The Diviners (The Diviners 1)
Evie rapped the brass eagle’s-head door knocker and waited. A plaque beside the museum’s massive oak doors read HERE BE THE HOPES AND DREAMS OF A NATION, BUILT UPON THE BACKS OF MEN AND LIFTED BY THE WINGS OF ANGELS. But neither men nor angels answered her knock, so she let herself in. The entry was ornate: black-and-white marble floors, wood-paneled walls dimly lit by gilded sconces. High above, the pale blue ceiling boasted a mural of angels watching over a field of Revolutionary soldiers. The building smelled of dust and age. Evie’s heels echoed on the marble as she made her way down the long hall. “Hello?” she called. “Uncle Will?”
A wide, elaborately carved staircase wound up to a second-floor landing lit by a large stained-glass window, and then curved out of sight. To Evie’s left was a gloomy sitting room with its drapes drawn. To her right, pocket doors opened onto a musty dining hall whose long wooden table and thirteen damask-covered chairs looked as if they hadn’t been used in years.
“Holy smokes. Who died?” Evie muttered. She wandered till she came to a long room that housed a collection of objects displayed behind glass.
“ ‘The Museum of the Creepy Crawlies,’ I presume.”
Evie passed from display to display, reading the typewritten cards placed beneath:
GRIS GRIS BAG AND VOUDON DOLL,
NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA
BONE FRAGMENT FROM CHINESE RAILROAD
WORKER AND REPUTED CONJURER,
NORTHERN CALIFORNIA, GOLD RUSH PERIOD
CRYSTAL BALL USED IN SÉANCES OF
MRS. BERNICE FOXWORTHY DURING
AMERICAN SPIRITUALISM PERIOD, C. 1848,
TROY, NEW YORK
OJIBWAY TALISMAN OF PROTECTION,
GREAT LAKES REGION
ROOT WORKER’S CUTTINGS,
BATON ROUGE, LOUISIANA
FREEMASON’S TOOLS AND BOOKS, C. 1776,
PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA
There was a series of spirit photographs populated with faint figures, gauzy as lace curtains in a wind. Poppet dolls. A ventriloquist’s dummy. A leather-bound grimoire. Books on alchemy, astrology, numerology, root workers, voudon, spirit mediums, and healers, and several volumes of accounts of ghostly sightings in the Americas starting in the 1600s.
The Diary of a Mercy Prowd lay open on a table. Evie turned her head sideways, trying to make sense of the seventeenth-century handwriting. “I see spirits of the dead. For this they hath branded me a witch….”
“They hanged her. She was only seventeen.”
Evie turned, startled. The speaker stepped from the shadows. He was tall and broad-shouldered and had ash-blond hair. For a moment, with the light from the old chandelier shining down on him, he seemed like some severe angel from a Renaissance painting, come to life.
“What crime did she commit?” Evie said, finding her voice again. “Did she turn the gin to water?”
“She was different. That was her sin.” He offered his hand for a quick shake. “I’m Jericho Jones. I work for your uncle. He asked me if I could keep you company while he teaches his class.”
So this was the famous Jericho with whom Mabel was so besotted. “Why, I’ve heard so much about you!” Evie blurted out. Mabel would kill her for being so indiscreet. “That is, I hear Uncle Will would be lost without… whatever it is that you do.”
Jericho looked away. “I highly doubt that. Would you like to see the museum?”
“That’d be swell,” Evie lied.
Jericho led her up and down staircases and into preserved, musty rooms holding more collections of dull, dusty relics, while Evie fought to keep a polite smile.