The Diviners (The Diviners 1)

“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.

“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.