Book of Night(22)

Toward the back was another velvet curtain. Inside, a pair of club chairs—for clients—were arranged opposite a small beat-up wooden desk where Balthazar sat. Joey Aspirins leaned against the far wall, arms folded over his chest.

“You got an appointment?” Joey Aspirins demanded, louder than was necessary.

Balthazar waved airily. “Oh, don’t be silly. That’s the girl from the bar. What’s your name again—Shar? Cher?”

“Very funny,” she said.

“Charlie!” He snapped his fingers as though it had been on the very tip of his tongue. “You’ve reconsidered taking on jobs. I knew you would. Welcome back into my good graces.”

Balthazar had wavy black hair and long eyelashes and wore a messy black suit with a messy black tie over a wrinkled shirt. An onyx tiepin was stuck into his lapel. Word was, he used to be an alterationist and had burned up his shadow by using it too hard. He still had the cleaved tongue of a gloom and wore a silver stud at the apex of the split. He came in late, left early, and often forgot to pay the rent to Odette. He was the exact sort of skinny fast-talker that Charlie usually got involved with and then regretted.

Joey Aspirins, by contrast, was small, wiry, and sunken-cheeked in a way that spoke of ill health, maybe addiction, in his past. He wore his gray hair military-short. He had a lot of tattoos, including a few crawling across his throat, combat boots, and a wardrobe that seemed to consist entirely of white t-shirts with short-sleeve button-ups over them. When he looked at Charlie, she knew he didn’t expect her to be smart. Well, she didn’t think he was some kind of genius either.

Charlie put her hand on her hip. “I’m headed off break. I thought I’d ask if I could get you anything from the bar?”

“Aren’t you thoughtful,” Balthazar said, skeptical but not about to turn down a drink. “Perhaps that old-fashioned you make with amaro?”

“Orange peel and a cherry?”

“A couple of cherries,” he said. “I like a lot of sweet with my bitter.”

Nice line. With great force of will, Charlie didn’t roll her eyes. “And I wanted to ask you something.”

“You don’t say.” Balthazar was the picture of innocence.

She sighed. “There was a man I saw the other night on the street. He had shadows for hands. Do you know him?”

“You’ve met the new Hierophant,” he said.

The Hierophant. The magician in a tarot deck and a position among the gloamists. Locally, shadow magicians came together to choose representatives from each discipline to sit in what they—perhaps not incorrectly—called a Cabal.

The representatives were well-known. Vicereine, famous for causing a washed-up actor to win an Oscar with his post-altered-shadow performance and having altered her influencer ex-boyfriend so that his shadow’s head looked like a pig. Her gang of Artists had grown over the years to be highly influential, in part because alterations were so lucrative.

Malik was rumored to have puppeted his shadow to steal an extremely large ruby from the British Museum before they installed onyx, while Bellamy of the masks had no reputation so to speak of, which was a reputation in itself for those of the masked discipline.

Then there was Knight Singh. After his murder, they were going to have to find someone else.

The Cabal oversaw whatever adjudication was needed outside of the law among gloamists, and all of them put in a little money to hunt and trap the one thing that no gloamist wanted the daylight world to know too much about: Blights.

Whatever unlucky fucker crossed the Cabal was given the position of Hierophant.

“He didn’t look very friendly when I saw him,” Charlie said. “But I guess none of them are.”

If the Hierophant was in the alley with the body, it was very likely Paul Ecco had been murdered by a Blight.

“That guy who came in the other night trying to get you to sell something for him,” Charlie said. “How come you tossed him out?”

“You know why they call this guy Joey Aspirins?” Balthazar cut her off, nodding to his companion.

Charlie shrugged.

Balthazar’s easy smile faded and she had a sense of the menace underneath. “Because he makes headaches go away. And you are one. You were good, Charlie. One of the best. Come back to work and we’ll talk. Otherwise, get out.”

As she went back to the bar and made Balthazar his cocktail, Charlie reminded herself Paul Ecco’s murder shouldn’t matter to her. His choice of a drink wasn’t that interesting and his tip sucked. He was dead, sure, but lots of people died. Probably Adam was the one with the book, anyway.

As she got back from delivering the booze, she was flagged down by a guy wearing a neatly trimmed goatee and locs. He wanted to do the whole absinthe thing, with the water and the sugar cube on fire, and wanted five of his friends to do it too. Then there was a scotch drinker on the other side of the bar who wanted to debate the relative smokiness and saltiness of Speysides.

By the time Rapture was closing, Charlie had pulled her hair into two sweaty pigtails and slung a wet towel across her neck. Balthazar and Joey Aspirins were gone. The performers were sitting together in the corner with Odette, drinking pale purple aviations while Charlie pocketed her tips for the night and counted out the till.

“Is this what you thought you’d be doing with your life?” Odette was asking.