the toe of his shoe. “And then he blew up Marlowe’s mine. That wasn’t part of the plan. He was supposed to deliver the Secret Six to us, but he didn’t show up for our meeting last night. Once a traitor, always a traitor. I’m betting he’s here somewhere. We’re gonna turn this place out looking for him.”

  Mabel pressed herself against the wall as the agents’ feet thundered past her head and up the staircase. It was all lies. She’d loved him. She’d thought…

  Bile scratched up her throat, and she gagged against its hot truth. She didn’t know whether to run back to the others and tell them they were walking into a trap or chase after the man in the brown hat and demand to know everything. If she did, he’d arrest her on the spot.

  No. There was only one person who had the answers she needed.

  Mabel made her way to the basement. Her tears had dried. Her earlier panic had become an icy numbness thick in her chest. She found the small room directly under the stage and quietly let herself inside. Arthur had his back to her. He was crouched over the bomb at his feet.

  “Arthur,” she said coldly.

  He leaped up, eyes wide. “Mabel! What are you doing here?”

  “I know all about it. About you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I know that you’re a double agent working with the Pinkertons. You’re a spy for them. All this time, you’ve been lying to us. To me.” Mabel’s voice broke on the word. The tears were coming. She sniffed them back. “You didn’t want to help workers. You wanted to bring down the movement.”

  Arthur’s expression went slack for a moment, but he didn’t deny it. Mabel had half been waiting for him to tell her how wrong she was, but she could see now that she was right, and she both hated and respected Arthur for not lying to her just now.

  “They were going to execute my brother. They let me out of jail and told me they’d commute his sentence if I worked for them. But that was before what happened at the mine. Those children burned to death in their tents. Women shot by machine guns. It was before I fell in love with you. You changed me, Mabel. I had been half-dead, but you made me believe in the cause again. You made me want to be a good man.”

  A bitter “ha” escaped from deep in Mabel’s throat. “I’m supposed to believe that?”

  “You don’t have to, but it’s the truth, Mabel, I swear.”

  “Your word doesn’t mean anything,” Mabel shot back. “I suppose indicting the Roses’ daughter as a member of the Secret Six was supposed to be the feather in your cap.”

  “They were going to use you to blackmail your parents into cooperating. But I told them you were innocent!”

  Tears blurred Mabel’s vision. “Gloria’s right—I’m such a fool.”

  “Mabel, I promise you, I love you. I want to marry you.”

  Arthur moved toward Mabel. She pushed him away hard even as she wanted to hold him. “Don’t.”

  “How can I prove I love you?”

  “If you truly love me, you’ll destroy that bomb.”

  Arthur looked down at his creation. One switch, Mabel knew, and it would tick down to destruction. “He’s a bad man. The whole system’s rigged and rotten, Mabel. We need to send a message.”

  “Not this way.” Mabel stood firm. “I’m not leaving, Arthur. If you set that bomb, you’ll kill me, too.”

  “Mabel. Please.”

  “Once, you saved me. In Union Square, remember? Pulled me into an alley and into your world. Now I’m saving you.”

  Arthur teared up. He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. “It’s not a good world, Mabel.”

  “Yes, it is. It just needs a lot of help.” Mabel was crying
, too. “We can do that, you and me. I still have hope, Arthur. I can’t give up on the world just yet.”

  Arthur looked at Mabel. He was tearing up again, and Mabel fought the urge to comfort him. He swiped an arm across his eyes. “Sometimes it feels like…” There was a catch in his voice. “Like the world has given up on me.”

  “I haven’t given up on you,” Mabel said.

  Tears slid down Arthur’s face as he reached out and gently stroked Mabel’s soft cheek.

  “Okay,” he said.

  “Okay?”

  “Okay.” Arthur knelt before the bomb. He lifted his face to Mabel’s. His eyes were red. “For you, Mabel Rose.”

  Footsteps pounded toward them. Arthur leaped up. Mabel moved to his side. The four Pinkerton agents entered the room, guns drawn. Brown Hat was at the front. “Make a single move and I’ll shoot you where you stand! This is the only warning you get.”

  “Put your hands up, Mabel,” Arthur said gently.

  “Well, if it isn’t Mabel Rose. And what do we have here? A bomb. Looks like you delivered after all, gutter rat.”

  “Mabel has nothing to do with this!” Arthur said.

  “It isn’t what you think. He was just about to destroy it,” Mabel explained.

  Brown Hat smirked. “Sure he was.”

  “Please. If you could just listen for a minute…” Mabel took a step forward.

  “Mabel, don’t!” Arthur shouted.

  It happened very fast. The first bullet grazed Mabel’s right arm; the second found its home in her belly, exiting through her back, severing her spinal column. Mabel felt a searing heat, followed by cold, and then she felt nothing as she fell to the ground.

  In the Grand Pavilion, the radio men made sure the wires were secured and tested the microphones.

  “Just get right up on it, Miss Snow,” one of them said.

  But Sarah Snow knew exactly what to do. She’d waited a lifetime for this moment. As she took the stage, she smiled at the vast sea of tiny, waving American flags and wished that her parents could see her standing here. A lump rose in her throat. She couldn’t afford to tear up now. After all, Jake Marlowe needed her. He’d asked her to take charge, and take charge she would.

  Sarah raised her arms. “Brothers and sisters, citizens, welcome. What a glorious day the Lord has made!”

  The tiny flags agitated like electric current.

  “Here, in this great city in this great nation of opportunity, the American dream is alive and well. Jake Marlowe is bringing us the future. And, oh, what a glorious future it is, indeed! Do you feel that? Do you feel that future inside you? Do you feel it in your hearts, brothers and sisters?”

  The flags answered affirmative.

  Sarah Snow. Chosen. Anointed for greatness by the Almighty.

  “Let us raise a hymn of praise to America.”

  The Christian Crusaders took up their instruments once more.

  Sarah stepped up to the microphone and let her voice rise: “My country, ’tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing.…”

  “Mabel!” Arthur called, desperate. “Mabel!”

  “Arthur?” Mabel croaked out. She couldn’t move her legs.

  “Help her!” Arthur growled.

  “Stay where you are, Mr. Brown!” Brown Hat commanded as he moved closer. “Where are the others?”

  Arthur said nothing.

  “I’ll let her die,” Brown Hat said.

  “They’ll be leaving the fair right about now,” Arthur said.

  “Weston, Cooper!” Brown Hat called to two of the other agents. “Go find them. Make the arrest. Agent Lynch, stay with me.”

  It was just Brown Hat and the other agent left now. From where she lay, Mabel could hear Sarah’s pretty soprano coming through the microphone, filling the Grand Pavilion above them.

  “They’re st-starting,” Mabel murmured, and coughed.

  “Please. She’s hurt,” Arthur pleaded.

  Brown Hat’s expression didn’t change. “I don’t care.”

  Arthur fell on the other agent with furious blows. Brown Hat answered with a bullet to Arthur’s thigh. Arthur cried out. The wound bled profusely. It had managed to hit in a very bad place, he knew. Above him, the band played on. This wasn’t the way it was supposed to happen. He had a knack for screwing up. Perhaps there was still a chance to correct that, to make one lasting contribution. Arthur Brown left a slug trail of blood behind him as he crawled toward the bomb.

  Brown Hat kicked him in the face. Arthur fell back, and the agent brought his shoe down on Arthur’s outstretched hand, pinning him there.

  “You idiot,” Arthur said through teeth clenched against pain. “I was trying to disarm it!”

  Brown Hat nodded. “I know.”

  Without another word, Brown Hat turned and shot the younger agent, who jerked like a marionette and dropped to the ground, dead. The man in the brown hat stepped calmly around Arthur and the dead agent and placed the still-ticking bomb high into an alcove underneath the stage, out of Arthur’s reach.

  “So long, gutter rat,” he said, shutting and locking the door on his way out.

  “Memphis!” Theta shouted. “Help!”

  “Isaiah? Isaiah!” Memphis gathered his shaking brother in his arms, and they carried him to the grass. People were staring. “Isaiah?”

  Isaiah’s eyes had rolled back in their sockets. “Fire,” he cried. “Fire!”

  “Hey, now, boy, you can’t be yelling fire in a public place,” a man scolded, and Memphis wanted to hit him.

  “My brother’s sick!” Memphis growled.

  “Then get him outta here,” the man shot back.

  “What’s the matter?” a policeman asked.

  “That little boy’s calling fire.”

  “Memphis, we better go,” Theta said.

  “I said, my brother’s sick!” Memphis yelled. He wanted to punch somebody and he wanted to cry, and he didn’t know which he wanted more.

  “All right,” the policeman said kindly. “Let me help you get him outside.”

  Isaiah’s eyes snapped open. He sat up. “Bomb. Bomb. There. They’re here. Warning us.” Isaiah pointed to the charred field. The tents and bodies were gone, but the ground still bore witness to the massacre. “Do you see them?”

  Dead children lined up across the field.

  “Do you see them? They’re telling us to go,” Isaiah said. “Now.”

  “Say, now, what’s all this about a bomb?” the policeman asked.

  “My brother, he’s special. A Diviner,” Memphis explained.

  “Bomb! Bomb!” Isaiah screamed.

  “Say, now, what’s he going on about?” The officer blew his whistle. “You stay right there!”

  Across the grass, two men in dark suits were making their way from the Fitter Families tent toward Memphis, Theta, and Isaiah. Theta saw them approaching.

  “Grab Isaiah and run,” Theta said.

  “What? Why—”

  “Just do it, Poet.”

  Memphis scooped Isaiah up in his arms and staggered as quickly as he could toward the gates and out into the flat Queens field streaming with curious people making their way toward Jake Marlowe’s utopia. Several policemen had their nightsticks out, but it was the Shadow Men Theta feared.

  Theta let the heat come. And then she blasted a strip of grass at her feet. A small fire blazed across the entrance to the exhibition. Already, the policemen ran for buckets of water. They’d have it out in no time. But it would be enough to get away, she hoped.

  “It was that girl—that Diviner,” someone shouted behind her as she ran. “She did it!”

  The song soared to the rafters inside the Grand Pavilion.

  “Sweet land of liberty.”

  It bubbled forth from the lips of the people and echoed through the radio playing on a table inside the Fitter Families tent under a poster touting the qualities of the perfect citizen.

  “Of thee I sing.”

  Its muffled but
familiar strains drifted down into the depths of the small room below the stage, where, with his last bit of strength, Arthur Brown dragged himself on his elbows toward Mabel, leaving behind a trail of blood.

  “Arthur?” Mabel called softly.

  “I’m here,” Arthur managed through teeth gritted in pain.

  “It got so cold.”

  “Yeah.” The bullet in Arthur’s thigh burned. His trousers leg was soaked red.

  “Did…” Mabel wheezed. “Did we stop it?”

  Arthur glanced in the direction of the still-ticking bomb. He moved his face closer to Mabel’s.

  “Yeah. We did,” he answered, taking her hand in his.

  “And do… do you really…?”

  “Really what?”

  “Love me?”

  Mabel’s sight blurred until above her, she thought she saw a great gathering of doves. Their scalloped wings fluttered like the fans in Theta’s Follies show, the one she’d seen with Evie the night they’d sneaked out. Had that been so long ago? Seemed like ages. Evie. She’d call Evie and tell her that everything was okay. She’d tell her all of it now. You shared the truth with your friends. Yes, she would call Evie.

  Mabel’s smile quivered, an echo of the birds’ wings. To her ears, their cooing was like the tick of a steady clock. The iciness in her stomach spread. Her breathing slowed. She coughed. Blood spattered across her pale lips. It was hard to speak.

  “People are…” Mabel wheezed. “Mostly good, you…” Wheeze. “Know? Mostly.” She tried to take a breath. It was hard. Like breathing through layers of gauze. Where were her parents? She loved them so. “Mostly. I believe that with…” A bloody cough tore through Mabel’s lungs. “… With all my… all my heart.”

  The doves became a giant cloud. The cloud was all Mabel could see, stretching everywhere at once. It reached down, wrapping her in its embrace. And there was singing somewhere. Sarah Snow’s faraway voice.