Book of Night(13)

The diner had been dimly lit and Linda was sitting. From that angle, it hadn’t been obvious anything was missing.

“Do you notice that it’s gone?” Charlie had asked, frowning at the blurred edges of her own shadow.

Linda had taken a slug of her coffee. “You know when there’s a word and you feel like it’s on the tip of your tongue? It’s like that. There was something inside me that isn’t anymore, but I don’t know what. I’m not sure I miss it, but I feel like I should.”

Every time she thought of the conversation, it made her wonder if it was how Vince felt too. But when she’d asked him about it, he’d told her he couldn’t remember what it had been like before. And when she’d asked him if he wanted a new shadow, he said he didn’t need one.

Charlie picked up her burner phone and scrolled through the local news, looking for some mention of a body found in Easthampton. Nothing, even though the local crime beat at the paper was so sleepy that shoplifting and drunk students got reported. Who was the dead guy? And had he really stolen a book from Lionel Salt?

That rich bastard’s name stood at the top of lists of donors to museums and charities and hot chocolate runs. Kids swapped stories of seeing Salt’s car creeping along different roads—a matte black and silver Rolls-Royce Phantom Mansory Conquistador—a car whose name guys in high school had delighted in saying in its entirety so often that it lodged in the head like an earwormed song.

But most people hadn’t been inside Salt’s horror show of a house or watched him poison someone in the hopes of stealing a quickened shadow. If there were a different set of rules for the rich, Lionel Salt operated without rules at all. Just thinking about him made Charlie nervous.

She turned her mind back to the dead guy. He’d ordered bourbon and paid with a card. Which meant there’d be a receipt in Odette’s office with his name on it. If she knew who he was, she’d be able to ask around. Find out more about what he thought he’d been doing.

Her phone buzzed, and it took her a moment to realize it was her burner. Adam. We haven’t talked payment.

This was why Adam needed Balthazar as a go-between, not just for anonymity, but because Balthazar would have nailed down the cash immediately.

Since she wasn’t planning on paying him anyway, she could have promised any amount. But she figured she’d take the opportunity to find out just how much bliss he’d been rolling. Can we work something out? she texted.

The reply came quickly. What kind of connections do you have?

Charlie frowned. She’d expected him to bring up bliss, not whatever this was about. I know people, she wrote.

He took a moment to respond, and when he did it was a long message: I have something that I need to move Somehting big but I don’t want anyone to know it’s me making the deal. Act like its you and ill get your thing for free.

A job like the one she was offering could have gotten him a grand, easy. Twice that, if the client was desperate. What could Adam have that he needed to hide? He was, by all accounts, not a particularly skilled thief. And he had Balthazar to move things for him.

Sure, she wrote. Who are you making the deal with?

He typed his message back fast. All you’ll have to do is talk on the hotel phone. I’ll tell you what to say.

Charlie noticed Vince watching her and shoved her phone guiltily into her pocket. “How did you learn about cars?”

“I told you my grandfather was strict, right?” Vince said, his attention returning to the guts of the Corolla. “He taught me lots of stuff. He believed in the improving power of work, no matter how old you were. He didn’t believe in excuses. And he had a limo that broke down sometimes.”

“So he was a livery driver?” Charlie asked. “He let you ride in the back sometimes?”

He shrugged. “Dropped me off the first day of high school. Everyone stared at me like I was somebody.”

She tried to picture him back then. Had he been a gangly kid who ate two lunches and never filled out? The boy who sat in the back of the class and read comics? The track star? Nothing fit.

“You wouldn’t have liked me,” Charlie told him, bumping the toe of her sneakers against the van door. “I was a weird kid.”

Her boobs came in at ten, cresting over the tops of her Walmart bras. Between that and her home life, she’d kept her head down until high school, when she found ways to make herself look scary. Oversized clothes, lots of eyeliner, and hair that hung in her face. Frankenstein boots that she wore until the soles peeled off.

Vince gave her a heavy-lidded look and she wondered if he was going to make a joke.

“I like weird,” he said instead, and went back to disconnecting something on the car.

He had no idea.

A few moments later, Odette’s shiny purple Mini Cooper pulled into the lot. She got out, a voluminous black caftan billowing around her. The faded facial tattoos on her papery skin and the heavy silver piercings along her lips, cheek, and all the way up her ears made it clear that she’d been a badass while they were still in diapers.

She strode over to them, giving a wave with a gloved hand that had metal claws attached to the tips of the cloth.

“You’re a tall drink of water,” Odette said, looking Vincent up and down. Her gaze didn’t travel to the asphalt, to his missing shadow.

Vince wiped a hand on his pants and stuck it out. “Vince,” he said. “You must be Odette. Heard a lot about you.”