She pounded on the painted black door, ignoring the stenciled words: “GO AWAY.”
When no sound came from inside, she pounded some more.
“Can’t you read the sign?” came a shout from within.
Charlie kicked the door with her foot. “You know what a snap gun is? I’ve got one in the trunk of my car and it will pick that lock in seconds. Might damage the mechanism, might not, but I will still be inside.”
Balthazar jerked open the door. He was wearing a red dressing gown, his hair mussed, and he looked ready to go to war with the person responsible for waking him up. He blinked a few times, obviously stunned that it was her.
“You almost got me killed last night,” Charlie said.
“Well, fuck a duck. Hello, darling.”
She pushed past him into the fire station. “Surprised I’m still among the living?”
“Delighted. Come in, I was just going to make some coffee.” His tone let her know he was annoyed at her barging in, but not enough for it to matter. He signaled her toward some stairs and then went up a floor and into a surprisingly sunny kitchen with a few plants wilting in pots. On one of the burners sat the largest Cuban-style stove-top espresso maker Charlie had ever seen. “I said to ole Aspirins, there’s more to that girl than meets the eye. And then Joey, he said I was just being sentimental, that you were an empty-headed—”
“Save it,” interrupted Charlie, before he really got going. “I want information.”
“Have a seat,” he said, indicating a café table that looked like one corner of it had been set on fire at some point in the past. Raynham Park racing forms from the week before served as a tablecloth.
“I want to know about the book that Paul Ecco tried to sell you.”
“Eavesdropping, were you?” He took out a jar of Café Bustelo and rough measured the grounds into the metal cage, then filled the bottom with water. He set it down on the stove and turned on the gas so that blue flames licked the bottom. “You were good. Most people who think they can do this kind of work, can’t. But you’ve made it very clear you’re out of the game.”
Rand had told her that the world of heists and lies and lifts were what certain people were born for, and that Charlie was one of them. Her hands became steady, her fingers quick, and her mouth ready to talk a raft of shit. She had been good. And she’d liked it. That was the problem.
“I saw Paul’s body that night, on my way home,” she said. “It looked as though it had been ripped open. So, okay, I wanted to know who could have done something like that. Then some heavy comes in and acts like I know where Paul got the page. So then I was really curious, especially about who snitched on me.”
“You wrong me,” Balthazar said, all mock-innocence. “It’s not my fault if you’re a truffle pig for trouble. All I did was answer a few questions for an interested party.”
Balthazar turned away to get down a can of condensed milk, but not before she saw the way his mouth had gone pinched. Among criminals, and the crime-adjacent, there might be a flexible sense of morality, but there was one thing every ne’er-do-well was firm on: no rats.
“Omitting the part where Paul tried to sell you the page?” Charlie reminded him. She wondered how long it was going to be before word got around that Hermes was missing. It was worth reminding him that if she went down, she could take him with her. “What is so important about this particular book?”
“It’s called the Liber Noctem,” he told her in a bored voice. “Colloquially, The Book of Blights because it’s supposed to contain rituals specifically to do with them. Some gloamists think that’s the key to immortality, to be able to live on as your Blight. But whatever’s in there, it’s a truly magnificent object. Metal pages, stamped instead of printed on. Bought at auction by that particularly wicked old gentleman, Lionel Salt. Rich as a Medici, and with the same set of interests.”
Charlie’s lip curled.
“Do you know him?” Balthazar asked.
“Of course not,” said Charlie. “But he’s the one who sent Hermes.”
Balthazar set down two large mugs, generously filling the bottoms of each with gooey condensed milk. He poured coffee on top of both and brought one to her, then sat, smoothing out his dressing gown. “Salt’s grandson is supposed to have stolen the Liber Noctem and run off. Ed Carter, I think his name was. Carver? Anyway, the grandson gets involved in some kind of murder-suicide, but must have sold the book on beforehand, because it doesn’t turn up with the rest of his stuff. Salt’s so keen on getting the book back that he has a standing offer of fifty grand to anyone who returns it, no questions asked.”