Library of Souls (7 page)

“I am a businessman,” he said evenly.

“Who's well accustomed to meeting talking dogs and girls who make fire with their hands,” said Addison.

“In my line of work, one meets a wide variety of people.”

“I'll cut to the chase,” I said, shaking water off one foot, then the other. “We're looking for some friends of ours. We think they might've come this way within the last hour or so. Mostly kids, some adults. One was invisible, one could float …”

“They'd be hard to miss,” Emma said. “They were being held at gunpoint by a gang of wights.”

Sharon crossed his arms into a wide, black X. “As I said, all manner of people hire my boat, and each relies on my absolute discretion. I won't discuss my clientele.”

“Is that so?” Emma said. “Excuse us just a moment.”

She took me aside to whisper in my ear.

“If he doesn't start talking, I'm going to get really angry.”

“Don't do anything reckless,” I whispered back.

“Why? You believe that humbug about skulls and sea creatures?”

“Yes, actually. I know he's a slimebag, but—”

“Slimebag? He's practically admitted to doing business with wights! He might even
be
one!”

“—but he's a
useful
slimebag. I have a feeling he knows exactly where our friends were taken. It's just a matter of asking the right questions.”

“Then have at it,” she said crossly.

I turned to Sharon and said with a smile, “What can you tell me about your tours?”

He brightened immediately. “Finally, a subject I can speak freely about. I just happen to have some information right here …” He turned snappily and went to a nearby pylon. A shelf had been nailed onto it, and upon the shelf was displayed a skull dressed in old-time aviator garb—leather cap, goggles, a jaunty scarf. Gripped between its teeth were several pamphlets, and Sharon pulled one out and handed it to me. It was a cheesy tourist brochure that looked like it had been printed when my grandfather was a boy. I leafed through its pages as Sharon cleared his throat and spoke.

“Let's see now. Families enjoy the Famine 'n' Flames package … in the morning we go upriver to watch Viking siege engines catapult diseased sheep over the city walls, then have a nice boxed lunch and return in the evening via the Great Fire of 1666, which is a real treat after dark, with the flames reflecting on the water, very nice. Or if you've only a few hours to spare, we have a lovely gibbetting 'round Execution Dock—right at sunset, popular with honeymooners—in which some excellently foul-tongued pirates give colorful speeches before being put to the rope. For a small fee you can even have your photo taken with them!”

Inside the brochure were illustrations of smiling tourists enjoying the sights he'd described. The final page was a photo of one of Sharon's guests posing with a gang of surly pirates wielding knives and guns.

“Peculiars do this stuff for
fun
?” I marveled.

“This is a waste of time,” Emma whispered, checking behind us anxiously. “I'll bet he's just running out the clock until the next patrol of wights arrives.”

“I don't think so,” I said. “Just wait …”

Sharon was plowing on as if he hadn't heard us. “… and you can see all the lunatics' heads arranged on pikes as we float beneath London Bridge! Lastly, there's our most requested excursion, which is a personal favorite of mine. But oh—never mind,” he said coyly, waving his hand, “come to think of it, I doubt you'd be interested in Devil's Acre.”

“Why not?” Emma said. “Too nice and pleasant?”

“Actually, it's rather a rough spot. Certainly no place for children …”

Emma stamped her foot and shook the whole rotting dock. “That's where our friends were taken, isn't it?” she shouted. “Isn't it!”

“Don't lose your temper, miss. Your safety is my highest concern.”

“Quit winding us up and tell us what's there!”

“Well, if you insist …” Sharon made a sound like he was slipping into a warm bath and began rubbing his leathery hands together, as if just thinking about it brought him pleasure. “Nasty things,” he said. “Dreadful things. Vile things. Anything you like, so long as what you like is nasty, dreadful, and vile. I've often dreamed of hanging up my oar pole and retiring there one day, perhaps to run the little abattoir on Oozing Street …”

“What name did you call it again?” said Addison.

“Devil's Acre,” the boatman said wistfully.

Addison shuddered from tip to tail. “I know it,” he said gravely. “It's a terrible place—the most depraved and dangerous slum in the whole long history of London. I've heard stories of peculiar animals brought there in cages and made to fight in blood-sport games.
Grimbears pitted against emu-raffes, chimpnoceri against flaming-goats … parents against their own children! Forced to maim and kill one another for the entertainment of a few sick peculiars.”

“Disgusting,” Emma said. “What peculiar would participate in such a thing?”

Addison shook his head ruefully. “Outlaws … mercenaries … exiles …”

“But there
are
no outlaws in peculiardom!” said Emma. “Any peculiar convicted of a crime is brought by the home guard to a punishment loop!”

“How little you know of your own world,” the boatman said.

“Criminals can't be jailed if they're never caught,” Addison explained. “Not if they escape to a loop like that first—lawless, ungovernable.”

“It sounds like Hell,” I said. “Why would anyone go there voluntarily?”

“What's Hell for some,” said the boatman, “is paradise for others. It's the last truly free place. Somewhere you can buy anything, sell anything …” He leaned toward me and lowered his voice. “Or
hide
anything.”

“Like kidnapped ymbrynes and peculiar children?” I said. “Is that what you're getting at?”

“I said nothing of the sort,” shrugged the boatman, busying himself with a rat plucked from the hem of his cloak. “Shoo there, Percy, Daddy's working.”

While he placed the rat gently aside, I gathered Emma and Addison in a tight huddle. “What do you think?” I whispered. “Could this … 
devil
place … really be where our friends were taken?”

“Well, they have to be keeping their prisoners inside a loop, and a pretty old one,” said Emma. “Otherwise most of us would age forward and die after a day or two …”

“But what do the wights care if we die?” I said. “They just want to steal our souls.”

“Maybe, but they can't let the ymbrynes die. They need them to re-create the 1908 event. Remember the wights' crazy plan?”

“All that stuff Golan was raving about. Immortality and ruling the world …”

“Yeah. So they've been kidnapping ymbrynes for months and need a place to hold them where they won't turn into dried fruit leather, right? Which means a pretty old loop. Eighty, a hundred years at least. And if Devil's Acre is really a lawless jungle of depravity …”

“It is,” said Addison.

“… then it sounds like a perfect spot for wights to secret away their captives.”

“Right in the heart of peculiar London, too,” said Addison. “Right under everyone's noses. Clever little blighters …”

“Guess that settles it,” I said.

Emma stepped smartly toward Sharon. “We'll take three tickets to that disgusting, horrible place you described, please.”

“Be very, very certain that's what you want,” said the boatman. “Innocent lambs like yourselves don't always return from Devil's Acre.”

“We're sure,” I said.

“Very good, then. But don't say I didn't warn you.”

“Only thing is, we don't have three gold pieces,” said Emma.

“Is that right?” Sharon tented his long fingers and let out a sigh that smelled like an opened tomb. “Normally I insist on payment up front, but I'm feeling generous this morning. I find your plucky optimism charming. You can owe me.” And then he laughed, as if he knew we'd never live to repay him, and stepping aside he raised a cloaked arm toward his boat.

“Welcome aboard, children.”

S
haron made a big show of plucking six wriggling rats from his boat before we boarded—as if a pestilence-free journey were a luxury afforded only to Very Important Peculiars—and then he offered Emma his arm and helped her step from the dock. We were seated three abreast on a simple wooden bench. While Sharon was busy untying the mooring rope, I wondered whether trusting him was merely unwise or if it crossed the line into recklessness, like lying down for a nap in the middle of a road.

The trouble with the merely unwise/deeply stupid line is that you often don't know which side you're on until it's too late. By the time things have settled down enough for you to reflect, the button's been pushed, the plane's left the hangar, or in our case, the boat's left the dock—and as I watched Sharon shove us away from it with his foot, which was bare, and I noticed that his bare foot was not quite human-looking, with toes as long as mini hotdogs and thick yellow nails that curled like claws, I realized with sinking certainty which side of the line we were on, and also that it was too late to do much about it.

Sharon yanked the ignition cord on a dinky outboard motor and it coughed awake in a cloud of blue fumes. Tucking his considerable legs beneath him, he lowered into the puddle of black fabric his cloak made in the boat. He revved the puttering engine, then steered us out of the underjetty, through a forest of looming wood pylons and into warm sunlight. Then we were in a canal, a man-made tributary of the Thames walled on both sides by glassy buildings and bobbing
with more boats than a toddler's tub at bath time—candy-red tugs and wide, flat barges and tour boats whose upper decks teemed with sightseers taking the air. Strangely, none of them trained their cameras at, nor seemed to even notice, the unusual craft that burbled past them, with an angel of death at the tiller, two blood-spattered children in the seat, and a dog in glasses peering over the side. Which was just as well. Had Sharon charmed his boat somehow so that only peculiars could see it? I decided to believe it was so, because there was nowhere to hide in it anyway, should we have needed to.

Looking it over in the full light of day, I noticed that the boat was extremely simple but for an intricately carved figurehead rising from its bow. The carving was shaped like a fat, scaly snake that curved upward in a gentle S, but where a head should've been was a giant eyeball, lidless and large as a melon, staring forever out before us.

“What is it?” I asked, running my hand over its polished surface.

“Yew wood,” Sharon called over the motor's growl.

“I would what?”

“That's what it's made from.”