Book of Night(96)

“I met a friend of yours,” Charlie said, keeping her voice low. “Is it true you have a client who’s an actual billionaire?”

Odette took a sip of her drink and grimaced a little at the bite of the alcohol. “Lionel? A client? Goodness no. He’d rather be on the other end of the whip.”

Charlie pretended to be surprised.

“Have you ever been to his house?”

“I certainly have. It’s a grim old place, plush carpets, lots of incense, and horrible art. But his liquor is top-notch and he knows a lot of interesting people.” She paused. “He called me the morning after that man came in. Asked me a great many questions about your Vincent. What do you think he wants with him?”

Charlie looked at Odette as steadily as she could. “No idea. Maybe he’s got an odd job he wants done.”

“Ah, yes,” Odette said. “It must be something like that.”

“You remember that thing you said about pasts being the only thing that matter?” Charlie said. “What did you mean?”

“Did I say that?” Odette looked surprised. “Well, if I did, I suppose I must have meant it exactly as it sounds.”

“Isn’t who we are today what counts?” Charlie didn’t know why she was pressing this point, since she wasn’t particularly happy with the person she was today. And Odette had been talking about Vince when she’d said it, not Charlie.

Odette laughed. “Sure, honey.”

“Isn’t that the point of reinventing ourselves?” Charlie asked.

Odette took a second sip of her drink and closed her eyes in pleasure. “Ah, yes, that’s good.” Then she fixed Charlie with a look that made her remember that Odette had lived longer than she had and maybe lived harder too. “Who we were and what we did and what was done to us—we don’t get to shrug that stuff off and become some new shiny person.”

Charlie raised her eyebrows. “We can try.”

“Take fetish. No one is into sucking on someone else’s feet or worshipping their shoes or rubbing a balloon all over themselves for no reason. I know a boy who used to sit under the kitchen table and draw while his mother and her friends talked. He would look at their shoes, and know that if he touched one, he would be discovered and then he’d have to leave. You can guess what he likes. But if he didn’t admit it to himself, what then? It takes bravery to be an adventurer,” Odette said, lifting her drink and walking away. “And what better adventure than the discovery of our true selves?”

As Charlie worked, she let the physicality of the tasks take over, let herself fall into the rhythm of the work. Fill this, shake that, swipe a card, start a tab, pocket the change. Hold the pilsner glass at the exact right angle for the exact right head on the beer, do a boss pour for the hipster requesting one, dole out Fireball to a trio steering straight for regrets.

As she wiped down the bar top and collected wet napkins and wooden stirrers, her thoughts turned to her last days with Vince. The day before he’d left, he’d gone outside with the excuse of cleaning the gutters. He must have known that it was only a matter of time before Salt connected the dots and discovered him. Maybe he’d taken that opportunity to move the Liber Noctem to his van. She’d tossed the room only hours later. She could have been that close to finding it.

Hiding the book in his van was a short-term strategy at best, though. Since Vince had no legitimate ID, he couldn’t have a vehicle registered to him. If he was ever pulled over, the van would be impounded.

And if Lionel found his grandson at any point, it would be an obvious place to look.

Now that she thought of it, her car would have been an equally bad hiding spot. Someone like Hermes might have taken it apart that night he came to Rapture. Salt had been standing right next to it not four days ago.

But that left the whole rest of everywhere to have put The Book of Night.

Liam said that when Vince would hide something, he’d pick one of the places rich people don’t see. Perhaps he’d hidden it in one of the areas of Salt’s own house he’d never gone. The laundry room. The pantry. Behind the television. That would be something, for Salt to be walking past it the entire time and never noticing. But it was risky too. It would be hard to reobtain the book, and there was no guarantee it wouldn’t be disturbed by someone else. Even if he taped it to the chimney, slate repair people might stumble on it.

Even on a roof—

Charlie stopped, nearly overpouring soda in the scotch and soda she was making.

Who cleans the gutters the day after they murder someone and the day before they leave their girlfriend? A ridiculously considerate person, she supposed. Someone who’d been meaning to get to the task and wanted to get it done before they were gone.

Or someone who was moving something to a new hiding spot, one that no one was likely to stumble on, and which wasn’t the sort of place that someone like Salt would even remember existed. Their rental house had a chimney, connected to the furnace and water heater rather than a fireplace.

And it had a metal top on it. One that magnets might grip.

Of course, there were lots of things that were made of metal in a house. But outside of the house made sense if he wanted to protect the people inside. And if Vince wanted to be able to retrieve it without having to face Charlie.

She could look, anyway.

It would give her a chance to check and see if Adam had busted up their place. If it didn’t seem like he’d been there, Charlie would call Posey and they could move their stuff and themselves back in the morning. Put a baseball bat by the door. See if their landlord would mind if Charlie installed a couple of better locks.