Book of Night(72)

Telling him that wasn’t revenge, but it wasn’t nothing.

Adeline sucked in her breath.

Salt looked at Charlie across the table, and there was something in his face as though in anticipation of some great pleasure. That’s all the warning she got before his shadow flowed toward her and sank into her skin. Before she understood what was happening, her hand lifted the steak knife just as the waiter returned to the room.

She could sense the shadow inside her, a separate consciousness. She could hear its thoughts and sense the enormity of its hatred.

Her mouth opened and she could feel her tongue begin to form words, her voice rough with resistance. “I wi-ll mur-der—”

Then she was free, and shaking with horror. Uncertain if she cast the shadow off with her will, or if Salt let her go.

He laughed at the waiter’s startled face. “She becomes heated when we discuss politics, but there’s no harm in her. Isn’t that true, my dear?”

Charlie bit her tongue and didn’t answer, too afraid that it wouldn’t be her own words coming out of her mouth.

Salt leaned in close, dropping his voice to a whisper. “You have a week to steal the Liber Noctem for me. Given your reputation, I am certain of your success. But if you fail, we’ll see what else I can make you do, and to whom. You have a sister, isn’t that right? Now, would you like coffee before you go? A cordial?”

Anger and fear and fury rose in Charlie like a wave, sweeping every other thought away. She hadn’t thought it was possible to despise him more than she did, but now her hands were shaking with a desire for violence. She wanted to break a glass and use it to slice open his face. She wanted to watch him squirming on the carpet as poison stole his consciousness.

Salt’s smile grew as he studied her expression. She had the sinking suspicion that he enjoyed her hating him. It was another kind of power.

He wiped the edges of his mouth with a cloth napkin. “I need to hear you say that you understand. That you will be at my estate on Saturday, book in hand.”

Charlie pushed back her chair and got up, biting the inside of her cheek. “You have my word.”

He nodded. “Good day to you, Charlatan.”

As she turned to go, though, Adeline grabbed her hand. “I know you saw the news stories. Before you judge my father, remember what Red is capable of doing.”

Was Vince’s shadow really out there, murdering people in anticipation of some transformation? Was that what had happened to Rose Allaband? How responsible had Vince been for all of this?

And yet, Rand’s body had also been found in a car, along with a dead girl that Charlie was fairly certain he’d never even met while alive. All staged by Salt.

Maybe Vince hadn’t faked his own death. What if he’d just taken the book and run? If Salt had set up the burned husk of the car, with charred bodies inside, Vince would have been pronounced dead, making it impossible for him to get far, or to go to the authorities. If anyone thought he was alive, he’d be wanted for murder.

Of course, that didn’t explain Red.

“Let go of me,” Charlie told her.

Adeline’s fingers dug into Charlie’s skin. “You think you know Remy, but you’re wrong.”

Charlie pulled her hand out of the woman’s grip and walked from the room as fast as she could. She wasn’t even sure where she was going, as long as it was away from the Salt family and their horrifying desires and demands. As she crossed the smooth tiles of the reception hall, she spotted a man leaning against the wall.

Charlie’s heart sped.

He was younger than most people walking through the country club, dark-haired with deep-set eyes and bruised skin underneath. Bullet holes, she’d thought of them that night when she first saw him in the alley. But up close, his eyes just seemed tired.

Then her gaze fell to the area between the edge of his gloves and the cuffs of his shirt. It didn’t show much, but she could see there was shadow where the skin of his wrist should have been.

“You’re the Hierophant,” she forced herself to say.

He smiled, but it was all wrong. Too many facial muscles were engaged. His mouth was pulled in too many directions.

“Yes,” he said, as though forcing the words out. “I am hun-ting a Blight.”

Charlie took an involuntary step back, alarmed more by the way he spoke than what he said. It reminded her, suddenly and horribly, of how she had sounded when Salt controlled her.

“Red?” she asked him.

A gleam appeared in his eye. “You’ve seen him, haven’t you?”

She shook her head.

The Hierophant gave her one of those strange smiles. “I was a thief once. Like you.”

If she’d gotten caught in the wrong place, at the wrong moment, she could have wound up like him. Hands cut off, sent out to kill Blights. Had he been a gloamist before? Most thieves weren’t, if for no other reason than it was hard for a shadow to cross the onyx protections most gloamists put in place.

“Your shadow—” Charlie began, wanting to ask if it had quickened on its own, or if they’d bound him to something.

His eyes narrowed and he pushed off the wall, taking a step toward her. “Once they get their claws into you, they never let go.”

She scuttled back.

The Hierophant cocked his head to the side and began to speak, at first in a monotone, then in a rising shout. “Tell Red I want the book. Tell Red we can share. Tell Red that I will rip him to pieces.”