“Sister,” Memphis said quietly. “Could I ask you something? Privately?”
“You talking about me?” Isaiah piped up from Sister Walker’s dining room table, where he was adding sums now that his work with Sister Walker and the cards was finished for the day. Memphis was always amazed by his little brother’s talent for picking up on just which conversations were none of his business.
“Now, why would I be talking about you? Sister and I have more important things to talk about.”
Isaiah scowled. “I am too important!”
“Yes, you are,” Sister Walker assured him. “Why don’t you help yourself to another piece of candy, Isaiah? Memphis, let’s step out to the kitchen.”
Memphis followed Sister Walker to the back of the railroad flat into a small, cheerful kitchen with flowered curtains framing a window that looked out into a common courtyard strung with laundry. She offered him a cookie as she took a seat across from him at the table. Memphis nibbled at the cookie. Sister wasn’t much of a baker; her cookies were always too dry and not sweet enough, but he took them out of politeness.
“Something on your mind, Memphis?”
“I’m worried about Isaiah.”
“Has something happened?”
Memphis wasn’t sure how much he should say. What if Sister Walker didn’t want to work with Isaiah anymore? Isaiah would be crushed. Still, if something wasn’t right, he needed to let somebody know, and he certainly couldn’t tell Octavia.
“He’s been waking up in the night. It’s like he’s in a trance. And he’s saying strange things.”
Sister Walker’s brow furrowed. “What sorts of things?”
“ ‘I am the Beast. The Dragon of Old.’ And something that sounded like scripture, but nothing I was familiar with.”
“ ‘I am the Beast, the Dragon of Old,’ ” Sister Walker repeated. “That’s from Revelation, if I recall my Sunday school. I don’t like to cast aspersions, but might it be Octavia?” she offered kindly.
Memphis frowned. It would be just like Octavia to scare Isaiah with visions of God’s judgment.
“He said something else curious. Just one word over and over: Diviners.”
The warmth went out of Sister Walker’s face and Memphis was afraid he’d said something wrong.
“What is it? Is it something bad?”
“I haven’t heard that word used in a long time,” she said, and Memphis thought she sounded a bit sad. “It’s a name for people with rare gifts.”
“Gifts like Isaiah’s?”
Sister Walker gave a small shrug. “It depends on what you believe, I suppose. But yes, some people would call Isaiah a Diviner.”
Memphis broke the cookie into smaller bits. “But where would he hear that?”
“Children hear all sorts of things, I suppose.” Sister Walker swirled the ice in her glass of water ever so slowly. “The name comes from the accounts of a seer from the eighteen hundreds, Liberty Anne Rathbone. Just a girl, really. Her brother, Cornelius, built a big mansion over near Central Park. Now it’s the Museum of American Folklore, Superstition, and the Occult. Some folks call it the Museum of the Creepy Crawlies.”
“Oh. I’ve heard of it. But why would Isaiah know about these Diviners?”
Sister Walker stepped into the other room and returned with the day’s newspaper, which she spread out on the table. “The murders. The man who runs the museum, Dr. Fitzgerald, is helping the police try to find the killer. I’ll bet Isaiah heard people talking about it. Probably terrified him, too, and he took that right into his sleep. It’s not uncommon for children to sleepwalk or talk in their sleep when they’re frightened by something during the day. And Isaiah’s gifts make him even more sensitive. He’s almost like a radio, picking up signals from everywhere.”
There had been a lot of talk in the neighborhood about the killings, and even Aunt Octavia had brought it up. Memphis wanted to believe that was the case, but what Isaiah had said was so oddly specific, and the way he went trancelike… it was unsettling. But he’d already taken up too much of Sister Walker’s time and he didn’t want to bother her with vague notions of things not being right.
“I’ll bet that’s what it is. Thank you, Sister Walker.”
“I didn’t do much. Is there anything else?”
Memphis thought of his own recurring dream, but he couldn’t bring himself to tell Sister Walker about it. It seemed so silly, not at all the sort of thing someone who was grown should be asking about.