The Silenced Tale, стр. 40
Riletti follows him, making sure he doesn’t trip over anything, and sits on the coffee table. She grabs his chin, forces him to look up at her, checking his eyes and taking his pulse. She pulls Aunty Lilah’s throw off the back of the sofa and over his shoulders.
Shock, Elgar thinks. Again. It’s funny, in a way. Twice in one week. And I put Kintyre through worse than this, over and over again, in every book. . . . Never once did I think that he would . . . would react. Like this. Like me. Oh god. What’s happening?
“Good thing you brought your laptop and fire-safe with you,” Riletti says, tucking the blanket around him. “Or this could have been much, much worse. Stay here, I’ll get you some water.”
“Yeah,” Elgar says, his whole body numb. Because at that exact moment, he realizes why the bookshelf looked wrong, lopsided and strangely gap-toothed. “Yeah. You’re right. It can be much, much worse.”
Because the books, his leather-bound, special-edition books, are missing.
The Tales of Kintyre Turn are gone.
Chapter 6 Forsyth
Elgar texts me the next morning, and all it says is: GOIN 2 LA 4 2wks.
I wonder that a man so dedicated to the English language would choose to slaughter it so brutally when smartphones allow for people to text in full sentences now. Then I wonder if it is wise to travel when one is being stalked and threatened with bodily harm. And then I realize that being elsewhere, especially when one has the support of the police force to help them vanish, is probably the best course of action one could take. It gives the stalker no satisfaction to watch an empty house, and perhaps, if we are lucky enough, it will bore them into giving up the chase.
I can only hope that that will be the case here.
As for why Elgar is headed to LA, that much is obvious.
I’m not entirely certain how I feel about this adaptation of my brother’s life for the small screen. Though I do think it makes me feel better to know that this version of Forsyth Turn will be a peripheral character. Pip tells me that I only appear in the first, fourth, and eighth books of the series, and I do not even speak in the last of these. Whomever they cast to play me is therefore destined for a bit part.
Unless, by some meddling on Elgar’s part, the role of this fictional Forsyth is expanded. That possibility, I don’t mind admitting, has me even more emotionally wibbly.
I reply to my creator’s text, confirming that I got it, and then roll over in bed to watch my wife sleep. Though “sleep” might be a generous word for it. She is twitching, and mumbling, and I wonder if I ought to wake her, or if startling her would be unwise.
I slide out from between the covers and stand by her side, observing—the burns and bruises from the day before have all but vanished. Either the magic that made them appear is withdrawing, taking the evidence along with it, or the person to whom the original injury occurred—which we are seeing mirrored in Pip—is using Words of Healing so steadily that he or she must be utterly drained of energy this morning.
I have not yet told Pip about this second theory. I have no proof for it, and I do not wish to worry her with it when she has so much worry already. Deciding that waking Pip is the better option, especially with Alis’s own soft breaths coming through the baby monitor as proof that this round of horrible teething, at least, is finally over for her, I say, gently: “Pip?”
She snuffles and flops, and when I repeat her name, a little louder, her eyes snap open. “Morning,” I say. “I think you were having a nightmare.”
“I think I was,” she agrees, and sits up, groaning and wincing. She studies her palms, and then lifts her t-shirt to do the same to her ribs. “Nearly gone.”
“Yes,” I agree.
“Creepy.”
“Yes,” I agree again.
She holds out her arms to me, and I obligingly return to bed. She slides onto her side, pulling my arm across her so that she may be the “little spoon,” and I wonder at this gesture. I have never known my wife to be so desperate for consolation and comfort as she is this morning. She is a very sexual creature, yes, but cuddling for no reason but to cuddle hasn’t always been her preference.
I feel my insides twist, my heart sink, and I press my forehead against the nape of my wife’s neck, because I cannot, I do not want to ask this next question out loud, let alone while looking her in the face. “Pip, I have something to ask you, and I . . . I wish I did not have to.”
“Yeah?” Pip folds her arms across mine, and I squeeze her waist tight, screwing my eyes shut. I can feel her shaking. Or maybe it is she who can feel me shaking. I’m not certain which of us is the source. “Ask.”
“Do you recall the exact wording you used when you bound the Viceroy’s magic?”
Pip jerks in my grip, rolling down, curling herself over my arm as if clinging to the edge of a cliff. “Oh my god,” she chokes, and her voice is tight and terrible. “Did I get it wrong?”
“I can’t recall the exact wording . . .”
“Neither can I. I could have . . . did I leave a loophole?”
“Perhaps?” I say, softly, quietly, every syllable an agony.
“What have I done?”
“It could be a copycat,” I say hastily. “It could be someone who knows us and is using this as ammunition against Elgar.”
Pip frowns and turns into my chest. “I should have let Wyndam