Book of Night(121)

The absence hadn’t just shut a door inside her mind; it shut a door on a potential future. She wasn’t going to be a gloamist. She hadn’t been sure she wanted to be, but still.

Would Vicereine and the rest of them have listened to her more if she’d had a quickened shadow? Would they have let her see Vince?

She’d been so certain he’d want to come home with her, but after thinking about it, maybe she shouldn’t have been. When he met her, he wasn’t used to being alone in the world and had limited options. Maybe he hadn’t seen a future for himself past the end of Salt, but now he was in that future and, for perhaps the first time, could shape it as he wished.

If the Cabal let him, of course.

She wondered what he thought of the swing-for-the-fences-and-damn-the-consequences Charlie Hall that he’d never met before. Maybe they both had been holding themselves back, when the other person had been capable of rising to the challenge. When the other person might have been thrilled by the challenge.

After she was clean and dressed in her own clothes, she waited for Posey.

“Mom sent me, like, seventeen messages about bringing back the station wagon,” her sister said, emerging from her bedroom in fresh clothes. Charlie glanced behind Posey, at her shadow.

Her sister followed her gaze. Her brow furrowed with worry. “Is it weird?”

“I don’t know. Is it weird for you?” Charlie asked.

Posey moved her lips silently and the shadow swept around her, curling over her shoulders, looking for all the world as though it preferred to be there. Charlie couldn’t help a shiver that was part recognition.

“It’s the most perfect thing that’s ever happened. You won’t believe all the things I’ll teach myself to do.” Posey’s eyes were bright in a way they hadn’t been in a long time, and that Charlie didn’t want anything to dim.

She headed to the window and jammed it open. “Well, come on. If Mom and Bob are desperate to get the station wagon back, we better get out of here, since I want to stop for coffee first,” she said.

“Thank all the gods,” Posey said fervently.

They stopped at Small Oven Bakery, where Charlie got three espressos in tiny paper cups and lined them up in front of her like shots. Posey poked at a sticky bun while looking at her phone.

Charlie took the first of the espressos and downed it.

“Um,” Posey said, and turned the phone toward her sister.

Early this morning the Gazette received pages from a journal alleged to be written by Lionel Salt, implicating him in several open investigations, including that of Rose Allaband. Allaband’s body was found in a burnt-out car along with the body of Salt’s grandson, Edmund Carver, over a year ago. Both may have been Salt’s victims. Other cases are likely to be reopened based on information in the pages, including Randall Grigoras, Ankita Eswaran, and Hector Blanco. Not only does the journal include detailed accounts of their deaths, but drawings of medical experiments conducted on their shadows.

Handwriting examiners were able to confirm with 98 percent confidence that the writing in the journal was consistent with samples of Salt’s handwriting that the Gazette had obtained. We reached out to Salt’s representatives for comment, but we haven’t heard back at this time.



“You did this to Lionel Salt?” Posey said, astonished. “How?”

When Charlie had opened the safe, she’d only been expecting to find the Liber Noctem, but there had been something else in there too. A notebook, from which a few pages had been torn out.

It couldn’t be too often that the Hampshire Gazette got a scoop like that.

Charlie took her second shot of espresso, and then the third. “I didn’t do it to him. He did it to himself.”



* * *



That Sunday, Charlie showed up for her shift at Rapture. Her mind wasn’t in it, though, and she kept having to ask people to repeat their drink orders. She dropped two wineglasses and set an entire highball of absinthe on fire, instead of just the sugar cube. That glass broke too, and in a much more dramatic way.

Partway through her shift, Odette pulled her aside. She thought it was going to be to scold her or ask her about a missing red pantsuit, but instead it was to introduce her to the new bartender, the one taking José’s ex’s shifts. Charlie was surprised to see Don.

“Hey,” he said. “Top Hat got a new manager and I decided I could use a change of scenery.”

“Well, this place is that,” Charlie told him, and proceeded to walk him through what things were put where, how to use the register, and how many dry ice pellets to float on a drink.

“They swallow it, we get a lawsuit,” she told him.

“Maybe we shouldn’t have it on the menu?” Don suggested.

“It’s going to take you a minute to get the vibe of this place,” Charlie predicted.

Around closing time, Balthazar came to the bar. “Pour us a last drink. Whatever you’re having,” he told her.

“Oh, I’m drinking too?” She smiled.

“If I were you, I would be.”

She couldn’t argue with that. Took down the brand-new Laphroaig 15, opened it, and poured them both two fingers.

“So, your guy,” he said.

Charlie nodded. “I guess you heard. Quite a thing.”