Chapelwood (The Borden Dispatches #2)(49)

Inspector Wolf was stunned into silence, and I was right there with him.

Our confusion agitated our host; he fidgeted with his Bible, and then tossed it aside. It hit the floor with a thud, its pages fluttering and then settling, open to some chapter in Daniel.

It irked him, the way we did not grasp the universal truths he was doing his best to share with us—but what did we know about universal truths? Nothing. And what did we know of this man in the rocking chair? Very little, except that the dented place in the back of his head was where an axe blade had struck him, and although it had healed, it had left him a man who drew portraits of missing women—a man who chattered about entropy and the stars.

? ? ?

(I remembered, in the back of my mind, a tidbit about the Adventists—or rather, the woman who founded their church: She was a schoolgirl when she was hit on the head by a carelessly thrown rock. When she awoke, she could hear the voice of God. Or so it is said.)

? ? ?

“You will understand,” he told us, but I think he was trying to convince himself. “Someone else must understand—someone who can bend the pattern back, while there’s time to reshape it. Right now.” He leaned forward, and his tone took a turn for the conspiratorial. “Right now, the only men who understand the pattern wish to use that understanding for evil. Or, no. Not evil. Unbalance, yes. I’ll stick with that word. Balance. There is balance and unbalance, that is all.”

I thought at first that this was his conclusion, his great final proclamation—so I took the pause to try one last time: “Please, Mr. Lorino. You’re the only one who can answer this for me . . . If the gray lady is gone, and she isn’t coming back, then where is she?”

He didn’t exactly sneer, because he wasn’t exactly being cruel. The twist of his lips was more like a dismissive thing, like once again I was on the wrong track, asking the wrong questions. But if he wanted me to ask the right ones, he could damn well give me some hint about what they were!

“No one can answer you. Not me, not anyone else.” Then his eyes went almost cunning, and it worried me. For a moment, I could not be certain if he was balanced, or unbalanced. “However, there are others you can ask. They will lie to you, of course; but the lies might tell you something all the same. Ask at the church,” he said, looking sideways over to Inspector Wolf. “He knows the one.”

“Chapelwood?” he asked, but it wasn’t really a question—I could see the certainty on his face, and the set of his jaw suggested resignation, too.

“The unmakers of balance. The benders of patterns. It’s their magic, after all. They’re the ones who shouted the invitation out into the galaxy, the ones who have raised their trumpets to the great Milky Way—whether or not it’s the center of anything, or merely a small tendril in a greater picture, but the Great Debate is nothing, it means nothing. It’s not about the balance. It’s meaningless. The men at Chapelwood . . .” His attention wandered upward, to the small window over his head, and when he spoke again, his voice slipped from one thing to another. It dropped an octave. Syllable by syllable, it lost its manic warmth. “Ask them, but be careful about it. They’ve lost their offerings one by one by two by three, and they seek more to replace them. They’ll tell you anything, if it might keep you there—and you have a glaring weak spot, my lady.”

For a tense, awful minute his voice rang in my ears, and it wasn’t his voice. Not the quick, nattering prattle of a madman who might not be mad, but the lower, richer, slower tones of a professor from upstate. His was the voice of a man who would’ve killed us all thirty years ago; and besides the sound of his words, there was a flash of the flat, terrible emptiness behind his eyes. I saw it, for all that it moved quickly—it darted across his face, fast and cold as a shark.

My heart stopped. I felt it, I swear—it went cold and heavy, and I couldn’t breathe.

Wolf put a hand upon my shoulder. “Miss Andrew?”

I tried to swallow, but my mouth was so very dry.

“Miss Andrew?” Mr. Lorino said my name now, and when he said it, he sounded like himself again. The memory of an old shark was gone, and only this little man in his little room remained. “Are you all right?”

I would’ve answered, but a knock on the door spared me. A woman’s voice announced, “Gaspera, it’s me.”

The woman who entered was younger than Mr. Lorino by perhaps as much as ten years. She was modestly dressed, with flat shoes and her hair in a tidy bun—but she wore a hint of rouge. Her eyes were tired but kind, and pretty in a doelike way.

Inspector Wolf smiled broadly. “Miss Lorino, I’m so glad you could join us. Miss Lizbeth Andrew, this is Miss Camille Lorino.”

“It’s a pleasure,” I whispered. My heart was moving again, but feebly; my eyes were not watering, but I felt some lightness in my head and saw a faint smattering of sparks. I wasn’t going to faint, was I? No, I told myself repeatedly. I will not faint.

I did not faint.

I said, “Your brother has been telling me about this drawing he made.”

“It’s a picture of your sister—isn’t that right?” She closed the door behind her and came to sit beside me on the bed.

“That’s correct. She . . .” I swallowed, desperate for the moisture. I would’ve given anything for a glass of water. “She disappeared thirty years ago. There’s been no sign of her since. No sign but this one.”