The Silenced Tale, стр. 52
“No,” Pip says immediately, strongly. “No. No, he’s not close. He’s far away. But he did something. The spell was strong and . . . I felt it. The malice. The power. It’s taking him time to . . . get it all together. The pain was . . . sympathy pain.”
The way she says it makes something click in my head. The last puzzle piece slots into place in the back of my mind, and I cannot help but snap my fingers.
“That’s it! When strong magics are performed, they need ley lines to siphon off the excess and the blowbacks. In a magical world, the magic dissipates into the air.”
“But this isn’t a magical world,” Pip whispers.
“So it just flows, I suppose,” I say slowly. “Flows until something else magical can suck it up and disperse it.”
“Lucky me,” Pip growls, but she does so quietly. Exhaustion pools in her eyes, and she blinks hard, obviously working to stay awake. The ominous premonition in her snide reply daggers into my bones and leaves a chill there. “This is my fault. I messed up. I fucked it all up.”
“No, Pip.”
“It is. I should have chosen my words better. I could have . . . I could have killed him. I should have.”
“After not allowing Wyndam to do the same?” I pet her head gently, soothingly.
“I should have said it better.”
“You were rushed,” I say, trying to keep Pip from too much self-recrimination.
“I’ve been trying to remember. I think I said, ‘you won’t have access to the magic in your blood.’ But I didn’t say anything about anyone else’s blood. What if he found another Deal-Maker? What if she had another phial around? There’s hundreds of kinds of magic in Hain. He could have used any of it to get his own back. I should have . . . I should have—I don’t remember exactly what I said, and I wish I—”
I bow forward over my wife, kiss her cap of dark hair, and rock her in my arms.
“Shhhh, shhhh,” I say softly. “You could not have known.”
“But I should have,” Pip mutters darkly. “That’s the point. I’m the Reader. I should have known better.”
“You did what you thought was best at the time.”
Pip thumps her forehead into my sternum in self-recrimination.
“Ouch,” I murmur, but it is not a real reproach. I cradle the back of her head in my palm and scratch lightly at her scalp, soothing.
“Do you think it was really Linux?” Pip whispers after a long moment.
I flex my bare toes against the chill tile floor, and debate how to answer.
“Your silence means you agree,” Pip says.
“I will find out,” I reply. “In the meantime, back into bed with you.”
“No,” Pip says. “There’s no way I can go back to sleep now. I’ll be . . . I’ll go put on the coffee. If we have any left. We’ve been drinking a lot lately.”
“We have,” I murmur, and let her change the subject as she shuffles away.
I emerge from my office about twenty minutes later, filled with chilling horror and regret that Pip’s guess was correct.
A black cloud of self-recrimination and shame coalesces in my chest, weighting each of my pathetic, shallow breaths. I should not have watched . . . I should have fast-forwarded the video, or looked away, or . . . I should not have watched . . . that poor cat. I knew the Viceroy could be cruel, but to torture a small, defenseless animal, to flay it alive and literally paint the walls with its blood. To rip its head off . . . while it still breathed . . .
Oh, foolish, over-confident, Forsyth. When will you ever learn?
Pip has Alis with her in the kitchen, gnawing on her frozen stuffie, looking puffy-eyed and as miserable as I feel. Apparently, the Great Writer is determined that none of us are to have any sleep tonight.
“You were right,” is all I can say to Pip’s questioning look.
Elgar
Elgar and Juan are down at the concierge desk, working out how much longer he can stay in his suite. He’s preparing to spend another week in LA in order to write the script, but there seems to be someone else booked into his rooms for the weekend, and apparently this person is important enough that the hotel is reluctant to shift their reservation.
Juan gets phone calls all the time, so Elgar doesn’t really pay attention when he steps away from the desk and fishes his phone out of his pocket. It’s his job, after all. The concierge keeps clicking through the computer, and Elgar tries not to tap his fingers impatiently. Then, over the sound of Juan’s ringtone, Elgar hears him gasp. He turns just in time to see Juan blanch and nearly drop the thing as he fumbles to answer it.
“Boss, it’s the cops,” he says, heading for an alcove where he can take the call in private. Elgar’s heart shoots into his throat.
“Sir, did you and your, ahem, partner think you could stand to share a single—?”
Elgar holds up his palm, silencing the concierge, who makes an annoyed sound in the back of her throat and clicks her keyboard in a way that Elgar would have worried meant they wouldn’t be getting a room at all if he’d been paying enough attention.
Juan paces up one side of the lobby and back again, shoulders hunched in, hand over first his stomach, then his mouth. The concierge tries to speak to Elgar again, and he interrupts with:
“Wait. Just a second.” When she makes another annoyed sound, he adds: “Please.” He scrunches his fist in the bottom of his cardigan and waits. Whatever news Juan’s getting, it doesn’t look good.
Please not Forsyth, Elgar thinks suddenly. Oh god, please don’t be the Victoria