SANCTUARY
1902—New York
As she climbed aboard the late-night streetcar, Cela pulled her shawl up around her head to hide her face as she swallowed down a sob. The memory of the gunfire, a sound that had been so stark and clear and unmistakable in the quiet of the night, was still ringing in her ears. She couldn’t forget how she’d felt the thud of a body slumping to the floor. It had echoed in her chest, and she felt like she would always hear that sound and feel the emptiness that had accompanied it.
Abe. She didn’t know how she managed to find a seat when she couldn’t hardly draw breath, and as the streetcar rumbled blindly on, it felt like her body would crumble in on itself to fill the gaping hole left in her chest.
She needed to go back. She couldn’t leave Abe there, her brother and the closest family that she had left. She had to take care of his body and protect the property that her daddy had worked himself to the bone for . . . but she couldn’t. Every time she thought about turning around, a wave of such utter fear would rise up in her that she felt physically ill.
As the streetcar rumbled on, she thought of going to her mother’s family. They’d moved up to West Fifty-Second Street a few years back, but they’d never liked Cela’s father all that much. Her uncles had always looked at him like he was beneath their sister—something the dog dragged in. Now that her grandmother had passed, there wasn’t much buffer between the family’s judgment and Cela’s feelings. She’d end up there eventually—they’d have to be told, after all—but she didn’t think she could handle them yet. Not while everything was so raw. Not while it was still too hard to think the words, much less say them out loud.
Especially not to people who would be thinking that Abe’s death was his own fault, which was what they’d said about her father. Her uncles didn’t know that Cela had been listening when they whispered to each other after the funeral, so they hadn’t censored themselves. They’d complained that her father should’ve stayed inside the house where he belonged, instead of standing watch on the front porch for the angry mobs who had taken to the streets. They believed that her father should have known better than to stand up to them.
Her father had been trying to protect their family, just as Abe had been trying to protect her. Cela knew that she wouldn’t be able even to look at her family at that moment without hearing the echoes of those insults. Not now, when her own guilt and grief were vines around her heart, piercing and alive, growing with each passing second.
Besides, as much as her family might have hurt her in the past, they were still her blood. She couldn’t risk putting them in danger. Maybe the men who’d come pounding on their door that night weren’t after anything more than their property. It wouldn’t have been the first time someone thought they had a right to the house just because they wanted it. People had come with pretty promises and drawn up papers plenty of times, and first her father and then her brother had turned them away.
But they’d never come with guns.
And she’d never had a white lady up and die in her cellar before. Maybe those two things weren’t at all related, but she had a feeling they were.
She should go to her family.
But it was too late to be waking people up.
But there was no way her uncle would open his door and not ask what the problem was, and there was no way Cela would be able to say the words, the ones that would make what just happened true. Not yet. She wasn’t ready. She wasn’t sure if she’d ever really be ready, but she figured it would be a damn sight easier in the light of day. Though she was probably wrong about that, too.
Cela got off the streetcar at her usual stop, letting her body carry her along the streets through a combination of exhaustion and memory. The theater at least was a safe enough space, since it belonged to some rich white man. Nobody was gonna come and burn his property down, and she knew the ins and outs of the world behind the stage to get herself out of there if trouble did happen to find her again.
She let herself in through the back-alley stage door that nobody ever really used, except the people who kept things running from day to day. Inside the theater, it was silent. Even the last janitor would have gone home by now, which was fine. She didn’t need to run into anyone anyway.
Her costume shop was in the basement, and since that was her domain, that was where she took herself. She was no stranger to working late to finish a project, but if she didn’t want to break her neck on one of the ropes or props, she needed light. She decided on one of the oil lamps that they kept backstage in case of power outages rather than turning on the electric bulbs. The lamp threw a small halo of golden light around her, illuminating a step or two in front of her, but not much more than that. It was all she needed.
Down the stairs she went, counting as she always did so she could skip over the thirteenth riser. It was a habit of hers, but she felt the vines around her heart squeeze a little this time, remembering how Abe had made fun of her for it. She walked through the silent darkness of the cellar, wiping away the wetness on her cheeks before she unlocked the small storage room that had become her costume shop.
Inside, Cela set the lamp on the worktable and sat in the straight-backed chair in front of her heavy sewing machine, the one she spent most of her days in, sewing and cutting and stitching the masterpieces that made the stage come alive. For a moment she didn’t feel anything at all—not fear or relief or even emptiness. For a moment she was just a breath in the night surrounded by the warmth of a body. But then the grief crashed into her, and a cry tore free of her throat.
My brother is dead.
She let the pain come, let it take her under into a dark place where not even the light of the lamp could reach her. All she had were the clothes on her back and a ring too fancy to fence without getting herself arrested or worse.
And her job . . .
And herself . . .
She wanted to stay down in that dark place, far below the waves of grief, but those thoughts buoyed her up, up, up . . . until she could feel the wetness on her cheeks again and see the oil lamp glowing softly in the small, cramped workshop room.
Abel would have hated to see her wallowing. After their father had been beaten and shot for trying to protect his own home, hadn’t Abe been the one to put his arm around her and make her go on? She’d gone numb from the loss. The city she’d known as hers had become an unrecognizable, ugly place, and the life she’d once dreamed of had been buried with her father’s body. But Abe had pulled Cela aside and told her that the choices their father had made needed to be honored with a life well and fully lived. It was the reason she’d gone out to look for work as a seamstress and then had pressed to get a position in one of the white theaters, where the pay was better, even if the respect from the performers was less. She’d earned their respect, however begrudgingly, because of her talent with a needle. Abel had pulled those dreams of hers out of the grave and handed them back, forcing her to carry on with them.
She still had that job, the one he’d been so proud of her for getting, and she still had herself. She had family in the city who would take her in if she really needed them, whatever they might think. And she had a ring, a gorgeous golden ring with a jewel as big as a robin’s egg and as clear as a teardrop. It wasn’t glass, Cela knew. Glass didn’t glow like that or shine like a star when the light hit it. And glass wasn’t that heavy. Even seated, she could feel the weight of it, tugging on her skirts from the secret pocket she’d stitched to hide it.
But her brother . . .
The vines tightened around her heart until they felt as though they would squeeze it down into nothing. But before she could let grief overtake her again, Cela heard something in the darkness: footsteps coming down the stairs. It was too late for anyone else to be around.
She picked up her shears. They weren’t much of a weapon, true, but they were sharp as any blade and could cut just as deep.
“Hello?”
It was a woman’s voice, and now that Cela really stopped to listen, she realized they were a woman’s footsteps, too. Not that she put down the scissors.
Cela didn’t answer. Silently, she willed the woman to go away.
“Hellooo . . . ?” the voice trilled. “Is someone down here?”
She knew that voice, Cela thought with a sinking feeling. She heard it often enough. Every time Evelyn DeMure had an idea for a new way to make her waist look trimmer or her bust look larger, Cela was the one who got to hear about it . . . and boy did she hear about it. Evelyn was the type of performer the workers backstage tried their best to avoid. Though she was undeniably talented, Evelyn thought she was more so, and she acted as though the world owed her something for her very presence.
Evelyn DeMure peered around the doorframe and found her. “Well, Cela Johnson . . .” Without her usual lipstick and rouge, Evelyn looked like a corpse in the dim lighting. “What ever are you doing here so late at night?”
Cela kept the scissors in her hands but picked up a piece of fabric to go with them. “I had some odds and ends to work on,” she told Evelyn.
“At this hour?” Evelyn asked, eyeing her. “I would have expected you’d be home.”
Home. Cela fought to keep her expression placid and to keep any trace of pain from her voice when she answered.
She intended to lie and brush Evelyn off, but suddenly Cela couldn’t remember why she hadn’t liked Evelyn. There was something soothing about the singer, like her very presence was enough to make all the pain and fear that Cela was carrying fade away. Cela hadn’t wanted to face her family with all that had happened, but somehow she found herself telling Evelyn everything.
She told her about the white lady who’d died on her watch and the brother she would never see again . . . and about the ring, with its perfect, brilliant stone. It all came pouring out of her, and by the time she was done, she felt sleepy. So tired and relaxed now that she’d cried out all the tears left in her body.
“There, there,” Evelyn cooed. “Just rest. Everything will be fine. Everything will be just fine.”
Her eyes felt heavy . . . so heavy.
“That’s it,” Evelyn said, her voice soft and warm. “Just rest your head there. . . .”
Vaguely, Cela felt herself releasing the scissors. Her body, once wrung out with grief, felt soft now. Her chest a moment before had felt cold and empty. Hollow. Now she felt warm. Safe.
Her eyes fluttered shut, and when they opened again, Evelyn was gone. The lamp had long since gone out, and her workroom was as silent as a tomb.
With a groggy moan, Cela pulled herself upright, rubbing at her head, which still felt muddled and fuzzy. Evelyn’s visit and the whole night before it felt like a dream. A very bad dream. For a moment she allowed herself to believe that it was.
Cela didn’t need the light to make her way to the door. She knew her workroom well enough. But when she went to open it, she found it stuck. No. It was locked.
Not a dream, then.
Which meant it had happened—all of it had happened. Abe, her home. Evelyn.
Evelyn.
Cela was trapped, and she didn’t need to feel her skirts to know that the ring Harte Darrigan had given her was gone.