The Cure for Dreaming(41)

“You see what I mean?” asked Frannie, coming toward me. “You stirred up something remarkable with that letter. What does your father think?”

“He doesn’t know I wrote it.”

“If he finds out . . . do you think . . . what about the hypnosis?”

“I wrote that letter after he mandated that hypnotism cure”—I spat out that last word—“so, clearly, it did nothing but push me into trying things I never would have dared before.”

“You’re not saying you like being hypnotized, are you?”

“No! It’s just . . . Look here . . .” I squatted down and fished around in my right shoe. Henry’s theater tickets, along with some quarters I’d brought in case I got hungry, were hidden between the stiff leather and my thick stocking. “I’ve seen Henry—”

“I thought it was On-ree.”

“His real name is Henry Rhodes, and he gave me these tickets so we could stay in contact with each other.” I pulled out the tickets and stood upright. “I begged him to end the hypnosis, but he needs my father’s money for his sister. She has a tumor that requires surgery. It’s cancerous.”

Frannie took the tickets from my hand and, with her lips pursed, read them over.

“He can’t change me back,” I continued, “until my father gives him his full payment on Tuesday. That’s when he’ll be taking his sister to San Francisco for her surgery.”

“He’s about to leave town?”

“In three more days.”

“Are you still seeing strange sights?”

“Yes.” I grabbed for the tickets, but Frannie hid them behind her back. “Frannie?” I tugged on her elbow. “Give those back.”

“You’re telling me”—she swung her arm away and inched backward—“you’re going to keep viewing your father as a vampire, and doing whatever other horrible things that hypnotist is making you do, for three more days?”

“I’ve got no other choice. That poor girl might die if she doesn’t undergo her surgery. The cancer’s in her bosom.”

“How do you know he’s not making up her illness?”

“Don’t be mean.”

“How do you know, Livie?”

“I trust him.”

She stopped and thrust the tickets at me. “Fine. Trust a traveling, mind-altering showman.”

“There’s no need to get upset.” I took the tickets from her.

“I bet he smells terrible, too.”

“Frannie!”

“I’m just worried about you. Wait . . .” She squinted at the backside of the tickets and snatched them straight back out of my hand. “What’s this?”

“What?”

“This note. ‘Come to the side door of the theater after the show—’”

I grabbed the papers so hard, one of them ripped. “Never mind what that says.”

“You’re going to meet him in private?”

“I don’t know.” I slunk toward the exit. “I’m not sure what to do about any of this, but I know whom to trust and whom to avoid, so stop frowning at me like I’m an idiot.”

“I didn’t say you were an idiot, Livie.”

“But you’re looking at me as if I am one.” I turned and pushed open the door.

“Wait! Livie . . .”

The door slammed shut behind me before she could say another word.

I climbed aboard my bicycle and pedaled away, toward the Metropolitan.





enry’s matinee performance wasn’t scheduled to start until one thirty in the afternoon. To bide the time, I stopped for a ham sandwich across the street in a smoky café with a pressed-tin ceiling and theater posters hanging from knotty-pine walls.

Halfway through my meal, one of the other diners plopped himself across from me in my booth.

“What’s a good little girl like you doing all by herself in the city?” he asked, and when I raised my face, I found Sunken-Eyed John from Sadie’s party, grinning at me. “Does Percy know you’re not a respectable woman?”

I set the second half of my sandwich aside on the bone-colored plate. “I don’t care what Percy does or doesn’t think of me.”

“Is that so?”

“Yes. I am not his sweetheart.”

“Well, that’s unfortunate for him.” He leaned forward on his elbows, his breath stinking of cheese and ale. “I learned a little secret about you.”

I knitted my eyebrows together. “What secret?”

“Well . . .” He ran his tongue along the inside of his cheek. “I told my father about your odd behavior with that hypnotist last night, and he said he knew who you were. Your father used to work on his teeth—before last Wednesday.”

My skin went cold. “Who is your father?”

“John Underhill Sr., owner of the city’s largest shipping firm. My mother is the president of the Oregon Association Opposed to Women’s Suffrage—or whatever the devil that thing’s called.”

“Oh.” My voice cracked with too much of a quaver for the heroine of the morning’s newspaper.

A smirk inched up the side of John’s face. “Your daddy telephoned my father to brag about a hypnotism cure. It sounds as if Monsieur Reverie has you on the end of a leash, performing tricks like a trained little monkey.”