A man turned slightly toward him. “Don’t see me,” Sam growled, and the man looked right through him. Sam slipped unnoticed into the crowd, lifting wallets as he went.
A gust of wind howled across the cobblestones of Doyers Street, rattling the paper lanterns of the Tea House. In the back room, the girl with the green eyes came out of her trance with a gasp.
“What is it?” the older man asked. “What did you see?”
“Nothing. I saw nothing.”
He frowned. “They told me you had the power to walk in dreams, to talk with the dead.”
She shrugged and took his money. “Maybe the dead want nothing to do with you.”
“I am an honorable man!” he yelled.
“We’ll see.”
“You are a liar! A half-breed with no honor!” the man accused. On the way out, he banged the front door so hard it shook the windows.
The young man came out of the kitchen, looking scared. “I thought you said you could keep the ghosts away.”
The girl stared out the window. “I was wrong.”
Mabel could barely study for the hubbub in the other room. Her parents were having one of their meetings. The conversation had grown more heated in the past twenty minutes, and she could tell this meeting would stretch into the wee hours.
“We do not endorse violence,” Mr. Rose said. “We are about reform, not revolution.”
“Without revolution, there can be no reform. Look at Russia,” a man with a thick accent insisted.
“Yes, look at Russia,” another said. “Chaos.”
“What about the workers? If we don’t stand together, we fall. Unity is strength.”
Mabel poked her head out to see what was happening. The room was teeming with smoke and people. Papers and pamphlets were strewn everywhere. Her mother was holding forth about the conditions at a garment factory where the women weren’t protected.
“Just like at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory,” she explained.
Mabel was startled to see a handsome young man sitting on the settee. He was looking right at her, and she was sure she recognized him from somewhere. Mabel went back to her room and crawled out onto the fire escape for some fresh, crisp air. A moment later, the handsome man crawled through the window to join her.
“Remember me?”