Necropolis (16 page)

"No. It's more complicated than that."

I looked back at the door that we'd come through. It was now below and behind us. "How do the doors work?" I asked.

"How do you mean?"

"How do you know where they'll take you?"

He stopped and turned to look at me. "If you just wander through them, they'll take you anywhere," he said. "But if you know exactly where you want to go, that's where they'll take you."

"Can anyone use them?"

"The doors in your world were built just for the five of you."

"What about Richard?"

'You can each take a companion with you, if you're so minded. Just remember to decide where you're going before you step through or you could end up scattered all over the planet."

We continued on our way, but after another couple of minutes, the Librarian suddenly stopped, reached up, and took out a book. "Here you are," he said. "This is you."

I looked at the book suspiciously. Like all the others, it was oversize, bound in some gray fabric, old but perhaps never read. It looked more like a school book than a novel or a biography. I noticed that it had fewer pages than many of the others.

"Is that it?" I asked.

"Absolutely." The Librarian seemed disappointed that I wasn't more impressed.

"That's my whole life?"

"Yes."

"My whole life up to now…"

"Up to now and all the way to the end."

The thought of that made my head swim. "Does it say when I die?"

"The book is all about you, Matt," the Librarian explained patiently. "Inside its pages you will find everything you have ever done and everything you will do. Do you want to know when you next meet the Old Ones? You can read it here. And yes, it will tell you exactly when you will die and in what manner."

"Are you telling me that someone has written down everything that happens to me before it happens?" I know that was exactly what he had just said, but I had to get my head around it.

'Yes." He nodded.

"Then that means that I've got no choice. Everything I do has already been decided."

'Yes, Matt. But you have to remember, it was decided by you."

"But my decisions don't mean anything!" I pointed at the book, and suddenly I was beginning to hate the sight of it. "Whatever I do in my life, the end is still going to be the same. It's already been written."

"Do you want to read it?" the Librarian asked.

"No!" I shook my head. "Put it away. I don't want to see it."

"That's your choice," the Librarian said with a sly smile. He slid the book back into the space it had come from. But I had one last question.

"Who wrote the book?" I asked.

"There is no author listed. All the books in the library are anonymous. That's one of the reasons why it makes them so hard to catalog."

I was beginning to feel miserable. The dreamworld seemed to exist to help us, but every time we came here, it was simply confusing. Jamie and Pedro had both found this too. "You call yourself a librarian," I snapped at the man. "So why can't you be more helpful? Why don't you have any answers?"

He tapped the spine of the book. "All the answers are here," he said. "But you just refused to look at them."

"Then answer me this one question. Am I going to win or lose?"

"Win or lose?"

"Against the Old Ones." I swallowed. "Am I going to get killed?"

"We are experiencing some turbulence…"

The Librarian was still looking at me, but he hadn't spoken those words. With a sense of frustration, I felt myself being sucked away. There was someone leaning over me. A member of the cabin crew.

"I'm sorry I've had to wake you up," she said. "The captain has put on the seat belt sign."

I looked at my watch. We still had four more hours in the air. Richard and Jamie were asleep, but I knew I wouldn't be able to join them. I took out my notepad and started writing again.

Four hours until London.

Soon we will be home.

THIRTEEN

Crossing Paths

Scarlett thought she'd be safe, back at school. She'd slip back into the crowd, and nobody would notice her. After all, nothing exciting ever happened at school. Wasn't that the whole point? So, for the first time in her life, she found herself looking forward to the next Monday morning. There would be no bombs, no strange men in cars, no cryptic messages. She would be swallowed up by math and history and physics, and everything would be all right.

But it didn't happen that way.

Shortly before lunch, she was called into the headmistress's office. There was no explanation, just a brief: "Mrs. Ridgewell would like to see you at twelve fifteen." Scarlett was nervous as she climbed the stairs. In a way, she'd been expecting trouble ever since the trip to St. Meredith's. She had been the center of attention for far too long and for all the wrong reasons. Her work had gone rapidly downhill.

She'd been told off twice for daydreaming in class. And then there had been that terrible math test. The teachers had already decided that all the publicity had gone to her head, and Scarlett fully expected Mrs.

Ridgewell to read her the riot act. Get your head down. Pull your socks up. That sort of thing.

But what the headmistress said came right out of the blue.

"Scarlett, I'm afraid you're going to be leaving us for a few weeks. I've just had a phone call from your father. It seems that some sort of crisis has arisen…"

"What crisis?" Scarlett asked.

"He didn't say. He was very mysterious, if you want to know the truth. But he wants you to join him immediately in Hong Kong. In fact, he's already arranged the flight."

There was a moment's silence while Scarlett took this in. There were all sorts of questions that she wanted to ask, but she began with the most obvious. "Has this got something to do with what happened to me?"

"I don't think so."

"Then what?"

"He didn't say." Mrs. Ridgewell sighed. She had been at St. Genevieve's for more than twenty years and it showed. Her office was cluttered and a little shabby, with antique furniture and books everywhere. A Siamese cat — it was named Chaucer — lay asleep in a basket in a corner. 'You haven't had a very good term, have you, Scarlett?"

"No." Scarlett shook her head miserably. "I'm sorry, Mrs. Ridgewell. I don't know what's going on, really. Everything seems to have gone wrong."

"Well, maybe we should look on the bright side. A complete break for a few weeks might do you good.

I'll ask your teachers to prepare some work for while you're out there —and, of course, we're going to have to recast the Christmas play. I have to say that it is all very inconvenient."

"Didn't he say anything?"

"I've told you everything I know, I'm afraid. I thought he would have discussed it with you."

"No. I haven't heard from him."

"Well, I'm sure there's nothing to worry about. He told me he'd call you tonight. So you've just got time to say good-bye to your friends."

"When am I leaving?"

"Your flight is tomorrow."

Tomorrow! Scarlett couldn't believe what she was hearing. Tomorrow was only a few hours away. How could her dad have done this to her? He hadn't mentioned anything when they were in the Italian restaurant. What crisis could possibly have arisen so quickly?

Scarlett spent the rest of the day in a complete daze. Her friends were equally surprised, although the truth was that she was beginning to get a bit of a reputation. She was weird. First the church and now this. She didn't even get to see Aidan. She looked for him on the way home and tried texting him, but he didn't reply. Mrs. Murdoch had already heard the news. She had started packing by the time Scarlett got home. And she didn't seem pleased.

"Not a word of warning," she muttered. "And no explanation. What do you suppose I'm meant to do, sitting here on my own?"

Paul Adams called that night as he had promised, but he didn't tell Scarlett anything she wanted to know.

"I'm really sorry, Scarly." His voice on the line was thin and very distant. "I didn't want to do this to you.

But things have happened… I don't want to explain until I see you."

"But you've got to tell me!" Scarlett protested. "Is Mom all right? Are you?"

"We're both fine. There's nothing for you to worry about. It's just that there are times when a family has to be together, and this is one of them."

"How long am I staying with you?"

"A couple of weeks. Maybe longer."

"Why?" There was silence at the other end of the line. "Can't you tell me anything?" Scarlett went on.

"It's not fair. It's the middle of term and I'm going to miss the school play and all the parties and everything!"

"Look — I'm just going to have to ask you to trust me. You'll be here in twenty-four hours, and I want to explain everything to you face-to-face, not over the phone. Can you do that for me, Scarly? Just wait until you get out here…and try not to think too badly of me until you arrive."

"All right." What else could she say?

"I've booked you into business class, so at least you'll be comfortable. Make sure you bring lots of books. It's a long flight."

After they said good-bye, Scarlett stood there, holding the receiver. She was feeling resentful and she couldn't stop herself. This wasn't fair. She was being bundled onto a plane and flown to Hong Kong as if she were a parcel being sent by FedEx. She was fifteen years old. Surely she should have some control over her own life?

The taxi came at noon. Scarlett's flight was leaving Heathrow at half past three. Mrs. Murdoch helped carry the suitcases out and load them into the back. The housekeeper was coming with her as far as the airport and would then return to the house alone. It was a gray, overcast day, and the weather reflected Scarlett's mood. She twisted round as they pulled away and watched the house disappear behind her. She knew she was going to be abroad for only a couple of weeks, but even so she couldn't escape a strange feeling. She wondered if she would ever see her home again.

They reached the bottom of the street and were turning left onto Half Moon Lane. And that was when it happened. A car crash. Scarlett only saw part of it, and it was only later that she was able to piece together what had happened. A car had been driving toward them — it had just come from the main road

— and a second car, a BMW, suddenly pulled out in front of it. Scarlett heard the screech of tires and the smash of impact and looked up in time to see the two cars ricocheting off each other, out of control.

One of them had been forced off the road and was sliding down a private driveway. She could make out at least three people inside.

"London traffic!" The taxi driver sniffed. He completed the turn, and they picked up speed.

Scarlett twisted round and looked out the back — at the crumpled hood of one of the cars, steam rising into the air, glass scattered on the road. A bus had been forced to stop, and the driver was climbing down, perhaps to see if he could help. The accident was already disappearing into the distance behind them, and she supposed it was just a coincidence. It couldn't mean anything.

But even so, it made her uneasy. It reminded her of the moment — two years ago, and just a short distance away — when she had almost been killed. And that made her think of the man who had contacted Aidan, wanting to meet her at the restaurant that had been blown to pieces before she could arrive. Scarlett sank back into her seat, feeling anxious, unable to control what was happening to her.

Mrs. Murdoch gazed out of the window with no expression on her face.

They parted company at the airport. Scarlett was flying as an unaccompanied minor — what the airline called a Skyflyer Solo. She had to suffer the indignity of a plastic label around her neck before she was led away. She said good-bye to Mrs. Murdoch, hugging her awkwardly. Then she picked up her hand luggage and headed for the departure gate.

***

Matt Freeman had landed at the same airport earlier that morning. There had been a uniformed chauffeur waiting for him and the others, and soon they were sitting in the air-conditioned comfort of a new Jaguar, being driven to their hotel. Richard was dozing in the front seat. He had spent much of the flight working on the diary and had barely slept at all. Jamie was looking out for his first sight of the city. Matt could see that so far he was disappointed. They were driving through a wasteland of blank, modern warehouses and unwelcoming hotels — the sort of places that always surround airports — and Matt wanted to tell him that this wasn't London at all.

Then, twenty minutes later, they turned off the motorway, and suddenly they were in the city itself, passing the Natural History Museum in Kensington — it was still closed for repairs following Matt's last visit there — then the Victoria and Albert Museum, Harrods, and Hyde Park Corner. Jamie stared, openmouthed. He had spent much of his life in the desert landscape of Nevada, and he wasn't used to seeing anything that was actually old. For him, London, with its monuments and palaces, was another world. He saw red buses, pigeons, policemen in blue uniforms, taxis — it was like falling into a pile of picture postcards. His one disappointment was that Scott wasn't with him. The two brothers had never been so far apart.

The driver took them to a hotel in Farringdon, a quiet part of London with narrow streets and a meat market that had been around when the animals were driven there in herds rather than delivered from Europe, prepacked in boxes. The Tannery, as it was called, was small and anonymous — Richard and Matt had stayed there before. It was just a few minutes away from the private house where the Nexus met. By the time they arrived, it was eleven o'clock. A meeting had been arranged for half past seven that evening, giving them the rest of the day to relax and unwind from the long flight.

They made their way into a reception area that was like the front room of someone's house, with thick carpets, flowers, and the comforting tick of a grandfather clock. The receptionist was a tight-lipped woman who took care not to give too much away. She glanced disapprovingly at Richard — still in his Hawaiian shirt, looking more like a beach bum than ever — and the two boys who were with him, then asked for their passports and slid forward some forms for them to sign.