He knuckled where she’d pointed and she reached out to fix it for him. “There,” she said. “Got it.”
Charlie managed to stay out of sight of the teachers until it was time to leave. Then she tried to file out with the others, head down. Just at the door, she heard a voice.
“Hey,” one of the teachers said. “You’re not with this class.”
She turned around guiltily, lipstick smudged. Watched the teacher’s eye go to the boy, whose mouth she’d smeared with her lipstick.
“Keith!” she said. And then Charlie was out the door, and out of the museum, with what she hoped was a believable excuse for hightailing it out of there.
Benny set up her meeting for later in the day, at the parking lot behind a coffeeshop in the middle of town.
Three twentysomething glooms showed up. One of them had a vape pen in her mouth. Another was carrying a skateboard. They looked at her as though they would never have hired her if they’d realized how young she was.
“Here’s your three hundred,” the gloom with the vape pen said, gesturing airily.
Charlie opened her mouth to object and one of the others interrupted, smirking. “Take it or leave it.”
“Leave it,” Charlie said.
“Where are you going to sell the page, if not to us?” said the boy. “You think anyone else is going to give you a better deal?”
Charlie wondered if it was one of them who’d sent their shadow into the Arthur Thompson House, cutting out the others. Or if it was someone one of them had talked to, trying to snake it out from under them.
She could tell them, she supposed. But she didn’t like them enough. “Six hundred, or I set it on fire. And the price is going up every time you negotiate.”
They looked at one another. “No way.”
“Seven hundred,” Charlie said.
One of them laughed, and she fished a lighter out of the bottom of her bag. Flicked the flint wheel.
“Fuck off,” said the one with the skateboard.
Charlie set the page on fire. It caught fast, burning to cinder in moments as they screamed. The ashes blew around, black shapes circling in the wind like shadows.
She sneered at the glooms, fighting down a wave of exhaustion at the lost night, the frustration at losing when she’d been so sure she’d won, and the certainty that this would have never happened to Rand.
“Do you know what you did?” the one with the vape pen demanded.
“I made sure no one would ever stiff me again,” Charlie said, and walked off, keeping her head high and her shoulders squared.
That night she uploaded the photo she’d taken online. Sometimes she still saw it passed around. She could always tell it was hers because a corner of her finger was visible at the edge.
16
LICK YOUR WOUNDS
By the time Vince got home, Charlie pretended to be asleep, evening out her breaths, tucking her cheek against the pillow, pressing her nose to the cloth. He stood in the doorway, looking at her long enough for the hairs to rise along the back of her neck.
She knew she would have to confront him, but not now. Not when she was exhausted and the anger she should be feeling had somehow drained away, leaving her heavy with sadness. She didn’t want Vince to be Lionel Salt’s grandson, didn’t want to have to wonder how far he’d go to protect his identity. If he’d murdered Hermes for recognizing him as Edmund Carver, did that mean he’d murder her too?
He can’t realize I know, she reminded herself. At least not yet. But she still imagined Vince lying beside her, taking her pillow, and smothering her with it.
Imagined him holding a knife from her own kitchen behind his back as he got closer to the bed. Got distracted by remembering that she’d bought those knives at a TJ Maxx and they always needed sharpening. The last time she cut open a butternut squash, she’d really had to saw her way through. That would be a terrible way to go.
And given how fast he got rid of the last body, he wouldn’t have any trouble getting rid of hers too. She didn’t doubt that he had all the right solvents to clean things up so well that a forensic team would be hard-pressed to find evidence.
A shudder went across her shoulders and she bit her cheek to keep herself still.
That old chestnut about killers occurred to her—a quiet guy, kept to himself. That did describe Vincent.
She stayed still as he folded his pants and put his shirt in the laundry basket. Didn’t move as he set his watch on the dresser, plugged his phone in to the charger.
Maybe she should get out ahead of this. When you lived with someone it ought to be easy enough to incapacitate them. Horse tranquilizers. Food poisoning. Offering to tie him to the bedposts for sex. Then she could interrogate him. Force him to admit everything. Ask him all the questions she’d always wanted to know.
And yet, what she longed for was for him to slide into bed and put his hand on her shoulder, to tell her he knew she was awake. To say that he loved her desperately and wanted to confess all the things he’d kept from her, and all the reasons for them. It was a childish desire, a wish for the world not to be as it was, for people to act in ways they just didn’t. It was the wish of a sucker, ready to be fleeced for everything she had.
Vincent Damiano isn’t a real person. She’d been so busy trying to make sure Vince didn’t see behind her masks that she didn’t notice that he was all mask.
Hole in the head, hole in the heart, or hole in the pocket. The Hall family curse.
Eventually, he left the room, flicking off the overhead light. She lay alone in the dark, eyes open. Outside, the streetlights shone. Behind her neighbors’ houses, the old mill building rose, dark too, with the bright silver coin of the moon above.
It wasn’t until the red light of dawn bled onto the horizon that she finally slept.
* * *
Charlie woke in the early afternoon, alone.
She stumbled out of bed, then poked her head into her sister’s room to make sure that Vince hadn’t gone crazy and chopped her in half or something. Posey was sleeping, one arm flung over her ancient MacBook.
Charlie put on a robe, went to the kitchen, and poured herself a mug of bitter, lukewarm coffee. She slid a steak knife into the pocket of the robe. Then she waited, stomach churning.
It was time to have the real talk.
Twenty minutes later, Vince came back in with two bags of groceries. Charlie couldn’t help seeing the space through his rich-boy eyes. All the worn things. The grease stains. The shabbiness.
He took a look at her expression and set the bags on the counter, making no movement to unpack. “Did something happen?”
“You lied,” Charlie said, meeting his pale eyes.
He didn’t look defensive yet, but he did look wary. “I—”
“Trying to figure out which lie I’m talking about? It must be hard when there are so many,” she snapped. “Edmund Carver.”
“Don’t call me that,” he said.
“Because you prefer Remy? Or because you’re afraid someone will hear?” She’d thought it would feel terrible to confront him, but it felt great to have the nastiness inside her finally spilling out. “Was it hard, to sleep on a mattress on the floor and not between your one-billion-thread-count sheets?”
He shook his head. “I swear to you, it wasn’t like that.”
But when she looked at him, all she saw was the Edmund Vincent Carver of the society pages, disdain in his smoke-colored eyes. Just a little pomade, the tilt of his jaw, and he’d be a stranger. If only she’d observed him more closely, she’d have seen it—picking out that Vacheron Constantin watch at twenty paces, knowing about the vacation homes of the upper class, the fucking love of gossip for fuck’s sake. Not to mention the ability to murder people and believe there would be no consequences.
“Oh, you swear it. Well then, it must be true,” she said, a snarl in her voice.