Pip and I share a look that lets me know that my wife isn’t entirely certain what her answer ought to be. She walks over to the window, flexing out her hand, and opens the door to the narrow balcony that looks down onto an interior courtyard that appears to be connected to the foyer with the fountain. She leans her elbows on the rail and hangs her head. I am reminded of how little we all slept last night, how exhaustion pulls at our eyelids.
“It didn’t work, and he’s still out there, and I . . .” Elgar’s gaze is broken, glassy, the skin around his eyes pinched. His mouth trembles. “We have no idea, and I just—I can’t!” He hunches over the desk, back to me, I assume, so I cannot see him crying. His shoulders are moving, though. The blade of his dagger is sticking up from the sheath clipped awkwardly to his belt. I must remember to adjust it in case it slips loose.
“The Viceroy doesn’t usually appear until the third act,” Pip reminds him, as if he was not the one who Wrote it that way.
“Except I saw him in the hospital,” I remind her.
“Well, then, I don’t have any fucking clue, do I!” Pip snaps, whirling back around to face us. “I can’t just deconstruct the plot and—Elgar, what are you doing?”
She straightens and sweeps down to grab something out of Elgar’s lap. Before I can see what it is, Elgar reaches up and clasps the part of Pip’s neck where it joins her shoulder, where her shirt gapes just enough for his palm to touch skin. Pip grunts, staggers slightly to the side, as if she’s been pushed. Light flashes in my peripheral vision, but it is not the green glow I expect, that I fear. It is white. It is colorless. It is familiar.
There is a sound like a world shattering. I know this noise intimately. It makes every hair I possess stand straight up, goose bumps flashing across my flesh and fear splashing ice-cold up my spine.
I turn back to blink at Elgar through the haze, but he’s not sitting at the table anymore. He’s standing beside Pip, his palm cupping the back of her neck. Pip’s body is tensed upward in one long line of agony, her eyes wide open, her head thrown back, her arms a rictus, fists balled so tight I fear she will cut her hands with her fingernails. And her eyes, her eyes, they glow. They glow green. Pupil-less, iris-less, whites-less. Solid, verdant, acidic, dangerous green.
“Writer, no!” I shout, my heart jerking so hard in my chest that I feel my whole body lurch.
Elgar, thinking I am speaking directly to him rather than swearing, jerks his hand away from Pip, stumbling up onto his feet and back into the desk. Pip sucks in a great gout of air, and collapses downward. For once, Elgar is quicker than I, for he catches Pip in his arms before she hits the garish carpet.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” Elgar babbles, cradling Pip against him, lowering them both to the floor. “I couldn’t think of any other way. Lucy? Lucy!”
The white light is slowly, slowly fading, and I turn my back to it, swooping down over Elgar like a harpy. A touch to the side of my wife’s neck tells me that her pulse is rapid, but not dangerously so. She’s panting, smacking her lips together as if parched, and she shakes, a fine earthquake of tremors that wrack her whole body.
It is terrifying, but moreso because I can do nothing to either help her or stop it.
There is something white in my creator’s hand, and I focus on that, instead. It is paper. Yes, the desk had a little pad of notepaper on it—I remember seeing it as we came in, but I didn’t think I would have to take it away from Elgar like an errant toddler. I am stunned, stunned that he would . . . that he has . . . I snatch the piece of paper out of Elgar’s hand, horrified to see his thick, familiar scrawl all over it.
The Reader had the magic of the Viceroy inscribed on her bones, in her muscles, in her flesh. And while only the power of the Deal-Maker Spirits could rip a portal through the veil of the skies, the Viceroy was descended of one of the strongest; the weather witch who was his mother. His magic was Deal-Maker strong, and so were all the spells he had ever woven. He was a warlock in full possession of all the magic afforded to him by study and blood alike. That strength, that power, lived on in the corporeal essence of the Reader. Her husband could draw upon it—and so, too, could his maker, when he touched the Reader.
And so it was that the Writer placed his hand on the bare flesh of the Reader, cupping his palm over her scars and leeching the magic still held dormant there, releasing it, tapping it. And with that magic, that power, the Writer did what only a Deal-Maker had been able, in the past, to do.
He reached through the veil of the skies and pulled.
Through the rip stepped Kintyre Turn and Bevel Dom. They were attired for battle, armed with all their best and most treasured weapons and armor, and in the pocket of Kintyre’s jerkin, he carried a flask of the best dragon whiskey Drebbin had to offer. They came, ready to fight, ready to protect, ready to finish the final battle between good and evil. Ready to win.
“You complete, self-absorbed, narcissistic bastard,” I spit at him, shoving my fist and the crumpled paper under his nose. “What have you done?”
Elgar heaves Pip onto the bed, and she curls into a ball, clutching her head and moaning.
“How could you? How could you do that to her? How could you have
