Book of Night(19)

“You ready?” Vince asked, the door closing heavily behind him. She jumped, surprised.

His eyes looked eerie in the porch light. Silver.

“No thruple?” she asked after a moment.

He frowned at her in the same confused way he had when she’d read the French phrase off her phone. She wished she could make him tell her what he was thinking. Of course, it was possible he was just thinking that he was tired, annoyed with her friends, and wanted to go home.

Or it was possible that he was thinking there was something seriously wrong with her.

“Never mind.” She got up from the swing and dusted off her pants.

Charlie needed to stop looking for trouble where there was none. She needed to stop looking for trouble, period.



* * *



At home, she got ready for bed, washing her face and putting on a t-shirt. She moved to climb over Vince to her side of the mattress when he put his hand on her hip. She paused, straddling his chest.

Outside their window, the moon was a bright silver coin in the black sky, lighting the room well enough to see the intensity of his gaze. He reached up to thread his fingers through her hair.

“Your friends are nice.” His mouth curved up on one side. “Mostly.”

She wondered if he was going to ask her about Ian. “You were a hit.”

“Because I brought ice,” he said, clearly not believing her. “Everyone loves the guy who brings ice.”

She could have explained how bad the previous guys she’d brought around were, and how great Vince seemed by comparison, but that didn’t reflect well on either one of them. “I certainly do,” she said, before realizing what that meant. She’d intended to be funny, to imply I love ice, not I love you.

But he didn’t seem alarmed, and after a moment the sharp spike of panic faded. She was just drunk. Drunk people said stupid things.

“Come a little closer,” he told her.

As she bent toward him, his thumb went to her cheekbone, brushing lightly over her skin. Her hair fell around them in a canopy.

He levered up to kiss her, mouth careful, as though she was something fragile and precious. Spun sugar. The wing of a butterfly. Someone who wasn’t a human callus. Or a rock ready to be thrown through a window. Someone who wasn’t Charlie Hall.

Maybe that was how he thought he was supposed to kiss girls, the way he’d kissed the girl whose picture was in his wallet. Maybe he wanted to be respectful. But every time he did it, Charlie couldn’t help thinking of it as a challenge.

She reached down, hand on his chest, fingers sliding beneath the waistband of his sleep pants. She loved how his breath caught, went uneven. Loved the way that when he kissed her again, his mouth was looser, his tongue dirtier.

Pulling away, she squirmed out of her panties, kicking them to one side of the bed, not bothering to take off her shirt. Then she crawled back, on her hands and knees. He bent over her, covering her body with his. His mouth went to her throat, to her shoulder, his fingers tracing over the part of her breast just above her heart.

When pleasure hit at the base of her spine, she let it carry her past all regrets.





6

MARSHMALLOW TEST




Charlie groaned and rolled over. Coffee was brewing in the other room, the scent of it making her feel incrementally more awake. Outside, someone was using a leaf blower, the sound a steady, grating thrum. Above her, the familiar dried brown rings of a water stain from their leaky ceiling formed Rorschach-like patterns. A gun. A goat. An hourglass. In tea leaves, those would all be warnings. She rubbed her face with the heel of her hand and got up.

Her underpants were somewhere beneath the comforter. She found them and tossed them into the laundry pile, along with the shirt she’d slept in.

Naked, she flopped face-first on the mattress and took out her burner phone. She needed a better plan than the one that was just (1) go to the MGM and disappoint Adam by not being Amber, then (2) get him to go home and disappoint Doreen by being himself.

But … if Adam truly had the Liber Noctem, Charlie wanted it.

I think I can get to your place by 1:15am, she texted. Leave a key at the desk and I’ll just come up.

Almost all hotel elevators needed keys to operate, which would mean that if she didn’t have one, he’d have to come down to get her. Maybe he’d be willing to make things a little more convenient for both of them.

OK, he texted back.

See you tonight, she wrote.

As soon as she arrived at the hotel, she’d get that key. Then she’d text to say that she’d changed her mind and felt weird about going straight to some guy’s room. The casino floor served drinks until four in the morning; she’d suggest they meet there. He might be tired, might get frustrated by her, but she didn’t think he’d give up on a job because she asked him to come downstairs first.

Since she’d have his room key, she could just waltz in while he was waiting for her at the casino bar. So long as he didn’t keep the book in the wall safe, she could find it, grab it, and go. And even if he did keep it in the safe, she had enough information from knowing Doreen—kid’s birthday, his birthday, wedding anniversary—to guess the obvious passcodes.

Disguise wouldn’t be a big deal. Charlie just wanted to look different enough that she wouldn’t be noticed on security cameras, in case he got somebody at the hotel to show him the footage. She had a collection of wigs shoved in the bottom of a dresser drawer, packed in ziplocks, for just this purpose.