By the time Rapture was closing, Charlie had pulled her hair into two sweaty pigtails and slung a wet towel across her neck. Balthazar and Joey Aspirins were gone. The performers were sitting together in the corner with Odette, drinking pale purple aviations while Charlie pocketed her tips for the night and counted out the till.
“Is this what you thought you’d be doing with your life?” Odette was asking.
“Oh no, honey,” said one. “My mother wanted me to be a doctor.”
The three of them laughed as Charlie loaded the dishwasher. One of the bar-backs, Sam, swept up broken glass.
That’s when the doors opened. A bearded guy in a deep green fisherman’s jacket walked in, his shadow in the shape of wings at his back.
“We’re closed,” Odette called, turning in her chair and making a grand gesture with one hand. “Come back on another night, dear.”
The bearded man’s gaze went to Odette and her table, then over to Charlie. “Ms. Damiano?” he asked, and for a moment, Charlie didn’t understand. Then she did, and felt a flush of horror. This was the man on the other end of the phone, the one who’d pretended to be the late Paul Ecco.
“Charlie Hall,” she said, pointing to herself.
This was a lounge, after all. People passed through. Used phones. She told herself there was no way her voice was so distinct that he could be sure she was the one who’d called.
But as he crossed the room, heading toward the bar, she could tell he’d made his decision. And as he walked, his shadow began to grow, feathers lengthening and then rolling toward Charlie like fog.
On the other side of the room, the performers gasped and Odette stood up so quickly that her chair fell over.
Charlie stopped moving.
The dark reached toward her with suddenly knifelike fingers. She threw herself against the shelves, making the bottles behind her shake dangerously.
And then it slid away, as though they’d all imagined it. As though nothing had happened. The man’s shadow looked utterly normal, unaltered. No longer even in the shape of wings.
“Abracadabra, bitch,” he said with a grin, leaning his arm on the scratched wood of the bar top.
7
THE PAST
Charlie hadn’t thought there was anyone she could like less than Travis, until Rand came along.
He was one of Mom’s crystals-and-tarot friends and had been particularly skeptical when she was channeling Alonso. He hadn’t thought much of her, so she was surprised when one day Mom told her that he was waiting for her in the main room of their apartment.
“What does he want?” Charlie had asked.
“He said that he’d been doing a reading and there was something that concerned you. He wanted to tell you himself.” Mom was boiling green tea in a regular pot with several pieces of quartz at the bottom, for clarity of thought. “Go on in. I’ll join you in a minute.”
Rand was sitting on the couch. His mustache looked even longer than it had before, twisted up with wax on both sides into a style he called “imperial” and everyone else called “hipster.” He had on a tweed jacket and slacks, only slightly worn at the elbows and knees. It all combined to give him an affable look that fell somewhere between professor, old-timey saloon owner, and Rich Uncle Pennybags from Monopoly.
One of his main gambits was convincing older women that he was special and that they were special through their connection to him. Charlie had no idea that Alonso was stepping on his game.
She also didn’t know that Rand was a con artist.
“Sit down,” he said, patting the couch beside him.
She chose the chair that was as far as she thought she could go without seeming rude.
He gave her the fake smile that adults give kids—too broad. “Your mother probably told you that I have a message for you.”
She just kept looking at him. The only good thing that living with Travis had done for her was free her from wanting to please adults.
He cleared his throat, leaned forward, and kept going. “But it isn’t really a message from me, it’s a message from Alonso.”
Charlie opened her mouth to object, before she realized that she couldn’t. If she did, she’d be admitting Alonso wasn’t real.
“You see,” Rand said, looking her right in the eye, like he knew exactly what she was thinking. “He came to me in a dream and revealed that it was important you help me. You believe in Alonso, don’t you?”
Later, she would wish that she’d said many things. She wished she’d been clever enough to tell him that since Alonso spoke through her, she’d never met him. She wished she’d tearfully told Rand that she hated Alonso speaking through her and that he’d taken enough from her already. Basically, she wished she’d already become the con artist he was going to turn her into.