The Silenced Tale, стр. 50
“Shhhh, Da, shhh,” she says, in fantastic approximation of Pip’s soothing tone. It is such an accurate impression that Pip and I can’t help but laugh, though mine is a bit more blubbery.
“I will figure this out,” I tell Pip, whispering it into her ear even as I pull Alis down between us. Our daughter wriggles contentedly, happy to be bracketed by our bodies, and only knees me in the ribs twice. “I promise. I will make it stop.”
Pip does not offer a reply to that. I think, I hope, it is because she doesn’t want to set off another round of unexpected waterworks.
But the truth of the matter is this: I am frustrated. I am angry. And I am scared. It has never taken me this long to roust a villain, or uncover a plot, or decipher a riddle. And I cannot determine if this lack of clarity is because whatever story we are now in is not, in fact, a fantasy hero’s quest, as Pip suggests, or if it is because lazy old Forsyth Turn is getting rusty. Worse, I dread that it is because I have been in the Overrealm so long that all the specialness I was imbued with as a fictional character has begun to fade. What is the use of being the know-it-all younger brother who was secretly the spymaster, if it gains me nothing here and now, when those very skills are what is needed most of me? What if I am becoming horrifically, impotently normal?
Once Alis and Pip are safely tucked up in bed for the night, I return, as I have for every night this week, to Finnar and my desperate search. Following Elgar around LA has been fruitless—the back rooms and board offices of Flageolet are monitored by cameras, but from what I can see, nothing out of the ordinary has happened. The lobby and hall cameras of his hotel are equally without clue, and as there are no monitoring devices in his rooms, and the man makes a point of keeping his cell phone off and his computer closed when he doesn’t intend to use them, I cannot turn on his microphone or camera to catch what is being said and done.
Sleepless, angry with myself as well as with the world, my ears strain for the sound of Finnar pinging a result. I am so desperately awaiting that sound that I nearly miss it when it actually does go off.
I bring up the program immediately—it is an assault report filed by a Mr. Louis Garcia against the boyfriend of his daughter, Madeline. He spotted what is reported to be an electrical burn on her shoulder, hidden by a sweater that had slipped to the side. The time recorded for the incident matches that of Pip’s most recent fit, this morning.
Electrical burn. Lightning.
The culprit, it seems, is in Seattle still. And Miss Garcia is a waitress at Elgar’s favorite diner. At last, I am one step closer to Elgar’s tormentor. But there is no address given for his location, no arrest record, no indication that the police are even aware of the connection between Miss Garcia’s abuser and Elgar’s stalker. I dash off a hasty note to the police, taking care to make it appear as if it comes from a junior officer who noticed a similarity in the MOs, flagging it for the detective in charge of Elgar’s case. While I spin in my chair, fruitlessly, the bastard remains at large.
I can do nothing else from here, and so, flush with this one small, if bittersweet, victory, and confident that Finnar is clever enough to use this incident to branch out and search for more reports that are similar, I retire to bed.
Sometime around midnight, Pip wakes screaming.
I am alert before I realize it, and rolling over to cover her body with mine in an instant. I tense, preparing for a blow to fall upon my back, or the sharp slice of a knife to pierce my skin, but none come. Pip jams her fists against my chest and screeches: “Off, off, oh god!”
I roll away, and Pip sucks in a heaving, choking breath and moans.
Pip’s screams echo in my ears when I flick on the light. She has moved onto all fours, her head buried under her arms as she writhes and groans.
“Pip?” I ask, pitching my voice to carry over her cries. “Pip, what is wrong?”
“Hurts,” Pip hisses out, and it is more syllable than vowel.
I sit softly on the side of the bed, hands out and held over my wife, soothing, but not touching until I am certain that I won’t harm her further. After a very long moment, she flops onto her face, and then holds absolutely still.
“Pip?”
“It’s easing,” she sighs, but it is still between clenched teeth. She’s panting, her face flushed, her jaw clenched, the tendons and veins of her neck standing out as she fights back the pain.
“May I touch you?”
She grunts what sounds like an affirmative, and so, carefully, I lean over and peel her sweaty t-shirt up her back. I half expect to see the scars torn open anew, blood rolling down her sides to bloom like gunshot wounds against our white sheets. Or, failing that, for the scars to be red, or inflamed. What I do not expect—what I should have expected—is the faint, faint tinge of green. It looks like someone has dry-brushed green greasepaint along the very tops of each puffed ridge of hard white scar tissue. The suggestion of the color is so faint that I have to squint and turn my head to