Before the Devil Breaks You recap

New York, autumn 1927. Evie's radio fame is fading when a visit to the asylum on Ward's Island puts the Diviners in front of the restless dead, who are no longer only ghosts: they rise, they attack, and they are being called by the man in the stovepipe hat, the King of Crows. Following the dead back to their source, the group finally learns the whole of Project Buffalo, the wartime programme run by Will Fitzgerald, Sister Walker and Jake Marlowe that dosed pregnant women to manufacture Diviners and tore something open at the estate called Hopeful Harbor. The Diviners are its children. While Marlowe prepares to demonstrate the Eye, a machine that draws power through that same breach, Mabel is drawn into a radical circle, Theta's violent husband finds her, and Bill Johnson's own part in the programme comes out. At Marlowe's exhibition the Eye tears the breach wide open, the dead pour through, and the Diviners close it at terrible cost: Mabel is killed, Will confesses everything, and Marlowe pins the deaths on the Diviners, who scatter and go on the run as wanted criminals.

Previously: Evie O'Neill, sent to New York in 1926 and able to read the past of any object she holds, helped destroy the spirit of the cult leader John Hobbes and became a national celebrity as a Diviner. The following winter, the dream walkers Ling Chan and Henry DuBois traced a sleeping sickness in Chinatown to the ghost of a woman who died in a collapsed tunnel beneath the city, and the group burned her remains to end it. Around Evie has gathered a circle of the gifted: Sam Lloyd, who can keep from being seen and whose mother was taken by government men; Theta Knight, who can call fire and fled an abusive husband in Kansas; her friend Henry; the Harlem healer Memphis Campbell and his brother Isaiah, whose visions are growing; Ling; Evie's friend Mabel Rose; and Will's assistant Jericho, kept alive by a serum from a wartime experiment. That experiment has a name, Project Buffalo, run during the war by Evie's uncle Will Fitzgerald, Sister Walker and the industrialist Jake Marlowe, and it is why so many young Diviners exist at once. Bill Johnson, an old blind man who steals power from Diviners, drained Isaiah into a coma before the boy was brought back. A figure in a stovepipe hat, attended by crows, has been waiting at the edges of their dreams, and beyond New York the dead have begun to rise.

Autumn 1927. Evie's radio programme is losing its shine and her sponsors are restless, so she agrees to a piece of publicity at the asylum on Ward's Island, reading objects for the newspapers among the forgotten patients there. The island turns out to be crowded with the dead, and they are not the quiet kind. Something on the island is awake and aware of the Diviners as soon as they arrive. Ling and Henry are now part of the group, Sam and Evie are circling each other, Memphis and Theta are still hiding their relationship, and Mabel is quietly tired of being the reliable one. Back at the Bennington, an old woman who lays salt across the thresholds tries to tell anyone who will listen that the dead are moving.

The dead on the island are not ordinary ghosts. They rise in numbers, they can injure and kill, and they are hungry in a way nobody can explain. In the wards the Diviners meet Conor Flynn, a small boy locked up for visions that turn out to be accurate, who warns them about what is coming. Evie's ability to read objects becomes an investigative tool: the dead leave traces, and the traces lead back toward a government programme and an estate outside the city. Theta's control over her fire slips under stress, and worse, the husband she ran from in Kansas turns up in New York looking for her. Bill Johnson, still living with what he did to Isaiah, begins to be useful, and the group learns his real name and that he was a subject of an experiment himself.

Project Buffalo is laid out in full. During the war the government dosed pregnant women and soldiers with a serum meant to produce Diviners, and the young people in the group are its children: their gifts were manufactured. The work was run by Will Fitzgerald, Sister Walker and Jake Marlowe at an estate called Hopeful Harbor, where a machine was used to reach into somewhere else, and where something came back through and was never properly shut out. Will has known all of this since before Evie came to live with him. The revelation splits the group's trust in the adults around them, and it explains why the Shadow Men have been following them for two years.

The man in the stovepipe hat stops waiting at the edges and presents himself: the King of Crows, courteous, entertained, and attended by crows, who can call the dead up out of the ground and set them walking. He does not compel anyone; he offers bargains, and he is patient about them. Reports of the dead rising arrive from beyond New York. Mabel, taken seriously at last by a circle of political radicals, commits herself to their work. Sam's search for his mother finally turns up something real, and the Shadow Men move to keep him from following it.

Jake Marlowe's exhibition of the American future takes shape around its centrepiece, the Eye: a machine that draws power from the same somewhere else the Hopeful Harbor experiment opened. Marlowe presents it as the end of scarcity and refuses to hear that it is a door. Jericho, whose serum comes from Marlowe's laboratories, takes more of it than he should and it changes him, making him stronger, quicker to anger, and easier to lead. Ling and Henry use dream walking to see what cannot be reached awake, and the Diviners work out that the King of Crows needs the breach open and that Marlowe is going to open it for him.

Adelaide Proctor finally tells her story: as a young woman she loved a man the King of Crows turned into something that would not stay dead, and she and her sister found a way to bind him. What she knows about salt, thresholds and binding gives the Diviners a way to fight the dead rather than only run from them, and they begin clearing hauntings across the city. Mabel's circle settles on direct action against Marlowe and his exhibition, and she does not tell Evie what she has agreed to. Theta's husband forces a confrontation she has spent three years avoiding.

With the exhibition days away and Marlowe unmoved by anything the Diviners say, the group prepares to stop the Eye themselves. Evie's public standing collapses as the newspapers turn on her, which frees her to act and leaves her without protection. Every strand converges on the exhibition grounds: Marlowe's demonstration, Mabel's radicals, the Shadow Men, the dead the King of Crows has been gathering, and the Diviners themselves, who now understand exactly what was done to them and by whom.

Marlowe switches on the Eye in front of the country and tears the breach wide open. The dead come through in force, the King of Crows is strengthened by it, and the Diviners join their gifts together to force the tear shut. They succeed, and the night is still a catastrophe: Mabel Rose is killed, and Marlowe and the press blame the deaths on the Diviners rather than on the machine, naming them anarchists and murderers. Will finally confesses the whole of Project Buffalo, that he, Sister Walker, Marlowe and the colleague he loved dosed pregnant women to manufacture Diviners, that the young people in front of him are the result, and that the door opened at Hopeful Harbor was never closed. Theta cannot pretend her fire is controllable any longer. Jericho's dependence on Marlowe's serum has become a leash. With the law, the newspapers and Marlowe's money against them, the group scatters and runs, grieving and hunted, knowing the King of Crows is raising the dead across the whole country and that whatever ends him is not in New York.

Marlowe goes ahead with the Eye at his exhibition of the American future, and the breach it opens is far worse than he promised: the dead come through in force and the King of Crows is strengthened by it. The Diviners put their gifts together and force the tear shut, but the night ends in disaster. Mabel Rose is killed, and Marlowe and the newspapers hand the blame for the deaths to the Diviners, naming them anarchists and murderers rather than admit what his machine did. Will finally tells the whole truth about Project Buffalo: that he, Sister Walker, Marlowe and the colleague he loved dosed pregnant women during the war to manufacture Diviners, that the young people around him are its children, and that the door they opened at Hopeful Harbor was never properly closed. Sister Walker's warnings are vindicated far too late. Theta's reckoning with Roy leaves her unable to pretend the fire is under control. Jericho's dependence on Marlowe's serum has become a hold Marlowe can pull. Sam is left with what he learned about his mother and no way to act on it. With the law, the press and Marlowe's money against them, the group scatters and runs, hunted, grieving, and carrying the knowledge that the King of Crows is raising the dead across the whole country and that stopping him will mean leaving New York behind.