“You’re welcome.” Outside the sky flashed again, lighting every scar and angle of Luke’s face before casting it back into shadow.
“You’ll make sure your dog doesn’t get in here and steal one of the birds, though, won’t you?”
“Barney won’t leave Tom’s side until Tom’s nerves settle down, which will be after the storm. And then we’ll send Barn outside again.”
Elsa raised an eyebrow. “The dog is that smart?”
“You’d be surprised.” Luke smiled for the first time in her presence and was utterly transformed.
Nothing in this place was as it seemed.
CHAPTER
3
NEW YORK CITY
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 25, 1926
Elsa stood on the east steps of the American Museum of Natural History, her gaze winging over the street and into Central Park. Not that she could see all that much from here. The fall migration had started, and she was itching to spend time deep in the park’s Ramble with the seasonal visitors.
The only birds she saw at work were dead ones.
She buttoned her knit cardigan. Taxis and buses motored past, with commuting autos in between them. Exhaust fumes rode the breeze. After checking her watch, Elsa glanced to the right and spotted her roommate Ivy, on her way home from working at the New-York Historical Society on the next block over. Their apartment was a mere tenth of a mile from here, and they almost always walked to and from work together.
“Good day?” Elsa asked, meeting her on the sidewalk.
“So much fun. Friday is the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Brooklyn, so we’ve been getting ready for the commemorative event.” Ivy paused, placing one Oxford pump on the second step to retie the laces. “If people thought our giant July Fourth bash was the end of our celebration of the American Revolution,they’re about to find out it was only the beginning.” Straightening, she beamed.
Ivy had earned a master’s degree in American history from Bryn Mawr outside Philadelphia before moving to Manhattan for a fresh start. All these American Revolution anniversaries were totally her cup of tea.
Elsa linked her arm through Ivy’s and started walking. “Will the society be commemorating every significant date for the next seven years, ending with a party for the peace treaty?”
“I wish!” Ivy laughed. “Our plan is to at least honor the meaningful ones for New York State, but rest assured, I’ll be honoring every moment in my heart. Prepare to hear about each one.” They sidestepped a boy hawking the evening news. “How about you? How did it go working through those field notebooks you brought back from Elmhurst?”
Elsa’s nose wrinkled. “I didn’t get as far along in them as I would have liked. More boxes arrived from the Customs House, and those don’t wait.” As she spoke, they passed a pair of starlings eating the remains of a soft pretzel on the ground.
“Who at the Customs House is sending you packages?”
“We have patrons who sometimes send us birds or bird skins from overseas, and those have to go through customs first.”
Ivy frowned. “As in, they go on vacation and decide to kill birds for the museum while they’re at it?”
“Something like that. At least most of them have a handbook on how to prepare the skins, thanks to one of my colleagues, Mr. Griscom. You wouldn’t believe what we were getting a few years ago. But some people still don’t follow directions. In one of the packages today, birds were shipped in the flesh—that means they didn’t just send the skins but the entire bodies—and they hadn’t been fully dried first. They used a wooden box instead of tin, and insects destroyed them. Mr. Chapman still wants to use the skeletons, though.”
Ivy cast her a sidelong glance. “Let me guess. You have to clean the remaining flesh from bone?”
“I’ll spare you the details. You’re welcome.”
Ivy shuddered, and sun winked off her dangling earrings.
Elsa laughed. “I’ll go through the Van Tessels’ notebooks over the weekend, and hopefully I’ll find more next Monday when I go back. I wish you could come with me and see what it’s like.”
“I’d like that, too. I was so excited when I learned Mrs. Van Tessel bequeathed her paintings by John Audubon to the society. I volunteered to go collect them, but I’m a librarian, not a curator. Still, I’d love to see the estateandTarrytown. Did you know that British Major John Andre was arrested as a spy near there on September 23, 1780? His capture exposed Benedict Arnold’s plan to surrender the fort at West Point. Plus,The Legend of Sleepy Hollowwas set just north of the town. The Headless Horseman lost his head during one of the Revolutionary battles.” She wiggled her dark eyebrows. “You haven’t seen any ghosts on the estate, have you?”
“You’ll have to come see for yourself,” Elsa teased. The Hudson River valley was famous for its supernatural legends, none of which fazed her.
“Let’s plan on it.”
