“This is my brother, Isaiah. Isaiah, meet everybody. Meet the Diviners.”
Ling cleared her throat. She nodded toward the mantel clock ticking toward quarter past five. “I thought this meeting was called for five o’clock. They’re late.”
As if in answer, the library doors slid open, and the museum’s director, Professor William Fitzgerald, entered, trailed by his partner in the paranormal, Dr. Margaret “Sister” Walker.
Will tossed his hat and hung his umbrella on the stuffed grizzly’s stiff paw. “I see you’re all here. Good,” Will said, patting his pockets for his cigarette case.
“Some of us were even on time,” Ling muttered under her breath.
“Don’t bite yet, cher,” Henry whispered. “Save it for the finale.”
“Good evening, everyone,” Sister Walker said, drawing all eyes as she perched on the edge of a leather wingback chair. She sat as still as a queen surveying her subjects and waiting to hand down judgment. Seeing Isaiah, Sister Walker smiled. She had a broad smile, gap-toothed and welcoming. “Hello, Isaiah. My, I think you’ve grown a foot since I saw you last.”
“Two whole inches. Auntie marked it on the wall. Gonna be taller than Memphis soon!” The brightness drained from Isaiah’s face. He turned to Memphis in a worried whisper. “I thought Aunt Octavia said we couldn’t have nothing to do with Sister.”
“Anything to do with,” Memphis corrected quietly. “And that’s why we have to keep this secret for now, Ice Man.”
Sam cleared his throat. “All right, Professor. We’ve waited long enough to hear this. What in the Sam Hill is going on? And what does it have to do with us?”
Rain spattered against the dusk-painted panes in a steady beat as Will lit a cigarette and pocketed his silver lighter. At last, he turned to the waiting assembly. “Evil has entered our world. A force from beyond. It is spreading across the country, getting worse by the day.” Will paused to exhale. “And we are the only means of stopping it.”
“Gee. And I was afraid this would be bad news,” Henry said after a moment of stunned silence.
“You’re talking about the ghosts,” Memphis said when he found his voice again.
“Like John Hobbes,” Jericho said.
“And Wai-Mae,” Ling added quietly.
“And whatever those monsters were down in the subways,” Sam said, leaning against the fireplace, arms folded at his chest. “Those things that wanted to eat us.”
“They had teeth. Very sharp, very unfortunate teeth. You never think about ghosts having teeth.” Evie shuddered. “I never want to think about it again.”
“Unfortunately, you will all have to.” Will’s deep voice filled the space as he paced the same few feet of Persian carpet, his cigarette dropping ash onto the rug. “This museum was built by the railroad tycoon Cornelius T. Rathbone. Cornelius was my benefactor for a time, and also my friend, for a time,” Will said with a note of sadness. “He was obsessed with the supernatural and he sank much of his fortune into investigating the mysterious and unexplained. He was particularly interested in Diviners. You see, his own sister, Liberty Anne, was a Diviner.”
Evie sagged further into her chair. “Must we have a spooky history lesson, Uncle Will? We already know about Liberty Anne.”
“Not everyone here knows the story, Evie,” Sister Walker chided.
“When Liberty Anne was a little girl, she wandered into the woods and was lost,” Will continued. “Two days later, she emerged from that same wood. Her hair had gone snow white. She spoke of meeting a funny man—a man in a tall black hat whose coat opened to show the wonders and frights of the world. She fell into a feverish state between waking and sleeping, speaking prophecy, which Cornelius dutifully recorded in his diary. Some of her future visions were thrilling; others were quite dark.” Will pulled hard on his cigarette and exhaled a cloud of smoke. “Just before she died, Liberty Anne warned of a great storm to come—a battle between good and evil, of a time when the Diviners would be needed. That time is now. We believe there is a tear in the world, a crack between our world and another dimension beyond this one,” Will said slowly, deliberately. “Our aim is to find out what we can about the man in the hat and the ghosts invading our world so that we can reestablish the balance between natural and supernatural, between the living and the dead—and to do it without causing a public panic.”
“Swell!” Sam clapped his hands together. “So, uh, how do we do that?”
“That’s what we hope to discover,” Will said.
“For a couple of folks who run a museum of the supernatural, you sure don’t know much,” Theta said.
“We believe by working on strengthening your gifts, individually and as a team, we’ll find the answer,” Sister Walker added.
“I’ve spoken to the dead plenty during my dream walks,” Ling said. “They ask me to deliver messages to the living. No one has said anything about a coming storm.”
“My mother did,” Memphis said rather suddenly.
Sister Walker’s brow furrowed. “She did? When?”
“It was around the time of the Pentacle Murders, when my power started coming back to me,” Memphis explained to the group. “I would sometimes see my mother while I was under a healing trance.”
Memphis stopped for a second to catch his breath. He still missed his mother greatly, and he’d never quite forgiven himself for not being able to heal her as she lay dying, riddled with cancer. She’d begged him not to try to heal her—Let me go, Memphis. You can’t bring back what’s gone. It was then that the man in the hat had appeared to Memphis and offered him a bargain if he wanted to see his mother again. Memphis cleared his throat and stared down at his shoes for a second. “Anyway. She, uh, she came to me in a vision and told me that a storm was coming, that we had to be ready for it. Another time, she told me to heal the breach.” Memphis shrugged. “I didn’t know what she meant by any of it.”
Memphis cast a glance Theta’s way. She nodded at him, gave him a little smile that he knew meant, It’s okay. I’m here.
“But Unc—Will. We got rid of Naughty John and Wai-Mae and those things in the subway.”
Will took three long strides to the table and grabbed a sheaf of newspaper clippings, holding them aloft. “These are mentions of ghost sightings from newspapers all across the country. These are not isolated incidents. There are hundreds of sightings.”
“So how come nobody’s talking about it?” Sam asked.
“It’s a big country. And not everyone is paying attention as closely as we are,” Sister Walker said. “These stories are on the back pages of small-town newspapers. When you talk about seeing ghosts, most people assume you’re either crazy or drunk or both. You don’t have to disprove someone’s claim if you can discredit the person saying it.”
Will stubbed his cigarette into an ashtray. “We should be glad that most people aren’t paying as close attention as we have been. It gives us time to work, to try to figure out what we’re up against before…”