Page 11 of Thief of Night
A moment later, two men were grabbing Red by the arms, tying to pry him off their coworker. Charlie felt the hot slap of the Blight’s anger bleeding through their tether. He could kill this man. He could kill this man and never think about it again.
Charlie hopped onto the bar and slid over it, knocking some napkins onto the floor.
A few people had pulled out their cell phones and were filming.
“Stop,” Charlie told Red, pressing her hand against the solid expanse of his back.
“How did he get in here?” a woman in a green sequin dress and a deer-horn headband demanded. The same woman Don had been lecturing about beer. “I’m the CFO of Hampshire Ford. This is supposed to be an eventexclusivelyfor our company.”
Abruptly, Red let go of the man’s throat, turning the full force of his attention on the woman, a surprising authority coming into his voice. “So if I wasn’t here, you’d let him do whatever he wanted? I can see why you’d like me to leave.”
Something in the woman’s expression changed, as though she was no longer certain she wanted to be in this conversation. “Put your phones away!” she snapped at the crowd.
The bald man staggered to his feet, hand on his throat.
“Fred,” the CFO said. “You all right? Let’s go sit down.”
“I want to press charges,” he sputtered, furious, then turned toward Charlie. “Someone is going to hear about this. Where’s your manager? Elaine, contact our legal department.”
Odette was moving in their direction, liquid silver caftan flowing around her. She was not going to be happy.
Red’s expression grew grim. The sales guy seemed to deflate as he lookedup into the shadow’s face, into eyes that seemed to be burning away into darkness, sparking with embers as they went.
“His eyes,” the man whispered.
“Vince,” Charlie hissed, then realized with a spark of horror that he might not react to the name. “Red.”
The shadow turned to her, then closed his eyes for a long moment, perhaps trying to get himself under control. Why was he defending her now, after abandoning her in the mill building? It wasn’t like the sales guy was even that much of a threat.
“You have to get out of here,” she told him.
At the other end of the bar, Don was smirking as though looking forward to the lecture Odette was going to give Charlie.
At least the CFO was leading the bald guy—Fred—away. He was headed over to a table of concerned-looking car dealers. And when Red opened his eyes, they weren’t black holes. They were his human eyes, pale gray, shining with reflected light.
Then Fred turned. Maybe the idea of his colleagues thinking he’d lost a fight got to him. Or maybe he was too drunk to be properly scared. Whatever the reason, he took a deep breath, fisted a hand, and ran at Red, swinging.
The punch went through Red. And then the man stepped through him too, momentum carrying him forward.
Right into Charlie, who he hit square in the face.
7The Journalist
In the back room, Charlie placed ice, wrapped in a bar napkin, to her bruised cheek. Everything hurt.
The DJ had put on the Ramones’ “Merry Christmas (I Don’t Want to Fight Tonight)”—perhaps as commentary—and the beat of it thrummed through the walls. If she hadn’t been in so much pain, she would have laughed.
Odette handed Charlie a glass with whiskey and no ice. Maybe she thought that with so much on her face, she didn’t need any in her drink. “I hate these parties. Do you want me to call someone? An officer of the law?”
Charlie took the glass with a smile and downed her whiskey in one go. “No, no, they’d want to know where Vince went.” She liked her boss a lot, but she particularly liked how little Odette gave a shit about customers who treated the staff badly.
“Your boyfriend didn’t stick around? That’s bullshit,” said Odette’s drag performer friend, whose name turned out to be Hauntress Hysteria Glitterati.
Charlie looked down at her shadow. “Him being here wouldn’t help anything.”
Hauntress raised her eyebrows in a way that made it clear she didn’t think that was the relevant part.
“Well, you rest for a bit,” Odette went on. “Lie down on the couch, and I’ll check on you in an hour. Don can handle things.”
