Lair of Dreams recap

New York, the winter after the Naughty John killings. Evie O'Neill is a radio celebrity, the Sweetheart Seer, estranged from her uncle and drinking her way through her fame. A sleeping sickness breaks out in Chinatown: its victims cannot be woken and are burned away from within, and the city blames Chinese immigrants for it. Two dream walkers, the Chinatown medium Ling Chan and Theta's friend Henry DuBois, meet inside a shared dream world and befriend Wai-Mae, a girl who can build dreams out of nothing. She proves to be long dead, killed with many others in a collapsed tunnel beneath the city, and the sleepers are what she feeds on. Meanwhile Evie and Sam, posing as an engaged couple for the newspapers, uncover Project Buffalo, the wartime programme that made the Diviners, and Bill Johnson, an old blind man who steals power from young Diviners, drains Isaiah Campbell into a coma. The group destroys Wai-Mae's remains, ends the sickness and wakes the survivors. Jake Marlowe's exhibition is coming, and across the country the dead are stirring.

Previously: in 1926 Evie O'Neill was exiled from Ohio to New York after using her ability to read objects to humiliate a young man in public. Living with her uncle Will at his museum of folklore and the occult, she helped track a killer who turned out to be the spirit of John Hobbes, a hanged cult leader working through eleven ritual murders meant to raise a beast at the passing of a comet. Evie destroyed him at his burned house, and made herself a celebrity doing it, which broke her relationship with Will, who wanted her hidden. Along the way she gathered a circle of others with gifts: the pickpocket Sam Lloyd, who can keep from being seen and is searching for the mother government men took from him; Will's assistant Jericho, kept alive and unnaturally strong by a daily serum from a wartime experiment; the Follies dancer Theta Knight, who can call fire and is hiding from the husband she fled in Kansas; Theta's friend Henry DuBois; and in Harlem the healer Memphis Campbell, whose gift returned when he pulled his brother Isaiah out of a collapse, and Isaiah himself, whose visions keep worsening. Will and his former colleague Sister Walker share responsibility for something called Project Buffalo and both believe a far larger threat is coming. A man in a stovepipe hat, attended by crows, has begun appearing in visions.

Winter, and Evie is the most famous Diviner in America: the Sweetheart Seer, with a nightly radio programme on which listeners hand her their belongings and she tells them their secrets. She has left the museum, lives in a hotel, and is drinking her way through the attention while her uncle refuses to speak to her. In Chinatown, Ling Chan walks in other people's dreams, where she can find the dead and carry their messages back to their families for a fee, and spends her waking hours on braces and canes among neighbours who see only her legs. Henry DuBois walks in dreams too, night after night, hunting for a boy named Louis whom he left behind in Louisiana. Then a young man in Chinatown falls asleep and cannot be woken.

The sleeping sickness spreads. Its victims drop into a sleep nothing can break, and their bodies blister and burn as though something is consuming them from inside. Because the first cases appear in Chinatown, the newspapers and the city blame Chinese immigrants: the neighbourhood is quarantined, businesses fail, and crowds gather looking for someone to punish. Ling, half Chinese and half Irish, is caught on both sides of it. Walking in dreams she keeps meeting the same stranger, and she and Henry work out that they are two dream walkers sharing one dreamscape: a strange, beautiful underground world with a station, a tunnel, and a forest that answers to whoever is dreaming it. There they meet Wai-Mae, a girl who says she is crossing the ocean to be married and who can shape the dream world into anything she pleases.

Wai-Mae teaches Ling and Henry to build dreams, and the dream world becomes the best part of both their lives: Ling makes things she cannot make awake, and Henry finds a way to reach Louis at last. Above ground, Evie and Sam let the newspapers believe they are engaged, a stunt that keeps Evie in the headlines and keeps Sam close enough to help her dig for records of the wartime programme that took his mother. Memphis and Theta continue out of sight, both of them aware of what exposure would cost them. In Harlem, Bill Johnson makes himself part of the Campbells' household, and quietly, wherever he can find a young Diviner alone, takes their power for himself.

Jake Marlowe, the country's most celebrated inventor, announces an exhibition of the American future and makes plain that he regards Diviners as a superstition to be swept away. The sickness worsens and the sleepers fill the hospital wards. Ling and Henry begin to notice that the dream world does not let go easily: dreamers they met there turn up among the sick, the tunnel keeps pulling them back, and Wai-Mae will not hear a word about stopping. Ling, who trusts evidence over feeling, starts checking Wai-Mae's story against records she can find while awake, and the dates do not fit.

Evie and Sam get their hands on records of Project Buffalo, a wartime government programme run by Will Fitzgerald, Sister Walker and Jake Marlowe, and its scale is far beyond anything Will has admitted to. Evie's public position begins to feel less like protection than exposure. In Harlem, Isaiah collapses and cannot be woken, and for once it is not the sickness: Bill Johnson has drained him and finds, too late, that he cannot undo it. Memphis's healing cannot reach his brother, and the household comes apart over it.

Ling and Henry learn what Wai-Mae is. She came to New York decades earlier and died here, with many others, in a disaster in an unfinished tunnel beneath the city that barely made the newspapers. The dream world is built out of her memories and her rage, the sleepers are what sustains her, and the people she keeps are not permitted to leave. When Henry and Ling try to break away she turns on them, and Henry cannot get out on his own. Above ground the rest of the group, Evie, Sam, Theta, Memphis, Jericho and Mabel, put the pieces together while the number of sleepers climbs.

The group locates the buried station under Chinatown where the tunnel collapsed and the dead were left, and works out what has to be done: Wai-Mae is bound to her remains, so the remains must be destroyed. Henry goes back into the dream to hold her attention while the others work below, and Ling walks in after him rather than let him go alone. On the same day, Louis steps off the train from New Orleans, having answered a message he cannot explain.

Underground, the group burns the collapsed station and the remains in it. Wai-Mae is destroyed, the dead trapped there are released, and the sleepers still living wake; Ling and Henry get out, but the people the sickness killed are not given back, and Chinatown is left to repair what the panic did. Isaiah wakes from the coma Bill Johnson put him in, and Bill is left with what he did. Henry meets Louis at the station, and the reunion is quieter and more complicated than the one he had been dreaming. Evie now knows that Project Buffalo was real and that her uncle, Sister Walker and Jake Marlowe ran it during the war, which explains why so many young Diviners are appearing at once. Sam is closer to his mother's trail and no nearer to her. The Shadow Men are watching all of them, Marlowe's exhibition of the American future is being built, and beyond New York the dead are beginning to stir.

Beneath Chinatown the group finds the collapsed station where Wai-Mae and the others died, and burns the remains she is bound to. Wai-Mae is destroyed, the dead trapped there are released, and the sleepers who are still alive wake; Ling and Henry get out of the dream world, but the people the sickness killed are not given back, and the neighbourhood is left to repair the damage the panic did. Isaiah wakes from the coma Bill Johnson put him in, and Bill is left holding what he did and a family's trust he has not earned. Henry meets Louis at the station when the train from New Orleans arrives, and the reunion is quieter and more complicated than the one he had been dreaming. Ling ends the book with her gift no longer a private trade but a thing that has cost and saved lives, and with Henry as the friend she did not expect to have. Evie is more famous and more alone than ever, and now knows that Project Buffalo was real, that her uncle, Sister Walker and Jake Marlowe ran it during the war, and that it is the reason so many young Diviners are appearing at once. Sam is closer to his mother's trail and no nearer to finding her. The Shadow Men are watching all of them, Marlowe's exhibition of the American future is coming, and beyond New York the dead are beginning to stir.