Page 25 of Thief of Night
Charlie showed up for that night’s shift at Rapture more distracted than ever. The same DJ who’d been playing holiday music for the car dealers was back, setting up a karaoke machine near the stage. A projector was on and aimed at the wall. Currently an FKA Twigs video was playing silently. The dancers all seemed to have snakes for shadows.
Don was at the chalkboard, writing out a menu with a lot of drinks with names involving the words “hair” and “scissors,” leading Charlie to believe that she should be expecting another holiday party, this time for a salon.
It also led her to believe that Don wanted to have his menu up before Charlie got there.
“You’re a real overachiever,” she told him as she tucked her jacket and purse in the nook behind the bar and grabbed her apron.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” he asked.
“Nothing,” she said, glancing over his menu. It was heavy on the vodka, and lemon-forward, but there was nothing wrong with that. “Looks good.”
That seemed to mellow him. Or maybe he was thinking about how the last guy who hassled her got choked out. “How’s your eye?”
She touched it gingerly. The swelling had gone down a lot, though the bruising was dark enough that her concealer was struggling to mask it. She was looking forward to her day off, tomorrow. “Okay, I guess. Hopefully this party will go better. Is Odette around?”
“She’s in the back with some poor old gentleman who tried to sneak in earlier,” Don said, and raised his eyebrows.
“I hope that ‘poor old gent’ is paying handsomely for the privilege,” Charlie said and went to check the garnishes.
As she sliced limes, she thought about the bodies in the basement of the Hatfield church. Thought about the bite on the body in the photo, echoing the scratches on her own back. She didn’t think it could have been the same Blight—surely, she wasn’t that lucky—but it did make her believe it was one.
Which would make this her job, even if Mr. Punch hadn’t drafted her into it.
When she got to the maraschino cherries, she plunked two into a lowball glass and made a godmother with vodka and amaretto. Then she carried it past the velvet curtain and to the stairs of Balthazar’s shadow parlor.
The top step had onyx in it, so as she hit it, Red was forced to manifest. She heard his heavy step behind her as they went the rest of the way down.
At the bottom, when she turned, though, he wasn’t there.
Charlie sucked in her breath and looked around. The shadow parlor was low-ceilinged, with the same black walls as Rapture and lots of cocktail tables, over which gloamists and clients met to work out the details of their arrangements.
A Black boy in a parka had his hand touching the wrist of a middle-aged white man whose eyes were rolling back. Rolling bliss, probably, although alterationists could also cut out parts of you that you didn’t like—addictions, uncontrollable rage, jealousy. But that was less common, since whatever a person lost wasgone. Cut away too much and the person wound up effectively lobotomized. More or less what Mr. Punch had threatened to do to Charlie.
Another girl with dyed black hair was crying quietly to two friends. “He stole it,” she was saying as Charlie passed. “He told me he loved me and then he stole my shadow.”
Joey Aspirins stood near the second curtain, this one demarcating Balthazar’s office. Aspirins had a fresh tattoo of a lobster shining with Aquaphor on his lower arm. He looked as sunken-cheeked and unwell as ever.
“He in?” she asked.
Aspirins nodded once, folding his arms over his chest. “For you.”
Charlie took that as a compliment. She parted the curtain. Balthazar Blades sat in one of the leather club chairs. Tall and skinny, Balthazar had dark eyes and messy dark waves, and wore a wrinkled burgundy velvet suit. The top three buttons of the white and equally wrinkled shirt underneath were undone.
“Trouble is here, I see,” he said. “And she brought me a drink! What exactly are you trying to bribe me into doing this time?”
“I need your help,” she told him.
Balthazar looked as pleased as a shark scenting blood in the water. “Go on,” he practically purred.
Charlie took a deep breath. Although Posey wasn’t there, somewhere her ears must be ringing. “I need to know some things about how to be a gloamist.”
“And there’s no better teacher than Balthazar.”
“Despite the fact that he talks about himself in the third person.”
He grinned, undaunted. “Of course, there’s a price.”
“Let’s hear it,” she said.
