Page 50 of Book of Night
“Fuck,” Charlie said, lacking any more coherent response.
“There’s a graduate student over at UMass. Madurai Malhar Iyer. He’s been working on a doctoral dissertation on quickening shadows. The guy who told me about him had been trying to get Malhar to talk to him for ages, but Malhar kept blowing him off.”
Charlie had a feeling she knew what was coming next, and that she was going to hate it.
“I knew you weren’t going to agree to meet him, so I wrote to him and said all that stuff that happened to you happened to me. Only…”
Charlie stared at her unhelpfully.
“Only I can’t go alone,” Posey finished.
“Why not?”
“Because it didn’t happen to me,” Posey said, as though that should be obvious.
Charlie stuck a fork into her sister’s ramen and let the hot chili sear her mouth as she ate it. “That sounds like a big problemfor you.”
“I told him we could meet him at the UMass library tonight to talk,” Posey finished, voice lilting up in the manner of someone who wants to ask something without asking it. “Tonight.”
“No—no,” Charlie said, holding up her hands. “No way am I going. That’s not happening.”
Posey narrowed her eyes. “Busy with something? Planning on ransacking the living room?”
Charlie got up. “Last night was real bad and I definitely don’t want to discuss it with a stranger today.”
“You lied about meeting Katelynn. I know you did. You were looking forsomething and you didn’t want Vince to be here when you did it.” Her threat was implied, but effective nonetheless.
They stood staring at one another. Charlie’s hands had unconsciously curled into fists so tightly that her nails were pressing into her palms. “Don’t do this.”
“I don’t have a car. At least drive me,” Posey said.“Please.”
Charlie groaned and headed for her room.
“Where are you going?” Posey called after her.
“To get my coat.”
She passed Lucipurrr, tail lashing, staring at one of the walls near the bathroom. Sometimes you could hear mice scrabbling in there, and it set the cat on edge. She supposed they were all on edge, these days.
Back in the bedroom, Charlie tried to put it into a semblance of order—making up the mattress with new sheets to give her the alibi of cleaning if anything was out of place.
As they pulled out of the driveway, Charlie’s thoughts were a jumble of memories of Salt’s murder of Rand and the ease with which Vince had covered up a murder the night before. Had he killed for his grandfather? Had he killed that girl they found dead in his car for Salt? Had he killed her for himself?
Vince had been careful, and thorough, and unnervingly competent—but he hadn’t seemed as though he’d liked murder or was eager to do it again. She had a hard time imagining him hurting someone for fun.
Of course, it’s not as though she would have easily imagined him standing in the middle of the sort of gala that she’d only seen on television, wearing an outfit likely to cost more than her car, and guzzling Champagne that was allowed to use the capitalCbecause it came from the right region of France. It was possible that Charlie had a severely stunted imagination.
“So tell me about this guy, Malhar,” Charlie said, to distract herself.
She shrugged. “I don’t know that much. He seemed nice over chat.”
“No offense, Posey, but there are a lot of graduate students in the Valley, and they’re just that,students. What makes you think this guy has that much more information than you do? I mean, you spend every night online doing research. You’ve probably read a million accounts of quickened shadows.”
Posey’s frown deepened. “I don’tdoresearch, though. People can make up stories, or exaggerate for attention. Videos can be faked. I might know a lot, but so many things I’ve thought were real turned out not to work. Meanwhile, he’s authenticating the information he gets. He has proof.” Posey shifted uncomfortably in her seat. Possibly because the seats were, like everything else in the Corolla, kind of busted. “Speaking of which…”
“What?” Charlie said.
Posey made a face. “I might have exaggerated some things too—”
