Page 58 of Thief of Night
“I’ll talk to the lawyers,” Red said. “Try to move things along.”
Madison squinted at him. “I don’t know what I expected, but you sound different.”
Charlie bit the inside of her cheek. If he couldn’t convince them he was Remy, he was going to be in a very tricky position.
“Iamdifferent,” said Red. “In a way, Remy really is dead.”
A shudder went through Adeline’s shoulders.
Topher put his hand on her arm. She leaned away from him, but not enough to break contact.
Brooks gave a big sigh and raised his drink again. “Remy Carver is dead. Long live Remy Carver.”
They were all lit enough to raise their glasses to that. “Remy Carver is dead,” they chanted. “Long live Remy Carver.”
“Soon, it’ll go back to the way it used to be,” put in Adeline, eyes sparkling. “All of us, together again.”
“All of us, together again,” Topher toasted, but his attention was entirely on her.
“And me,” Charlie said. “Intruding.” Then she drank.
“To you, Charlie Hall,” Red said, holding up his glass. “For putting up with me and all my baggage.”
“I doubt she’ll have to do it much longer,” said Topher, then laughed at his own joke.
“What did you say?” Red asked mildly.
“Oh, she’s too drunk to remember anyway,” Topher reassured him.
“Youareforgettable,” Charlie snapped, smiling, glad for an excuse to show her teeth. Finally, she’d run out of patience. She was tired of being ignored. Tired of them sneering at her. And most of all, she was tired of feeling as though Red might see her through their eyes and like her less because of it. “That must be why Adeline doesn’t love you.”
Madison gave a gasp. Brooks snorted.
“People like you,” Topher told Charlie, “always show their bad breeding eventually.”
Maybe she had gone too far, breaking the masquerade that he had any chance with Adeline, but leave it to him to make Charlie’s lack of discretion proof that she wasn’t one of their kind. Of course, there had never been a way to be good enough, only multiple paths to prove that she wasn’t.
“People like you,” she said, her smile widening, “are so used to the taste of spit in your food that you think it’s some exclusive seasoning.People like youare so used to getting what you want that if you were stranded on the side of the road, you’d refuse a ride from a car without heated seats.”
“Fuck you,” he said.
She stood, flushed with triumph. Then her heel caught on the rung of the barstool. Her drunken reflexes betrayed her. She fell sideways, kicking the table hard enough on her way down that Brooks’s drink was knocked to the floor, the glass shattering.
For a moment, lying there, she thought of being behind the bar of Rapture, surrounded by smashed bottles, when the gloamist’s shadow had smothered her.
Then Madison started to laugh. A moment later they were all laughing, looking down at her. Once again, Charlie had made a spectacular fool of herself. The heel on one of her shoes had entirely broken off so she couldn’t even stand with dignity. She could taste tears in the back of her throat.
“This is what you like, Carver?” Topher said, sneering.
Charlie pushed herself to her feet and kicked off her shoes. Then she punched him in the face.
Charlie Hall, glue trap for disaster. But come too close and you’ll get stuck too.
Topher staggered back, hitting the bar. His hand came up to his face. His nose was bleeding. “You’re a crazy bitch.”
“Glad you finally figured that out,” Charlie said.
A big guy with a beard pushed away from the wall and headed toward them. Security. Well fine, she didn’t want to be there anyway. She didn’t want any of this. Barefoot, she stomped out of the bar and into the icy-cold parking lot.
