“I know.”
“I’m just tired. I didn’t sleep well last night.”
Ling drew in a sharp breath.
“I don’t have the sleeping sickness!” George said quickly. He held out his hands. “Look: No burns. No blisters.”
“So what’s the trouble, then?”
“I had the oddest dream.”
“Probably because you’re odd.”
“Do you want to hear this?”
“Go on.”
“It was incredible!” George said, his voice hinting at wonder. “I was at one of those mansions like the millionaires have out on Long Island, only it was my house and my party. I was rich and important. People looked at me with respect, Ling. Not like here. And Lee Fan was there, too,” George said shyly.
“I didn’t realize it was a nightmare,” Ling muttered.
George ignored her. “It all seemed so real. Like it was right there for the taking.”
Ling kept her eyes on the uneven edges of the bricks. “Lots of things seem real in dreams. And then you wake up.”
“Not like this. Maybe it has something to do with the New Year? Maybe it’s good luck?”
“How should I know?”
“Because you know about dreams!” George said, jogging in front of her. “You can walk around inside them. Come on—it has to mean something, doesn’t it?”
He was practically begging her to say it was so, and in that moment, she hated George a little bit for being so naive, for thinking that a good dream could mean anything other than a night’s escape from reality until the morning came. For thinking that wanting something so badly was enough to make it come true.
“I’ll tell you what it means: It means that you’re a fool if you believe Lee Fan will give you the time of day once Tom Kee comes back from Chicago. You can keep throwing yourself at her, but she’s never going to choose you, George. Never.”
George stood perfectly still. His wounded expression told her that the words had hurt. She hadn’t meant to be cruel, only truthful.
George’s eyes went mean. “I pity the poor soul who takes you for a wife, Ling. No man wants to have the dead in his bed every night,” he said, and then he marched away, leaving Ling just short of her building.
Ling tried not to take the words inside, but they’d already settled there. Why couldn’t she have just left George alone? For a moment, she had half a mind to call him back, tell him she was sorry. But she knew George was too angry to hear it now. Tomorrow she’d apologize. For now, she had Lee Fan’s money in her pocket and a job to do. Ling moved slowly toward her building, feeling each bump and brick up her spine. Above her, yellow-warmed windows dotted the building facades, forming urban constellations. Other windows were dark. People were asleep. Asleep and dreaming, hopeful that they’d wake in the morning.
For all you know, she’ll give you the sleeping sickness.
It had started with a group of diggers who shared a room on Mott Street. For several days, the three men lay in their beds, sleeping. Doctors had tried slapping the men, dousing them with cold water, striking the soles of their feet. Nothing worked. The men would not wake. Blisters and weeping red patches appeared all over their bodies, as if they were being consumed from the inside. And then they were dead. The doctors were baffled—and worried. Already the “sleeping sickness” had claimed five more people in Chinatown. And just that morning, they’d heard there were new cases in the Italian section of Mulberry Street and in the Jewish quarter between Orchard and Ludlow.
A group of bright young things marched arm in arm down the street, laughing and carefree, and Ling was reminded of a dream walk she’d taken a few months ago. In it, she’d suddenly found herself face-to-face with a blond flapper. The girl was clearly asleep, but she also seemed aware of Ling, and Ling had felt both drawn to and afraid of this girl, as if they were long-lost relatives having a chance meeting.
“You shouldn’t be here! Wake up!” Ling had yelled. And then, suddenly, Ling had tumbled down through dream space until she came to rest in a forest where ghostly soldiers shimmered in the spaces between the trees. On their sleeves, they wore a strange symbol: a golden sun of an eye shedding a jagged lightning-bolt tear. Ling often spoke to the dead in dreams, but these men weren’t like any dead she had known.
“What do you want?” she’d asked them, afraid.
“Help us,” they said, and then the sky exploded with light.
Since then, Ling had dreamed of that symbol a few times. She didn’t know what it meant. But she now knew who the blond girl was. Everyone in New York did: the Sweetheart Seer.