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

confirmation or dismissal.
    Evie wondered what the cabbie would say if she told him the truth—that John Hobbes was most definitely not of this earth. He was worse than any demon imaginable, and she’d barely escaped with her life.
    Evie looked away. “People say all sorts of things, don’t they? Oh, look. Here we are!”
    The driver pulled up to the monolithic splendor that was the Grant Hotel. Through the cab window, Evie spied a scrum of reporters staked out on the hotel steps, smoking and trading gossip. As she exited the cab, they dropped their cigarettes along with whatever gossip du jour held their fickle interest and surged forward to greet her, shouting over one another: “Miss O’Neill! Miss O’Neill! Evie, be a real sweetheart and look this way!”
    Evie obliged them, posing with a smile.
    “How was the show tonight, Miss O’Neill?” one asked.
    “You tell me, Daddy.”
    “Find out anything interesting?”
    “Oh, lots of things. But a lady never tells—unless it’s on the radio for money,” Evie said, making them laugh.
    One smirking reporter leaning against the side of the hotel called out to Evie: “Whaddaya think about all these Diviners coming forward now that you let the cat out of the bag on your own talents?”
    Evie gave the reporter a tight smile. “I think it’s swell, Mr. Woodhouse.”
    T. S. Woodhouse raised an eyebrow. “Do you?”
    Evie fixed him with a stare. “Sure. Perhaps we’ll start our own nightclub—hoofers and hocus-pocus. If you’re nice, we’ll even let you in.”
    “Maybe you’ll have your own union,” another reporter joked.
    “There are some folks who say the Diviners are no better than circus freaks. That they’re dangerous. Un-American,” T. S. Woodhouse pressed.
    “I’m as American as apple pie and bribery,” Evie cooed to more laughter.
    “Love this Sheba,” the second reporter murmured, jotting it down. “She makes my job easy.”
    Woodhouse wasn’t giving up. “Sarah Snow, who shares the radio with you, called Diviners ‘a symptom of a nation that’s turned away from God and American values.’ What do you say to that, Miss O’Neill?”
    Sarah Snow. That small-time, Blue Nose pain in the neck, always looking down at Diviners in general and Evie in particular. She’d like to give that two-bit Bible thumper a kick in the backside. But that kind of publicity Evie didn’t need. And she wasn’t about to give it to Sarah Snow for free by starting a war.
    “Oh, does Sarah Snow have a radio show? I hadn’t noticed,” Evie said, batting her lashes. “Come to think of it, no one else has, either.”
    As Evie bounded up the steps, T. S. Woodhouse sidled up next to her. “You went after me a little hard there, Woody,” Evie sniffed.
    “Keeps things interesting, Sheba. Also keeps anybody from suspecting our arrangement. Speaking of, my wallet’s feeling a little light these days, if you catch my drift.”
    With a careful glance at the other reporters, Evie slipped Woodhouse a dollar. Woodhouse held the bill up to the light.
    “Just making sure you’re not printing your own these days,” he said. Satisfied, he pocketed the bill and tipped his hat. “Pleasure doing business with you, Sweetheart Seer.”
    “Be a good boy, Woody, and go type something swell about me, will ya?” Evie said.
    With a little backward wave, she flitted past, letting the bellhop open the gilded door for her while the reporters continued to shout her name.

The lobby of the Grant Hotel was festive chaos. Partygoers of all sorts—flappers, hoofers, gold diggers, Wall Street boys, and aspiring movie stars—draped themselves over every available inch of furniture while baffled hotel guests wondered if they’d wandered into a traveling circus by mistake. On the far side of the lobby, the angry hotel manager wiggled his fingers up high, trying to get Evie’s attention.
    “Horsefeathers!” Evie hissed. Turning the other way, she squeezed through the tourniquet of