Book of Night(47)

Vince didn’t smile like that.

Of course, back then he’d called himself Remy and been wealthy and happy. He hadn’t killed somebody or faked his own death. He wasn’t working an under-the-table job cleaning up corpses or shacking up with some broke girl to have a place to sleep.

She remembered the sweat trickling between her shoulder blades in the crowded bar the night they met, the taste of gin and tonic made with well liquor because she’d wanted to get drunk on the cheap, her friend dipping out early, how Vince had stood like a wall between her and getting shoved into the fire door.

If she’d known he was filthy fucking rich, would she have taken him home when she was feeling self-destructive and foolish? No way. Of course, she’d never have believed him either. She’d have thought it was the world’s worst line. Oh, the grandson of a billionaire, you say? Well, I only get down with bajillionaires. Just your luck.

If he’d convinced her, though? Never. Not a guy who’d graduated from a prestigious university, a guy with a trust fund and a future ahead of him. No chance she would have brought him back to her rental house, so he could sneer at how she lived, so he could look down on her for her job, her lack of education, and all her choices.

And if she’d known he was related to Salt, she would have broken a bottle over his head.

Charlie tried to focus, to imagine what he’d been thinking that night. Probably worried that he didn’t have a future, right? He’d stolen the Liber Noctem, and then something had gone wrong. Something to do with the girl? Something that had resulted in two dead bodies and a need to fake his own death?

He’d gotten that fake Minnesota driver’s license somehow, one good enough for Charlie not to question it. Of course, she’d never seen a real Minnesota license, or taken his out of the plastic sleeve to inspect it, and she supposed very few other people had either. But he had no credit card and no credit. No social security number. Just a gruesome job cleaning hotel rooms under the table.

Enter Charlie. Probably saw her drinking alone and figured her for an easy mark. A sad girl, ready to take him straight to bed. Desperate enough not to ask too many questions. That’s what good con artists did. They didn’t need to convince you of anything, because you were too busy convincing yourself.

Then nearly a year later, Vince walks into Rapture and finds his grandfather’s hired gun standing there. If Hermes spots him, he’ll be in more trouble than ever. So Hermes has to go. He hadn’t done it to save Charlie.

She felt a little light-headed, a little dizzy.

“Did you mean to leave—” Posey leaned against the doorframe, hand still on the knob. Her eyes widened slightly at the mattress shoved up against the wall, the dumped-out drawers, then her gaze went to Charlie sitting on the floor. “Did you know you left thirty bucks in singles in those clothes you tossed in the trash?”

“Shit,” Charlie said. Her tips for the night. She was losing it. Seriously losing it.

Posey came into the room to hand her the money, then looked around again. “What’s going on? Because you do not look like you’re napping.”

“No, not napping,” Charlie admitted.

Posey gave a big sigh. “I am going to make some ramen and another pot of coffee. You have ten minutes to finish up whatever you’re doing, and then we’re going to have a conversation.”

As soon as her sister was gone, Charlie went back to the internet. She typed “Edmund Carver” in again. Photographs came up in society blogs, him standing around at parties. None from the last four years, but before that, notices of his attending openings and balls.

She found an article about a French Heritage Society gala that showed a picture of him with a blond woman identified in the caption as Adeline Salt. She wore a white silk shift that looked particularly expensive on her tanned and toned and probably microsculpted body.

In the photo, Vince—Edmund—had an arm thrown over her shoulder and a champagne coupe in his hand. He was in mid-laugh, the light catching him so that his shadow loomed over them both.

Charlie knew the girl. She was the one in the photo in Vince’s wallet. Salt’s daughter, which would make her Edmund’s aunt, even though they appeared to be around the same age.

Adeline. The girl he called out for in his sleep.

Several people had posted in the comment section of the newspaper article.

This is the problem with celebrating the parasitic one percent. It’s okay if he’s a murderer so long as he knows all the right people.

I don’t believe the accusations against Remy and anyone who knows him wouldn’t either. He was always willing to go out of his way for people, from getting soaked helping staff put up a tent after a rainstorm threatened to torpedo a party in the Hamptons, to lying down on the filthy sidewalk to retrieve a stranger’s purse that had fallen through a grate. I will never forget sneaking out of the Central Park Conservatory’s luncheon to walk through the park with him. That’s the Edmund I choose to remember.

Maybe I’m a bad person, but I’m glad he’s dead. I wish he’d died before he could have taken the life of an innocent girl with him. It’s disgusting that anyone would defend him, no less “choose to remember” him as anything but what he was—a sociopath.



Charlie heard her sister put something in the sink and knew she had only a few more moments before she was going to have to talk to Posey. But there was one more thing she wanted to do. She put the name Lionel Salt into Google, something she hadn’t done in years.