“Again, shouldn’t you guys have noticed that?” I asked.
“Remember that glow he always had around him?” Rune chimed in. “Everyone always thought it was just an attribute of his power — and it may have started out that way — but it was really used to mask his appearance.”
“So he fooled you,” I stated in simple terms, reflecting on the fact that the secondary glow I’d once seen on Static had obviously emanated from his amulet.
“Hey, it wasn’t like he just slapped on a handlebar mustache and started speaking with a fake French accent,” Rune protested. “He put an enormous amount of power and effort into maintaining his façade, and — as you noted earlier — he had an actual Incarnate helping him. That alone made it a hard hill to climb in terms of seeing through the ruse.”
“If we could get back on point?” Endow interjected. “We were discussing how Static bound himself to the amulet that Gamma had given him.”
“I’m guessing Gamma found out at some point and wasn’t happy,” I said. “After all, the whole point of sharing her power was so she wouldn’t see him die.”
“That’s what Cerek conveyed to Reverb,” Rune reported. “However, Gamma couldn’t take it back. Her power was now inextricably linked to Static’s life force. If she took it back, it would kill him.”
“So she came up with another solution,” I said in a matter-of-fact tone. “She decided to kill herself.”
Chapter 60
Surprisingly, my statement wasn’t as shocking as one might have expected. Endow merely nodded, giving me an appraising glance.
“True,” she acknowledged. “Gamma did kill herself, but how did you know that?”
“Cerek told me,” I answered. “It was in his clues.”
“You know,” Rune said, “you’re getting an awful lot of information from two rinky-dink clues.”
I laughed. “Just shows you brought in the right man for the job after all. But I can elaborate if you like.”
“We insist,” Rune stated drolly.
“Well,” I began, “Cerek gave me two words as clues: MOUSES and KLEOP. The former was somewhat the more familiar of the two, so I started researching it first.”
“And what did you find out?” Endow asked, plainly curious.
“The most salient point was that ‘mouses’ actually is acceptable as a plural of ‘mouse,’” I replied.
“Excellent, detective,” Rune chimed in. “You’ve cracked the case.”
I ignored his jibe. “More obscure, however, is the fact that the same spelling in Greek is pronounced ‘Moy-sis,’” I explained, enunciating the word for my audience. “It’s a variation of ‘Moses’ — assuming you’ve heard that name before.”
“We’re familiar with the story,” Endow assured me. “Please go on.”
“Once I found that out,” I continued, “I thought I had the answer. See, Moses means ‘drawn from the water,’ and we just happen to have an Incarnate whose attributes seemingly center on water.”
“You thought Mariner was your guy,” Rune surmised.
“Yeah,” I acknowledged, “but I didn’t point the finger right away because — even though I felt I was right — there was still a chance that I was wrong. Turns out I was, so I guess I owe him an apology.”
Rune pooh-poohed my concerns. “You never actually accused him of anything, so no harm, no foul.”
I wasn’t sure I actually agreed with him, but continued with my narrative.
“The other clue, ‘KLEOP,’ initially threw me for a loop,” I admitted. “However, sticking with the Grecian theme that began with the first clue, I found out that the name ‘Cleopatra’ begins with the letter K in Greek.”
Endow frowned in thought for a moment. “So you think that when Cerek wrote ‘KLEOP,’ he was intending to write ‘Cleopatra’?”
I nodded. “Yes.”
She looked at Rune, who shrugged, saying, “As you can tell from my responses to Jim’s story about the clues, I’ve got no info on this subject. That’s one of the few areas in which Cerek didn’t share anything with Reverb.”
“But there’s still the question of why Cerek gave Greek renderings of the names,” Endow noted. “And why didn’t he finish spelling out Cleopatra?”
“I think I know the answer to that,” I said. “But first, I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that Cerek was Greek.”
“I believe that’s right,” Rune confirmed.
“Well, in my opinion, I think he panicked,” I offered. “I couldn’t reach him with my telepathy, but I could pick up on his emotional vibes when he was leaving the clues, and he was just a bundle of raw nerves. His anxiety level was in the stratosphere. As a result, I think he inadvertently reverted to Greek spellings of the clues he wanted to leave. As to why he didn’t finish spelling Cleopatra, the short answer is that he probably ran out of time.”
Rune gave me an inquisitive look. “What do you mean?”
“On those first two occasions when I saw Cerek, there was always this weird rumbling sound all around us. It wasn’t until that second visit that I figured out what it was: snoring.”
“Snoring?” Rune echoed in surprise.
“Yeah,” I confirmed with a nod. “When I first figured it out, I assumed that it was Cerek — that he was projecting his astral form while asleep and the accompanying sound was some kind of side-effect. But when I ruminated on it, I recalled the snoring being interrupted that second time, as if the sleeper were coming awake. That’s what seemed to make him panic. But if he were the sleeper, I couldn’t figure out why coming awake would cause him dread.”
“I suppose you discovered the answer?” Endow queried.
“I did,” I answered, “but not until later, and it ties back into the clues.”
“In what way?” asked Rune.
“In the story,” I replied, “Moses is raised in the house of Pharaoh — the enemy who wanted him dead. That’s what Cerek was telling me when he gave me the first clue. It had nothing to do with water; it was indicating that he was with the enemy. Or rather, the killer, Static. Basically, he could only safely project his astral form — sneak out, so to speak — when Static was asleep. It was Static’s
