Book of Night(111)

The shadow didn’t speak.

It was hard to fake a death. There were dental records. There was evidence of past surgeries or fractures. Forensics could tell a lot from bones—sex, ancestry, age, height.

Salt could have paid someone, or several someones, to cover all that up. There was another answer, though: that the burnt body found in the car had belonged to Edmund Carver, and the person she had known wasn’t him at all.

The shadow wasn’t a malevolent entity taking the shape of Vince. It was Vince. He was Vince. And Vince had always only been the lost parts of Edmund Carver, the scraps from his table, his upside-down self, his mirror self, his night self.

He was right, part of her had known from the moment he’d been horrified about Adam. She hadn’t wanted to admit it to herself. Charlie Hall, flinching, finally discovering the puzzle she hadn’t wanted to solve.

“When Remy was dying,” Vince said. “After his grandfather stabbed him. While Adeline screamed. Remy grabbed hold of me, and pulled me to him, so I would have all his blood, all his strength. As it left him, it became mine. He breathed his last breath into my mouth.

“For a moment, I didn’t understand how I could be naked, how I could feel the cold floor under me. Then I ran. Hours later, I woke up beneath an underpass, lying on asphalt and broken glass, with no idea how I got there. And then I had to learn how to be a person all the time. I tried to be, for you.”

Charlie recalled his words during their last fight, their only real fight: I wish I could say I was sorry, that I wanted to be honest the whole time, but I didn’t. I never wanted to be honest. I just wanted what I told you to be the truth.

If this was what was behind the mask, she understood why he hadn’t wanted to remove it.

“And called yourself Vincent,” Charlie said.

“The one thing Remy didn’t give me that I took anyway,” the shadow said, lifting his chin, as if daring her to judge him for it.

Down the hall, gears shifted in the wall, making a soft but distinct noise. Someone had entered the secret room beyond the library. In moments, they’d enter the corridor where Charlie was standing.

“Vince,” she said. Their eyes met.

“Hide,” he told her.

Charlie made it to the shadows of the security room, crawling under the leather couch at the same time she heard steps in the hall. How many times had Salt sat on that couch, watching something awful on the screens? Rand might have died in one of these cells. Charlie herself could have died there.

Could still, if she wasn’t careful.

“Red.” A woman’s voice, soft and worried. Adeline, Charlie realized. “He didn’t tell me you were here until now. Did he hurt you?”

Only silence answered her.

“I know. I should have left when you did,” she said, with a big huffing sigh. “You must be very angry with me.”

Vince’s voice had a veneer of calm, but beneath you could hear the vibration of some very different emotion. “Once his mother was dead, he wasn’t going to rest until the world knew what your father had done. You should have warned him she was in danger.”

“I didn’t know. How could I have known she was going to overdose? I thought she was getting better. We all did.”

“You know why she never got better,” Vince said. “Your father needed her to be sick, and then he needed her to be dead.”

Vince sounded as though he was talking about a family that wasn’t also his. His mother. Your father. The only person he considered to be his family was Remy.

“I swear I didn’t know about any of it,” she protested.

The hall was dark, and Charlie thought it might be possible to slip out past Adeline while she was distracted. Quietly, she pulled herself out from under the couch. But as she edged closer to the door, Charlie’s whole plan started to seem wobbly.

Maybe she should bonk Adeline over the head and try to get Vince out of the prison. But if Adeline didn’t have the key—and neither Adeline nor Vince were behaving as though there was a possibility of her freeing him—then they were all screwed.

Carefully, Charlie slid behind Adeline’s body, moving slowly and sticking to the shadows.

“You can still help me.” Vince’s voice was soft. He didn’t look in Charlie’s direction, but there was something so carefully blank in his stare that the effort showed.

Adeline put her hand on one of the onyx bars of his prison. “How?”

Charlie was far enough down the hall by then that she didn’t hear Vince’s request. Maybe it was unfair to think he couldn’t trust Adeline as far as he could throw her.

If Charlie’s plan worked, it wouldn’t matter. She’d come back with a hammer and a flame-retardant blanket and get him out.

She would. Even if she was afraid of him.

Sliding the door open, Charlie slipped through. Then she climbed back through the second hidden bookcase, into the library. She needed to get outside and meet Posey, but she was distracted, thinking of how he’d guided her through the house that night.

Don’t look.

What would she have seen if she had, back then? Perhaps a smudgy shape, like a ghost. Perhaps he would have been half boy and half shadow.

Don’t look at me.

She snuck into a garden room. Ominously large plants with waxy leaves filled the spaces between pieces of white cast-iron furniture. Through the windows she could see the gardens. Charlie took out her phone and sent a text. The time on her screen read 8:16. Fourteen minutes to do what she needed to do, and no chance for errors.