The Ferryman Institute (43 page)

A small grin perked up on his face. “I'll pass that on to my superiors.”

Alice felt strange. Part of her wanted to curl up into a ball and just lie there, a not unfamiliar feeling for her of late. But the other part fixated on Charlie. Where was he? Why wasn't he here? Was he all right? Her thoughts were scattered and fuzzy, like her brain was trying to run underwater. She felt drunk and slow and mentally clumsy.

What should I do?

And suddenly, like the proverbial lighthouse shining through the night, the answer was there. She didn't know why, or how, or any of those silly little details she'd undoubtedly go back and try to figure out after the fact. She just
knew
.

“You never answered my question about Charlie,” she said. She was attempting to be casual, but there was no mistaking the hint of anxiety in her voice.

Begemot's placid gaze acquired an offhanded smirk, and he slumped back against his chair. “It was a question I was trying to avoid, but I can see that's not going to happen. Cartwright went to him. That's all I know.”

That seemed like a lie, but Alice was in no position to call him out on it. She forged ahead. “I need to see him,” she said matter-of-factly.

He smiled again, but it was different this time. A ruse, and Alice saw right through it. “I'm afraid I—”

“You seem like a really nice guy,” she said, interrupting him, “and I'm extremely grateful for everything you and Cartwright and whoever else have done for me, but I don't think you understand. I
need
to see Charlie. I'm sorry, and I know this kind of makes me a horrible person after all you've done for me, but I won't take no for an answer.”

If her admittedly levelheaded demand (levelheaded in spoken tone, anyway—asking to see the guy who'd just shot and nearly
killed you was, from a logical standpoint, less “levelheaded” and more “certifiably insane”) bothered him in any way, it certainly didn't show. He considered her statement, completely unfazed, before pointing at her shoulder. “We just got you patched up. It's not a good idea for you to be up and about. Rest is my advice.”

“Listen,” Alice began, but already her brain was elsewhere. All she could think about was getting up and moving. It was just a feeling, a
strong
feeling, that she needed to get out of there. She tossed aside the covers, and to her relief, they didn't pose the tangled threat that the ones in her dream had.

Her feet felt the cool tiled floor, and slowly Alice pushed herself up. She wobbled a bit as she straightened out, then had to fight off the light-headed vertigo that accompanied it. When she achieved relative stability, she looked over her shoulder at Begemot. “Have you ever felt like you just instinctually know something that you have no business knowing?” she asked as she began to make her way gingerly around the bed.

Begemot seemed poised to stand up, but the question kept him in his seat. “Maybe,” he finally offered.

“Well,” Alice said with one passing shuffle step at a time, “that just happened to me. For whatever reason, I just know I need to go find Charlie. I understand that I'm supposed to wait here and hope for the best, but I can't do that. Not that this is going to mean anything to you, but I recently learned from some crazy, bullet-stopping dork—and I mean that in the nicest way possible—that sometimes you have to trust yourself and do what you believe is the right thing even if the world tells you otherwise. I've spent too much of my recent life being willfully blind to the choices I was making because I'd convinced myself that they didn't even exist. Like I didn't have any control over my life, you know? Now I'm choosing. Please. Help me find him.”

The man regarded her carefully, perhaps trying to figure out if she was bluffing. The look on his face had shifted into one of calculation. Alice got the sense that, behind his indifferent exterior, he was weighing everything with his full attention. Finally, he stood up.

“I would almost say that this strikes me as somewhat ungrateful. We've already put ourselves at considerable risk for you, and now you want me to do so again without understanding the circumstances.” It was a statement, not a question. “I don't like that.”

Alice made to interject, but he spoke over her. “However, your friend Mr. Dawson has made a career out of trusting his intuition, and I've yet to see it steer him wrong. Perhaps the same could be said of Cartwright as well. I don't believe in coincidences, Ms. . . .” He trailed off there, just then realizing he wasn't actually acquainted with Alice.

“Spiegel,” she said quickly.

“Ms. Spiegel, yes, I remember now. I will admit, what you're asking me to do is . . . well, let us call a spade a spade—it is potentially worse than career-ending. Should things go as poorly as I imagine they possibly could, we may both find ourselves traveling to the afterlife tonight.” He reached next to the nightstand, where an old gray hospital cane was propped. Begemot passed it to Alice across the bed. “Let's hope some of Mr. Dawson's divine intuition has rubbed off on you.”

An awful feeling of shame crept in from all sides as Alice clutched the cane in front of her. Her haste to find Charlie was a strong wind at her back, but it didn't assuage her feelings of guilt. This man had helped save her life. Even if she was still somewhat on the fence about whether that was a good thing or not, somewhere along the way she'd regained enough perspective (temporarily, at least) to realize what an amazing thing that was. Now, on
top of everything he'd already done—which sounded like a lot—she was asking him to put everything on the line, again, for her.

“I'm sorry,” she said. “I didn't realize that's what I was asking for. Why exactly is it so dangerous?”

Begemot was standing in the doorway now, his hand on the knob. With a daring smirk, he looked back at her over his shoulder. “Because you're about to become the first human to spy on the Ferryman Council.”

“That does sound mildly terrifying.” Alice took the cane in her left hand. “I'm in.”

S
o let me get this straight,” Charlie began, but he was derailed by his efforts to match Cartwright's—or rather, Virgil's—pace. Though Cartwright was more of the strolling type who seemed to take pains to meander, Virgil strode with a purpose Charlie found slightly disconcerting.

“Go on,” Cartwright said with his traditional unperturbed attitude.

“Alice is alive?” Charlie asked as he caught up.

“Very much so.”

“And I'm not being sent to Purgatory?”

Cartwright looked over at him with a sly smile. “Not yet.”

“And you're one of the original founders of the Institute acting as some run-of-the-mill late-Victorian British gentleman Ferryman mentor?”

Cartwright waved his hand dismissively. “I would argue strongly against your use of the word
acting
as I
am
your mentor, in the truest sense of the word. My position at this Institute has no bearing on that, nor do I act any differently with or without my given name.”

“Speaking of, as a born Roman, why are you so . . . British?” An odd question, but Charlie didn't know how else to frame it.

“Tea,” Cartwright replied. “And Shakespeare, I suppose, who inaugurated the rise of England as a literary and cultural powerhouse, a rise in which I was more than happy to immerse myself. It was so very similar to Rome back in its heyday, flaws and all, that I'd finally felt home for the first time in centuries. But mostly tea. You simply cannot fully appreciate its ambrosial qualities without first being a subject of the queen.”

“What about the Ferryman Council stories? Is there any truth to them? Did you actually say those things?” Charlie asked. He felt disturbingly similar to a small child with all the questions he was slinging.

“They are mostly true,” Cartwright said. “Some parts have been embellished.”

Charlie finally managed to match Cartwright's stride. “An example being . . . ?” When Cartwright said nothing, Charlie continued. “Right, so back to my first question.”

“I sincerely hope this isn't tumbling into an infinite loop of inquiry,” Cartwright remarked.

Charlie ignored him. “How do you know Alice is alive? Javrouche told me I'd . . . she was dead.”

They were approaching the end of a long hallway, not dissimilar to the one that connected Charlie's office to the control room, except it seemed older, somehow. He also hadn't seen anybody wandering around since they'd left the courtroom, and Cartwright was regularly unlocking doors Charlie hadn't even known existed.

“Because I arrived shortly after you were unceremoniously apprehended and had her brought here. She'd lost a considerable
amount of blood, but she stabilized some hours ago. I have it on rather good authority that she'll make a full recovery.”

Charlie didn't quite know what to say. It was like being one of the twelve disciples, thinking that this groovy guy you've been following around for a while has finally kicked the bucket, only for him to walk in the door a couple days later. Alice was alive. There existed in Charlie a crushing, shame-fueled guilt that made him wonder if he'd ever be able to show himself in front of her again. He'd almost killed her, after all, which was generally considered a bad way to endear yourself to someone. However, the fact it was even an option again was nearly beyond belief.

“Surprised?” Cartwright asked, apparently bemused.

Charlie shrugged. “You could say that, yes.”

“Well,” Cartwright replied as he opened one final door, “I would wager the first of many tonight.”

Charlie was inclined to believe him.

Beyond was a dimly lit spiral staircase. The steps were narrow, cut from stone, giving way to uneven landings from one to the next. If ever there was a place where Hamlet would have met his father's ghost, this was it.

“Not much for Ikea upgrades, I take it?” Charlie said. With the weight of Alice at least partially off his mind, he felt his sarcasm returning to its normal dry sensibility.

“I would advise against judging too quickly,” Cartwright replied.

The pair began climbing the winding staircase in silence. With each step, the walls seemed to press a bit closer. Small yellow lights were embedded in the floor every five stairs or so, but the light they gave off was paltry and often flickering. There were no windows to speak of. They marched upward at a steady pace, climbing well over a hundred stairs before Charlie lost count.

Just when Charlie was about to break the silence, they arrived at a large stone landing that eventually gave way to an ornate, solid-wood door. Without much fuss, Cartwright fit his Ferryman Key into the small, intricate lock just below the doorknob.

“Welcome,” he said as the door swung open, “to the chambers of the Ferryman Council.”

The room Charlie was ushered into might as well have been a spaceship cockpit compared to the staircase he'd just climbed. A strong but somewhat muted light shone down onto a luxurious table in the middle of the floor. The table seemed to be a perfectly cut, smooth circle of glass, polished to an incredible sheen. The room itself was circular as well, Charlie noticed, with glowing computer monitors lining the walls. Their screens continually changed from one instant to the next—some displayed rapidly changing pictures, like a slideshow gone haywire, while others seemed to be showing near-continuous streams of text. Charlie wondered for a brief moment whether the lines on the screens corresponded to people, each line one more soul on its way to the afterlife. The thought was both awe inducing and utterly horrifying.

“Pretty amazing, isn't it?”

The booming baritone voice brought Charlie's attention back to the table, which he only then realized was occupied. Just beyond the circle of light sat a cadre of figures, each one obscured by shadows. A dark hand reached out and tapped the table's surface. To Charlie's great astonishment, a holographic keyboard with several corresponding buttons next to it appeared, the keys vaguely orange and transparent. The hand then touched a translucent button on the side of the floating keyboard, causing the pressed key to momentarily flash.

The light above the table suddenly grew in intensity, revealing
seven sitting figures: five male, two female. To call them a diverse group didn't quite do the ensemble justice.

The man immediately to Charlie's left possessed a rich olive complexion with very dark hair, which was a sight to behold in its own right. The sides were cropped neatly except for two large spikes of hair that jutted up above his ears. The top and front of his hairstyle—if you wanted to call it that—protruded several inches past his face in a sort of outlandish pompadour. Combined with a somewhat fierce expression, he vaguely reminded Charlie of an exotic wolf.