But the moment she’d seen Salt, that horror had surged back. She’d felt like a child again, running through the woods, monsters at her heels. She had no urge to go back to his big house and finish bleeding out on his library carpet.

  “Under the circumstances, I really don’t think I should go with you,” she said, not moving.

  “But you will,” he told her, circling around the Corolla toward her. “You’re a smart girl. You’ll make the smart choice.”

  Charlie raised both her eyebrows. “Clearly you don’t know anything about me.”

  As Lionel Salt glowered at her, she couldn’t help seeing the familial resemblance between him and Vince. They were both tall and had the same hard jaw and angry eyebrows. But where Vince had no shadow, Salt’s flickered behind him like a furious flame.

  She noted its height, its profile when Salt turned, and wondered whose shadow he’d stolen, to finally be a gloamist himself.

  “My daughter is waiting for us in the car,” Salt said, pointing the gun at Charlie with real intent now. “I’d prefer not to upset her. I’ll even pay you for your time. But this is your last opportunity to make the correct choice.”

  “So you’re going to pay me if I go and shoot me if I stay?” Charlie asked.

  His smile grew, appreciating her observation. “The world works by two principles, the carrot and the stick.”

  “If you know Odette, then you know sometimes the carrot is the stick.” But despite the remark, and despite her certainty that going with him was stupid, she was aware of how few choices she had.

  Getting shot the last time had sucked, and this time was likely to kill her.

  “Come along,” he said. “We’ll have a little lunch. In public. Very civilized. We can discuss what you’re going to do for me, and how much time you’ll have to accomplish the task.”

  Without quite agreeing, she moved in the direction of Salt’s car. There might be no getting out of going for this ride, but she reminded herself that she’d gotten away from him once, and would again.

  Oh, and this time she really would make him pay. For the past, for the gun he had on her, but most of all for sending in Hermes and wrecking a perfectly good relationship built on perfectly good lies.

  The elderly man with the umbrella—small and wiry, built like a jockey—opened the door to the back seat.

  I told you my grandfather was strict, right? He taught me lots of stuff. He believed in the improving power of work, no matter how old you were. He didn’t believe in excuses. And he had a limo that broke down sometimes.

  There was no way Salt had taught Vince to fix cars himself. But he could have insisted that someone else did.

  “You liked Edmund, didn’t you?” she asked the driver.

  He didn’t look particularly pleased to be spoken with. “Everyone liked Edmund, Ms. Hall,” he answered, low-voiced.

  She slid into the car.

  Even with sunglasses on, the woman occupying the seat on the other side of a large center console was unmistakably the one from the photos of galas in New York. Salt’s daughter and Edmund Vincent Carver’s aunt, though so alike in age she looked more like a sister. She wore tight black pants tucked into suede boots, a patterned blue georgette blouse, and a shearling jacket. Her blond hair was much lighter than Edmund’s, duckling gold. They must have cut a swathe through Manhattan’s elite hearts—and beds.

  “I’m Adeline,” she said as Charlie slid in. “Sorry about Father. He can be a terrible bully.”

  Carrot and stick.

  Salt said something to the driver in a low voice, then got in the front passenger seat.

  The smell of leather and expensive air freshener made Charlie’s head spin.

  “Let’s get some coffee,” Salt said, turning to look back at her. “You look as though you could use some.”

  “And fresh clothes,” Adeline said, wrinkling her nose, then smiled at Charlie. “No offense. I’ve woken up plenty of mornings in last night’s party rags.”

  Party rags? It wasn’t that she couldn’t picture Vince spending time with her, because he had a deep well of patience. What she couldn’t picture was Vince being like her.

  The car pulled out onto the road, swinging away from the bar, Charlie’s Corolla, and any hope of an easy escape.

  A few minutes later the car stopped in front of The Roost, a coffeeshop at the edge of Northampton’s downtown. An employee came out with a tray of coffees and a bag that the driver accepted through the front window.

  Charlie wondered if there was a sign she could give that she was being kidnapped, like those clever women who manage to signal that they’re in trouble during pizza deliveries.

  If there was something, though, Charlie’s hangover prevented her from thinking of it. The car pulled away from the curb, in the direction of I-91. The wipers swept across the windshield like a metronome.

  She took a nervous sip of the coffee. Adeline had gotten some matcha concoction, which left a trace of green foam on her upper lip.

  “I am a person who is used to getting what I want,” Salt began, an understatement if ever she’d heard one. “And what I want is a book returned to me. Liber Noctem, The Book of Night. Look for a book that Edmund is keeping under lock and key, with a metal cover, and that will be it. There are no words on the cover. It may appear like a journal.”

  Charlie nodded, unwilling to agree to get it for him, and took another sip of coffee. She waited. Sometimes silence kept people talking. Sometimes if they talked enough, they wouldn’t notice when you didn’t.

  In this case, it worked. Salt went on. “My grandson can be charming, but selfish. It’s not his fault that he uses people; he grew up with an addict for a mother. She put him into situations and left him among people with whom no child should associate. They lived on the street, even slept in cars. From a young age, he had to learn to survive, and to shape-shift into whatever pleased the people he was around. By the time I got hold of him, he was thirteen and practically ruined.”

  Charlie cut a glance in Adeline’s direction. The woman was frowning at her hands, as though she didn’t like what her father was saying but was unwilling to openly disagree.

  Although Charlie was loath to believe Salt about anything, a history like that would explain how Vince was able to behave like a normal person, even after more than a decade of being steeped in extreme wealth. A child who’d lived in poverty for thirteen years, one who’d been the responsible person in a household, might well know how to clean gutters. Might have learned how to make tacos and do laundry and all the stuff that would have come less easily to a rich layabout.

  And as for using people, well, he’d used Charlie, hadn’t he?

  Salt went on. “When most people look up at the stars, they are frightened by the vastness of the universe, and their own lack of significance.”

  She heard the echo of Vince’s voice: Do you think that stars have shadows?

  “But I have always been comforted,” he said. “And do you know why?”

  Charlie shook her head, since that seemed like what she was supposed to do.

  “Because they signified possibility. In all that vastness, it was impossible that the universe didn’t have secrets left to be ferreted out. And when I took in my grandson, I saw that I was right. Because for all that was broken in him, he had one incredible talent.”

  “Magic,” Charlie guessed.

  Salt nodded. “When I saw him command it—which he did without a split tongue, having had no formal education with any gloamist—I felt as though I had found what I’d been looking for my whole life. A true secret of the universe, and a path to greater mysteries. But for Edmund, it was merely a crude little trick. He played with the thing like it was some imaginary friend and sent it off to steal candy and cigarettes.”

  The car pulled into a long drive marked with a carved and painted sign proclaiming they were entering the grounds of the Grand Berkshire Private Club. It seemed as though Salt intended to keep his word about taking her to lunch, in public.

  “I will send you two girls to the spa. There are showers with which to refresh yourself, Ms. Hall. The staff can bring you clothing. We’ll meet for lunch in a half hour. And then we can finish our business. Now, see, isn’t that civilized?”

  It was, except for the gun in his pocket.

  The driver came around again and opened the door. Adeline allowed him to take her hand as though she were departing a carriage. Charlie followed, scooting out inelegantly, trying not to flash her panties.

  The rain had turned into a light drizzle. She looked around, taking in the rolling green grounds, most of them golf course. The grass looked impossibly bright for this late in the fall. There was a large building in the distance that seemed to be the common space of the country club. The spa building was smaller, its wooden shingles painted the charmingly cottagecore color of a fern.

  A sign set to one side of the door proclaimed that this was the relaxation and wellness center.

  Inside, the air was warm, humid, and scented heavily with eucalyptus. A woman behind a desk took two towels from the shelves behind her and placed them on the counter. She smiled at them as though it was utterly normal to have a hungover client in a spangly dress with makeup all over her face. The steadiness of her gaze didn’t so much as flicker.

  “We’d like a private sauna room,” Adeline said. “And we need some clothing in a size … twelve?”

  “Fourteen,” Charlie corrected.

  The woman continued to smile. “There are towels and robes waiting for you. Would you like some cucumber water?”

  “Absolutely.” Charlie felt dehydrated enough to drink a bathtub of cucumber water. “Do you have aspirin?”

  “Of course. Anything else?”

  Charlie wondered if there was anything they could ask for that would dent her smile. A giraffe? A hot-air balloon? The loan of a crossbow so she could shoot Salt in the back?

  Still making that mental list, Charlie followed Adeline into the sauna room. White lockers lined the left wall, robes hanging on attached hooks. The door to the sauna itself was shut, with a lot of dials on the door meant to, she supposed, optimize the heat and moisture levels, as though she and Adeline were lizards in an extremely fancy tank.

  And there was a shower room.

  Charlie grabbed a robe. “Back in a minute,” she called to Adeline.

  Under the steady heat and excellent water pressure, Charlie scrubbed her face with body wash, ignoring the way it stung her eyes. She shampooed her hair twice, then shrugged on the robe.

  Adeline stood waiting for her, hair twisted up in a tortoiseshell clip. “The sauna really is the best thing for a hangover. You sweat out the liquor.”

  Charlie spotted a pitcher of cucumber water and a bottle of aspirin sitting on a silver tray. She took a generous helping of both before following Adeline into the steam.

  The air inside the little room was scented even more strongly of eucalyptus than the front desk, and so thick she seemed to be drinking it as much as breathing it in. Charlie hadn’t been in a sauna before, so she wasn’t sure if that was normal. The combination of heat and moisture created a claustrophobic but not entirely unpleasurable sensation. She sat on a bamboo bench and stretched out her bare toes.

  “You’ve got a bruise,” Adeline said, pointing to where Charlie’s calf had come up black and blue after being knocked around by Hermes’s shadow only three days before.

  Charlie decided the best thing she could do was ignore that and redirect the conversation. “You and Edmund are almost the same age, right?”

  Adeline hesitated, as though the question bothered her. “We were close from the time he first came to live with us. My half sister was so much older than I was that I never knew her well, so it was easier to think of Remy as a brother, more than anything else.”

  Her half sister. Right. Edmund’s mother. “What about your mom? Did she mind having another kid in the house?”

  “She was a model from the Netherlands. Used to children behaving differently than American kids. She thought there was something wrong with him.” Adeline smiled as though recalling a fond memory. “Edmund cursed. A lot.”

  “What about now?”

  Adeline sighed. “She lives in New York since the divorce. My mother found Father’s obsession with gloaming … distasteful.”

  The painkillers must have kicked in, because Charlie’s head hurt less. It was a little easier to think and it bothered her even more that this whole situation didn’t add up. “Why did Edmund decide to take off?”

  “He didn’t want to do what Father said anymore.” Something in Adeline’s face made Charlie wonder if Adeline wasn’t feeling a little rebellious herself. “Father asked a lot from Edmund.”

  She could imagine. His grandson was the one with the magic, after all. Even once Salt got himself a quickened shadow, he still wouldn’t have the years of experience his grandson had. That was impossible to buy, and Charlie could only imagine how much that would grind Salt’s gears. A man who was used to buying anything, unable to buy the power a kid had.

  “What was he like with you?” Adeline asked. The question was inflected oddly, as if one of the words meant something else.

  Perhaps Adeline thought of Edmund as a shape-shifter, the way his grandfather had described him, changing to suit the person he was with. It was hard to argue with that. After all, if he was different with everyone, then how could she know?

  But Charlie did have one way to describe him. “You ever been to the Quabbin?”

  “The reservoir?” Adeline looked slightly horrified.

  “You know there’s a whole town down there,” Charlie said. “Buried under the waves. That’s what Vince was like. A drowned town. Still along the surface. Everything’s hidden underneath.”

  “You can’t know—” Adeline started, then cut herself off. Looking down at the slim gold watch with the diamond case on her wrist, still miraculously running despite the heat and the moisture of the room, she cleared her throat. “It’s almost time to meet Father for lunch. We ought to go.”

  She stood. Charlie followed her lead, rising and stretching until she got a satisfyingly audible crack from her shoulder blades.

  In the changing room, Adeline regarded her speculatively. “I know you’re not going to think this is nice of me to say, but I’m glad you’re not with Edmund anymore.”

  She was right. It wasn’t nice. But it was interesting.

  The spa had left an outfit for Charlie hanging from one of the lockers. It had the look of coming from a golf shop, one that she imagined was probably in the main building. Pants in a stretchy navy material, a white collared shirt, and a navy chevron zip-up jacket. They’d brought her white tennis shoes and socks, but her flats were fine, with just a little dried mud at the edges. She got dressed and braided her hair, but without a clip, it immediately began to unravel.

  Charlie’s gaze fell on her shadow.

  In all this talk, no one had quite explained how Vince lost his—or when.

  “Charlie?” Adeline called.

  She blinked, coming out of her thoughts.

  A golf cart idled in front of the spa, the driver waiting to take them to the main building. Charlie didn’t have to go to lunch. She could head back inside, insist that someone call her a cab. Put on her own clothes back at home.

  But if Salt wanted to find her again, he had the resources to do it. He could tail her to and from work in his Rolls. For all she knew, he might be able to send a cop to her house to pick her up for him.

  Maybe that nice Detective Juarez.

  Enough money bought anything.

  The grass was wet against her ankles as she walked to the golf cart. Then she hung on as they crossed the parking lot, past Bentleys and Lexuses. Charlie wondered how many of Odette’s clients were members here.

  Inside the main building, Charlie followed Adeline across a gleaming stone floor to the restaurant. The host didn’t ask their names, just led them to a private room where the walls were covered in yellow silk, and paintings of horses, coats gleaming like polished mahogany, hung atop the cloth.

  Lionel Salt was already waiting for them at the table, nursing a lowball glass of whiskey with an ice globe sitting in it. She took in his wrinkles, his faded age spots and too-pale skin, as though he’d tried to bleach them away. The smoothness of his forehead from injections. He wore a black turtleneck and dark gray pants. On his finger, a gold ring marked with an unfamiliar arcane symbol gleamed. Charlie noted that neither he nor Adeline wore any onyx.

  “This is a lot of trouble to go to for a conversation,” Charlie said as the host hastened to pull out her seat for her.

  “You look refreshed.” Salt exchanged a look with Adeline, who nodded. Maybe there had been some kind of two-part poison in her cucumber water. If she started to feel woozy, she was going to stab Salt in the chest with whatever knife there was, even if it was a butter knife.

  He leaned over to a waiter. “We will have the smoked pheasant confit salad, the Kanzan cherry blossom tea–cured salmon, and the grilled lamb loin.” He looked at Charlie. “I assume you’re not a vegetarian?”

  She shook her head. After a night of drinking what she really wanted was a greasy egg-and-bacon sandwich, but he was the guy with the Glock.

  “And a bottle of Château d’Esclans 2018 Garrus rosé,” he concluded. The waiter nodded.

  “I’ll just take an iced tea,” Charlie said.

  After the waiter departed, Salt put his hands on the table. His nails were clean and buffed. If she were conning Salt, she’d note the veneer of perfection. The need for control.

  It manifested in the way Adeline was quiet unless invited to speak. The way he’d immediately taken the gun from his pocket when Charlie refused to go with him. He expected automatic obedience and acknowledgment of his superiority from people like Charlie. And like Vince.

  The best way to con Salt would be to let him dominate. Let him win. He’d believe that and he’d never look deeper.