Book of Night(73)

As he continued to advance toward her, Charlie turned and ran. Her flats slapped against the polished floor.

“No one can fight their own shadow,” he shouted after her.

She hit the doors with her shoulder, throwing them open. The matte black car was waiting for her, and she didn’t stop running until she was inside.





21

THE PAST




Remy Carver stood on a cobbled street in Boston’s Beacon Hill neighborhood, trying to appear like a normal teenager instead of the conductor of a murder. He felt the pull of his shadow, as though there was a rope between them, thinning as Red floated up the stairs of the rowhouse.

Across the street, an elderly woman in a fur-collared coat walked a fat Chihuahua. She glanced toward Remy, and he turned away, moving deeper into the shadows, his heart hammering.

Maybe he should have come at two in the morning, instead of just past eleven at night. His grandfather argued for this hour, saying that he would be less conspicuous when there were other people on the street, but there was no time when it didn’t look a little suspicious for a fourteen-year-old boy to be hanging around with a couple of trash cans, waiting for his invisible friend to finish killing somebody.

Remy didn’t belong in a place like this, no matter who his grandfather was. The window boxes full of spring flowers and gleaming brass door knockers made him uncomfortable.

He tried to concentrate on something other than what was happening upstairs, even though part of him could see out of Red’s eyes. His shadow had made it to the man’s bedroom. The door was slightly ajar, no barrier at all. The man was asleep, wife beside him. She had one of those cannulas in her nose, the ones that supplied extra oxygen—

Remy shook his head, pressed his eyes shut as though that would stop the images from coming. No. No. Think about the last time he saw his mother and how much better she was doing. But that memory wasn’t so good, either, because she’d wanted him to come live with her and he couldn’t.

Think about the fancy private school he was attending and how Adeline had introduced him to her friends. They’d thought he was cool. He knew how to score drugs and how to spot a guy heading into a liquor store who’d buy them a bottle of Grey Goose for an extra twenty. They wanted him to come to their ski lodges this winter. They wanted him to come to their islands for spring break.

And wasn’t that a hell of a lot better than what he’d been doing last year, wrapping duct tape around his sneakers so his feet wouldn’t get wet, trudging through the gray snow?

It was worth it. This was worth it.

That’s what he concentrated on as Red flowed down the man’s throat, as Remy’s head echoed with awful sounds. As the wife woke up and started screaming. Think of having a home. Think of Mom going to the kind of rehabs that celebrities hung out at. Think of a future. Think of Adeline, who wanted to be his sister.

Don’t think about Red.

Ever since his grandfather had discovered how useful Remy could be, he’d wanted him to use his shadow. And his grandfather started collecting books on gloamists, spouting off about how Remy was doing it wrong. How Remy needed to understand that Red was just an extension of him, like a hand, something he had total control over.

That acting like Red could make his own decisions was dangerous.

But Remy didn’t want to kill anyone. It was bad enough he had to be a participant in it. He couldn’t imagine being wholly aware of what he was doing, pushing himself down the man’s throat, watching his eyes bulge and his tongue loll. Listening to the frantic howls of the wife close enough that his ears would feel like they were bleeding.

When it was done, Remy wiped tears from the sides of his eyes.

He hated knowing the man was dying, and he hated the dying man too. If only he’d just gone along with Remy’s grandfather’s business stuff, then they’d all be less miserable.

It didn’t take long for Red to return, sliding across the cobblestones toward him. But his shadow stopped before returning to his dormant place. Instead Red stood black against the brick wall, as upright as Remy was, in defiance of the streetlights and any natural law.

“You’re unhappy,” Red said, although the words could only be heard in Remy’s mind.

Adeline had explained to him that Red was the part of Edmund that Edmund didn’t know about. Like his subconscious.

But Red didn’t feel like his subconscious. He felt like an attic. A place to shove things Remy didn’t want to deal with. At the new fancy private school that his grandfather insisted he attend, they didn’t like people getting into fights. So Remy didn’t get into them anymore, even though at his old school he had to get up in people’s faces if he wanted to be respected. But that anger had to go somewhere.

And when Remy felt sad at times like this or when he was missing his mother, he put that sadness into Red too. His pity for the people his grandfather wanted dead. Which wasn’t fair, because Red shouldn’t have to kill people and feel sorry for them.

But Red wasn’t real. He was Remy’s subconscious. Or an attic.

He used to be a friend.

“So what? It’s over,” Remy said, thrusting all the sadness away from him. He wondered if Red would complain, but it was energy, right? Like the blood that fed him.

“Next time cut me free,” Red said. “And when the thing is done, I will return.”