The Collectors' Society 01 (18 page)

My legs give out from beneath me, and I drop to the ground before the window. That’s my last name.
My
real last name, not the one I’ve used for privacy since coming back from Wonderland.

My name.

Mine
.

Isn’t it?

“If it’s any consolation,” he continues, his soft voice laced with a bitter rue, “it’s said I’m based off some guy that Mark Twain knew, too. That’s who wrote my books, by the way.”

I root around for my voice. “But . . .”

“I wish I could give you all the answers, but I don’t know how it works. I really don’t. That name was never in your story, nor was your father. But the Librarian tells me that it’s the
intent
that matters. Maybe Carroll somehow instinctively knew of your history. Maybe his intent, when it came to that book, was to have a girl named Alice Liddell whose father worked at a university.”

There’s that word again.
Intent
. “But how could there be another one? Another Alice Liddell?”

“Some scientists insist that there are always doppelgängers out there in the world. Maybe it’s like that for Timelines, too. Maybe each Timeline has somebody who is similar to another somewhere else. I don’t know, though.”

“With the same
name?
Same
family?
Same face?”

“You and she look nothing alike. I can promise you that.”

I close my eyes, dragging my knees up to my chest. Son of a jabberwocky, am I about to have a panic attack? I can’t remember the last. No, that’s a lie. I can, and it’s a day I’d really rather never recall for the rest of my life.

“I know this is a lot to take in—”

My sigh is bitter as I drop my head to my raised knees. “That’s putting it mildly.”

“But maybe
this
is your initiation. Have you considered that? Because it’s one we all go through. Nobody has an easy time grasping this, Alice. Nobody. There are no robes, no candles, no vows . . . There’s just an identity crisis. If you can make it through to the other side, you’re in.”

I mutter, “It’s a bloody shoddy initiation.”

A touch to my shoulder startles my head up. And there he is, squatting down in front of me, his phone to his ear. “I know.”

Something inside me quakes, wants to break free, but I refuse to allow it. I allow a shuddery breath and then force my body to comply with my wishes. “Aren’t you the quiet one? Do you normally like sneak upon unsuspecting ladies?”

He shrugs as he tucks his phone back into a pocket. “You don’t need the phone anymore.”

My face flames as I yank the blasted machine away. “Right. Of course.”

“So.” He fully sits down, scooting against the wall next to me so that our bodies are just an inch or so apart. “About your request . . .”

“I had a request?”

“You wanted me to show you around New York, right?”

Bloody hell, do I feel like a tomato right now. “I wasn’t—”

“I’d be happy to.”

My head tilts to face him, but the truth is, it feels as if we’re been spinning rather than sitting.

“Can we start small, though? I have somewhere I have to go in a few hours, but a walk would be good. Maybe coffee? We can do the more touristy stuff later.”

Could my skin warm any further? Of course he has plans. Why wouldn’t he? Just because I’m his partner doesn’t mean he owes me anything. “I don’t want to inconvenience you—”

“Besides. For all of us who weren’t born in the Twenty-First Century, the true initiation is a coffee shop, you know. There’s one about six blocks over that’s good. It’s always crowded, but their espressos are worth the wait. It’s like liquid crack.” At the look on my face, he quickly clarifies, “It’s addictive.”

“I don’t drink coffee.”

His eyebrows lift up.

“I’m English, remember?”

Oh, those beautiful lips of his curve upward again. “Plenty of English drink coffee.”

“I prefer tea.”

“Luckily for you, they have tea at coffee shops. And hot chocolate, if that’s what you like.”

I glance down at the dress I’d found in Sara’s closet. It’s white and loose and barely grazes my knees, with crocheted lace trimming the hem.

As if he knows what I’m wondering, he assures me, “You look fine. Very boho. It’s a good look for you.”

“Boho?”

I’m annoyed at how much I like the quirk of his mouth. “Bohemian. Do they not say that in England? Are bohemians coffee drinkers, maybe? A rare breed?”

I give in and allow myself to giggle. A small weight lifts off my shoulders, even if momentarily.

W
HEN A LOUD HORN beeps, Finn grabs my arm and tugs me back up onto the pavement. “Careful!”

My hair flutters in my face as a bright-yellow vehicle with the word
Taxi
on it zooms by. “Do you ever get used to this?”

“Actually,” Finn says, “yeah. You do.”

The Twenty-First Century is chaotic, loud, and terrifying, to be honest. According to Finn, people travel in cars on the road and planes in the sky and, from what I can tell, they’re all in constant motion. He’s been good about pointing things out to me, and not talking down as he explains how things work in this modern day and age, but panic steadily rises in my chest anyway. I have questions about all that he’s already said and more, but I’m afraid it’ll be too much if I let them out. He assures me that, over the coming weeks (and months and years, if I choose to stick around), I’ll get to know this city and century like the back of my hand. While that, too, is a terrifying prospect, I choose in this moment to focus on the mystery next to me, to narrow down my focus onto something, and someone, I can handle.

“How long have you been here?” And then, realizing my question smacks more strongly of accusation than curiosity, I clarify, “In New York, with Van Brunt.”

Finn’s hands stuff into his pockets as he angles us toward a street corner with colored lights on it. “I was recruited when I was fifteen, so that makes it thirteen years now.”

He’s just a few years older than me.

We stop alongside the crowd. Does the light have something to do with movement? “When I came here, Brom got me the best tutors money could buy, put me into high school, and then paid for college. He wouldn’t let me officially work for the Society until I graduated, although I did work on numerous missions prior to that.” His smile is a bit naughty. “Unofficially, of course.”

I watch a couple nearby laugh over something on one of their phones. Goodness, does anyone go anywhere without theirs? “During that time, he adopted you?”

“He and his wife, yes.”

But the flat yet anguished look on Finn’s face books no room for further questioning on that subject, no matter how much they burn inside me. Is Brom married? What name had he mentioned? Katrina? In that vein, hadn’t Finn mentioned his mother was dead? And oh bloody hell, how could I have forgotten the mention of a brother?

“Victor came here even younger.” He stares off into the distance. “I think he was like three or four. And Mary came when she was a teen, too. The A.D. was also young. A lot of members come as kids.”

“Like a sweatshop,” I say with mock solemnity.

His laugh is a puff of surprise. “Or a child army.”

“Are they your siblings, then? Has Van Brunt adopted the lot of you?”

“Victor, yes,” he admits. “But not the others.”

Aha! And also, really? “Victor’s last name is . . .” I search around in my memory for the distinctive surname. “Frankenstein. Correct?”

Finn rocks back on his heels, like he’s unsure if he’s telling secrets that are better left to others. But then he says, “It’s his birth name. Legally, he’s now Victor Van Brunt.”

“Would people recognize his name, like they would yours?”

A small, glowing man appears in the black box across the street at the same time the light above turns green. The crowd surges forward.
Green means go
. “Worse. Way worse.”

“But he goes by Frankenstein at the Institute.”

A pair of young women strolling near us whisper furtively to one another, their eyes hot upon us. Have I spoken too loudly?

Luckily, Finn blocks their stares with his body. “It’s complicated. Honestly? I’m surprised he told you that name at all. It’s an extremely touchy subject.”

I’m glad when the women turn down a different street than us. “Some woman was the first to say it. At that first meeting.”

I wait for the man next to me to explain the discrepancy between Frankenstein and Van Brunt, but he doesn’t. So I say, instead, “I should have liked to have continued my education. Like I told you, my father was a learned man.”

“Didn’t Wonderland have schools of higher learning?”

He sounds genuinely curious. “You all don’t know much about Wonderland, do you?”

“No,” he admits. “There are those Timelines that are still mysteries to us thanks to the fantastical elements of their stories.”

“Is there no magic in your original Timeline?”

He pulls in a deep breath. “None.” And then, more gently, “I’m fascinated by those that do, though. And even though I go in, knowing it will happen, I’m still amazed by what I see.”

I’m quiet for a long moment. “There are many amazing things in Wonderland.”

His head briefly tilts toward me before we reach another intersection.

My fingers curl inward, nails digging into my palm. “To answer your question, yes, there are schools of higher learning in Wonderland. But I never attended any.” My smile is tight. “I suppose you must think me uneducated or ignorant, having spent so much of my formative years running mad amongst Wonderlanders.”

“Not at all. And I’d be the last person who could judge such things.”

There’s bitterness there, and hints of intriguing resentment. But this, too, is made clear to be a closed subject, so I prompt, “You said the Society recruited you when you were fifteen? Why then? Why not when you were younger, like Victor?”

Silence settles between us on the busy street for several seconds. “That was shortly after the last official book I was in ended. Nobody can leave a Timeline until that happens.”

It’s weird how much I enjoy these tiny morsels of information he’s reluctantly doling out to me. “How many books were you a subject of?”

The question embarrasses him, because his tan cheeks color ever so slightly. “Four. Although . . .” He sighs, running a hand through his sandy hair. “I’m told there were more, but they were unfinished. So, I guess they don’t count, thank God.”

It’s a sobering thought. “And I was in two.”

He motions toward a shop several doors down, nodding. Suddenly, a woman wearing sky-high shoes falls to the ground a few feet away, knocked down by a man paying more attention on his phone than on the sights before him. Finn is immediately there to help her up when the man refuses to give her a single glance, and gently holds onto her until he’s assured she’s okay. And then, once that’s done, he obtains her a cab and pays the driver to take her wherever it is she’s going.

She lowers her window as the cab pulls away. She’s as enchanted with this man as I apparently am.

“Sorry,” he tells me.

“What are you sorry for now?”

“We were in the middle of a conversation, and I—”

He needs to stop this. I won’t ever be able to resist him if he doesn’t. I promptly cut him off and ask, “Have you ever read your books?”

“One,” he admits. “The first one. After Brom explained the truth to me, I went to the Librarian, curious. She cautioned me about reading them, though—as I’m sure she cautioned you. It sat on my dresser for months before I touched it.”

“That must have been . . .” I search for the right word. “Unnerving to read about people you know in such a way.”

He opens a glass front door for me, and a blast of strong aromas tantalizes my nose. So this is a coffee shop. It’s crowded and loud, just like he cautioned, and filled with people drinking and talking and playing on their phones or computers. Some people are dressed elegantly, some in barely anything at all.

I am enraptured by what I see.

“I wish now that I hadn’t, to be honest,” Finn says in a low voice once the door closes behind us. “What made it worse was being around other people who’d read those books, too. Other kids in school. Adults I knew. Miniseries or movies shown on TV or in classroom. References made in passing that were like little jabs coming out of nowhere. Lots of talk around Banned Books Week. People thinking they knew me—” He shakes his head. “They don’t know shit. Authors can only allow readers to learn so much about their characters. As much as they try to build someone three dimensionally on a page, words are still limited and subject to imagination and interpretation.”

He leads us over to one of the few unoccupied tables, in the back by a large window. The woman at the next table looks up at Finn, her eyes widening in appreciation before she spots me.

I ask him, “I take it your stories are popular?”

A hard breath is blown out. “I guess you could say that.” He’s contemplative. “Nothing like yours, though.”

I swallow my unease. “Reading them, though . . . Was that as unnerving as having to listen to people talking about them?”

“It was a complete mindfuck. What would you like to drink?”