The elevator operator rode Miss Adelaide all the way to the very depths of the Bennington without a word; he’d only been there two weeks and had already learned not to question the Proctor sisters. While the lift rumbled down, Miss Addie chanted softly to herself, “The land is old, the land is vast / He has no future, he has no past / His coat is sown with many woes / He’ll wake the dead, the King of Crows.”
The elevator gates clanged open on the Bennington’s underworld. The young man at the elevator’s controls peered into the darkness. “Shall I wait for you, Miss Proctor?” he asked uncertainly.
“It’s quite all right, dear. I’ll ring you shortly. Run along now.”
Shaking his head, the young man closed the gate and the elevator groaned back up, leaving Addie alone in the dim basement. Immediately, she took out the candle and lit the wick, waiting for the glow to brighten the gloom. She fed one end of the bundled sage into the flame and waved it through the air, spreading out in wider circles. Next she wiggled up the sleeves of her robe and nightgown. The paper-thin skin of her wrist glowed nearly blue in the dim light from the narrow street-level windows that ran along the park side. Speaking ancient words, she slid the small knife across her thumb, hissing as she dripped blood into the bowl. She pressed her bloody thumb to the basement’s eastern corner before marking the room’s three other corners. This done, she bandaged her finger, then scooped salt from her pockets, sprinkling frost-thin lines along the windowsills, where she hoped the janitor wouldn’t find them. Night pleaded at the windows to be let in. Addie snuffed the candle, gathered her things, and pressed the elevator’s call button, watching the golden arrow tick down the floors to the bottom.
When the doors opened, the elevator operator helped Addie onto the lift. “You smell smoke, Miss Proctor?” he asked, alarmed.
“It’s only sage. I smudged the basement, you see.”
“Beg your pardon, Miss Proctor?”
“I lit a bundle of sage and smoked the room.”
Curiosity and suspicion proved too much for the young man at the controls. “Now, Miss Proctor, why’d you want to go and do a thing like that?”
“For protection,” Addie said, resolute.
“Protection from what, ma’am?”
“Bad dreams.”
“I’m sorry, Miss Proctor. I don’t follow.”
Miss Adelaide whispered urgently, “I’m keeping out the dead, my dear. For as long as I can.”
The elevator operator kept his thoughts to himself, though he’d be sure to mention this to the building management before his shift ended. No doubt they wouldn’t want the old woman burning down the whole building. With a small shaking of his head, he yanked the gate shut and turned again to the controls, and the gilded doors closed on the dark of the basement.
“Good morning, good morning!” Evie called as she flounced down the halls of WGI wearing a broad smile that masked the hangover from the previous night’s party. As promised, Evie had popped out of the cake at midnight. As expected, she’d popped right into a boozy party that went until well into the wee hours. She’d kill for another few hours of sleep. In the hallway, the day’s hopefuls clamored to be put on the air. Every morning, there was a line of new talent looking to make a name on the radio.
“I can sing just like Caruso,” one fellow explained before launching into an aria so loud Evie was fairly certain it could be heard out in Queens.
“What about me?” another man with a nasal voice piped up. “I can do fourteen different bird whistles!”
“Oh, please don’t,” Evie muttered, rubbing her temples.
As Evie dropped off her cloche and coat with the coat-check girl, another of Mr. Phillips’s many secretaries, Helen, hurried toward her. “Miss O’Neill! I’ve been looking for you. Mr. Phillips would like to speak with you. Immediately.”
Evie’s gut roiled as Helen ushered her into Mr. Phillips’s private office, an enormous corner room of gleaming cherrywood walls on the tenth floor with a view of Midtown Manhattan. A gold-framed oil painting of a godlike Guglielmo Marconi inventing the wireless took up an entire wall. His painted expression gave no hint as to Evie’s fate.
“Wait here. He’ll be in shortly,” Helen said and closed the door.
Was Mr. Phillips firing her? Had she done something wrong? By the time she heard Mr. Phillips’s patrician voice telling his secretary to “hold all calls,” she was so anxious she could’ve climbed the pretty walls.
