“I see your race here. Wild Mars Rover. How sure are you about this?” Murray asked.
A good question. Adam had seemed certain, but Adam was an idiot. “Totally sure.” After all, equivocating wouldn’t make him blame her less if he lost the money.
“All right,” he said. “Take the ring back to your little friend. But if this doesn’t come through, you’re going to be getting me twice the value of what I lost—and you’re going to get it in something easy to move, like uncut gems. Or stolen shadows. Agreed?”
“Yeah,” Charlie said, slipping the ring all the way onto her finger and then pointing down at the black knives. “You sell a lot of these?”
“More all the time. You can’t be too careful,” he said. “People say onyx can cut through the night.”
“How much?” she asked.
Murray smiled a kind, grandfatherly smile. “I’ll add it to your tab. Better get it from someone you trust. Too much shined-up resin out there, looking like stone.”
“Appreciated,” she told him.
He chose one of the knives from the case, wrapped it in a cloth, and slid it into a bag. “Hope the horses come through.”
“You and me both,” she said, and headed out the door. As she did, she noticed one of the bricks on the threshold was a polished black. No puppeteer was sending a shadow in there.
In the car, sitting behind the wheel, she opened the pouch and took out the knife. Pressed her finger against the side. It wasn’t particularly sharp—stones didn’t hold an edge like metal did.
Onyx can cut through the night.
She hadn’t carried an onyx knife with her since she stopped stealing from gloamists—and her old one had a big chunk broken off it. Despite not being sharp, an onyx knife was an excellent weapon against a shadow. The onyx forced it solid, so it could be hit, and weakened it.
She’d need the knife, now that Vince wasn’t around to break people’s necks.
With the job over, there was no way to prevent herself from thinking of him. No way to avoid the gut punch of him being gone. No way to avoid the sadness that was coming to smother her.
But at least he understood that Charlie Hall was no sucker. She wasn’t a mark.
Edmund Vincent Carver. She took out her phone to stare at the picture of his license again, to study it as though she could know him from that picture. Her gaze slid to the address, right there in Springfield.
Might as well swing by.
The apartment building was on the smaller side, with four high-ceilinged stories. Old brick covered the exterior. If she hadn’t been able to guess the age of the building from the patina, the nonstandard-sized windows would have given it away. Every air conditioner jutting out from one had to be braced at an odd angle to fit.
Charlie went up the steps. There were ten buttons on the buzzer. The first three didn’t get a response. The fourth and fifth had no idea who she was asking about. The sixth got a grumbled hello.
“I have a package here for Edmund Carver,” she said. “Needs a signature.”
“He doesn’t live here.” A guy, from the sound of the voice.
“Well, maybe you could forward it to him,” Charlie suggested. If he would open the door, she believed she could weasel her way inside and refuse to leave until he told her something. “I just need someone to sign.”
“I told you, he’s not here. He’s dead.”
It was not particularly convincing that he started out with “not here” and ended with “dead.” She decided to take a gamble. “Look, I lied. I’m a friend and I really am trying to find him—”
There was a quaver in the voice. “Go away. I don’t want any of this at my door. I’ve told all of you—I don’t know anything. Most nights he didn’t even sleep here, and he didn’t leave anything behind. Now, go away.” The intercom stopped crackling.
Charlie pressed the buzzer again, and again, but he didn’t return.
She looked over at her car but walked around the back of the building instead, where the trash cans were kept. It didn’t take her long to find one that had junk mail addressed to apartment 2B among the coffee grounds and eggshells and takeout containers. A glossy catalog of scrubs, only slightly smeared with old soup, had the name Liam Clovin, MD, printed on the back.
18
THE PAST
Born as a wisp of a thing, ephemeral as smoke from a cigarette. Succored with blood, with scraps of horror and self-disgust. Embarrassing desires. I want her. I want him. I want that.