Book of Night(123)

Lounging on a red velvet beanbag was Bellamy.

Charlie looked around warily. “Where is he?”

“We’re holding him in a room at the top of the tower, like a princess waiting for rescue,” Bellamy said. “Unharmed.”

“He’s leaving today,” Charlie told him. “With me.”

Bellamy took a sip from a delicate cup, thin enough to be translucent. Bone china. “Go and speak with your Blight. Up the stairs. Up, up, up. We’ll talk again after.”

Charlie didn’t like the sound of that, but in her eagerness to see Vince, she let it go. She started back toward the stairs and was stopped by a woman’s voice.

“Ms. Hall,” Adeline Salt said. She sat on a slightly ripped couch in a room full of locked metal cases of books.

She had on dark-wash jeans and an emerald-colored blouse that tied in a bow underneath her throat. Balanced on her thighs was a computer, its case rose gold. She had that strangely burnished look that wealthy people have, hair extra smooth and skin extra glowing.

She couldn’t have looked more out of place.

Charlie leaned against the opening, not quite entering the room.

“You’ve come to see Red, is that right? Oh good, I’m sure he will like that. He was asking for you.” Adeline’s smile was completely disingenuous.

“Vince,” Charlie said.

It was interesting to see Adeline trying to decide whether to argue over his name. It obviously bothered her, not that Charlie called him something else, but Charlie acting as though the name he went by with her was his real one. Well, it was what he called himself.

“I’ve spoken to the Cabal. He’s going to come home with me. I’m going to be his guardian, and he’ll be able to pick up where Edmund’s life ended.” Oddly, there seemed to be a flicker of fear in her eyes.

“How exactly is he going to do that?” Charlie asked.

“I’ve already begun the process of voiding the death certificate.” Adeline smiled again, stiffly. “You understand that’s for the best, don’t you? Red will be very wealthy. And he’ll only be bound to me for a few years.”

The idea that Adeline might be considered a guardian for Vince, when by all rights she should be the one punished, was enraging. The possessive tone in her voice made it worse, and a whole lot creepier. “Maybe that’s not what he wants.”

Adeline tossed back her hair. “You think he’d rather be skulking around with a thief?”

“I think he’d rather do almost anything than live in your father’s house,” Charlie said.

“You didn’t hear?” One perfectly manicured eyebrow arched. “My father died that night, after being left alone with you. Stabbed thirty-three times with a letter opener.”

“Tragic,” Charlie said archly. She had heard.

“What did you do to him in there?” Adeline asked silkily.

“I took his gun away and cut off his shadow,” Charlie told her. “Whatever happened after that, I wasn’t there for it.”

“Convenient.” Adeline sneered.

“I’d agree.” Charlie looked at Adeline’s laptop, at the green leather Chanel shopper she’d carried it in, at the diamond studs in her ears. “You’re his only heir, aren’t you?”

Adeline’s hand went to her hair, nervously catching a strand of it between her fingers. “Don’t try to implicate me in your crime,” she said stiffly. “Your guilt is your own to wrestle with.”

“In the great room,” Charlie said. “I was pretty distracted when you came in. But the funny thing is that I still noticed you had blood on your hands.”

Charlie started toward the hall, then looked back over her shoulder. “By the way, you’re welcome.”



* * *



Charlie tried to walk calmly up the concrete steps, but when she hit the second landing, she found herself walking faster and faster until she was practically running. At the very top, she found a door, banded in onyx and locked with a bar. Charlie lifted it, surprised by the weight.

Vince stood in the small, windowless room with his back to her. He appeared much the same as he had always been, same broad shoulders, same height, same everything. But when he turned, his eyes were empty sockets, filled only with smoke. It made her think of his body as a shell with some swirling creature living inside.

Charlie thought of the tarot cards she’d pulled from Posey’s deck. The conversion of the spiritual into material. The Magician.

When his eyes closed, she noticed that for his hair had darkened to bronze, as though the gold had blown off when he changed. He was dressed in a black button-up, and his pants were some kind of performance material that looked expensive. Remy’s clothes.

Charlie felt turned inside out by the closeness of him, like the man in that story he told at Barb’s party, like a sock. All of her vulnerable parts seemed to be showing. The slightest touch might hurt.

“I didn’t quite go back together the way I was, did I?” Vince asked her.

Charlie realized that she’d stopped, going no farther into the room than that first step. No wonder he didn’t look happy. He had to think she was afraid.

And she was afraid, but only a little. She made herself walk toward him. The Fool, walking off a cliff. “I like it. It’s weird.”