Under_The_Whispering_Door_by_TJ_Klune

“I’m dead,” Wallace said.
Hugo beamed at him. “Yes. Yes, you are.”
Wallace ground his teeth together. “That’s not what—forget it. How the
hell can I pick up the cup?”
Hugo laughed. It was a low and rumbly thing that started in his chest and
poured out from his mouth. “Ah. I see. And anywhere else, you might have a
point. But not here. Not with these. Try it. I promise you won’t be
disappointed.”
No one could promise that with any certainty. The only thing he’d been
able to touch was Mei and the ground beneath his feet. And Apollo, but the
less said about that the better. This felt like a test, and he didn’t trust this man
as far as he could throw him. Wallace had never thrown a man before, and he
didn’t want to start now.
He sighed and reached for the cup, expecting his hand to pass through it,
ready to glare at Hugo as if to say See?
But then he felt the warmth of the tea, and he gasped when his fingers
touched the surface of the cup. It was solid.
It was solid.
He hissed when he jerked his hand up, sloshing tea over the side of the
cup and onto his fingers. There was a brief flare of heat, but then it was gone.
He looked at his fingers. They were pale as always, the skin unblemished.
“These teacups are special,” Hugo said. “For people like you.”
“People like me,” Wallace echoed dully, still staring at his fingers.
“Yes,” Hugo said. He finished pouring the tea into the remaining cups and
set the teapot back onto the tray. “Those who have left one life in preparation
for another. They were a gift when I became what I am now.”
“A ferryman,” Wallace said.
Hugo nodded. “Yes.” He tapped the stitched lettering on his chest. He
didn’t seem to notice the cable, his fingers disappearing through it. “Do you
know Charon?”
“No.”
“He was the Greek ferryman who carried souls to Hades over the rivers
Styx and Acheron that divided the world between the living and the dead.”
Hugo chuckled. “It lacks subtlety, I know, but I was younger when I named
this place.”