Lair of Dreams (The Diviners #2)
Page 4Lee Fan glared at Ling. “You probably make it all up just to get attention.”
“If you believe it, it will be. If you do not, it won’t,” Ling said.
Lee Fan slid a dollar across the table. Ling let it sit.
“I have to cover my expenses. Make the proper prayers. I could never forgive myself if I brought bad luck on you, Lee Fan.” Ling managed a quarter smile that she hoped passed for sincere.
Lee Fan peeled off another bill. “Two dollars. My final offer.”
Ling pocketed the money. “I’ll need something of your grandmother’s to locate her in the dream world.”
“Why?”
“It’s like a bloodhound with scent. It helps me find her spirit.”
“I’m not the one who seems to be losing things,” Ling muttered.
Lee Fan rose. She glanced down at her coat, then at George, who jumped to help her with it. “Careful, Georgie,” she stage-whispered, nodding toward Ling. “She might curse you. For all you know, she’ll give you the sleeping sickness.”
George’s smile vanished. “Don’t joke about that.”
“Why not?”
“It’s bad luck.”
“It’s superstition. We’re Americans now.” Lee Fan marched through the restaurant, slowing to allow everyone to watch her. Through the holes in the screen, Ling watched Lee Fan and her acolytes walking easily into the winter’s night. She wished she could tell them the truth: The dead were easy to talk to; it was the living she didn’t like.
The cold wind whistling around the curve of Doyers Street made Ling’s teeth chatter as she and George walked home toward Mulberry Street. The laundries, jewelers, groceries, and import shops were closed, but the various social clubs were open, their cigarette smoke–drenched back rooms filled with businessmen, old-timers, newcomers, and restless young bachelors all playing dominoes and Fan-Tan, trading stories and jokes, money and ambition. Across the rooftops, the Church of the Transfiguration’s steeple loomed at the edge of the neighborhood, a silent judge. A trio of slightly drunk tourists stumbled out of a restaurant talking loudly of heading over to the Bowery and the illicit delights to be found there in the deep shadows beneath the Third Avenue El.
“You charge too much money. That’s your trouble. Other Diviners charge less,” George said, panting.
“Then let Lee Fan go to one of them. Let her go to that idiot on the radio, the Sweetheart Seer,” Ling said. Lee Fan might live it up in nightclubs uptown, but Ling knew she wouldn’t go outside the neighborhood for fortune-telling.
“What are you saving money for, anyway?” George asked.
“College.”
“Why do you need college?”
“Why do you let Lee Fan run you like a dog?” Ling shot back, her patience at an end.
“She doesn’t run me,” George said, sulking.
“She’s changed you,” Ling said.
“She has not! You’re the one who’s changed. You used to be fun, before—”
George cut himself off abruptly, but Ling could fill in the rest of his sentence for him. She looked away.
“I’m sorry,” he said, chagrined. “I didn’t mean it.”