Her past problems might be unsolvable, but Vince was the key to fixing her current problems. He either had the Liber Noctem, or could tell her its whereabouts. And if he was really attempting to make his evil shadow into an evil person, maybe he’d be done by Saturday and she could take the book back to Salt.
And if it felt like a relief to have a reason to contact him, she refused to dwell on that. Pulling out her phone, she sucked in a breath as she tapped his name, waiting for it to ring.
A moment later an automated voice told her that the number had been disconnected. Of course it had.
Well, she’d spent the better part of a decade finding things. She could find one tall guy with no working credit cards and a fake ID.
Charlie looked across the kitchen to her sister. “Do you think you could be friends with your shadow?” she asked. “Like, come to really care about it?”
Posey frowned consideringly for a moment. “There’s a lady who married the Berlin Wall. She was super devastated when they knocked him down. Carried around a brick for a while.”
Posey had a point, but that wasn’t what Charlie had meant. “Yeah, okay, but could you reasonably be friends with it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Yeah,” Charlie said. “Me neither.”
“If it could talk, maybe,” Posey said, still chewing over the question. “But then aren’t you just talking to yourself?”
Charlie frowned at the floor. She hadn’t been talking about her own shadow, but perhaps she should have been. It was as unresponsive as ever. Definitely not friendly. “You hate me a little, don’t you?”
Posey gave her a look. “You mean because it’s unfair that it’s your shadow that’s quickening when becoming a gloamist is the thing I want most in the world?”
Charlie nodded.
“I’m angry,” Posey said. “At the universe. And at you, I guess, even though I know it’s not your fault. I’ll get over it. But if you fuck this up, I will hate you.”
Charlie sighed, half sure she was fucking it up already, and entirely sure she’d fuck it up somewhere down the line. That was just her nature. Charlie Hall, Maker of Mistakes. Patron Saint of Disaster.
The only things she’d ever been good at were trickery and deception, so she better stick to those. Paul Ecco had gotten a page of the Liber Noctem somehow. If Vince sold it to him, there’d be some record of the transaction. Maybe Vince had left Ecco with a phone number that worked, or even better, an address.
Curiosity Books, that was the name of Ecco’s shop. Well, Charlie was feeling curiouser and curiouser.
“I’m going back out,” she said, heading to her bedroom for a change of clothes.
Posey gave her a sideways look. “You coming home tonight? I’m going to order lo mein.”
“Get me some,” Charlie called back. “I can always eat it for breakfast.”
* * *
Curiosity Books was on the third floor of a slightly shabby converted mill building, just above a concrete artisan and across the hall from a circus school where small children were taught how to juggle and spin plates. The locks on the doors were a joke. Charlie didn’t even need to pick it; she just slid her Big Y points card into the gap between the frame and the door, then brought it up hard enough to depress the latch bolt. Turning the knob, she nudged the door with her hip. It opened.
The walls were lined with bookshelves that seemed to have been scavenged from every library closeout sale and Craigslist giveaway in the neighboring towns. The volumes were so tightly packed that Charlie wondered how any of them could possibly be removed. Cardboard boxes had been stacked in small towers, some with their sides ripped, others containing more folded boxes inside, presumably for shipping. High on the back wall, above a bank of windows, an unattributed quote had been painted: “The universe belongs to the curious.”
An old 1950s-style metal desk rested in middle of the floor, with a computer humming away on top, an ancient-looking landline phone, and a label printer. Loose paper carpeted the floor, as though recently pawed through.
Charlie walked from one end to the other, inhaling the powdery dust of old books. A locked glass cabinet had been smashed and the shelves inside emptied. A single bookshelf rested on the floor, books seeping out from underneath.
She went back to the desk, sat down, and moved around the mouse in a circle. After a moment, the computer monitor sprang to life, showing a ridiculously cluttered screen. She opened a search window and typed in “name:Noctem.” Nothing came up. She replaced it with “name:Blight,” and that got nothing too.
Then she tried “inventory” and got an .xl file. When she opened it, she found a list of books Paul Ecco had in the store, with short summaries, the price Paul paid for them, and the price he’d sold them for.
She typed “Noctem” into the search area of the file. No results.
Frustrated, Charlie took out her cell phone and called Balthazar. He answered on the third ring.
“Darling,” he said, drawing out the vowel. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”
“What if I want to take the Knight Singh job?” she asked, kicking the file drawer and making the chair spin.
“Too late, alas. I hear someone got the folio already. Regretting it? Don’t worry. I have a half dozen other jobs. A few out of state, if you’re willing to travel. A few impossible, if you’re looking for a thrill.”
“Always,” Charlie said. “But who wanted them?”
“Wanted which?”
“Knight Singh’s papers.” Idly, Charlie began to open the drawers of the desk. They made a grating metallic sound.
Balthazar hesitated before answering. “Is there something you ought to tell me?”
“I don’t think so.” In the files drawer she found dozens of manila folders, all labeled with the dull needs of business: bills, rent, takeout menus, insurance, bookseller organizations with acronyms: ABA, IOBA, NEIBA. “It was a puppeteer, wasn’t it?”
“There were several underlings from carapace who wanted the folio, and yes, a puppeteer. A very wealthy puppeteer.” He paused, as though troubled. “Now do you want to tell me how you knew that?”
She fought down the urge to show off, to mention that she was aware Raven was the one they’d been taken from.
“It’s my job to know stuff,” Charlie said innocently. She ought to thank Balthazar, hang up, and leave things at that, but she owed him something in the way of information. “Remember that job you said I should do, finding the Liber Noctem? Salt basically told me he’d kill me and everyone I love if I don’t.”
“Good thing I’m not likely to find myself in that category,” said Balthazar.
“Oh, I don’t know. You’re growing on me,” she told him as her fingers went to the far back of the files in the bottom drawer, stopping on a thin folder marked “Porn.” It was empty.
“You’re trouble, Charlatan,” he said, but with fondness.
“Goodbye, Balthazar,” she told him, and hung up.
Turning to the computer, she typed “Porn” into the search bar. A folder came up. Inside, were a half dozen .jpgs, three .mov files, and another folder marked “Geriatric Porn.” That contained a single .xl file. When she clicked it, a new inventory opened, listing a collection of occult books that might be of interest to gloamists. This spreadsheet included the year created, the specialty of the gloamist, whether it was a one-off or mass printed, whether there were other editions, what shelf it was on, and how Paul had acquired it.
Then there was a list of gloamist ephemera. To hide knowledge from one another, gloamists had taken to writing out their secrets in nontraditional ways. Stitched into the lining of a leather coat. Written in tiny letters inside of artwork. Objects whose real value was disguised so thoroughly that they might be thrown out or sold for pennies at a flea market.
And then there were NFTs. Popular among the wealthy, and still far from commonplace among most gloamists. Paul had one in his inventory, and seemed to have listed it for a hundred grand two weeks ago.
Charlie scanned down the list of sellers, looking for Remy, Edmund, Vincent, Red, even Salt. But the only name she recognized was Liam Clovin.