“Why is this the first I’m hearing of it?”
He strokes his beard. “Because it wasn’t until just this morning did I receive the last of the test results.”
I swipe the screen until I reach the full-body photograph of the girl. She looks exactly as a young girl would. Baby fat still rounds her cheeks. Bruises litter her knees and legs like any other young, active child’s. Her hair is stringy and matted, her nose small and pert. Her body is still that of a youth’s, with only the barest signs of puberty.
“How can this be?”
“That is a question I would very much like to find the answer to,” Finn’s father says.
I return the phone, leaning forward in the chair. “That Pan-child, the one who stabbed Finn . . . His teeth are similar to this girl’s. As are Todd’s, with Rosemary’s at a lesser degree.”
“It is very interesting coincidence, is it not?”
Todd and Rosemary both confirmed that they originated from 1846/47RYM/PEC-SP. But at the same time, Rosemary told me herself, under influence of truth serum, the earliest memory she could recall placed her at eight years of age.
She and Todd, associates of Lygari, were recruited as children—teenagers, but still. Pan is a child. This girl in the red cloak is a child. Lygari, as Koppenberg, is (or was) a benefactor at a school full of children.
Coincidences, the Caterpillar used to tell me, are never really coincidental at all.
“How long will it take us to reach this Connecticut?”
“It depends on where in the state this school is, of course, but I would estimate a few hours in a car.” He also leans forward. “A few hours is not what we have, though. Mr. Dawkins will fly us in to whatever location it is Ms. Lennox determines we must go; from there, we will obtain a car.” Now he stands. “Before then, though, there is one more vital piece of information you must hear that comes from the Librarian’s research. I myself only heard it shortly before you returned from interrogating Mrs. Carrisford.”
“Grymsdyke, I would ask you to stay.”
The web quivers as the spider bows. “As you wish, Your Majesty.”
Van Brunt opens the door; standing outside is another agent, ready to take my place at Finn’s side. “Tick-tock, Ms. Reeve.”
Tick-tock, indeed.
THE INSTITUTE’S CONFERENCE ROOM stands empty. We meet instead within the Librarian’s domain, deep below the basement in the Museum, as Sara claimed it was free of her bugs. Metal folding chairs have been shoved within the tiny office, and with Mary and the A.D. clicking away frantically on their laptops, the space seems even more claustrophobic than ever. There are only a handful of us down here, though; the rest of the agents within the Society are scouring the floors above for Sara’s bugs alongside Marianne, although they have all been outfitted with earpieces that allow them to hear what is being said without the surveillance being able to overhear.
Van Brunt wants the entire Society on the same page, and for this I am glad.
I cannot see the majority’s faces while he flatly yet concisely lays out what Sara related to the A.D. and myself, but there is no doubt shock reverberating within the Society. Mary herself is enraged at Sara’s duplicity, despite the circumstances; Victor nearly equally so as he mutters angrily beneath his breath. As Van Brunt talks, though, I stare down at the polished table of rock and quartz before me. Copies of Children’s and Household Tales, One Thousand and One Nights, Fairy Tales for Children. First Edition, Norwegian Folktales, two volumes entitled Duetsche Sagen, and Mother Goose Tales are spread out across the glassy surface alongside a number of file folders. I pick up one of the books just before Van Brunt concludes with, “This corroboration, along with research the Librarian has conducted, leaves no doubt in my mind over the identity of the man we now hunt.”
Well, now. He certainly has my attention. Or rather, the Librarian does, because she says, “Alice, you must wear special gloves to hold that book. It’s a first edition.”
I try not to roll my eyes when she passes me a pair sitting on her desk.
As I slip them on, she continues. “As many of you know, our active field agents have had little to no contact with any Timelines that directly associate with fairy tales. For one, most of these Timelines are associated with multiple stories—some dozens, some even hundreds—and almost all have some kind of magic within, making catalyst identification and retrieval difficult at best. Not too many of us are so willing to go up against clever witches, sorcerers, giants, genies, or the like, are we?”
A quiet tittering fills the room.
“Furthermore, a number of tales associated with the collected tomes of fairy tales are told in other places, leaving the question of whether or not they truly belong to singular Timelines or in fact have roots within many. A story can have its origins hundreds of years earlier but will have found popularity within a collection of a later date. Or a story can be featured in not one, but two or more famous collections. Which Timeline do we then search? Are they connected somehow?” She shrugs, her dark hair tumbling about her shoulders. “I’ll admit we never concerned ourselves much with locating catalysts from these sorts of stories. There was no evidence that any were in danger. Not once in all the years we’ve hunted our culprits has a single collection of fairy tales been deleted, at least to our knowledge. And none appeared on the wall in the Ex Libris bookstore that revealed targets.”
I glance down at the book in my hands, nearly afraid to open it, it appears so fragile. Finn had asked me about fairy tales before, hadn’t he? I’d told him I’d never given these much credence. My parents, scholars who preferred the classics, shied away from providing such books to my siblings and me. I’ve read many a Wonderlandian fairy tale and enjoyed them immensely, though, but I do not think they are quite the same as what the Librarian now talks about.
“It now appears to be for good reason,” she is saying, “for I am certain that this Gabriel Lygari, or Pfeifer, or Koppenberg is, himself, from a fairy tale.”
The A.D. head snaps up sharply from where it’d been hovering over his computer. “Like . . . Cinderella? Or Snow White? Or one of the princes?”
The Librarian’s smile is faint yet tight. “You are thinking of heroes and heroines, Jack. I meant more along the lines of a fairy tale villain. The Pied Piper of Hamelin, to be precise.”
Piper.
Pfeifer is German for piper. Lygari means liar in Icelandic. A lying piper.
“His story, though, is a difficult one to pin down.” She walks the scant distance over to the table. “It is featured in 1816/18GRIM-GT,” she picks up the pair of volumes titled Duetsche Sagen and holds them aloft, “and received great popularity there, as with many other fairy tales made famous by the Grimm brothers, but it is also found in much earlier texts, dating all the way back, if rumors are correct, to the fourteenth- and fifteenth-century. And even then, there are tales of how his story was told in stained glass dating back to circa 1300, except that window has long since been destroyed. His true name is not known, except that he is universally referred to as the Piper.”
And then she tells us a story.
A long time ago, Hamelin, a town in Germany, was plagued by a terrible rodent infestation. They contracted the services of a man who promised he could, for a fee, rid them of their problems. Pipes in hand, music floating through the town, he led the entirety of the town’s dazed rats to a nearby river and drowned them all. When it came time for Hamelin to uphold its end of the bargain and pay for services rendered, they reneged. Angered, the Piper then used his magical pipes to lure the townsfolk’s children away, never to be seen again.
A stone drops into the pit of my stomach as I listen to her tale. Puzzle pieces slide into place.
I set the book down and strip the gloves off. “What happened to the children he kidnapped?”
“No one knows.” Not a trace of familiar amusement is to be found on her lovely face. “Some versions claim he drowned them as he did the rats. Others say he led them
to a mountain and hid them away in it.”
My fingers beat against my knee, I’m so agitated. “What mountain? Where did this story take place?”
She’s uncharacteristically serious as she regards me. “Hamelin is a German city, now called Hameln, and that piece of the tale has never wavered amongst the various versions. As for the mountain . . .” She shrugs. “Some scholars believe it could be Koppelberg Hill. Or Koppenberg Mountain. Or perhaps the forests of Coppenbrügge, or even Poppenberg Mountain. Interestingly enough, there is a Koppenberg Mountain here, but it is a hill, and located in Belgium, nearly three hundred miles away.”
Koppenberg.
The A.D. and I exchange startled yet wary glances. At the same time, Mary snaps her fingers. “When Victor interrogated Todd, he claimed his contact’s names changed. He said those words, those names: Koppenberg. Koppelberg. And . . . and . . .” She smacks her forehead with a palm. “Bunting! Todd also used Bunting!”
The Librarian smiles, as if Mary was in the middle of an exam and spouted the correct answer. “Bunting is occasionally mentioned as the name of the Piper in some of the tales. It refers to his clothes, as does pied.”
The A.D. flips his computer screen around for us to see. “You’re never going to believe this, but . . . remember that lady that attacked Alice and Mary at the library?”
“You say that as if it were forever ago,” Mary says. “It was just yesterday.”
He ignores her pointed remark. “Her name was Jenn Ammer.”
Mary waves a hand, as if she’s hurrying him along. “Believe me, we already know that.”
“But did you know that, just like Pfeifer is German, Ammer is, too? It means . . .” He pauses dramatically. “Bunting. Or at least it does according to this search engine’s translator.”
It all comes back to the legend, doesn’t it? To him. To the Piper of Hamelin.
“Don’t you speak German?” Mary asks the A.D.
“Yes, but it’s not like I learned the word for bunting, you know. Who talks about bunting nowadays?”
I turn to the Librarian. “How many children?”
She glances away from the bickering pair, back to me and my harshly voiced question. When she does not readily answer, I ask once more, “How many children is he said to have stolen?”
Sadness reflects in her blue eyes. “The accounts vary, of course, but it is somewhere around one hundred and thirty.”
One hundred and thirty children missing, stolen by a man with magical pipes, over seven hundred years ago, if one takes into account a destroyed stained glass window.
A child, one thought to be impossibly 731 years old, was found dead in my flat.
“Why Gabriel—or Gabe?” Victor is asking. He’s jumpy, as if he can barely hold himself still. “Is there any reference to that name in all of these fairy tales and legends?”
She shakes her head. “Not that I can find. I do not know why that is the commonality in all the aliases he uses. I wish I could tell you all what Timeline you could hunt him in, but I cannot. I can provide you with a list of all the texts he’s mentioned in, though. We must pray that they are enough.”
“He’s using them.” My fingers twist tightly in the cotton of the Victorian dress I still wear as I offer this firm assurance. “He’s using the children he stole. He’s transformed them, somehow. Enchanted them to become his minions. Those children we saw on the surveillance video are the same he’d stolen all those years ago, or at least some of them are. Who knows if he’s kidnapped others?”
Bleakness fills the room as the wheels in my head spin at frightening rates. We’ve been so blind. So very, very blind.
I turn to Van Brunt. “The teeth—they’re all the same. What if Todd and Rosemary are not who they think they are, but two of these children now grown? Rosemary claimed she could not remember anything prior to her eighth year. We know that the tales told within books, while subject to interpretation, have events that are unchangeable. Sweeney Todd died in String of Pearls. So did Mrs. Lovett. What if these two were made to believe they were people they were not? What if they were actively encouraged to become like characters from other stories?”
“Like an army.” Victor smacks his hands together, eyes gleaming. “His own army of storybook villains. My God, it’s a terrifying thought. The list of villains is endless!”
“What kind of magic does he possess?” I ask the Librarian. “What do the tales you’ve read say?”
“There is no clarification beyond his ability to mesmerize people and animals alike with his music.”
Mary reaches over and settles one of Victor’s bouncing knees with a hand. “Which he’s doing. He did it to Alice and me, although I was mostly unconscious for that bit. All of the surveillance footage shows the children using pipes.” She snaps her fingers twice, then thrice. “Oh! Oh! Pan was playing pipes whenever he visited Wendy—or so we assume, based on the footage we have.”
“Meaning the boy we thought to be Peter Pan may not be Pan at all!” Victor’s voice is unnaturally loud. “What if he was just another one of Hamelin’s children, created to be a character from a different fairy tale?”
Mary flies out of her seat, her laptop clattering down onto the metal chair. “He could fly, though! Like the real Pan, only I’m positive Victor is right. I’d bet every last penny I have that he isn’t the true Peter Pan. So that means Pfeifer’s magic must be more than just pure brainwashing.”
Stories, the Librarian and Finn have always told me, are open to interpretation. Mine, for example, was much darker and complex than the children’s tale those nowadays see it as. There were no chessboard pieces, there was no silliness.
Pfeifer’s story must be much more, too.
“The girl in my room.” I round on Van Brunt. “She wore a red cloak. Could she—”
The A.D., Mary, and Victor burst out in unison, “Little Red Riding Hood!”
Well, now. Isn’t that a fitting name for the girl? “Did you know this?” I ask Van Brunt.
He strokes his short, dark beard thoughtfully. “It was certainly my first thought when I saw her.”
Chances are, though, she was not this Little Red Riding Hood, though. Just as Todd and Rosemary are most likely not the real Sweeney Todd and Mrs. Lovett.
“What about Jenn Ammer?” Mary asks. “Could she possibly believe she is a fairy tale person?”
“We have yet to get proper access to her at the police station,” Van Brunt says. “A pit bull of a lawyer appeared, shutting us down. But once we do, we will certainly find the answer to that question.” He clears his throat. “We must entertain the notion that he is training them in whatever magical arts he possesses, whether it be through enchanted pipes or true ability. It will be critical for us to study the footage even further and see if we can determine any other assumed characters these children may be. And that, of course, is if they have actually been convinced they are those who they are not. For all we know, there still may be some who have maintained their original persona.”
“There were not a hundred and thirty children in the footage,” I say. “Not even close. A dozen, perhaps.”
Victor’s knees are bouncing rapidly, he is so agitated. “Sweeney Todd was known for his blade work; the Todd that we knew was equally adept. The boy we assumed was Pan can fly. I don’t think this is a one-stop shop when it comes to training. It looks as if Pfeifer is tailoring each child to specific gifts.”
“To do specific parts of his bidding.” Mary swears quietly. “Jenn Ammer was, believe it or not, pretty handy with a gun. She was a guardian of sorts, protecting whatever work he was doing at the library.”
It’s unbearably rude, but I cut off Van Brunt’s burgeoning comment to ask, “Victor, what do you mean Todd was adept at blade work?”
All eyes turn to him.
He scratches at the back of his neck, eyes darting from side to side. “The dead don’t wield weapons, do they?” When quiet shock is his response, he adds fiercely, “Finn killed
the bastard after he edited into Sara’s Timeline. It’s how we got there, actually, considering we didn’t have a pen amongst us. We followed him before the door closed, ending up in some alley. Finn shot a bullet right between his eyes. By the time he was done, there was no way Todd was ever going to use his knives on another person, let alone destroy another catalysts.”
Mary holds her hands together, staring upward. “Thank God.”
Pride fills my bloodthirsty heart.
Van Brunt, though, is silent for a long moment as he stares at his son.
“We knew you wanted to be there.” Victor is much more subdued and yet still clearly frantic. “When it was done, but . . . We couldn’t risk letting him get away again. Not after what he did to Mom.”
“Did he suffer?”
I must admit, it’s not the question I thought Van Brunt would ask. Nor would I have guessed there would be so much savage hope in such a request.
Victor’s grin is just as savage. “Three shots preceded the one right between his eyes. For good measure, Finn placed one in the bastard’s heart, too.” The grin curls wickedly. “I might have gotten a shot in afterward, too.”
“Did you shoot his dick off, love? Like you’d always said you’d do?” Mary asks.
Across the room, the A.D. cringes, his hand instinctively moving between his legs.
“Yes.” The doctor’s eyes gleam nearly sadistically, he is so pleased with this confirmation. “I sure as hell did.”
“Good,” she says. And then, more fervently, “He deserved that and more.”
A long moment passes before anyone else speaks. Van Brunt merely folds his hands, draping them over his knees, as his head lowers. Soon enough, though, the emotion he’s so desperate to contain disappears and the man who is always in control returns.
“Do you know what this means? We’ve been going about this all wrong.” Victor’s out of his chair, attempting to pace between the slim strips of spaces between where we all sit. A finger juts my way. “The sword wasn’t Neverlandian, not if that isn’t the real Peter Pan. It would be something of the Piper’s—something fairy tale-ish.”
The Forgotten Mountain (The Collectors' Society Book 3) Page 11