The Silenced Tale, стр. 118
“I guess it was too much to hope for,” Bevel says quietly. “That the magic would linger long enough for just one more spell.”
“It was worth a try,” Pip says.
“Yes,” Bevel says sadly. “But this world isn’t a story. This world isn’t anything like the one I come from.”
“Not to be persnickety,” I say gently, “but this is exactly the world you come from. And it’s not so very different from Hain.”
“Oh, shut it, Bossy Forssy. You don’t have to keep indirectly apologizing for trapping me here,” Bevel snarks. “I chose to stay, didn’t I? I chose to . . . anyway, I chose.”
“You did,” Pip says. “And I just want to let you know that we’ll be here to help you adjust to—”
A tap on the doorframe makes Pip sit up ramrod straight and snap her mouth shut, like an errant child caught out by her governess. Standing in the doorway is a middle-aged man in the dark blue uniform of the Toronto Police Service. His hair is flecked with gray, his gaze tired but direct, and for a moment, he reminds me strongly of Rupin Pointe—upright, kindly, worn out by his duties, but also firmly and nobly beholden to them.
“I’m sorry to interrupt,” the man says, “but I’m looking for Lucy and Syth Piper?”
“That’s us,” Pip says, eyes narrowed warily.
“Ah,” he says, and shifts, picking at the side of his trousers with one fingernail, clearly uncomfortable. Clearly about to impart news he’d rather not. “I’m afraid that I need someone to . . . to come down to the morgue with me to identify the body, please.”
The body. As if the creator of my whole world could be reduced to so pithy and hollow an epithet.
“I’ll go,” Pip says, rising stiffly from the uncomfortable hospital chair. “You’ve got a broken rib.”
“No,” I say, putting a hand over hers. “No, please, I . . . I want to do this. For him.”
“Okay,” Pip says, and tries to pretend she’s not relieved that I’ve volunteered.
The morgue is in the basement of the hospital, and the room is chilly in a way that has very little to do with the actual temperature. There are far more than three bodies laid out on the gurneys in orderly rows in the room. And while this is the closest hospital to the convention center, it cannot be the only one to which the casualties—both living and not—were ferried.
The police officer stops me just inside the room and introduces a similarly weary-looking fellow.
“Detective Khouri,” I say, holding out my hand for him to shake.
“Mr. Piper,” the detective says. “I apologize that we’re meeting again like this.”
“Yes,” I say, not liking the feeling of being on the back foot.
“You know, I tried to look you up, after the hospital,” the detective says, hands in his pockets, emanating a friendly, casual air. It doesn’t fool me—I am too familiar with the spark of curiosity in his eye, see it too often in the mirror, to fall for it.
“Oh?” I ask, matching him tone for tone, raised eyebrow for raised eyebrow. “And what did you find?”
“Not very much, I’ll tell you,” Khouri puffs out in a chuckle. “You must be a hell of a spook, for you to be so un-existing.”
I raise my other eyebrow at his invention.
“What?” he asks. “That’s a word.”
“Certainly,” I allow. “If you say so.”
We both crack a grin at one another, aware that our respective positions and duties will allow this conversation and line of inquiry to go no further. He will never know who I am, not really, and he accepts that. He believes that I do not really know what he’s been investigating all this time, and I will let him continue to believe it. Whether he is aware that I am allowing him this fiction, I do not know, but I don’t feel like pressing the issue.
“Wanna tell me what actually happened in that hole?” the detective ventures. “Just between you and me? One agency mook to another?”
I allow my mouth to curl into what Pip calls my “enigmatic Cheshire Cat grin.” Khouri sighs and scrubs his hand through his hair, chuckling and shaking his head.
“Right, then. On to the grim stuff, then. This way, Mr. Piper.” His cheerful demeanor falls away, solemnity taking its place. “Normally, a detective from Toronto would be walking you through this,” he says as we wind our way to the back corner of the room. “But I wanted to be on hand to close out this case personally. We’re still searching through the deceased to find the, ah, the stalker, but I’m starting to wonder if he got caught in the blast.”
He looks askance at me, and I offer him nothing.
“Right, then. I guess I should take that as a sign that I won’t find anything?” he asks, but he’s not really directing the question at me, not now.
A doctor with a clipboard and a face mask, her hair bound back in a colorful hijab, nods respectfully. “Mr. Piper?”
“Yes.”
“We just want you to confirm the identity of this man.” She gestures to the body under the sheet. It bulges upward almost obscenely, and it is clear that it is nude. “You only have to look at his face. You don’t have to say anything if you don’t want to. Just a nod is enough. Are you prepared?”
Am I prepared? My heart flutters hard against my cracked rib, and I wince and press my palm down hard against it to relieve the ache. Kouhri’s wise dark eyes follow the gesture, and I can tell that he’s cataloged that I am injured. Perhaps this humanizes me in his eyes a little, for his expression softens a fraction.
“N-n-o,” I husk out, honestly. “Bu-but let-t-t us be-be-gi-i-in all th-th-the sa-me.”
Thankfully, no one comments on my stutter. The coroner reaches out, and gently, respectfully, folds back the sheet.
They