Lair of Dreams (The Diviners #2) Read Online Free Page A

doors were shut. “Did… did Mr. Phillips like it?”
    The secretary smiled sympathetically. “Gee, honey, you know how the Big Cheese is: He only shows up for the biggest names. Oh!” she said, catching herself. “Gee, I didn’t mean it like that, Evie. Your show’s very popular.”
    Just not popular enough to get the full attention of WGI’s owner. Evie tried not to dwell on that fact as she grabbed her new raccoon coat and gray wool cloche from the coat-check girl and headed out front, where a small but enthusiastic crowd waited in the January drizzle. When Evie opened the door, they surged forward, their umbrellas like fat black petals of the same straining flower.
    “Miss O’Neill! Miss O’Neill!”
    Slips of paper and autograph books were waved at her. She signed each with a flourish before dashing down the alley toward a waiting taxicab.
    “Where to, Miss?” the cabbie asked.
    “The Grant Hotel, please.”
    The rain was coming down; the taxi’s windshield wipers beat in time to some unseen metronome as they cleared the fogging glass. Evie peered out the taxi window at the study in smoke, fog, snow, and neonthat was Manhattan’s Theater District at this late hour. A lightbulb-ringed theater bill featured an illustration of a tuxedoed man in a turban holding out his hands like a soothsayer while comely chorines danced under his enchanting sway. A sash at the top read COMING SOON—THE ZIEGFELD FOLLIES IN
DIVINERS FEVER
! A MAGICAL, MUSICAL REVUE!
    Diviners were big and getting bigger, but so far, no Diviner was bigger than Evie O’Neill. If only James were around to see her now. Evie traced the empty space at her neck where the half-dollar pendant from her brother used to rest, a reflex.
    A billboard for Marlowe Industries loomed above the jostling cab as they waited for the light to change. The billboard showed a silhouette of the great man himself, his arm gesturing to some nebulous future defined only by rays of sunshine. Marlowe Industries. The future of America.
    “He’s coming to town soon, you know,” the taxi driver said.
    Evie rubbed her temples to keep the headache at bay. “Who?”
    “Mr. Marlowe.”
    “You don’t say.”
    “I do say! He’s breaking ground out in Queens for that whatchamacallit—that exhibition he’s planning. Traffic’ll be murder that day. I tell ya, he’s already given us the good life—automobiles, aeroplanes, medicine, and who knows what else. Now, that’s a great American.” The cabbie cleared his throat. “Say, uh, ain’t you the Sweetheart Seer?”
    Evie sat up, thrilled to be recognized. “Guilty as charged.”
    “I thought so! My wife loves your radio show! Wait’ll I tell her I drove you in my cab. She’ll have kittens!”
    “Jeepers, I hope not. I’m all out of cigars.”
    The light changed and the cab turned left off the arterial throughway of Broadway, following the narrow tributary of Forty-seventh Street east toward Beekman Place and the Grant.
    “You’re the little lady who helped the cops catch the Pentacle Killer.” The cabbie whistled. “The way he butchered all those people.Taking that poor girl’s eyes? Stringing that fella up in Trinity Cemetery with his tongue cut out? Skinning that chorus girl and—”
    “Yes, I remember,” Evie interrupted, hoping he would take the hint.
    “What kind of person does that? What’s this world coming to?” The cabbie shook his head. “It’s these foreigners coming over, bringing trouble. And disease. You hear there’s some kinda sleeping sickness now? Already got about ten people with new cases every day. Heard it started in Chinatown and spread to the Italians and Jews.” He shook his head. “Foreigners. Oughta t’row ’em all out, you want my opinion.”
    I don’t
, Evie thought.
    “There’s talk the killer—that John Hobbes fella—wasn’t even human. That he was some kinda ghost.” The cabbie’s eyes met hers in the rearview mirror for a moment, seeking either