The Ferryman Institute Read Online Free PDF

felt perfectly comfortable. It was originally a fun little perk—how many people could say they’d trekked across Antarctica in a Hawaiian T-shirt and flip-flops?—that Charlie now found only irritating.
    He’d just started lathering up when he heard the main door to his office open and slam shut, followed shortly by the familiar cadence of three-inch heels thumping across his floor. Each small thud came in a rhythm he’d come to know instinctively, which meant it’d only be a moment before—
    â€œCharlie? Is that you in there?”
    The voice belonged to his manager, Melissa Johnson. If her tone was any indication, she was unhappy, and Charlie was willing to bet he knew why.
    â€œNope,” Charlie replied casually as he ran the soap under his armpits. “Ghost of Churchill.”
    His comment was promptly ignored. “Jesus Christ, Charlie, where have you been? You’ve been gone all day.”
    He found it somewhat remarkable that Melissa was confounded by that. After five years of being his manager, Charlie figuredshe’d have moved past being irritated by his frequent disappearances. That led him to conclude she was either naively optimistic or had medium-term memory problems. For her sake, he sincerely hoped it wasn’t a combination of the two.
    â€œI’ve been out and about,” he said. Charlie decided it was best to leave out the bit about diving into canyons and whatnot.
    Melissa, however, seemed less concerned with the what or where of it all than she was with the why . “I called you at least ten times!” she cried, exasperated. “Why didn’t you pick up?”
    Charlie grabbed the shampoo. “I lost my phone,” he said. This was a semitrue statement. He was trying a minimalist approach to answering his manager’s questions this time around to see if maybe he could avoid some of her wrath. Based on the empirical evidence, the answer was no.
    â€œI keep telling you, you can’t just disappear like that. It’s my responsibility to know where you are at all times. What if there was an emergency? And how the hell did you lose your phone again ?”
    â€œWell . . . ,” he began, unsure of whether he should make something up or just tell the truth. He wanted the former, but his brain wasn’t up to creating a plausible cover story that didn’t end with him looking like an asshole. That left Charlie with the latter, which unfortunately he already knew ended with him looking like an asshole.
    â€œI may or may not have thrown it off a cliff.” In his defense, the constant ringing was getting really annoying. Charlie hated that Ferryman phones deliberately came without a Do Not Disturb setting, but he supposed he was also the perfect example of why they didn’t. On the flip side, throwing his phone off the cliff had provided a far better reason for not calling back, so perhaps it wasn’t a total loss.
    A long silence followed. The last bits of dirt and detritus from his earlier adventures flowed down the drain, most likely with what little respect Melissa still had for him. When she finally replied, her voice managed to combine equal parts utter shock and complete resignation into one impressive, two-word question.
    â€œYou what?”
    Charlie turned the shower off, knowing full well his sarcasm was escalating to dangerous levels and yet feeling completely powerless to stop it. “I mean, it might still work,” he said. “I’ll be honest, though, I couldn’t find enough of the pieces to check. How durable was this last one supposed to be?”
    There were times Charlie was his own worst enemy.
    He drew a squiggly line on the shower door. Beyond the condensation, he could make out the vague form of his manager. Her shoulder-length blond hair and long athletic legs were what most people first noticed about Melissa, but her affable personality and generally easygoing