The mist crept around her again, and Nellie began to slide slowly backward.
“Oh, one more word of advice.” Her voice cut through the fog. “You want to catch the bastards? Use your peripheral vision. The real powers at play never take center stage. Don’t follow the marionette, follow the strings.”
“But I can’t see who’s pulling the strings! That’s why I’m down here. Nellie? Nellie?” The mist folded behind us as the slim longship drifted onward.
Nellie Fuller was well behind us when the boat ground to a halt again. This time it was not the white mist that coalesced into a barrier, but the dark shadows. As the gloom took solid shape, two obsidian pillars appeared to our left and right, followed by long strings of black, which dripped down from the roof of the cavern, stretching to the surface of the slow river like molasses from a spoon. The drips thickened, forming ink black bars. A deep chime sounded and the whole thing snapped into shape, just as the first gate had done.
“Here we go ag—” said Charon, and once more I was in a cushion of total silence.
The voice that issued from beyond the dark bars was small and meek, like a child’s. “The more and more you have of me, you’ll find the less that you can see.”
I thought for a moment. “That’s easy,” I said. “It’s darkness.”
The gate lost solidity and the boat eased forward again as the sounds echoing through the caverns returned. The darkness of the gate did not dissipate entirely, but spread and hung in the air like a curtain. Charon’s boat slipped through it like we were passing through a coal-black waterfall, and when we reached the far side the entire cave was as black as pitch.
I turned around, but the tunnel behind us was equally dark. “Charon?”
“I am here.”
“I can’t see a thing. Did I give the wrong answer?”
“I do not think so. You are doing very well.”
Ahead of us a pinprick of warm light appeared. It grew by slow degrees as Charon pressed the vessel steadily forward. Soon I realized it was a lantern, and clutching it was the silhouette of a girl.
“Hello?” I called.
“Who are you?” she said, suspiciously. She had an American accent.
“It’s all right. My name is Abigail,” I said. “Abigail Rook. What’s your name, young lady?” We drifted closer, and the girl’s face came into view. She could not have been more than ten; she was blonde with a heart-shaped face and wide, wary eyes. The little spirit, I realized, looked like she had stepped straight out of the tintype in Jackaby’s dossier. If I had had blood in my veins, it might have frozen. “Eleanor?”
“How do you know me?” she said. “Why are you here?”
The boat came to stop beside the girl, or else she was drifting along evenly with us now; I could see neither land nor water in the faint glow of the lantern. “We have a mutual friend,” I said. “He speaks very fondly of you. And very sadly. You meant a lot to him.”
Her brow crinkled. “I don’t have a lot of friends.”
“Neither does he, but he gets attached to the ones he has. Mr. Jackaby has the sight now. He’s made a life of using it to help people, especially people who are different. People who are misunderstood.”
Eleanor’s expression faltered. A curious brightness flickered in her eyes, and then she giggled. “Mr. Jackaby? With a mister and everything?” Her smile was timid and earnest.
“That’s right. He’s grown into a very special man since you—since you knew him. He’s a good man.”
“Jackaby,” said Eleanor. “He kept it.”
“Kept it? You mean the sight?”
“I mean the nickname. He never let me call him Jackaby when the other boys were around. It was all right when we were alone in the library, but he was so embarrassed when we were out in public. My Jackaby.”
“You mean Jackaby isn’t even his real name?” I said. I had often wondered what the R. F. stood for, but I had assumed I knew at least his surname. “Oh, for heaven’s sake, of course it isn’t. Pavel was right. Mr. Jackaby does have a thing about names.”
Eleanor laughed and caught her breath. The orange lamplight danced in her wide, wet eyes. “Names have power,” she whispered, nodding. “And he kept the one I gave him. My dear, sweet Jackaby.”
The lantern in her hands began to dim. Eleanor’s head shot up, her expression suddenly intense. Her hand reached toward me, fingers shaking with urgency. “Oh no. If he has the sight, then they’re coming for him, just like they came for me. They want it. They need it. Don’t let them take it. It’s important. You have to keep him safe!”
“Who’s coming for him?” I said. The light was flickering now, the cavern blinking into blackness and back with each sputter. Eleanor was beginning to drift away from the boat and back into the shadows.
“I never let them have it.” Her voice was panicked. “I never let them. I couldn’t. It’s too important.”
“Never let who have it? The council? Who is coming?”
“I could feel his eyes on me all the time, red as fire, waiting at the end.”
“Where? The end of what?”
“At the end,” she said, “of the long, dark hallway.” And then the lantern died away and the cavern was pitch-black again. In the darkness I could hear the faintest echo of a whisper. “My poor, sweet Jackaby.”
The sound of Charon’s pole splashing softly in the water and the echoes of drips were all that punctuated the silence for several minutes. My chest felt tight.
“One more, I should think,” Charon said at last.
“One more?”
“Yes,” he said. “Three feels right. I’ve been doing this for some time. You begin to notice the patterns.”
In another moment the boat shuddered beneath us. I still couldn’t see anything, but I could tell that we had stopped. If there was a gate before us, I could not describe it. Everything was inky black.
“Here we are,” Charon said.
A ringing note cut through the darkness, and then all sound ceased. The voice that followed was a man’s this time, clear and deep.
“My constant hunger must be fed, but if I drink, then I’ll be dead.”
Hunger and feeding and death—the notions felt uncomfortably close to home. A vampire? Vampires had to feed, but drinking wasn’t what killed them. I tried to think, but my mind kept flashing back to little Eleanor and Nellie Fuller. What creature ate constantly, but could not drink?
“Fire!” I said at last. The word had barely left my lips when I was pressed back in the ship by a wave of hot air and a blinding light. Twin columns of flame bloomed to either side of us, and the surface of the river flickered with blue heat. We were coasting forward again down a channel of burning black waters, and this time we were approaching a dock.
“We have arrived.” Charon nudged the ship forward until it bumped to a stop against the landing. The flames licked the sides of the old pier, but the ancient wood did not burn. “You did well, Abigail Rook.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight