I turn toward the carpetbag encased nearby. “What was the intention behind this collection?”
“The same as any catalyst acquired,” he tells me. “Preservation.”
The threadbare carpetbag was obviously well-loved. “Does it hold a particular significance?”
Van Brunt discreetly brushes crumbs off his beard. “Ms. Reeve, one would think that, as tied to literature as we all are, we would have a handbook for our members. But, alas, none of us are as talented as those who first told our stories. I apologize that you will not get all your answers at once, but I hope you will stay with us long enough to learn what we know. But for now, I will tell you what I can. For some reason that is still yet unknown to us, each Timeline outside of the original has a singular object that represents its existence.” He motions toward the carpetbag. “For example, this bag is the catalyst for a particular series of books that combine to form a singular Timeline we refer to as 1934/88TRA-MP.”
“Explain the designations.”
He’s pleased by my question. “The numbers refer to the year or years of publication. The first three letters represent the author’s surname; the last reference the title. For this particular catalyst, the Timeline associated with it has a series of books published between 1934 and 1988. While the titles vary, they all contain the name of the lead character Mary Poppins. MP.” His smile is small yet indulgent. “The author’s name was P.L. Travers. Thus, we have 1934/88TRA-MP.”
I mull this over as I nibble on a biscuit. “You say these catalysts represent existence. What would happen if this bag was to be destroyed?”
His eyes shift away from me to focus on something in the distance. “Then the Timeline would be deleted, and all of the individuals living in it would be erased as if they were never there in the first place.”
Chills sprout up and down my arms. Not lost, but erased. “What about the book? Is it deleted, too?”
Something I can’t quite identify haunts his eyes. “No. The book remains. But it becomes only a book. Today we learned a Timeline associated with a very famous story was deleted. Somebody found its catalyst before we could and destroyed it.”
My cup clatters onto the saucer in my lap. “Why would somebody do that?”
“We don’t know,” he says roughly. “I wish we did. Unfortunately, this is a recent development over the past decade. Somebody outside of the Collectors’ Society has been targeting popular, famous Timelines and has been destroying catalysts.”
“And yet you collect them.”
His smile is wan. “We do. And then we store them here at our headquarters, so that nobody can erase the lives of so many innocent people.”
I place my plate back onto the cart Dawkins left. “You think this person might do the same to my Timeline. To Wonderland.”
“It seems logical. Your story is immensely popular. Unfortunately, we have yet to be able to track down a catalyst associated with your Timeline, Ms. Reeve. Furthermore, we’ve sent a number of people into your world, only to have them fail to even find a way into Wonderland.” The wan smile turns grim. “There are Timelines such as this that make catalyst acquisitions nearly impossible. You see, each of these worlds has its own set of rules, even more so when there is magic involved, so there is no consistency. For some reason, none of those in my employ are able to go into Wonderland.”
I am numb once more, wondering if I ought to open myself up and reveal secrets I’d hoped to hide.
After a few moments of pained silence, Van Brunt says, “Some catalysts are easier to identify than others. Each is an item within the story that bears significant meaning and refuses to yield to time and age as others do. They—”
I throw caution to the wind. “Even if you send somebody in, it won’t do any good. They’ll never want to leave. It’s the food and drink. If you have any while there, once you’re past puberty, you become addicted. Sending in your teams would be pointless.”
He doesn’t even let a beat go by. “And yet, you managed to escape. Did you go on a fast?”
A hint of bitter laughter ghosts out of me. “In a way, yes.” My fingers curl into my skirt’s fabric. “I also bartered for a potion of sorts from someone I knew that allowed me a small window of clarity.” I twist the cotton until my fingers burn. “I say clarity, but it was really just a lesser degree of madness, because even then, I nearly stayed. I wanted to, you see. I ached to. Every muscle, every joint, every bit of skin and bones physically hurt when I forced myself out.”
A thumb runs across his beard as he takes this in. “Yet you still left.”
I wonder if he understands what I have just told him. “Yes.”
I had to.
NEW QUESTIONS SURFACE, BUT for my recently acquired sanity, I place them on hold. I need to allow ones so freshly answered to breathe.
Van Brunt must sense this, because he uses his little communication box to summon Mary. She joins us in the library minutes later. “I swear, Brom, if you don’t get the A.D. under control, I’m going to box his ears.”
A heavy sigh escapes the large man. “Ms. Reeve, I must apologize for once more leaving you, but I must go address new security issues. Will you be all right with Ms. Lennox?”
Mary smoothly says, “Perhaps I ought to box your ears.”
Amusement glimmers in his bright blue eyes. “Yes. Perhaps you ought to.”
He’s about thirty feet away when I call out, “Who is the Librarian?”
“Tomorrow, Ms. Reeve. You shall meet her tomorrow.”
I turn back to find Mary picking through the remaining sandwiches. “I imagine that you feel as if your brain is melting right out of your head.” She nibbles at a cucumber and cream cheese square. “At least, that’s how it felt on my first day here. Bloody hell, this is awful.” She tosses the sandwich down.
One of the best lessons I took away from Wonderland was that of not allowing others to see my weaknesses. I tell Mary, “This isn’t my first pony ride.”
For a moment, she stares at me as if I’ve stripped naked, but then a hearty laugh emerges. “I suppose for you something like this would be old hat, wouldn’t it?”
Another ill-advised, involuntary bristle roils my skin. “Yes, I suppose so.”
The humor fades away until all that’s left is thoughtfulness. “I meant no insult.”
I force myself to swallow back my carefully cultivated distrust of the unknown. “It’s me who ought to be apologizing. You’re right. This has been a long day, filled with many things that have . . .” I offer her a white flag smile. “Left my brain feeling as if it’s melting out of my head.”
“Brom is brilliant,” she says, “but even he has difficulty explaining what most of us can barely wrap our minds around on a daily basis. It’s a lot to take in, even for those who have lived with the reality for years now.”
“Are you from a story?”
My question doesn’t offend her. “It’s called A Secret Garden.” She leads me to the sliding set of doors she emerged earlier from. “A children’s book, much like yours, although written a bit later.” A small puff of annoyed laughter whistles between her lips. “Did Brom tell of your stories?”
I watch as she presses a small button on the wall. A children’s book? How much of my life has been chronicled? “Not much,” I admit. “But he did allude to multiple volumes.”
“It was probably for the best. These sorts of things are best left for the Librarian anyway.”
A ding sounds before the ornately decorated doors slide open. I’m embarrassed to find I’ve taken a step backward.
Mary’s hearty laughter once more emerges as she takes a step into the small room beyond. “This is an elevator. It’s used for transportation.”
I must look as angry as I feel, because she adds more contritely, “Don’t be embarrassed. I had the same reaction. It felt as if it were wizardly. Come on—let’s go visit your apartment so you can have a bit of time to rest. It’s on the fifteenth floor, so unless you want to h
ike all the way up, I advise you to step inside with me.”
Once I’m inside, she presses a button labeled 15 on a golden panel riddled with numerals. The doors slide shut and the ground below me lurches; I instinctively grab a bar circling the room. “You’ve been assigned 1508,” she is saying. “We’re neighbors, you know. I’m right across the hall.”
The numbered buttons alight and count upward at a steady pace.
I feel her eyes taking me in. “Brom likes teams to be on the same floor. I suppose for some people it makes sense, but sometimes it feels like you can’t quite get a proper breath without having your partner breathing down your neck.”
“Are we to be paired up as partners?” I ask as the lit-up numbers switch from nine to ten.
“God, no. Sorry. Victor’s my partner. You’ll be working with Finn—but as teams occasionally double up, and Victor and I tend to find ourselves with Finn due to the obvious, I’m sure we’ll be going on plenty of assignments together.”
I’m to work with Finn? That beautiful man? And what, exactly, is the obvious?
“Victor was actually filling in for you today. Since Finn’s last partner retired, he’s been teamed up with various people. I was out with just him last week, and for as many years as we’ve worked together, you’d think it wouldn’t have been weird, but it was.” She scratches the base of her neck as she turns toward me. “I just realized how that must have sounded. It’s not that it was weird working with him, per se. He’s excellent at what he does, and obviously is very easy on the eyes.” A sly smile curves her mouth. “But I’ve been teamed with Victor for the last five years, and I guess there’s a shorthand that develops between people who work so closely together, you know?”
I do know, unfortunately. And I’m not keen on replicating such a shorthand.
I refocus on the changing numbers. “I find it interesting that Van Brunt brought me in to supposedly save Wonderland, yet everyone assumes I’m here to stay.”
She shrugs. “It’s because everyone ends up staying.”
The elevator slows once more. This time, when the doors slide open, Mary steps out into a richly decorated hallway. “This is our floor. Luckily, it’s one of the quieter ones, especially our wing. Between Victor and his studies and Finn hardly ever being here, we’ve got it good.”
The walls are dark green; the carpet below our feet is an unrecognizable pattern style. Mary turns to the right and heads down the hallway. “All of the living quarters have been modernized while retaining their historic flare.” She looks back over her shoulder at me. “You’ll be able to fully decorate your place however you see fit. I think most of us tend to favor what we know. It’s like a museum in here.”
Mary stops in front of a wooden door with a brass plaque bearing the numbers 1508 affixed to the front. A set of keys is extracted from her floral satchel. “Do you want to do the honors? It’s the blue one—I put some nail polish on it so you’d always know which is home.”
I take the keys from her. They’re small, much smaller than I’m used to. And the doorknob is just that—a doorknob.
“Like I said, my place is across the hall.” She points in the direction we just came in. “Victor’s is that way.” Her thumb hooks in the opposite direction, past my door. And then she motions to the door just before the turn. “There’s Finn’s.”
A loud bang sounds nearby, followed by a string of indecipherable curses. Mary shouts out, “What did you blow up now?”
Something crashes, and a new set of angry words is unleashed. The door across the hall, midway between mine and Finn’s, wrenches open. A dirty and disgruntled appearing Victor practically falls out. “Christ, Mary. I just can’t get the solution right!”
She crosses the carpet and licks her thumb. “You couldn’t wait for me, could you? And here I was just telling Alice that you were quiet as a dormouse.” A bit of dirt close to his mouth is smudged away. “Now you’ve gone and made me look the liar.”
Victor’s dark eyes, shrewd and thoughtful, flick toward me as he stands statue still whilst Mary cleans another spot on his face with a licked-upon finger. “Are dormice truly quiet?”
It’s a soft jab, but his message is crystal clear. “The one that I knew was more caustic than quiet.”
“Yes,” he murmurs. “It was, wasn’t it?”
Mary swats his shoulder. “She’ll think you a boor if you keep this up.”
When his eyes turn back to his partner, they soften. “I am a boor. You just choose to ignore it.” But then he sticks out a hand. “We haven’t officially met yet. I’m Victor . . .” He pauses briefly. Clears his throat meaningfully before he says, almost as if he’s resigned, “Uh, Victor Frankenstein. I’m one of the Society’s resident doctors.”
His handshake is brief and firm, and yet he appears unsettled, like he’s waiting for a particular reaction. “What are you a doctor of?”
I must not give him what he expects, because Victor’s muscles loosen in visible relief. “Officially?” He leans back against the wall closest to his partially opened door. “I specialized in general surgery, but many of the team here use me as their GP, too. You’re free to do so as well, if you like.”
My fingers curl so tightly around the keys that I can feel their imprint in my skin. “GP?”
“General practitioner, otherwise known as an all-around doctor.” The grin that materializes can best be described as lazy. “They had those in your Timeline, correct?”
I take in the man before me, from his bare feet and frayed hems of his worn, blue pants to the thin, oil-streaked short-sleeved white shirt and the dark, twisted markings ringing both of his biceps. He’s good looking, there’s no doubt about it. Handsome, even. But the difference between him and the man I talked with earlier is that this one carries himself as if he knows his attractiveness is evident.
He’s a peacock. And, thankfully, there isn’t one ounce of attraction toward him to worry about.
“Yes,” I tell him. “We had doctors in both England and Wonderland. Is it an uncommon occurrence?”
Victor’s eyes light up. “No, no, doctors or their ilk are fairly common pretty much everywhere. I was just curious—oh, hell. I’d love to know more about the ones in Wonderland. Did they use magic in their practice? Or were they more akin to those in your England? I—”
“Are you forgetting that this is Alice’s first day?” Mary pats his face. “Or that, just this morning, she was blissfully unaware of the Society or Timelines or nosy doctors who want to grill her when I’m sure she wants nothing more than to sit down and catch her breath?”
He has grace enough to appear sheepishly admonished. A hand rakes through his dark hair, leaving it askew. “Of course. Sorry, Alice. Maybe we can chat about this later.”
“Perhaps,” I allow.
“Did you hear about the security malfunction?” Mary asks.
Victor’s startled. “What security malfunction? As soon as we finished eating, I popped up here for a nap and then got straight to work.”
Mary crosses the hallway to stand next to me. “Wendy insists her system registered an unauthorized passkey attempt at the back elevator, but a review of the footage shows nobody there.”
“What about the alarms?” Victor asks. “I heard nothing.”
“Neither did I. Apparently, only the first floor suffered.”
He scratches his forehead, his dark eyebrows veeing. “Did Brom shit a brick?”
“Brom,” Mary says wryly, “wasn’t informed of the incident until well after Finn investigated.”
“That was probably wise.” Victor shoves his door open wider. “After what happened last time, I’m surprised Finn told him at all. I sure as hell wouldn’t.”
“Finn didn’t. The A.D. did, the little punk.”
Victor glowers. “Fan-fucking-tastic. Tonight, they’ll be cleaning up all the bricks that both Brom and Finn have shit, won’t they?” He ends up shutting the door rather than going farther inside. “I ought to go downs
tairs and see what’s going on. I’ll let you know what I hear.”
And then he comes over and presses a quick kiss against Mary’s cheek. A hand briefly skirts across my shoulder. “See you around, Alice.”
Once he’s gone, I slide the blue key into the keyhole and turn the ordinary knob.
The flat I’ve been assigned is, well, extremely girlish. I’m talking little girlish—to the point its femininity is sickening. The walls are pastel pink, the floors hardwood and peppered with floral rugs. All of the art hanging on the walls is also floral and romantic, and porcelain dolls are found on nearly every surface.
Mary shuts the door behind us. “Don’t mind Victor. Despite his lack of tact, he’s got a good heart. And he’s quite good at what he does.”
My fingers trail across the shining, polished arm of a chair. Even the print on the furniture fabrics is floral. “You mean stealing catalysts?”
I can’t tell if she’s insulted or amused. “Well, that too, but he’s a damn fine doctor. God forbid something goes wrong on an assignment, he’s quite handy to have around.”
I pick up one of the heavily embroidered pillows on a velvet couch. It’s hideous. “Have things gone horribly awry on theses assignments before?”
The pillow says in cursive lettering centered above a tiara: All Girls Are Princesses.
“Not everybody appreciates having their belongings stolen,” Mary is saying, “even if it’s done under the noblest of circumstances.”
How true that is. “Some thieves in Wonderland often found themselves without heads.” I toss the pillow back onto the cushions. “At least, those who were caught.”
She drops her purse down onto a small table. “The Queen of Hearts, right?” She pretends to shudder. “How macabre.” And then, more cheerfully, “The housekeepers came in earlier today, so everything is clean.” An arm sweeps in an arc before her, toward a hallway. “There are two bedrooms, one-and-a-half bathrooms, a good-sized kitchen—not that you’ll need it much. Most of us tend to eat in the restaurant on the second floor during dinnertime. Which is six-thirty p.m. sharp, in case you’re wondering.” She smiles. “The chef here at the Society is divine. Communal dining, as weird as it sounds, seems to give us all a chance to catch up, especially if we’ve been gone on assignments or liaisons are in town.”
The Collectors' Society Page 6
