The wind whipping down 125th Street in the wake of the zippering trolleys was brisk, and Memphis Campbell blew on his hands for warmth. A tall ladder leaned against the outside of a brownstone where two men hoisted a banner above a second-floor window: MISS CALEDONIA: READER OF OBJECTS, HEALER OF MALADIES, DIVINER EXTRAORDINAIRE. Memphis shook his head. Everywhere he looked, it seemed people were trying to cash in on the Diviners craze.

As he walked with his younger brother, Isaiah, and old Blind Bill Johnson, Memphis counted the signs hanging from doorways or posted in windows up and down the streets of Harlem: FATHER FORTUNE WILL FREE YOU FROM HARM. MYSTICAL MOHAMMED, TELLER OF TRUTHS FROM BEYOND. OBEAH MAN: PALMS READ, FORTUNES TOLD, CURSES LIFTED. Most of them couldn’t tell a crystal ball from a bowling ball. And the only fortunes were the ones they were collecting from gullible clients.

None of them had half the stuff Isaiah did, and Memphis knew it galled his little brother not to be lapping up the attention. Ever since Isaiah had gotten sick, their aunt Octavia had kept a watchful eye on him, preaching about “the dangers of the Devil’s business.”

“You remember what happened? How you lay in that bed for three days?” she’d said, pronouncing each word as if she were spitting it into stone to stand the test of time. “Jesus healed you, so don’t you go throwing his blessings away. This family has no business with Obeah men, mambos, houngans, and card readers. And we certainly don’t have business with Miss Margaret Walker. Never again.”

But it hadn’t been Jesus who’d healed Isaiah. It had been Memphis himself.

He’d never told his aunt that he’d gone to his brother’s bedside as Isaiah lay in that sleep between life and death. In secret, he’d put his hands on his brother, and the power he’d thought had left him forever the night he tried to cure his dying mother had rushed through him once more, just as it used to do back when he was the Harlem Healer, curing the sick in a storefront church with his mother looking on and praising God. It seemed that Memphis had been given a second chance at his gift. He didn’t know why. But he did know that this time, he’d figure it out on his own terms. And no one, except for Theta, would need to know until he was ready.

“You awful quiet back there, Isaiah,” Blind Bill said, breaking Memphis out of his reverie.

“I hate this stupid tie,” Isaiah grumbled, pulling at his collar, and Memphis knew it wasn’t the suit that was bothering him. He put a hand on Isaiah’s shoulder, but Isaiah shrugged it off.

“I have powers bigger’n a lotta these fool Diviners making money now. I coulda had a radio show, too!” Isaiah said and kicked a small rock down the street.

“No, you couldn’t. Too shrimpy to reach the microphone,” Memphis said, hoping to tease Isaiah out of his mood. It didn’t take much to set his brother off these days. Not being able to use his clairvoyant gift was like keeping him inside the house when there was a warm, sunny day taunting him on the other side of the window. Lately, he’d been talking in his sleep again. Nightmares.

“I liked going to Sister Walker’s house. She was a nice lady. She was good to me,” Isaiah grumbled.

“Now, now, now. I can feel you pouting clear over here, little man. Gonna get your face stuck like that,” the bluesman said. These days, Bill seemed to be the only one who could calm Isaiah when he was in a mood.

For the past month, Bill had been a boarder in Octavia’s house. “Can’t let the man who saved my nephew live in some flea-ridden flophouse,” she’d said as she readied the small room off the parlor that wasn’t big enough to hold anything other than a cot, but Bill insisted he didn’t need more than that, anyway.

“This is like a king’s room to me, Miss Octavia,” he said, smiling as he patted the cot with a rough, scarred hand.

It seemed like no time at all before Bill was part of their family—sitting in at meals, going to church with them, telling stories about the Louisiana cotton fields, or showing Isaiah how to bend his fingers to make guitar chords. Sometimes it was nice to have Bill around. There was more time for Memphis to write, more time for nights with Theta.

“Come on, little man,” Bill said now. “Let’s get you something good to drink.” The bluesman offered the hand that was not on the cane, and Isaiah came to his side and took it easily, as if they belonged together.

The after-church crowd filled the booths of the Lenox Drugstore soda fountain for a little refreshment and Sunday gossip.

Bill excused himself for a moment. Memphis and Isaiah hopped onto the stools at the counter in the back and ordered two root beers. The brothers sipped their drinks, Isaiah arguing baseball with Mr. Reggie.

“If you ask me, the Homestead Grays are the team to beat. The Giants are finished,” Mr. Reggie said, wiping down the counter.

Isaiah took umbrage at the insult to his beloved New York Lincoln Giants. “Si Simmons gonna pitch for the Giants and win it all this year!”

“Suppose we’ll have to see about that,” Reggie teased.

Memphis pulled out his notebook, scribbling some changes to a poem he’d been working on for the better part of a week. The words didn’t feel quite right yet, like he was trying to write in somebody else’s clothes, and he wondered when he would know he’d written something that felt true to himself instead of feeling like an impostor with a pencil.

“Hello, Isaiah. Memphis. How are you boys getting along?”

At the sound of Sister Walker’s voice, the boys’ heads shot up. If Sister Walker was sore that Octavia had forbidden them from seeing her, she didn’t show it, offering them one of her warm smiles.

“Fine, ma’am,” Isaiah said almost shyly.

“Well, I believe you’ve grown a foot since I saw you last,” Sister Walker said.

Isaiah grinned. “Gonna be as tall as Memphis. Taller, even!”

“Keep telling yourself that, shrimpy,” Memphis said. Isaiah socked Memphis in the arm. It barely hurt, but Memphis pretended it was a mortal wound, which pleased his brother greatly.

“And how are you feeling, Isaiah?”

Isaiah’s smile faded. “Fine, thank you, ma’am.”

“I believe my candy dish misses you,” Sister Walker joked.

“I miss it, too. You still got Bit-O-Honeys?”

“A whole mess of them. You’re welcome back at my house anytime. I want you to know that.” Sister Walker lowered her voice to an urgent whisper. “Memphis, I need to talk to you about something. It’s important.”

“I don’t believe I ought to, Miss Walker. My aunt Octavia—”

“It won’t take long, I promise. I’m leaving town for a bit. But before I do, it’s very important that we—”

“Well, well, well, is that the Campbell brothers I hear talking to some pretty girl?” Bill called as he tapped his way over to the group.

Memphis made the introductions, and Bill bowed, all charm, making small talk about the weather and the wisdom of the reverend’s sermon they’d just heard.

“Do I know you? You look familiar,” Sister Walker said quite suddenly.

Bill’s mouth worked its way into a smile. “I always look like somebody. Got a familiar face, my mama said.”

“You have family in Baltimore?”

“No kin that I know.”

“Where are your people from?” Sister Walker pressed.

“Georgia,” Bill said, his mouth tense around the word.

“I thought you were from Louisiana,” Isaiah said.

Bill placed his hands on Isaiah’s shoulders, pressing down slightly. “I’m from everywhere. Been all over this country.”

“Memphis! Isaiah!” Aunt Octavia’s angry voice announced her arrival. She marched through the drugstore and right up to Sister Walker. Her body had the feel of a slingshot pulled to breaking.

“Afternoon, Octavia,” Sister Walker said.

“Don’t you ‘afternoon’ me, Margaret Walker. I know what you were doing with my nephew behind my back. I told you before and I’ll tell you for the last time: This is a God-fearing family. You understand?”

Every head in the drugstore had turned in their direction. All chatter had ceased. “Octavia, Isaiah has a gift—a rare gift. It’s important that we continue our work—”

“Don’t tell me how to raise my sister’s children!” Octavia stood a hair’s breadth from Sister Walker. “That boy lay in bed near death thanks to you. You’re never getting near my family again, you hear me?” Octavia turned sharply to the boys. “Isaiah, Memphis—we are leaving.”

Like a scared jackrabbit, Isaiah scrambled down from his stool and, with a backward forlorn glance, said good-bye to Sister Walker before taking Blind Bill’s hand and leading him from the drugstore. The after-church crowd made a pretense of moving food around their plates, but they were still watching. Nothing in the preacher’s sermon carried the same fire as the scene they’d just witnessed.

Sister Walker laid a hand on Memphis’s arm as he walked past. “Please. It’s important.”

“Memphis John Campbell!” Octavia shouted from the door.

“I have to go,” he said.

“Memphis, you don’t believe I would harm Isaiah, do you?”

“To be honest, Sister… Miss Walker, I don’t know what I believe,” Memphis said and ran to catch up with his family.

While Octavia bustled about the kitchen, preparing Sunday supper, Memphis sat on the front stoop and read over his latest love letter to Theta one last time before mailing it. But his mind was on the earlier encounter with Sister Walker. What could be so important that she had to speak to him? And if it was that important, why hadn’t she brought it up before? Aunt Octavia said that Sister Walker had been in prison—for what, no one seemed to know for certain, though there’d been a rumor floating around church that it had been for sedition during the war. “Can’t trust a word that woman says,” Octavia declared, and Memphis wished he could be so sure.

“Memphis? You out here?” Bill tapped his way out the door.

“Over here, Mr. Johnson,” Memphis said, guiding the old man to a seat on the stoop.

“What you working on out here in the cold?” Bill asked.

Memphis stuffed the letter into his pocket. “Nothing.”

“Hmph. Sound like a woman to me,” Bill said and laughed.

Memphis grinned. “Might be.”

“Sound like a pretty woman.”

“Might be that, too,” Memphis said, embarrassed.

“Aww, now, I don’t mean to be in your business. Mostly, I got to wondering if that Walker woman upset you earlier.”

“No, sir,” Memphis lied.

Bill fished in his pocket and came out with two sticks of chewing gum and passed one to Memphis. “What she want with you, anyhow?”

“Just to talk,” Memphis said, brushing the lint off the gum. It was brittle and stale, so he stuffed it in his pocket.

“And did you?”

“No, sir.”

Bill nodded. “You did right, Memphis,” he said, like an older, wiser uncle. “You did right to look out for your brother thataway.”

Memphis bristled. He wasn’t sure that keeping Isaiah from using his gift was the right thing.

“Little man ever talk about what happened to him the day he got sick?” Bill asked, chewing his gum slowly.

“No. He doesn’t remember anything.”

Bill nodded. “Well, I ’spect that’s for the best. We shouldn’t bother him none about it. Prob’ly just upset him. Still”—Bill took in a sucking breath—“that sure was a miracle the way he pulled through. Yes, sir, a miracle.”

“You sound like Octavia,” Memphis said.

“Wasn’t you, then, that did the healing?” Bill said, lowering his voice.

Memphis’s tone went flat. “Told you, I can’t do that anymore.”

“Yes, you did. You did tell me that.” Bill’s laugh came out like soft cat hisses. “Why, I reckon if you had the healing power on you, you’d put those hands on poor old Bill Johnson and heal up his sight, wouldn’t you, now?”

Memphis’s stomach tightened. He’d never thought about healing Blind Bill. That seemed too great a miracle to attempt. In fact, since healing Isaiah, Memphis hadn’t quite worked up the courage to try again. What if he couldn’t do it a second time? What if there were limits, like a genie in a bottle granting only three wishes? What if it turned sour, like it had with his mother, and he hurt someone? Memphis needed an opportunity to work in secret, in small ways. Easing a scrape here or a sore throat there wouldn’t draw much attention. But giving a blind man back his sight? That wasn’t the sort of healing that went unnoticed.

“You would do that for old Bill, wouldn’t you?” Blind Bill asked again. The playfulness of his tone had vanished.

“Isaiah, Memphis, wash up for supper now!” Octavia called from inside.

“Yes, ma’am!” Memphis called back, grateful for his aunt’s interruption. “Coming, Mr. Johnson?”

“You go on ahead. I’ll be in shortly.”

When he heard the door close behind him, Bill sat for another minute on the front stoop and tilted his head up toward the sky, which he could only see as a dark, grainy impression.

That would change soon, if it all worked out right.

Somebody had healed Isaiah Campbell as the boy lay in that back bedroom at Octavia’s house all those weeks ago. Somebody very powerful. When Bill had put his hands on the boy’s head, trying to see into his Diviner mind in the hope of getting another lucky number to ease his gambling debts, he’d felt the energy in the boy’s body immediately. It had traveled up Bill’s arms and into his own body, till it was too much, and he’d had to let go. That was when he noticed the change in his vision. It was very small—where there had been total darkness he now saw faint, blocky shapes, like looking through several layers of gray gauze. But it had been enough to let him know that it was possible: He could be healed. He could see again. And if he could see again, he could get revenge on the people who’d taken his sight from him in the first place.

Diviners were everywhere these days, it seemed. But Bill was fairly certain there was only one person who had the gift to do that sort of healing, only one person desperate enough to try it. A brother’s love was strong, and the Campbell brothers’ love was stronger than most. It was clear that Memphis would do anything to protect Isaiah, even lie to Bill about his own abilities. Fine. If Memphis Campbell wanted to play the rabbit and hide in his warren, then Bill would play the fox and wait him out. Memphis would surface in time. And Bill would be right there waiting.

And if not, well, he might have to smoke the rabbit out.

Sometimes a child who’d had one fit suffered another.

It happened all the time.

Nearby, a crow cawed, making Bill jump. “Go on, bird! Git! Shoo!”

It squawked again, passing so close to Bill’s head that he gasped at the suddenness of feathers against his cheek like a slap.