by Colin Gigl
“Wait, time out,” she said as some of the shock began to wear off. “Why are you driving?”
“Because I know where we’re going.” He searched the area around the wheel for the ignition, without much success. “I thought that’d be pretty obvious.”
“Said every man in the history of forever. Have you even driven a car before, Mr. King Kong?”
“Sure, plenty of times. Well . . . I’ve never driven a regular car before,” he said. “Race cars, on the other hand, I’ve been behind the wheel on more than a few occasions.” The SUV roared to life as he turned the key in the ignition.
“So that’s pretty much the same thing, I think,” she said. Actually, Alice had no idea if that was true or not.
Charlie stared at the Jeep’s shifter. He tried to put the car in reverse but overshot it. “I guess I should warn you,” he said nonchalantly as he missed again, putting the car back in park, “I wasn’t very good at it, but then again”—he missed again, sending the car into neutral—“I wasn’t really trying to drive in the conventional sense.” Finally, he had the car in reverse. “It was more of a how horrifically can I crash? type of thing. It’s what you do when you’re bored and can’t die.”
“Oh.” Alice put on her seat belt.
On the plus side, if this was real life, it didn’t appear that she was going to have to suffer through a long stretch of it. In fact, it looked like she was going to die tonight after all. Hooray for small favors.
“Good thing you put on clean underwear, right?” That charming but increasingly irritating smile again, which she caught out of the corner of her eye.
Alice began to mockingly laugh, then suddenly stopped. “How the hell do you know I put on—”
The words in her mouth quickly transformed into a howl of abject terror as Charlie reversed the Jeep, smashing into the car behind them. Without even hesitating, he threw the car in drive and took off down the street, the sound of burning rubber their exit song.
CHARLIE
* * *
INTO THE WILD
He’s not answering.”
Charlie held Alice’s phone limply in his hand. The third attempt to reach Cartwright had been as unsuccessful as the first two. With a sigh, he dropped the phone into his lap. Charlie wasn’t sure whether it was a good idea to call Cartwright or not, but he wasn’t exactly drowning in options, either. Mostly, though, he just wanted to know the truth. Actually, he didn’t want that—he only wanted Cartwright to be who he’d always been. And if that wasn’t the truth . . . ?
He frowned. Dammit.
The streetlights lit up Charlie’s face in intermittent beats as the Jeep rode steadily through the night. Was it possible that Javrouche was lying about Cartwright not being in the Institute’s records? It was nice to think the Inspector had made up the accusation, but ultimately it was bound to be true. Javrouche was vindictive, sure, but he was no fool—if he didn’t have the evidence to support the charges, there wasn’t a chance he would have made them, no matter how much he hated Charlie.
As for what that all meant, Charlie had no idea. In Charlie’s mind, Cartwright was the Institute’s ultimate ambassador, the one who had made Charlie a Ferryman to begin with two hundred and fifty long years ago. It seemed completely beyond comprehension that the Institute didn’t know who the guy was. There was no way Cartwright could have snuck Charlie in, all the while leading a double life. It just wasn’t possible.
Right . . . ?
“So, what now?” Alice asked.
Charlie kept both eyes on the road as his attention turned to the passenger next to him. Despite a few narrow misses and some flagrant traffic violations, she’d given up on getting Charlie to relinquish the driver seat. To be fair, they were currently driving in New Jersey, so traffic laws were more guideline than law anyway.
“First order of business is getting away from your house. If my phone was bugged, they probably know its location from when I dropped in the first time around,” he said.
“So we’re fleeing the scene of the crime. Interesting. Are we going to be on the lam for a while?”
He could see her looking at him anxiously from the corner of his eye. “I have absolutely no idea what that’s supposed to mean.”
“You know—fugitives, on the run, pulling a Bonnie-and-Clyde.”
Charlie stole a glance at her before returning his attention to the road. “You sound disarmingly excited about that prospect.”
It was true. She did appear oddly chipper about the whole thing. If Charlie had to guess, he would have put it down to shock or adrenaline. After all, she had just cheated death, and in rather unconventional style to boot.
“Well,” she said, “it’s either that or I hysterically lose my shit, which I’m trying desperately hard not to do. But if you don’t have a preference—”
“Status quo is fine by me.” Charlie made a hard right onto a highway ramp he thought would put him in the right direction. “In response to your question, no—being fugitives is about the last thing I want. We’re going to get this sorted out as soon as possible. Regardless of what I may or may not have done, you had nothing to do with it, and I intend to make sure that the Ferryman Institute knows that’s the case.”
It was a plan Charlie was admittedly cobbling together as he went, but even an improvised one was better than nothing. Unfortunately, said plan’s success hinged on a meeting with the president of the Institute—a person he had no idea how to find. Still, if—and it was a big if—Charlie could find him, it’d be his best chance at sorting out the tremendous clusterfuck he’d tangled them in. It was a long shot, but crazier things had happened. Exhibit A, everything so far that night.
Even without looking over, he could feel Alice’s eyes on him again. “So we’re headed where then, exactly? Not for nothing, but I didn’t think you could take the Garden State Parkway to the afterlife, though that would explain a lot about the traffic,” she said.
A wry expression co-opted his face. “No, but you can take it to New York.”
“Hold up. Are you implying that your dead-person tour guide club—”
“That’s not even close to what the Ferryman Institute is,” Charlie interrupted.
“Fine, whatever,” Alice said. “Back to my question. Are you saying your base is in New York?”
“No.”
Alice frowned. “So we’re heading to New York, then, because why, exactly?”
“Because even if the Ferryman Institute doesn’t physically exist in New York, there are still ways to enter it from the city. Without getting into the weeds on this, the Ferryman Institute isn’t just this place you can go to. I’ve been told it’s between worlds—this world and the afterlife. Before you even ask, I have no idea what that means in terms of precisely where it is. Parallel dimension or something like that.”
Alice didn’t reply immediately, instead sitting in silence for several seconds. Then, she said, “Somehow, things are making less sense as this explanation goes on.”
“The important thing to understand is that, generally speaking, the only way you can get into the Ferryman Institute is with a special key,” Charlie said.
“Like the one you threw at me in my bedroom?”
Charlie sighed. “I didn’t throw it at you, I threw it near you. But yes, that key.”
“What’s stopping you from using that again?” Alice asked.
“I don’t have it anymore. That means if we’re going to get back, we’re going to have to do it another way. There are a series of secret portals the Institute’s hidden in various places—sort of like heavily monitored public entrances—and I think there are a few in New York. We just need to find one. After that, it’s a simple matter of getting everything straightened out and then everyone can leave happy.”
Despite the assurance with which Charlie outlined the plan, he felt none of it, namely because he had no idea if any of his suppositions about Institute public entrances were actually true. He’d heard rumors of
the so-called Institute portals, but never in anything approaching an official capacity. Even if they did exist, who knew what—or who—would be waiting on the other side of them. Still, Charlie wasn’t exactly swimming in ideas, not to mention the last thing he wanted was to give Alice any more reason to suspect this wasn’t the finely honed exit strategy he’d let on. At the very least, New York was an easy place to lie low for a while, Institute access or not.
“Portals. Right,” Alice said. She went silent, gazing out the windshield, unblinking. “I swear to God, if the next thing you tell me is that Elvis is alive, I’m leaving through the window.”
“Don’t worry, he’s not.” All things considered, she was handling this better than expected. At least, it seemed that way. “Amelia Earhart, on the other hand . . .”
“Shut. Up,” she said. “No she’s not. You’re fucking with me right now.”
“Nope, true story,” Charlie replied. He was enjoying blowing her mind. Figuratively, of course. “One of the best employees currently at the Institute.”
“You’re joking.”
“From what I hear, she’s a great manager. Just don’t ask her for directions. She gets a little lost sometimes.”
Alice stared at him blankly. “Was that a joke? That was a joke, wasn’t it?”
Charlie shrugged, keeping his eyes on the endless supply of repeating white lines on the road ahead of him. “It could have been,” he said. “Were you going to laugh?”
“No,” she replied. “Hang myself with this seat belt, maybe.”
He frowned. “Just the no would have sufficed.”
Alice croaked a harsh laugh. “Right. Just remember—you’re the invincible one here. As a mere mortal, my body can only take so much of the torture that is your sense of humor.”
It was a weird situation Charlie found himself in. Usually, he only had to deal with an assignment for a few minutes, tops. With Alice, however, he had no idea what time frame he was looking at. Keeping her happy, not to mention in one piece, felt like a tough ask for even a few hours, particularly as her penchant for sarcasm seemed fueled by the sort of limitless energy source that had thus far eluded scientists. But what if it was days, weeks, maybe? This was uncharted—and mildly terrifying—territory no matter what way he sliced it.
“Can I tell you something, just in the interest of, you know, full disclosure?” Alice said.
He managed to sneak a look in her direction, and in that fleeting moment her eyes looked brilliant, filled with a light that he’d seen tumble out of countless Ferryman Doors. Then it vanished, and he realized that it had only been the reflection of the highway streetlights.
“Sure,” Charlie said. “I’m always good for a listen.”
“All right.” Alice inhaled—one, two—then exhaled, almost as if there were an imaginary stethoscope pressed to her chest. “So, just because I decided to tag along with you doesn’t mean I’m happy or grateful or anything that you”—she looked out her passenger window quickly before turning back to him—“temporarily postponed the inevitable. I never asked you to, uhh . . . intervene, let’s say, so when I decide I’ve had enough of this little”—she drew a few circles in the air with her index finger—“whatever this thing of ours is, that’s it. I’m out. You only get to stop me once. Capisce?”
Charlie took that moment to mentally reorder his list of priorities vis-à-vis Ms. Alice Spiegel. Needless to say, keeping her happy no longer topped the list.
Keeping her alive, on the other hand . . .
Alice’s eyes were studying him again, but when he turned to face her, they were impossible to read in the dark, the streetlight reflections no longer able to reach them. As Charlie looked back to the highway, a small chuckle escaped his lips. It shouldn’t have been funny, but given the circumstances, he just couldn’t help it. He’d finally rescued someone from the very brink of death itself, and—go figure—she was annoyed at him for it. Evidently he was single-handedly paving the road to hell.
He quietly drew a deep breath and closed his eyes, making sure there was no traffic around him first. Despite her sharp remarks, they meant nothing—the improvised plan was still in effect. In fact, the basic principle of what he was doing was the same as what he normally did with any Ferryman assignment, only this time, he wanted the subject to walk away from the light. Hell, when he thought of it like that, the whole thing seemed downright easy.
If only he knew how wrong he’d be.
“I hear you,” Charlie replied, “but, also full disclosure, I just might choose to completely ignore you. I can be remarkably selfish sometimes.”
Normally, Charlie was a better match for a little inane banter, but his mind continued wandering back to his recent confrontation at the Institute. He promised himself that as soon as he sorted things out with Alice, he would find his team and set things right. Maybe it wasn’t even an issue anymore—maybe Melissa had managed to smooth things over in the interim. She did have a knack for that sort of thing.
Well, when she hadn’t been electrocuted into unconsciousness, anyway.
Did he feel guilty that he wasn’t riding to his team’s immediate rescue? Of course he did. Was he worried about them? Very much so. But Charlie knew where his priorities lay. While everyone at the Institute was very much immortal, Alice was very much not.
“Jeez, dude, lighten up a little bit,” Alice said. “You look like I just ran over your cat or something.”
“In my defense,” Charlie said, “you did just tell me you’d prefer being dead over spending time with me. If you’re trying to boost my self-esteem, you may want to consider a different strategy.”
The start of a tiny grin seemed hidden somewhere in the corner of her lips. “Look, I’m not happy about the fact that I’m still alive, per se, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little curious about where this is heading. I haven’t been out of the house much lately. Plus, no offense, but if I really wanted to be dead right now, I’ve had ample opportunity to roll myself headfirst out of the car.”
Charlie looked over at her. He promptly locked the doors.
He could practically hear her eyes rolling in their sockets. “Hilarious. The point, Mr. Fairy Man, is that I didn’t expect you to be so sensitive about it. I thought you dealt with dead people all the time. What’s one more dead flamed-out failure to you?”
A lone car zipped past them on the left as Charlie gave a short, harsh laugh. “Is that really how you think of yourself?”
“Before you even think of giving me some It’s a Wonderful Life speech right now, I’d like to remind you that I have a power-lock button on my side, too.” The ker-clunk of the doors unlocking emphasized her point.
“Duly noted. And yes, I guess you could say I’m a little sensitive when it comes to . . . that sort of thing.”
“Apparently,” she replied. From the corner of his eye, he could see her playing with the tips of her hair, gaze focused out her passenger window. “So what year were you born?”
The question came as a surprise only because he’d gotten the sense that Alice would prefer the conversation be over with. She was proving to be a very difficult person to read. “Come again?” Charlie asked.
“You mentioned before that you saw King Kong when it was in theaters. It doesn’t exactly take John Nash to figure out that means you’ve been around for a while, so I was wondering when you were born. If you were actually born, I guess, and not created in a lab. Or by aliens. Or both.”
He gave equal consideration to both dodging the question and laying it on thick, but given her apparently volatile nature, he decided it best to go along. “September twenty-first, 1732.”
“Wow,” she said. “That’s, uh, a few years ago. You don’t sound very eighteenth-century-ish.”
He laughed at that, the green mile markers ticking by on the side of the road. “Just because I was born then doesn’t mean I’ve warped through time to get here. My speech has evolved along with everyone else’s.”
�
��Makes sense. I think. Where were you born?”
The steady rhythm of disappearing and reappearing streetlights bathed the interior of the car. The engine of the car hummed quietly as cruise control kept the speedometer just under seventy. “You’ve got a lot of questions all of a sudden,” he mused.
Alice gave a laugh at that. Charlie noted that it was still of the cynical variety. “One, apparently you know all about me, including what underwear I’m wearing right now, so we don’t really need to talk about me—”
“Let’s not exaggerate too much,” Charlie interjected. “I know a few bits and pieces, and the underwear thing was a joke.”
“—and two, I’m not the mysterious guy with the bulletproof noggin who swears on his grandmother’s grave that he’s abducting me to quote-unquote ‘save me’ from a mysterious organization seeking to do terrible, terrible things to me on account of me not blowing my brains out. This all seems a few yards to the left of patently outrageous, so if it weren’t for the fact that it really looked like I shot you before, I don’t think I’d believe you. However, since that did happen, and loath as I am to admit it, I’m also a little scared, so the less we’re sitting here in silence, the better. That work for you, Superman?”
Evidently it was his turn to be surprised by her honesty.
“Boston,” he said, repaying that belief in kind. “I was born in Boston, but left for London on my seventeenth birthday. Hopped aboard a whaler out of Howland Dock almost as soon as I set foot in England, stayed there for twelve years, then went on my last expedition in 1762.”
“Really? You were a sailor?”
He raised an eyebrow. “Is that so surprising?”
“I don’t know . . . maybe? You don’t look manly enough to be a sailor.” Charlie scowled, but she continued unabated. “So you were a sailor. Why’d you stop? Get tired of it?”
