Page 83 of Thief of Night
“Just help Vince,” she said, letting her shoulders sag.
“So you’ll leave him with me?” He smiled benevolently, now that he thought he had her where he wanted her. “You ought to know that this is the moment when the negotiation is most likely to go my way, so don’t try to get me to pity you, Charlie Hall. I respect you too much for that.”
She folded her arms. “If he dies, you’ll have nothing to show for all this.”
“And you’ll have less.” Bellamy’s gaze on her was steady.
“My friend has been trying to restore his memory, interviewing him. I’ll give you access to the recordings.” Malhar wouldn’t be happy with her for that bargain, but at the end of this, it would be good to leave Bellamy with something.
“You’re in my stronghold,” he said. “What’s to stop me from simply separating him from you?”
Footsteps sounded on the stairs.
“Her.” Charlie would look like either a badass or a dumbass, depending on whether her calculations about who’d been at the door were correct. “Her and her collection of rare books, that is.”
Bellamy’s gaze sharpened. “And I didn’t think you liked one another much.”
Charlie turned to smile at Adeline Salt. Adeline, who she’d phoned from the van. Adeline, who rushed to kneel at Red’s side as soon as she came into the room.
“We have a shared desire,” Charlie said. “To see Vince survive.”
“I brought three volumes of Brecht’sAnatomy of Shadow,” Adeline said. “I will give you the remaining volumes when he leaves here.”
There were only three copies of Brecht’sAnatomy of Shadowin the world. There had been four, but a gloamist in Los Angeles had burned a full set in a bonfire, immortalizing the event on his TikTok for the ultimate ragebait.
“Fine,” Bellamy agreed after a long moment, turning from Adeline to Charlie. “But since she likes him so much, she can donate the blood.”
He stalked out of the room and Adeline sat down.
She put her hand on Red’s forehead, smoothing his hair out of his face. “It’s odd,” she said, looking up at Charlie. “He feels so alive.”
Charlie sat down on one of the couches. She was panicked and resentful and wanted to shouttake your hands off of him,but she needed Adeline to stay. Charlie had made a truly monstrous bargain, bringing her here. “Heisalive.”
Adeline stood as a young man with blue hair and sad eyes entered the room. “This is Felix,” Bellamy said. “He used to be with the alterationists before he was with us, so he’s good at healing shadows.”
Felix moved to Red’s side, displacing Adeline.
“You think you know his true nature,” she said to Charlie, low-voiced, so that Bellamy wouldn’t hear, “but you don’t.”
“I think he’s still learning about himself.” When Charlie had first been bound to Red, she’d thought him disturbingly unlike Vince, a doppelgänger wearing the same face. But Red had been newly untethered from Remy and raw, as Vince must have been in the time before he learned how to pass as human. And as angry as Charlie was with Red for drugging her, she couldn’t miss that he’d broken their tether, wrapped her in blankets, and left her with her phoneand keys to protect her. Red was the person Charlie had known as Vince, she was just meeting him in reverse. From the inside out, instead of the outside in.
Adeline laughed. “He tells you what he wants you to know.”
“Isn’t that what we all do?” Charlie countered, but this conversation was starting to feel pointed. Less like Adeline was trying to get under her skin and more as though Adeline was toying with her.
“You want to know something he would never tell you?”
“No,” Charlie said automatically.
Adeline laughed. “Of course you would.”
Charlie kept her eyes on Felix, on the tiny stitches he was making at the edges of Red where he was most translucent. “You’re obviously going to tell me.”
Adeline’s smile was smug. “He needs blood to be like he is. He was powerful before Remy died, perhaps not like he is now, not so… whole, but as powerful as some ancient Blights. Did you wonder how he got that way?”
“Salt killed a lot of people,” Charlie said, thinking of his words.There was a lot of blood.
“Including your friend—what was his name?” Adeline stuck the knife in, her satisfaction obvious.
