Lair of Dreams (The Diviners, #2)

by Libba Bray

“What’s in here, then?” Padraic asks. “A speakeasy,” says another man, Michael, chuckling. “Grand. I could use a drink,” Padraic jokes as he heads inside, still hopeful of some lost treasure. The workers follow. These men are the unseen builders of the city, like ghosts themselves, and they’ve no need to fear the dark.

For dreams, too, are ghosts, desires chased in sleep, gone by morning. The longing of dreams draws the dead, and this city holds many dreams.

“I would argue that every country is built upon dreams and violence. Both leave scars. America is certainly no exception to this.”

Evie had never felt so naked with anyone, not even Mabel, as if she could say anything and be understood. It was heady. And dangerous. A girl needed armor to get by in the world, and Jericho had a way of dismantling hers so easily.

“You’ve been given a gift. A link between old and new, between the living and the dead. But like all gifts, you must accept this with humility, Ling.”

“We are made by what we are asked to bear, Ling Chan,” he’d said.

Sam stole a glance at the flappers watching them. They were cute, and probably one of them might jump to date him. So why was he entering into a devil’s bargain with Evie? Why did the prospect of a fake romance with her give him the same thrill as thievery?

Ordinary people were capable of extraordinary bravery. That was the only magic Sam knew or trusted.

The land has a memory. Every stream and river runs with a confession of sorts, history whispered over rocks, lifted in the beaks of birds at a stream, carried out to the sea. Buffalo thunder across plains whose soil was watered with the blood of battles long since relegated to musty books on forgotten shelves. Fields once strewn with blue and gray now flower with uneasy buds. The slave master snaps the lash, and generations later, the ancestral scars remain.

“I’ve spent the last two hours worried that you were bleeding to death in a ditch,” Evie continued. “Now that I know you’re okay, I just want you to be bleeding to death in a ditch.”

“I have to find the truth.” Sam Lloyd did not ask for favors. Whatever he needed, he paid for or took—no strings, no debts. So it took everything he had to offer Evie the file again. “Please?” he asked, the word unfamiliar. “Could you please try one more time?”

Don’t bother to check into the story ’cause they’d rather just believe that than find out for themselves.” “Why?” “Looking for truth makes a man hafta look at himself along the way.”

The truth was, she was afraid that when she fell hard for a boy, she’d lose herself along the way. She’d seen it happen to lots of girls. They’d go from drinking gin, driving fast cars, and boldly shimmying in speakeasies to these passive creatures who couldn’t make a move without asking their beaus if it would be okay. Evie had no intention of fading behind any man. She didn’t want to slide into ordinary and wake up to find that she’d become a housewife in Ohio with a bitter face and an embalmed spirit.

The country awakens with the dawn. The citizens rise and wash, shave and brush. They don stockings and dresses, pants, shirts, and suspenders. They button up their need. Affix their aspirations. Tuck histories neatly inside drawers, creating themselves as they go, a rhapsody of reinvention.