The Silenced Tale, стр. 33
“What’s this?” she asks, eyes darting back and forth between the two windows Elgar’s set up on the desktop side by side: one filled with the head shots, the other a browser with thirty different IMDB tabs open.
Elgar points at the head shot of a very muscley hunk, with bright blue eyes and an infectious puppy-dog smile, but dark hair. “If he was blond, do you think he could play Kintyre?”
“Maybe. He might be too old, though. He would need—wait. Wait!” Riletti hisses. “Are you . . . are you telling me that . . . ? Oh my god!”
“Shhh,” Elgar laughs. “This is supposed to be a secret. Don’t wake your partner.”
“Oh my god!” Riletti says again. “The rumors are true!”
They spend the next few hours going over the head shots and watching the self-tapes, compiling a careful email to the casting team, and by the time they’re finished, Elgar is yawning.
“That is so cool,” Riletti says, falling back against the sofa. Her hair, which she had loosened during their argument over why Elgar was taking so long to choose the perfect Forsyth Turn (“It doesn’t matter this much, does it? Why are you tying yourself up in knots? We only see Forsyth for like, a chapter in the first book, right? Oh, and I guess in book four? Three? Which is it?”), puffs around her shoulders like a capelet.
“It is cool,” Elgar agrees, though he feels a little empty and selfish for doing so. He realizes he has just successfully manipulated this woman into spending hours with him to keep him company, to keep him entertained. Though, he supposes that’s what real friendships and dating are like, not that he’s had much experience with either. Only, he wouldn’t have had to use the bait of forbidden knowledge to tempt them into spending time with him.
“Thanks for asking me to help.”
“Thanks for helping,” Elgar says. “I think I’m going to turn in.”
“Sure,” Riletti says. “I’ll be out here if you need me, and I’ll be waking Jackson to swap in an hour.”
“Okay.” Elgar packs up his laptop, and then brandishes a teasing finger at her. “Now, no texting your, uh, wife about what just happened. No leaks allowed.”
“Cross my heart,” Riletti promises. And she really seems to mean it.
Forsyth
Several days pass in research for me, and in a sort of holding-pattern stasis for Pip. She is scared, but she will not admit to being so. She cuddles Alis, goes to work, attends the gym and her martial arts classes, and comes home. We eat, we watch television, we talk, but neither of us really says anything. Because we are unsure. We are waiting. And in the meantime, because our misfortunes must always come in groups, Alis has not one but three new teeth coming in. She spends much time clutching her cheeks and muttering to Library about how stupid and ineffective her parents are, while I corral my Turnish temper. Between my intensive focus, Pip’s fear, and Alis’s misery, nobody is getting as much sleep as they ought to, and everyone is weary and listless and cranky.
A full week after Alis’s birthday party, she wakes us just an hour or so after dawn with her shrieks. Pip rolls over into my shoulder and mutters: “If you make a joke about her being my daughter after the sun is up, I will punch you in the nose.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it,” I return, heaving myself up. Pip pats my rear end as I shuffle out the door toward the nursery, and I can’t help but snort. Ah, yes, the loving affection of the sleep-deprived.
Alis is standing, holding the edge of her crib, and sobbing miserably. She is flushed and angry at her inability to communicate and her parents’ obvious deficiency. I scoop her up and bring her to my office, where, in my haze last night, I for some reason left the little tube of pain-numbing gel that we rub on Alis’s gums. I distinctly recall Sheriff Pointe using whiskey for this task, but Pip tells me that getting children drunk enough to pass out and forget their pain is frowned upon in the Overrealm.
It doesn’t mean that it isn’t an appealing alternative.
Alis quiets down after a few moments, sniffling miserably and burrowing into my shoulder as I spin us in slow circles in my office chair. On the fifth or sixth revolution, I am finally awake enough to realize that there is a small red icon flashing in the middle of my main monitor. After a frustrating span where diving into the deep files and illegal monitoring software that the law-abiding citizens of the Internet don’t believe exist yielded nothing but ill-defined results, Finnar has at last found something.
Frowning, I flick my mouse with my elbow on my way by, waking up the screens. Then I put down my foot, hard, and jerk us to a stop.
“That unbelievable, selfish bastard,” I hiss, forcing myself to reread the title of the report Finnar has turned up.
Alis whines once in my grasp.
“Sorry, sweeting,” I say, standing and walking her into our bedroom. “Cuddle with your mama for a bit. Your da needs to call your Uncle Gar Gar and scream at him.”
Pip struggles upright, eyes bleary as she leans back against the headboard and lets Alis climb into her lap. “What’d he do this time?”
“The fool man has been in protective custody for a week. And he has told neither of us.”
“A week?” Pip repeats, suddenly coming awake. “Why?”
“Apparently, he is being threatened. I have not read the whole report yet, but I assure you that I will be calling him immediately after I have. I only know because Finnar—my program, that is—caught his name in a document stating that he is to be released back into his home later