The Cartographers(110)

His eyes jumped across the screen as she talked, double-checking everything.

Priya was right. That was it.

“That’s got to be the one,” Naomi breathed.

As if to agree, the Haberson Map chimed. They all looked up to see it had accepted the same data point—a slim glowing line from their office in Manhattan snaked its way across lower New York State, toward the destination.

He was halfway there. If the Haberson Map could find the house, maybe if he took it with him, something there could lead it to Agloe, too.

Felix grabbed his phone from the desk and hugged Priya over the back of her chair. “You’re a genius.”

“I know,” she laughed, but as he pulled away, she caught his arm, so he had to look at her. “Be careful, Felix,” she said. “We don’t even know who this Wally is, and he could be out there after her, too.”

“I will,” he promised. “Thank you both.”

As he turned to leave, Naomi called out to him one more time. “This can’t really be real, right?” she asked, looking over again at the impossible room in the NYPL still on his screen. “I mean, an entire town? How can it be real?”

“I don’t know,” Felix said. “But I’ll tell you when I get there.”



Even though he’d been awake all night, Felix never once felt his eyelids start to droop on the drive. The closer he drew to Rockland, the more nervous he became. In the east, dawn was threatening, the horizon already beginning to brighten. As he drove, winding along the quiet country roads through square after square of pastel-green-and-yellow farmland, Felix couldn’t help imagining a tiny image of his car cruising along one of the thin black lines on Nell’s highway map, and himself watching from above.

His phone, the Haberson Map’s route on its little screen, dinged politely—he was getting close to the house’s address they had found.

His pulse quickened. The old house was as close as he could get to this mysterious phantom settlement, but it was still at least a few miles away. What could he do once he reached it, to help the Haberson Map find his real target? Would this really work?

He gripped the steering wheel, anxious. It always had succeeded before. Traffic, weather, crime, practically any question he had—he could find a data stream in the Haberson Map to show him the answer. The greatest map in the world, a map that could achieve a level of accuracy and detail that was nearly unfathomable, but would it be able to explain what was actually going on this time?

Would it be able to show him the way better than a cheap, old paper version could?

A rumble of thunder startled him. Above, the deep navy clouds were curdling with the first hints of rain. Felix rolled up his window just as the gentle patter began against the roof of his car.

His phone dinged again, more urgent.

Please be there, Nell, Felix wished. Or at least have left me a clue about how to find you.

A moment later, the automated navigation voice advised him to turn, and then suddenly in front of him, he saw a long gravel driveway leading up from the road to the right and a rusted mailbox posted at its start. Felix eased onto the brake and guided the car off the asphalt and onto the damp path. The trees closed in overhead, unkempt. The way sloped slightly, and he took the corner slowly so as not to skid.

“You have arrived at your destination,” the Haberson Map announced.

At the top of the driveway, the trees opened up into a small clearing—where a house should have been but was no longer.

Felix stopped the car.

“You have arrived—” his phone started to say again, before he canceled the route, and silence fell back over him again.

This was it.

The place where Nell had lived when her parents and their friends discovered the Agloe map. Where whatever happened that summer had changed them all forever.

He waited for a moment and then climbed out of the car, even though it was raining. His shoes squished in the thickening mud as he went forward, to what remained of the house.

A great, black expanse stretched before him, a mixture of fine silt much darker than the greenish-brown earth beyond, where no weeds grew. And atop it, a mound of old, forgotten ash and scarred concrete foundation.

“Where are you, Nell?” he whispered.

He was so close to her. He could feel it. She, and the town, couldn’t be more than a mile or two away from him, in any direction.

He just had to find it.

Suddenly, the sound of footsteps on gravel broke the quiet patter. Felix turned quickly as a shadow emerged from the trees behind him and into the early morning gloom.

“Nell?” His heart thudded with hope.

But it wasn’t Nell.

“Felix,” William Haberson said.

Felix took a step back, surprised.

How did William know where he’d gone?

“You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” William remarked, opening an umbrella. Behind his boss’s form, Felix could now make out the dark outline of another company car, much farther back. He’d pulled into the driveway without noticing it parked there in the rain.

“How did you find me?” Felix asked.

“You were using the Haberson Map to navigate. We’re all on the same system.”

“Oh,” Felix replied, feeling silly. “Right.”

“I know how much Nell means to you. I figured you might not wait for the police.”