Book of Night(70)

Charlie’s gaze fell on her shadow.

In all this talk, no one had quite explained how Vince lost his—or when.

“Charlie?” Adeline called.

She blinked, coming out of her thoughts.

A golf cart idled in front of the spa, the driver waiting to take them to the main building. Charlie didn’t have to go to lunch. She could head back inside, insist that someone call her a cab. Put on her own clothes back at home.

But if Salt wanted to find her again, he had the resources to do it. He could tail her to and from work in his Rolls. For all she knew, he might be able to send a cop to her house to pick her up for him.

Maybe that nice Detective Juarez.

Enough money bought anything.

The grass was wet against her ankles as she walked to the golf cart. Then she hung on as they crossed the parking lot, past Bentleys and Lexuses. Charlie wondered how many of Odette’s clients were members here.

Inside the main building, Charlie followed Adeline across a gleaming stone floor to the restaurant. The host didn’t ask their names, just led them to a private room where the walls were covered in yellow silk, and paintings of horses, coats gleaming like polished mahogany, hung atop the cloth.

Lionel Salt was already waiting for them at the table, nursing a lowball glass of whiskey with an ice globe sitting in it. She took in his wrinkles, his faded age spots and too-pale skin, as though he’d tried to bleach them away. The smoothness of his forehead from injections. He wore a black turtleneck and dark gray pants. On his finger, a gold ring marked with an unfamiliar arcane symbol gleamed. Charlie noted that neither he nor Adeline wore any onyx.

“This is a lot of trouble to go to for a conversation,” Charlie said as the host hastened to pull out her seat for her.

“You look refreshed.” Salt exchanged a look with Adeline, who nodded. Maybe there had been some kind of two-part poison in her cucumber water. If she started to feel woozy, she was going to stab Salt in the chest with whatever knife there was, even if it was a butter knife.

He leaned over to a waiter. “We will have the smoked pheasant confit salad, the Kanzan cherry blossom tea–cured salmon, and the grilled lamb loin.” He looked at Charlie. “I assume you’re not a vegetarian?”

She shook her head. After a night of drinking what she really wanted was a greasy egg-and-bacon sandwich, but he was the guy with the Glock.

“And a bottle of Chateau d’Esclans 2018 Garrus rosé,” he concluded. The waiter nodded.

“I’ll just take an iced tea,” Charlie said.

After the waiter departed, Salt put his hands on the table. His nails were clean and buffed. If she were conning Salt, she’d note the veneer of perfection. The need for control.

It manifested in the way Adeline was quiet unless invited to speak. The way he’d immediately taken the gun from his pocket when Charlie refused to go with him. He expected automatic obedience and acknowledgment of his superiority from people like Charlie. And like Vince.

The best way to con Salt would be to let him dominate. Let him win. He’d believe that and he’d never look deeper.

“So,” Salt said, putting his elbows on the table and peering across at her. “We have something in common. My darling grandson wronged us both. He took something from me and broke your heart. Isn’t that right?”

Adeline frowned at her plate. Either she was more on Vince’s side than she wanted her father to know, or Charlie being with Vince had really bothered her. Maybe she hated all of his girlfriends.

“I suppose so,” Charlie said.

“Then let us be allies. You won’t just be helping me by getting back my book. You will be stopping Edmund from committing a great wrong. You see, as I told you before, my grandson, in his idiosyncratic way, treated his shadow like some cross between a pet and a friend.

“To command a shade, one must be a good custodian. Provide blood and energy from our own bodies. We gift unto them life, and in return they give us utter obedience. They are us, after all. Formed from us, as we were once made of sculpted clay and the Lord’s breath.”

Charlie was surprised by the religiosity of his description. She had spent a few Sundays at Laura’s church, trying to con Laura’s parents into believing that she wasn’t a terrible influence. The only parts she remembered in detail were the songs, the free doughnuts in the basement, and a lot of language like this.

Salt went on. “But the sacrament is an unholy one. We give our shadows the parts of us that we want to shove down into the dark. Our anger, our jealousy, our gluttony, our most shameful desires. Imagine a hate-filled creature, made of everything monstrous about a person, a thing that feeds on energy and blood. Now imagine coddling that, Ms. Hall.”

Charlie tried to picture Vince with a shadow like that and found it easy to see why he’d been willing to overlook so many of Charlie’s faults.

“He named it Red,” Salt said. “Red and Remy, isn’t that sweet? Maybe that’s what it calls itself now.”

“What do you mean?” Charlie asked.

“Once Edmund’s shadow was cut free, it became a Blight.”

“A Blight of a living person?” Charlie objected.

“Formed in childhood, with a child’s foolish allowance for gluttony. He overfed the thing. Gave it too much blood, and not just his own. By the time Edmund was an adult, his shadow was very powerful. Powerful enough to have desires of its own. It was for that reason Edmund stole the Liber Noctem from me—to bring his Blight to full life, a shadow no more.”