The Silenced Tale, стр. 31
“Here,” Pip says, lunging for the barbecue grill sitting on the patio under a thick black cover. She roots around the cabinet underneath and comes up with a lighter.
Understanding what she means to do, I hold out the sprig, and we both watch with grim determination as it burns. Maybe this achieves nothing, but it makes me feel better.
“Now what?” I ask. In my hand, the twig withers and crumbles in on itself, turning to ashes in the breeze.
“We’ll go back inside. Finish the day. Keep our eyes peeled,” Pip suggests.
“Yes,” I agree. “No need to alarm anyone else.”
“Because whatever this is . . .” Pip says slowly. “It won’t bother with them, will it?”
“I sincerely hope not,” I agree.
I wipe away the smudges of soot on my fingertips. And then, together, we go back into the house.
“Everything okay?” Mei Fan asks immediately.
“Yes,” I say. “We were . . . just startled. I feared it was poison ivy, you see, and the leaves did not match my, ah, app. Alis seems to have developed no rash, but we will watch her.”
The other three adults in the kitchen relax visibly at this explanation. The human mind will always seek and accept the easiest answer. It is something I have long learned to take advantage of.
Pip crosses the room and pulls Alis into her embrace. Our daughter clings to her mother, staring up at Pip with a look that pains me to admit that I know all too well. Alis knows something is wrong, that there is some reason to be frightened, and she has accordingly gone silent and still.
This is a thing she learned on the road in Hain, and it guts me that, even now, she remembers.
“Shall we wash your hands, sweeting?” Pip asks Alis, and takes her over to the sink, where both of them are able to hide their expressions from the others. After this, Pip sets Alis back down on the blanket, and the rest of the partygoers turn their eyes back to the center of the room.
“Sorry for the scare, everyone,” Pip says. “You know new parents. I flipped out, thought it was poison ivy!”
The room laughs.
“What’s that old joke?” one of the more elderly fellows asks the woman next to him, who is clearly his wife. “About the dime?”
“The first time my kid swallowed a dime, I took him to Emergency,” she supplies. “The first time my second kid swallowed a dime, I took it out of his allowance!”
The room howls with laughter, relieved that everything is fine, and pretending that they weren’t worried. More wine is poured, a few more cakes are passed around, and Martin crouches at the edge of the blanket with a marvelously large grin.
“Okay, baby girl,” he says, clapping his hands to get Alis’s attention. She turns to him, startled, and then dimples adorably at her beloved grandfather. “Shall we try this again?”
Chapter 5 Elgar
The safe house isn’t anything cool. Not like in the spy movies, with steel-shuttered windows and a locked armory in the pantry. It’s just a little farmhouse whose decor is stuck somewhere around 1973, located about forty minutes outside of Seattle, on the eastern side of Fall City. The house does, however, have movie-spy grade surveillance, a camera-and-security room where the back mudroom ought to be, and an IP scrambler that will keep people from pinpointing his location when he uses his laptop. Riletti and Jackson have explained that they’ll take shifts sleeping, so that one of them will always be on duty. What the goon in the mudroom will be doing instead of sleeping, Elgar decides not to ask.
All the same, the only security Elgar really wants right now is the sound of Forsyth’s voice and a promise from his penultimate spymaster that this is a problem he can solve. But with the police around, Elgar doesn’t feel comfortable calling Forsyth.
Firstly, the cops might object to him sharing details of the case over the phone with an unknown stranger (no matter that Elgar would explain that the Pipers were family). Secondly, he doesn’t want to have to use subterfuge and nicknames, and he’s afraid he’s too upset to remember to do so. He might slip-up and call Forsyth by his real name, and with a fan in the other room, listening in . . .
No. It’s not a good idea. Not yet. Maybe if the situation gets dire enough, but not now.
Instead, he sits in the small living room, opens his laptop, and considers sending Forsyth an email—wait, is it possible that someone’s watching his emails, too? Deciding that it’s safer to forego the email to the former spymaster, just in case, he spends the rest of the evening answering fan mail and updating his website to clear his mind.
Jackson is asleep in a room upstairs, and Riletti has just finished sticking a frozen pizza in the oven when Elgar finally clears his inbox. The zero count, in and of itself, is a feat to be celebrated, and with no Juan nearby to scold Elgar for his dinner choices, he and Riletti spend the rest of the evening watching ridiculous cooking shows, eating pizza, and talking around the two elephants in the room: the Incident, as Elgar has started referring to it in his mind, pleased by his own melodrama, and the Work.
Riletti is fan enough that she’s read the books, but she’s no Lucy Piper. And frankly, Elgar’s a little surprised she likes the series as much as she does, being a . . . well, being a woman. Elgar has always thought his main audience consisted of young, nerdy men. Or maybe not so young anymore, seeing as much of his fan base has aged with him.
Oh, god, is Riletti young enough that her father introduced her to the books? He does a little mental math and realizes that . . . yes, if she’s relatively new to the force, as her bright-eyed eagerness suggests, then Lieutenant Riletti