Page 26 of Thief of Night
“Get me one of those Blights you’re supposed to kill. A good one, not some little thing that Raven would use for stitching.”
“They don’t send the Hierophant after those,” she reminded him.
“I want a real shadow again,” he said, gesturing toward the floor. “Not this dormant nothing.”
Just what she needed. Another person who wanted her to catch a Blight.
“Done and done,” she said, swallowing her frustration. “But I expect an advance on my services. You start teaching, I start hunting on your behalf.”
“After so many years of acquaintance, I think we can trust one another to honor a bargain,” he said with a grin.
Charlie put her hand on her hips. “When you say it that way, you know it sounds like just the opposite, right?”
“Don’t worry,” Balthazar said, taking an envelope out of his desk. “I’ve got something else to bargain with. I got what you were looking for.”
Charlie ripped the corner of the flap so eagerly that the paper tore across. Inside was a handwritten description and map, crudely made but workable, of an underground area, beneath the mask stronghold, full of treasures. “How—”
She met Balthazar’s gaze. “I told you I’d get it,” he said, looking impossibly smug. “Somebody always needs something. Apparently, rumor has it they hired a company to excavate a new space and then stole the workers’ memories.”
“Did you ask—” she began.
“Yes, the part of Red they took is there, in an onyx vial. It’s marked with numbers: 335.”
She folded the pages and slid them into her apron. “I’ll get you that shadow,” she vowed.
“See that you do.” Balthazar smiled and took a sip of his drink. “And I suppose I can throw in a little training. Show you a few tricks. Come to my place. Afternoons are best. Or late nights, after Rapture shuts down. Though I may not be entirely sober.”
By the time Charlie got back upstairs, the hairstylists had arrived. It was obviously a small salon and even with their significant others, the lounge seemed empty. Don was on his phone, distracted, texting someone.
Up on the stage, the karaoke had gotten started and a stylist with a glitter beard and cat ears belted their way through “Animal In Me.”
Charlie poured chardonnay for a man wearing perfectly applied black lipstick, none of which came off on the glass when he took a sip. She poured a whole line of tequila shots for three young women in wolf cuts with nose rings. An older lady with an enormous white-and-yellow snake around her shoulders settled at one end of the bar. The woman’s shadow had horns.
“May I have an espresso martini?” she asked. “Black.”
“Considering the size of your snake, you can have whatever you want,” Charlie told her.
“Flatterer,” said the woman.
Charlie poured more drinks, her fingers sliding into her apron from time to time, checking that the pages were there. Her distraction was the only possible reason why she didn’t notice the man until he was standing right against the bar. Beanie pulled low on his head, he was skinnier than she remembered. Hollow-cheeked.
Still handsome in that skinny, dark-haired, sad-boy way that all herboyfriends before Vince had been. Mark, who had nearly been the death of her. Mark, who was supposed to be in prison.
For a moment, Charlie just stared at him. Her mind stuttered. She felt as if she blinked, he might turn out to be some trick of the light. Surely, if he was free, someone should have told her. Someone should have warned her.
“You,” she said, the small of her back hitting the counter the only thing that made her realize she’d moved. “You cannot be here.”
Mark’s nails were dirty. He looked hungry. “I came to apologize.”
Who is that?Red’s voice was in her head.
She’d done such a good job of not thinking about Mark since the bandages from the bullet wounds came off. Not letting her fingers rub over the scars in the shower, not looking at them when she was staring at herself in a mirror.
And when she’d met Vince, agood guy,he was supposed to be the proof that Charlie Hall could make good decisions. He was supposed to blot out her past with his unwillingness to talk about his own. None of it had worked.
My ex,she told Red.
I’ll kill him.After a pause, he amended his words.If you want.
