Outside the bar, he’d traced the tattoo of roses and winged beetles along her throat, his fingers gentle. But when she’d twined her arms around his neck and kissed him, he’d pressed her against the rough bricks with all the fervor she could want, his height and the strength of his arms suddenly a real and previously unknown advantage.
She took him home, and in the morning, he was still there. He made coffee and brought it to her on the mattress, along with toast that was only slightly burnt at the edges. Maybe she loved him a little right then, although she would have never admitted it to herself. He was looking for a place, he said. Did she know anyone with a room to rent?
But Charlie never let herself forget that Vince’s life with her was a kind of exile. He kept a picture of himself with another woman, one he never talked about, in his wallet. That first night she’d looked through it and found ten dollars, a driver’s license from Minnesota, and the photo, worn thin from the touch of his fingers.
Every now and again she’d pickpocket him again, to check. It was always there.
5
INSIDE OUT
Although they managed to drive the Corolla home—slowly—it made an alarming clunking noise, and Vince thought he needed a part that it was too late to get. He offered to drop her back at Rapture for her shift, but he wasn’t likely to be back from his cleaning job in time to pick her up.
Charlie arranged for her friend Barb to give her a lift home, not wanting to be alone on the street again. Barb was a line cook at a vegan restaurant in Northampton that stopped seating at eleven on Fridays; by the time they got the last table turned over, the kitchen clean, and the next day’s food prepped, it was close enough to one in the morning for the timing to work out.
Standing outside, huddled in her coat, Charlie watched Balthazar leave with Joey Aspirins. She couldn’t help thinking of the nameless murdered man and his tattered shadow. Couldn’t help wondering if Balthazar had ratted the guy out to Salt. She hoped not. She wanted to keep on liking Balthazar.
When she was a kid, she’d imagined making Salt pay for what he’d done to her. But the idea of revenge was childish, and it died with her childhood. Charlie was pragmatic. People like her didn’t get back at people like Salt.
Still, she couldn’t help wondering about the Liber Noctem, this book he was apparently desperate to get back. Wondered what it would be like to have something he wanted. To have the power to take something from him.
Then Charlie reminded herself that she didn’t want to wind up a corpse in an alley, and definitely not the alley just around the corner from her rental house. If she was going to get murdered, she’d like to do it in Paris. Or Tokyo.
What she did want was her sister in college and her debts paid.
Well, that was what she wanted to want.
You can’t quit, Balthazar had told her when she informed him she wasn’t taking jobs. You’re too good. This is the only thing you’re good at. Sometimes Charlie worried he was right about that second part.
Idly, she took out her phone and tapped out “Liber Noctem” into the search window. An auction notice from Sotheby’s came up:
LIBER NOCTEM. Colloquially called The Book of Blights, each letter individually stamped into pages comprised of a nickel alloy. Created in 1831 in Scotland by its anonymous author, the book is one of the most significant documents related to the phenomenon of disembodied shadow manifestations. Rumors of an actual Blight being involved in the writing of the book are unconfirmed but add to its historical significance.
Catalogue Note: Sotheby’s does not endorse carrying out any of the rituals in this book and will ask the buyer to sign papers indemnifying Sotheby’s from any and all related damages.
Bidding begins at 520,000 GBP.
The picture that accompanied it was of a silvery book with elaborate clasps, like an old bible. Not exactly an easy thing to hide.
Could that be what Adam had and was trying to move? What he wanted Amber to take the fall for?
Barb pulled up in her slightly dented electric-blue minivan, startling Charlie out of her thoughts. Barb powered down the window and cracked a huge smile. “Get in, babycakes.”
Charlie tossed her bag onto the floor of the passenger side and climbed up after it. Barbara Panganiban was easily her favorite of the people she’d met in the course of getting, and then losing, bartending jobs all over the Valley.
“A bunch of people are at my house tonight,” Barb told her, throwing the car into reverse. Her thick black hair was pulled into an olive-colored headscarf and her cook’s jacket hung open over a singlet. “I thought about saying something earlier, but I figured it’d be easier to kidnap you.”