Page 32 of Thief of Night (The Charlatan Duology #2)

You’re close enough, part of her wanted to say, but not everything ought to be a con. Love, she supposed, shouldn’t. “Why is Adeline letting Fiona stay here?”

“I don’t kno—” He stopped himself. “Oh. Because it’s my house.”

“You had no idea, did you? What else does Fiona know that we don’t?” Charlie asked. “Look, my head is killing me. I need coffee and aspirin and bacon fat before I am going to be even moderately able to face the day. Two birds. One stone.”

“What are you planning?” he asked.

“To get out of these pajamas and mainline caffeine.” Charlie shrugged. “But if you don’t want to spend time with Fiona…”

He sighed, looking up the stairs. “Of course I want to go. But I shouldn’t. She’s not my family. Nothing good will come of it.”

“Nothing good?” Charlie said with a smile he didn’t seem to be able to resist returning. “Sounds like my kind of plan.”

Fiona opened her door when Charlie came up the stairs and then ushered her inside the bedroom.

A sweater the color of fresh cream and a pair of cuffed black jeans had been spread out on the bedspread. They looked large enough to fit, which made Charlie wonder if they’d been borrowed from the staff or if Fiona liked things oversized. “I appreciate you finding something for me to wear.”

“Oh, it’s no trouble,” Fiona said. “I’m glad you’re giving me the chance to spend some time with my grandson.”

“You’ve really just been here, waiting for him to get over himself and see you?” Charlie asked.

Fiona frowned at that characterization. “I came as soon as I heard what had really happened to Remy. You can’t imagine how terrible it was the year before last. My daughter died, and within a week, Remy was dead too and I couldn’t even mourn him properly, because everyone was saying he was a monster. ”

Right. Because he’d been found in the burned remains of a car beside the casino, with the burned remains of a woman.

“Poor girl,” Fiona said.

Rose Allaband. Charlie thought of the shadow coming through the window. “Yeah, poor girl.”

“What size are your shoes?” Fiona asked crisply, bringing Charlie back to the present.

“A nine,” she said.

“I’m a seven and a half,” Fiona said, holding up a pair of short, lace-up Prada boots. “But I took these from Adeline’s closet. She wears a nine and a half. You can double up on socks.”

A better person would have refused anything of Adeline’s, but Charlie just took them into the bathroom and laced them on.

Outside, Charlie climbed into the passenger side of the Porsche while Fiona headed to a zippy-looking white BMW.

“Follow me,” the old lady called to Red.

He pulled out of the driveway, mouth set in a grim line.

Charlie let herself study him: broad shoulders, hair catching the golden light of the afternoon sun, eyes like burning brands.

Now that she’d spent a little more time with Fiona, she thought she could see the resemblance in the slant of his eyebrows and the bow of his mouth.

“I won’t ask if you don’t want me to,” Charlie said.

“What did I tell you about Adeline… before?” Red returned.

“Not that, ” Charlie blurted out.

“She thinks I’m a toy version of Remy. One she can play with. One she can manipulate with Salt’s fortune.”

“Is that how she always saw you? As a toy version of Remy?” Charlie asked.

“As a toy, certainly,” he said, a growl in his voice.

She recalled the photo of Remy Carver she’d found online, the one where it seemed as though he’d been caught banging Adeline on the deck of a yacht.

Charlie hadn’t known what to think. Photos got manipulated, people got misidentified, rich kids were perverts.

She’d figured maybe they had a thing, but not much of a thing.

But it hadn’t been Remy. It had been Red. And he hadn’t had a choice. A shudder went through her but she kept her focus on the window.

You’re going to hate her, Charlie had said, when she found out he was going to be bound to Adeline.

I already do, he’d answered.

Charlie hadn’t understood even half of what he’d meant. But maybe she should have. Maybe it had all been there and she’d just refused to see it.

“And Remy?” Charlie asked.

Red shrugged. “He didn’t like to think about it.”

“Even at the start?” Charlie asked, incredulous. How could he not? Even if he somehow hadn’t understood that Adeline was doing something awful, surely he thought it was weird .

“I was a killer. A monster. It didn’t matter.”

“Once, when we were up late, Vince and I compared first times,” Charlie said, deciding not to argue about whether being forced to be a killer made it okay to be forced into all kinds of other things.

“You told me you were fourteen and it was with a girl you’d known for a while.

That you both were experimenting. Was any of that true? ”

“None of it was a lie, ” he told her. “What happened was an experiment. It just wasn’t my experiment. There was a lot of blood.”

And on that horrifying note, he pulled into the parking lot of a restaurant called the Federal.

“The blood made you more physically present,” Charlie said, puzzling through the mechanics of what had likely happened.

Red led with his monstrousness when he was afraid of judgment.

A familiar impulse, to make things worse when you were afraid you couldn’t make them better.

“They should never have done that. Not to anyone and not to you.”

He flinched. “I didn’t want you to know any of this.”

“She should be ashamed,” Charlie said, with vehemence. “Never you.”

He shrugged, obviously not believing her.

Fiona got out of her car. She looked over at them, waved, and then headed inside the restaurant.

Red reached for the door handle.

“Wait.” Charlie put a hand on his arm. “Tell me about your grandmother.”

“She’s a good person,” he said, forgetting to correct her. “Like I said, don’t hurt her.”

“Trust me,” Charlie said with a grin.

He gave her the look that line deserved.

“Fiona Carver. Just turned seventy. She’s on the board of several foundations in New York—that’s how she spent Salt’s money after their divorce—the Robin Hood foundation, which focuses on poverty; the Drug Policy Alliance; Children’s Aid; to name just a few, covering everything from leukemia research to endangered tigers.

She had one child, Kiara, and one grandchild, Remy.

She doesn’t come from money, but Kiara always said she took to it like a duck to water. ”

Lionel had donated plenty to charities. That alone didn’t make Fiona a good person. Red had vouched for her, but his standards were low.

Past its white columned entrance, the Federal turned out to be the sort of place with starched tablecloths and hushed voices.

They passed a small bar area where a few couples that Charlie would have pegged as retirees fresh from a game of golf had gathered.

A diamond tennis bracelet gleamed on one of the wives’ wrists, just begging to be pocketed.

Fiona was already at a table, a dirty martini in front of her, three cheese-stuffed olives, two cornichons, and a pickled onion floating in the gin.

In her starched white shirt and black trousers, paired with comfortable-looking, faux-fur-lined mules, she managed to be elegant without seeming at all overdressed.

Her hair was pulled back in a tortoiseshell clip, revealing a pair of thick, heavy-looking gold hoops.

Charlie couldn’t guess a single brand, except for the understated gray Polène bag sitting beside her on an otherwise empty chair. Fiona wore her wealth lightly.

“You know, you’ve got a whole salad in your drink,” Charlie said as she took a seat.

Fiona laughed. “This place! I can’t decide if they’re delightful or insane.” She pushed a menu in Red’s direction. “You can add a lobster tail to anything. Anything .”

Red sat on the other side of the table, looking around the room like he was counting the exits.

“So,” Charlie said. “You know Odette, right? She’s my boss. She talks about you sometimes.”

Fiona’s eyebrows rose. “She could tell you some stories about me that would make your hair stand on end. Are you one of her protégées?”

“Am I… Oh! No.” Charlie could feel her face heat. “I’m just a bartender.”

“Ahh.” Fiona took a sip of her martini and made a motion toward the waiter. “That’s why you’re offended by my drink.”

“I’m not offended, ” Charlie said as the waiter descended on them. “I just think that if you added a tomato, you might be able to convince me it was a Bloody Mary.”

Fiona turned to Red. “And what will you be having, dear?”

He frowned at the menu. “A steak?”

“The strip,” Fiona clarified to the waiter. “I’ll have your onion soup and a dozen Coffin Bay oysters.”

Charlie decided fast on something that seemed safe. “The turkey burger.”

“Would any of you like a lobster tail with that?” the waiter asked. Charlie bit the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing.

“So,” Fiona said, when he left. “Tell me about your people, Charlie Hall.”

“My grandmother’s in prison for murder,” she said, going for brutal honesty. She needed to establish some quick intimacy between them, if she was going to gain Fiona’s trust. It was a gamble, but she thought it could work.

Fiona didn’t seem rattled by Charlie’s disclosure. “My ex-husband was a monster, so if I think badly of you, I will be obligated to think worse of myself. Are your parents also criminally inclined?”

“Dad’s homesteading with his new wife. Mom’s sitting on a fortune of rare Magic cards.” She didn’t mention that she was the one who was criminally inclined. “My sister can tell your future.”

“I see,” Fiona said.

“Also, if this is one of those situations where you were going to take me aside and offer me some money to stay away from your grandson, don’t bother. That’s not going to work.”

That made Fiona laugh. “Oh, am I supposed to think you are corrupting Remy Vincent Carver? Teaching him a love of spray cheese or inducing him to graffiti the sides of buildings? Ruining his good name?”

“You both know I am also at the table, correct?” Red asked, but the talk of names had to make him a little uncomfortable.

Charlie rolled her eyes. “Okay, fine. But Adeline’s friends said as much last night.”

“She’s very possessive of him,” Fiona said diplomatically, with a glance in Red’s direction.

“She always has been. I suppose that before Remy came, she was all on her own in that big house. I’ve always thought she was terrified of being alone again.

And scared of what my ex-husband would do to her if he didn’t have Remy as a target for his ire.

That’s the only excuse I can come up with for her choices. ”

Was Fiona talking about the lawyers and the strings Adeline was putting on Red getting his inheritance? Did she know about the other stuff?

No, Charlie realized. She was angry for a totally different reason. She believed the story that he’d been locked in the basement of the mansion for a year while everyone thought he was dead and that Adeline never went to the police, never reached out to Fiona, never did anything to help him.

“And you two always got along like a house on fire,” Fiona went on.

“Exactly like that,” Red agreed, his tone making the words mean something else.

“So I need to say this.” Fiona looked down at her drink. “You don’t have to protect me. I want you to understand that I am not frail, even if I’m old. I buried a daughter. You’re all I have left in the world.”

“No,” Red said. “I’m not.”

The waiter returned with their food, placing the plates down in front of them. Ignoring him, Fiona grabbed hold of Red’s hand and squeezed it.

“You are,” she insisted.

“What do you know about shadow magic?” he asked, pulling his hand free. Charlie’s heart thudded. Surely, he wouldn’t tell her. Surely, he wouldn’t.

Fiona’s attention sharpened. “Not so much, but not nothing. I was aware my ex-husband had an unhealthy interest in the occult and I was curious about what had so captivated him. There are people in my circles with Cabal connections, ones who’ve bought shadows at events held for that sort of thing.”

“The Cabals punish members who are involved in selling shadows,” Charlie said.

Fiona took another sip of her drink. “Well, it is hideously expensive, so I imagine there’s some risk on their end.

” Then she turned to Red. “I should never have let you go to Salt. That’s what he wanted from you, wasn’t it?

Your friend, the one you talked to all the time? The one I thought wasn’t real?”

Charlie dragged a fry through truffle mayonnaise and put it into her mouth. The flavor wasn’t precisely good, but somehow, she wanted more of it.

Fiona spoke into the silence. “I didn’t realize until many years later after you left my care that you had shadow magic. I don’t know if it was something you wanted. I don’t know what you can do, but I am sorry for the position it put you in.” She frowned. “Are you still part of that world?”

“I never won’t be,” Red told her.

“Whatever Salt asked you to do,” Fiona said, “whatever you’ve done, I want you to understand. I am always on your side.”

“Stop,” Red told her.

“Even if you’d killed that Rose Allaband girl, I would have been on your side. I wouldn’t have liked it, but I would have helped you.”

“Stop,” Red said again, more firmly, a note of panic in his voice.

She reached across the table, as if she meant to take his hand again. “I know you have every reason to be angry with me—”

He rose to his feet, cutting her off. “I’m not mad. I love you. But I am not Remy.”

Fiona’s mouth opened and closed soundlessly, but it was Charlie who felt as though she couldn’t breathe as Red melted into a shadow that spread out from where he’d stood, a shadow that pitched the entire room into an eerie darkness.

Panicked gasps went up around the room.

The old woman pointed to Charlie. “Explain,” she demanded in a shaking voice.

“He’s your grandson,” Charlie said, standing. “Just as much as Remy ever was.”

Fiona shook her head in horror.

And Charlie, coward that she was, headed straight for the door.