Book of Night(109)

Before she was ready to go out there, she pushed on a three-finger knuckle ring set with onyx and shoved the onyx dagger she’d gotten from Murray’s into her bra. Holstered with a makeshift sheath of duct tape, it would be there if she needed it. She waited for the familiar rush, that pleasurable hit of adrenaline, but it wouldn’t come.

Charlie turned back to the safe, intending to close it, when she noticed a black button in the upper corner, close to the back. Could there be something behind the safe? A compartment she hadn’t opened yet?

Come on, Charlie Hall. You don’t have to stick your finger in every socket.

But that cautious instinct seemed to belong to someone who hadn’t already chosen the path of recklessness. She pressed the button.

A click came from the shelf to her left. Another bookshelf swung open, revealing a hall. A passageway that must run behind the walls of the house.

Taking out her phone, Charlie checked the time. She’d gotten to the house at half past six. José had told her that the party was supposed to go officially until ten, and that there was going to be a champagne toast at eight thirty. It was seven forty-five. Time was tight.

Still, Charlie stepped through, into the dark.

She switched back on the lights on her glasses. They illuminated something that mixed the architecture of a wine cellar with that of a mausoleum. More tiles of onyx ran across the floor. Two cells were ahead of her, with a door opposite them. A groove had been carved into the ground, running in front of the bars, the blue line of a gas flame outlining the edge. The air had a faint smell of rot, and of incense.

Sweat dampened her palms and brow. This was the bad kind of adrenaline. The kind that made her twitchy instead of careful, that made her stomach sour and her hands shaky.

This felt like a haunted place.

Still, she kept walking. The soft soles of her flats scratched against the floor. The cells were deep enough that Charlie’s little lights couldn’t pierce the darkness.

Along the wall were an assortment of restraints. A rope that had been threaded with onyx beads. A pair of shackles with blue silk padding on the inside, the cloth sewn tightly with rectangular onyx tiles. Above them, a shelf with onyx containment boxes.

The door on the opposite side was slightly ajar, flickering colors within. She pushed slowly with her foot and found herself staring at a bank of screens. Surveillance footage of the house.

Caterers in the kitchen. Partygoers moving through the rooms. The Hierophant, speaking with Vicereine, seeming completely composed. She peered at him more closely, hoping for some tell. The only thing notable was that he was thinner and more unhealthily pale than ever.

In another room, two men were making out, one a blurred outline. Was he kissing his own shadow? Someone else’s? Charlie couldn’t tell.

Outside in the garden, three men were arguing. One had the other by the shirt, their shadows looming large behind them like the spread plumes of fighting peacocks.

Salt was walking through the rooms with purpose, a drink in one hand, looking as though everything was going his way. He glanced up, for a heart-stopping moment, peering directly into the camera. The time in the upper right-hand corner read 7:52.

“Charlie?” Vince’s voice came out of the darkness.

She whirled around.

He was in the cell, standing just behind the bars. Broad-shouldered, hair like old gold. A small smile turning up the corner of his mouth. As familiar as her own heart.

“What happened to your eye?” he asked.

“Hold on,” she said, so relieved at the sight of him that her voice broke. “I can get you out of there.”

Before Charlie could pick the lock, she had to disable whatever the gas line running along the seam beneath the bars was supposed to do. She guessed it was on some kind of trip wire that would send up a burst of flames when the cell door opened. There had to be a way to turn it off.

Charlie hesitated. The wrongness of the scene bothered her, like an itch in the mind.

Pale, hollow eyes followed her movements. She wanted to believe it was Vince in the cell, behind bars of onyx, with a gutter of fire between them. But those weren’t restraints meant for a human.

“You’re not Vince, are you?” she asked softly, walking to the bars.

The silence from the cell was her answer.

Charlie met the Blight’s gaze. “You’re his shadow. You’re Red.”





31

THE FOOL, THE MAGICIAN, AND THE HIEROPHANT




Only when her back hit the wall did she realize how far she’d moved from the cell. “You found the Liber Noctem,” she managed to choke out. “You did the ritual.”

“Because I look like a person?” the shadow asked. “It was Edmund who made me like this.”

“He wouldn’t do that.” Her voice came out too high. She didn’t know how to comprehend the being in front of her. It was a doppelg?nger. A mirror reflection come to life. A thing Frankensteined together from discarded parts of Vince: slime and snails and puppy dog tails. “Is he here? Is Vince all right?”

The shadow shrugged. Even its expression was one that Vince would make, slightly chagrined. The tailored suit it wore was the color of its eyes. “We met before. Do you remember?”

Don’t look behind you.

Charlie didn’t speak for a long moment. It wasn’t as though the thought hadn’t crossed her mind, but she’d had a hard time believing it. “In the library.”