Page 82 of The Forest of Lost Souls

“He knows everything.”

“Ask him the name of the judge of souls in the underworld.”

“Why would I ask him that?”

“To prove to yourself that he doesn’t know everything.”

“God help me,” Regis says, and he takes the call.

Terrence Boschvark’s manner of speech is as ingratiating and full of false earnestness as that of any third-rate lounge singer coddling his audience, although even at his most oleaginous he is unable to fully repress a sinister undertone. “May I ask to whom I am speaking?”

“This is Edgar Allan Poe,” says Regis. “May I ask who’s calling?”

“Good morning, Mr. Poe. This is H. G. Wells,” Boschvark replies.

Although when properly purchased and activated, burner phones can’t be traced to their owners, though the risk of conversations being tapped and recorded is virtually nil, the billionaire insists that every call begin with this charade and then be conducted in an absurd improvisational code.

As required, Regis replies, “I much enjoyed your novelThe War of the Worlds,” though it annoys him that the real Edgar Allan Poe died forty-nine years before that story of a Martian invasion was published.

“Are you alone?” Boschvark asks.

“Yes, I’m alone,” Regis lies. He glances guiltily at Wendy, but she smiles to assure him that this is a justifiable untruth.

“Are you where I think you are?”

“I’m where you wanted me to be.”

“I never doubted you were. Your reliability is of great comfort to me. You saw them off?”

“I saw them off.”

“And none of them has returned?”

“None of them.”

“I don’t mind saying I’m greatly concerned. You know how much the well-being of my associates matters to me. Something’s very wrong. They have come to a prolonged stop.”

Both Vector and Rackman are carrying GPS trackers.

“A stop?” Regis asks.

“A full stop. Most concerning. Zero movement. The bird isn’t moving, either.”

“The bird?”

“The lovely bird. The bird is carrying four eggs.”

“Eggs?”

“The kind of eggs that sing. Am I not making myself clear? The bird with four eggs isn’t moving.”

Regis decides that the eggs are four of the sticky tracking devices that they intended to drop on Vida when they located her. He also decides that Terrence Boschvark, in spite of all his wealth and power and animal cunning, is in some ways an idiot. “I understand now.”

Boschvark says, “We’re about to send a swarm of bees out there to scout the situation. Gather some pollen, so to speak.”

“Bees,” Regis says, and he wonders about his own capacity for idiocy when he at once translates the word todrones.

“We have underestimated the songbird before,” Boschvark says.

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