Page 20 of Thief of Night (The Charlatan Duology #2)
Red stood there for a long moment. “Charlie and I have to go,” he blurted out.
For a moment, an uncomfortable silence filled the room.
“But we’re going to have brunch,” Adeline reminded him.
“I can’t,” Red said with the intensity of someone running out of oxygen in a shrinking room.
Fiona took a step back, looking down at her hands. Perfectly manicured, a cocktail ring on her middle finger so big it looked like it couldn’t possibly be studded with real diamonds and emeralds. She turned it idly, nervously. “Sweetheart, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have surprised you like this.”
A few moments ago, Charlie had been as desperate to leave as Red, but now she felt terrible. Was Fiona a bad person? She didn’t seem like one. Her spontaneous apology had seemed heartbreakingly sincere. And Odette had liked her. “R-Remy, are you sure?”
“It’s okay. I’ll be in town for a few weeks,” Fiona told Red, hand on his arm. “I’d like to sit down and talk with you about what really happened back then. And I’d like to hear about your life now.” Her gaze went to Charlie. “You must be Charlotte.”
“Charlie Hall,” she said, lifting her hand awkwardly in a half wave.
The woman looked at her intently, as though something about her grandson could be divined from Charlie’s appearance. “And you two are together?”
Charlie was conscious of how the makeup she’d used to cover her black eye wasn’t that great. How her clothes were cheap and her perfume was coffee. The most expensive thing she was wearing were her tattoos.
“Yeah,” she lied, because it was a better explanation for how they were connected than the real one. “I should apologize for our short visit. We were out late last night and haven’t had a lot of sleep.”
That made them sound like hard partiers and possibly drug addicts. But it was at least some excuse.
“Well, then we won’t keep you,” Fiona said. “Charlie, would you have lunch with me sometime?”
“Me?” She hadn’t been expecting that at all. And for a moment, she wondered if she’d met someone far better at manipulating people than Salt had ever been.
“Both of you, if you’re willing,” Fiona said. “Say, tomorrow?”
“Sounds good,” Charlie agreed, because to say anything else would just delay their getting out of there. If Red wanted to slither out of the lunch date, he could do it later, over text, like everyone else.
Red simply headed for the door, eschewing all the rituals of goodbyes. Charlie gave Fiona an apologetic smile before following him.
He went to the keypad at the three-bay garage, pressing buttons.
“I can call a cab—” Charlie started, scrounging for her phone. “What are you doing?”
The garage door farthest on the left started to tilt as it rose.
Inside, each bay was big enough to accommodate two cars each, plus mowers and trimming machines for the lawn, and a wall of labeled tubs full of what appeared to be holiday decor.
The matte black Rolls-Royce Phantom Mansory Conquistador, an object of envy to every car nut in the Valley, squatted nearby, oozing menace.
Red walked past it to a silver Porsche 911, opened the door, and swiped the key fob resting on the dash.
Charlie opened her mouth to object.
“Get in.” His voice was flat, final.
“What are you doing?” she asked, even though it was pretty obvious.
“Please,” he said, as his gaze met hers. “Get in.”
She sighed and slid into the passenger side, onto a buttery leather seat softer than her bed.
He touched the keyless controls and the car purred to life. Charlie glanced back at the house, waiting for someone to do something. Driving off in the Porsche was so blatant that it almost couldn’t be called stealing, except for the part where Red was taking something that didn’t belong to him.
No one chased them down the driveway. Red pressed a clicker clipped to the visor and behind them, the garage door began to swing closed.
He slid through the gears on the shift, his foot heavy on the pedal.
A few minutes later, they were on 91 and speeding home.
The acceleration on the car was ridiculous.
Red glared at the road. “Before you say anything, understand this: Adeline wants me to steal his life and I’m not going to do it.”
Charlie watched him, his muscles clenched, his eyes smoldering like coals.
“I know what you’re going to say,” he continued. “That I already stole his life.”
Charlie shook her head. “I’d never say that.”
“Fiona’s not my grandmother,” he told her. “And Adeline isn’t thinking clearly. She just wants Remy back. Everyone loved Remy.”
You’re going to have to see yourself as the kind of man who is welcome in any room, said the asshole on the radio, but even a stopped clock is right twice a day.
Red didn’t see himself as welcome at all.
You don’t have to disappear all the time, she’d told him, and he’d been ready for her to take it back.
What did it mean to live in the margins of life? To be unused to taking up space in the world? To be bound to someone who could control you, make you do whatever they wanted, and ignore your needs if they were inconvenient.
Remy could never have loved someone like you.
“Not me,” Charlie said.
He glanced at her strangely.
She yawned. “I never met Remy Carver and I don’t give a shit about him. And if I had known him, I doubt I would have liked him any better than you think he’d have liked me.”
Red’s head jerked toward her so abruptly that she was afraid he’d swerve off the road. When he looked back at the traffic, his expression was skeptical, as though he wanted to argue her point but wasn’t sure how.
Since he was planning on her being dead soon anyway, there was absolutely no reason to hold back. “For what it’s worth, I know you loved him and you were tied to him and all that, but I’m not sure you liked him either.”
Red shivered as though someone had walked over his grave.