L.
The same code name. Beneath the Greenland ice sheet, it had belonged to Lena V. Lawton, a nonhuman "Observer" preserved in a crystal coffin. And now, in this filthy, smoke-filled bar in Istanbul, another "L" wanted to arrange a meeting with me through an intermediary.
Was it a coincidence? A trap? Or a character already cast in the notebook's still-unrevealed script?
The Death Note in my backpack pulsed faster and sharper, like a beast that had caught the scent of its own kind, excited and hostile all at once. The azure Ice Crystal Mark on its cover also seemed to glow faintly, radiating cold.
"Talk in person?" I repeated the intermediary's words, my voice unusually calm amid the noise of the bar. "When and where?"
A glint of triumph flashed in the scrawny man's eyes. He handed me a crumpled slip of paper with an address scrawled on it, deep in the tangled alleys of the old city. "Ten tonight. Come alone." He paused, then added, "The lady said... you'd be interested in 'the hunger of the pen tip' and 'the glacier's gaze.'"
The hunger of the pen tip! The glacier's gaze!
Those two phrases pierced my mind like ice picks! She didn't just know about the blue mark; she had pointed straight to the Death Note and what had happened in Greenland!
Who the hell was she?
Having delivered his message, the intermediary slipped into the crowd like an eel and vanished.
I pinched the slip of paper between my fingers, feeling its rough texture and considering the tracking chip or chemical marker that might be hidden beneath it. This was a scheme laid bare. I knew it could be a trap, but the bait was too tempting, and I... or rather, the notebook in my hands, could