Page 21 of Book of Night
“An illustrated edition ofThe Witch and the Unlucky Brother,” Charlie improvised, heart pounding. Unless this was a different Paul Ecco, the person on the other end of the line was posing as a dead man. “We spoke about it yesterday?”
Yesterday, a day after he would have been murdered.
“Ah yeah,” the man said. “Some boxes just came in, so I’ll have to lookthrough the inventory and get back to you. Why don’t you give me your name and number…?”
He paused, waiting for Charlie to supply the rest.
The problem with phones and caller ID was that he very probably had Rapture’s number already, so the only thing left to lie about was her name.
“Ms. Damiano,” she said, giving him Vince’s surname instead of her own. “And you can ask for me at this number.”
“I will get back to youvery soon,” he said ominously. “Good evening, Ms. Damiano.”
Because that wasn’t creepy at all.
She checked her cell. Seven minutes before she had to be behind the bar. Not a lot of time. But there was one other person who knew something worth knowing about Paul Ecco.
Charlie pushed aside the velvet curtain, took that first step onto the onyx top step—mirrored by the onyx lintel over the threshold—and then down the stairs into Balthazar’s shadow parlor.
Although weakening the power of shadows for the brief period of passing over the step wasn’t particularly useful, the other property of onyx was more so—it made quickened shadows solid. That was what made onyx attached to weapons particularly valuable; it meant that gloamists’ shadows could be struck.
The space was low-ceilinged, with the same black, light-sucking walls as the rest of Rapture. A few people sat at tables with their drinks, heads bent in conference. One girl had her eyes shut as the gloom beside her did something to her shadow that looked a lot like stitching. A boy with a skateboard slouched low in a chair, resting his head against the wall, eyes rolling up into his head.
Toward the back was another velvet curtain. Inside, a pair of club chairs—for clients—were arranged opposite a small beat-up wooden desk where Balthazar sat. Joey Aspirins leaned against the far wall, arms folded over his chest.
“You got an appointment?” Joey Aspirins demanded, louder than was necessary.
Balthazar waved airily. “Oh, don’t be silly. That’s the girl from the bar. What’s your name again—Shar? Cher?”
“Very funny,” she said.
“Charlie!” He snapped his fingers as though it had been on the very tip of his tongue. “You’ve reconsidered taking on jobs. I knew you would. Welcome back into my good graces.”
Balthazar had wavy black hair and long eyelashes and wore a messy black suit with a messy black tie over a wrinkled shirt. An onyx tiepin was stuck into his lapel. Word was, he used to be an alterationist and had burned up his shadow by using it too hard. He still had the cleaved tongue of a gloom andwore a silver stud at the apex of the split. He came in late, left early, and often forgot to pay the rent to Odette. He was the exact sort of skinny fast-talker that Charlie usually got involved with and then regretted.
Joey Aspirins, by contrast, was small, wiry, and sunken-cheeked in a way that spoke of ill health, maybe addiction, in his past. He wore his gray hair military-short. He had a lot of tattoos, including a few crawling across his throat, combat boots, and a wardrobe that seemed to consist entirely of white t-shirts with short-sleeve button-ups over them. When he looked at Charlie, she knew he didn’t expect her to be smart. Well, she didn’t think he was some kind of genius either.
Charlie put her hand on her hip. “I’m headed off break. I thought I’d ask if I could get you anything from the bar?”
“Aren’t you thoughtful,” Balthazar said, skeptical but not about to turn down a drink. “Perhaps that old-fashioned you make with amaro?”
“Orange peel and a cherry?”
“A couple of cherries,” he said. “I like alotof sweet with my bitter.”
Nice line. With great force of will, Charlie didn’t roll her eyes. “And I wanted to ask you something.”
“You don’t say.” Balthazar was the picture of innocence.
She sighed. “There was a man I saw the other night on the street. He had shadows for hands. Do you know him?”
“You’ve met the new Hierophant,” he said.
The Hierophant. The magician in a tarot deck and a position among the gloamists. Locally, shadow magicians came together to choose representatives from each discipline to sit in what they—perhaps not incorrectly—called a Cabal.
The representatives were well-known. Vicereine, famous for causing a washed-up actor to win an Oscar with his post-altered-shadow performance and having altered her influencer ex-boyfriend so that his shadow’s head looked like a pig. Her gang of Artists had grown over the years to be highly influential, in part because alterations were so lucrative.
Malik was rumored to have puppeted his shadow to steal an extremely large ruby from the British Museum before they installed onyx, while Bellamy of the masks had no reputation so to speak of, which was a reputation in itself for those of the masked discipline.
