Page 115 of Book of Night
Inside, cold shrimp were being tweezered onto silver platters topped with lettuce leaves and some kind of creamy sauce. Risotto balls were being lowered into a portable fryer set up on a large marble island big enough to lay out a dead body on.
She turned her thoughts away from that.
It was easy to be overlooked at a party like this, with multiple vendors and freelance waitstaff. José’s catering would be supplemented by specialty offerings, like a caviar station, or a sushi station, or a human sacrifice station. Hopefully, she could get lost among them.
She was just stepping into the hall when someone called after her.
“You’re late,” said a harried-looking woman with a clipboard and a lot of curly blond hair. Probably the event coordinator.
With what Charlie hoped was a sufficiently blank look, she turned. “Sorry. I was looking for a bathroom to use before I started.”
“There isn’t time. Put your things down and take these hors d’oeuvres.” Charlie shoved her backpack under a table where she could grab it easily later and took the metal tray.
Across the room, she saw José, rolling prosciutto roses. He winked.
Cheeks prickly with warmth after going from the cold autumn air into rooms full of bodies, Charlie moved through Lionel Salt’s mansion. Passing leaves smeared with blue cheese and candied walnuts to anyone with empty hands was a good cover for reacquainting herself with the house and trying to spot Vince.
Charlie gritted her teeth against the uncomfortable mix of familiarity and dread she felt as she walked through the rooms. She kept a little smile on her face and didn’t meet anyone’s eyes. Balthazar had shielded her from direct contact with clients, but stealing things occasionally meant conning people, so it wasn’t like no gloom had met her before. She just hoped no one would recognize her.
Passing through a gallery-like hall near the entrance, she covertly observed a display of antiquarian books under glass. Beside that was an etched plate that said “The Lionel Salt Library will be open to all gloamists, and cultivate a space where arcane knowledge can be shared.” The taxidermied animal heads Charlie remembered looked down from where they hung, their shining glass eyes, polished antlers, and sharp horns catching the light.
Usually collections like Salt’s were hoarded, so the idea of getting a look must have gotten the glooms, especially the younger ones, salivating.
As a thief of magical secrets, Charlie was not unlike a bee, pollinating many flowers. Once gloamists digested an old book, copying down the experiments or techniques they thought might be useful into their own notes, the only reason they hung onto the original copy was to guarantee that what they learned stayed exclusive to them. Charlie had once failed to steal a volume from a guy, because when she arrived, she discovered that he burned every single book he’d acquired as soon as he copied down the parts in which he was interested. She still got angry sometimes, thinking about him.
If Salt wanted to found a library, that would make him very popular. It showed a willingness to share his secrets. A generosity of spirit.
Or that his secrets were so much greater and more terrible that he could afford to have a collection like this mean nothing to him. Either way, he ought to have no problem convincing the local gloamists that his elevation to the Cabal had been long overdue. His influence would grow, and so would the horror that followed in his wake.
Charlie’s gaze went to her own shadow, then away.
At the end of the hall hung an oil painting of a dark-haired woman, lying on a couch, wearing a diamond-encrusted crown. Her dress was parted, showing her naked body from the waist down. And suspended over her by straps was a stallion. Charlie frowned at it, then glanced around. It was far from the only piece of disturbing art. A painting of a Roman king being devoured by his horses hung by a door. Beneath a sconce, she spotted a sketch of a decomposing fawn.
As though Salt’s house needed to be creepier.
Charlie walked by massive and magnificent stairs carved in the shapes of lions, through an arch into a sitting room. There, two bartenders poured drinks from behind a wooden bar topped in pewter. A small knot of people waited for their drinks. Gangsters stood shoulder to shoulder with academics, performers chatted with mystics. Gloaming was a new science, and its practitioners as hungry as the shadows that fluttered behind them in the shapes of capes, or wrapped around their bodies like snakes. Others drifted a bit behind their wearer, leashed by a single silver cord, moving to peer out the window, or fetch a drink.
One shadow even drifted up to her tray, plucking an endive off of it before she could pause. Startled into stopping, she swallowed a curse as she almost dropped the food.
She heard a bark of laughter from across the room.
A prank. It reminded her that no matter how tense she was, and no matter how terrible her suspicions were, to most of the glooms present, this was a party.
With effort, she swallowed her irritation and glanced into the great room with its towering two-story ceiling and its wall of windows.
She spotted Salt in a tuxedo, standing beside one of his four enormous couches, declaiming to a few older gloamists. Adeline, in an elegant black column of a dress, stood beside the limestone fireplace, in which green and blue flames burned. An enormous painting of a forest hung over the mantel. Only when you looked closely did you notice that it was full of shadows wearing deep red slashes for mouths and that gray body parts had been rendered among the ferns of the forest floor.
Two additional Cabal members were there as well. Bellamy stood in a corner, and Malik looked particularly regal. His locs had been pulled into flat twists on the sides and wrapped in gleaming gold thread, his shadow hanging across his body like a sash.
A trio of musicians in animal masks played classical music. An owl with a violin. A fox with a cello. A bear with a viola. Through the windows, an outdoor garden was lit with low lamps that showed off marble statues of shrouded figures.
What must it have been like to grow up in a place like this? Surrounded by this much wealth? Force-fed untold depravity?
Charlie finished her circuit and ate the remaining hors d’oeuvres so she had an excuse to go back to the kitchen. Setting the silver tray down on the marble island to be wiped and refilled, she took the opportunity to grab her backpack. Then she headed directly for the library.
Charlie’s memories of the house were blurry and indistinct, more nightmare than recollection. A voice close enough for her to have felt breath on her neck. Cavernous rooms linked together in a puzzling maze.
The library, with a secret door leading to a room of treasures, including a safe. With the rug she vomited on, and where she might have died.
