Odette gave a long, frustrated sigh. “Charity work isn’t really my thing, darling, but needs must. Now, pay attention. If you’d like me to stop, all you have to do is tell me so. No risk to your job. No risk to your sensibilities.” Then she reached up and closed her fingers around his throat.

  Don froze, which made sense, since his semiretired dominatrix boss had her hand on his neck. But the expression on his face had something oddly yearning in it. “I—don’t—”

  “Really, darling?” Odette smiled up at him. “Then tell me to stop.”

  Don said absolutely nothing.

  “Good,” she told him. “So, would you like Charlie to give you a little slap?”

  Don still didn’t speak.

  “Oh my.” Balthazar leaned forward on his barstool, appearing riveted. “You should have put this on the main stage.”

  Odette shook her head as though very disappointed in both Balthazar and Don. “If you can’t say it, you won’t get it.”

  “Okay, fine,” Don spat out the words.

  Charlie sucked in an incredulous breath. Could Odette be right? Was Don provoking people around him, hoping for a very specific kind of bad attention?

  “Yes, what?” Odette’s voice was stern.

  “I’d like her to slap me.” Don looked down.

  “You want her to slap you…” Odette tightened her grip, although it was clear he could pull away from her any time he wanted. She was small, her fingers thin.

  “Please,” he said.

  Balthazar snorted. “Well, fuck a duck.”

  Odette turned to Charlie. “Would you like to do the honors? Not necessary, of course. Enthusiastic consent is my byword, for everyone.”

  Oh, Charlie definitely would like to slap Don after everything he’d said to her, though she was sure that wasn’t entirely in the spirit of the game. She walked up to him, smiled, then swung her open palm across his cheek. It was extremely satisfying, although clearly not in the same way that he found it satisfying.

  Don’s cheek pinked, his neck flushing red with embarrassment.

  “Well, you best go on home, darling,” Odette said to Charlie. “Balthazar, you can go back downstairs. Don and I have some talking to do.”

  * * *

  Later that week, Rapture had their own holiday party and Odette gave the staff presents. Charlie got a copper French press. Rachel got a calamansi plant. The two barbacks got bottles of imported, capital C Champagne. Don got a leather and steel ball-gag. Balthazar showed up, demanding his present. Odette told him his present was not being asked to pay for all the drinks on his tab.

  The next morning, Charlie sat in the bright light of the windows in the fancy new apartment and drank coffee from her new French press. A small smile formed on her mouth without her being entirely conscious of it.

  Posey came in with the mail, handing Charlie a black envelope sealed with stamped wax. The thick creamy linen of the envelope was bad enough, but inside, the invitation shone with gold engraving:

  Remy Vincent Carver cordially requests the honor of your company at a black-tie New Year’s Eve gala.

  Written at the bottom in Red’s handwriting were two words: Please come.

  33

  Never Be Forgotten

  Two days after she got the invitation, Charlie went to a vintage thrift store in downtown Northampton, where she found a cream-colored satin dress that exposed a lot of skin, but in an old-fashioned, classy way.

  In front of the mirror, she felt silly. Who did she think she was going to fool? Red knew exactly what she was and what she wasn’t.

  And yet she couldn’t help hoping that if he saw her, he’d want her.

  The night of the party, Malhar picked her and Posey up in his only slightly dented Subaru Forester. He looked dapper in the same suit he’d worn to Solaluna. And Posey was glamorous in green sequins, hair pulled up, a few stray curls spilling over her shoulders.

  It was hard for Charlie to think of Salt’s mansion as belonging to Red, but there was no point in pretending otherwise as Malhar pulled his car onto the long driveway. This was New Year’s Eve in the style of a scion eager to establish himself with the jet-set elite, drawing ultra-rich guests from Manhattan, Connecticut, and the Berkshires to attend on short notice. Trees along the drive were hung with silver stars. Long strings of white lights had been woven into a canopy overhead. The effect was whimsical, promising greater delights to follow.

  The house was decorated with enormous gold and silver orbs, each one larger than Charlie. As they pulled up, a valet in a black suit stepped forward.

  “Deliveries are around the back,” he said, looking personally offended by Malhar’s Subaru.

  “Good to know,” Charlie said from the back seat, then hopped out, careful not to let the hem of her satin dress touch the ground.

  The valet looked skeptical rather than apologetic, but took Malhar’s keys.

  “This car is a classic,” Malhar told him as he got out. “Vintage.”

  “I’m finally going to see the inside,” Posey said, marveling at the building. “And the books.”

  Charlie felt a twist in her gut remembering meeting her sister on the lawn of a different party. She was feeling too many things to be able to make sense of them all.

  “Red told me about this place,” Malhar said, slinging a worn leather satchel over his shoulder. “About floating through the walls. His family. The torture basement.”

  “Oh right,” Posey said, with a quick look at Charlie. “Is it weird that he’s living here?”

  “It’s his childhood home,” Charlie said, avoiding the question.

  Posey and Malhar shared a look.

  As they approached, a man in a tuxedo opened the door before Charlie could even knock. The high-ceilinged entryway was full of balloons in shades of gold, from pearl to reflective as a polished coin, each trailing a tail of golden ribbon. A waiter moved to offer a tray of champagne, poured into coupe glasses.

  Laughter bounced off walls no longer hung with Salt’s creepy art collection. Charlie glanced toward where she knew a painting of a decomposing fawn had been. An etching hung there depicting a naked man artfully posed like a dancer, the shadow behind him obviously a beast.

  Well, the art was less creepy, anyway.

  “Lots of people at this party,” Posey said, drawing Charlie’s attention back to the present.

  “We’re going to try to find the library you told us about,” Malhar said. “See if the book still opens the secret room.”

  Posey nodded, clearly enthused at the idea of getting out of the crowd. “I like to think Red would loan them to me. Maybe give me one as a Christmas present.”

  “I’m sure he would.” It was perhaps a little ironic that they’d be the ones stealing gloamist artifacts while Charlie merely attended the party. “But if you get locked in the basement, it might take me a while to get you out.”

  Posey made a face, then wandered off with Malhar.

  Charlie ventured deeper into the crush of the party.

  The lights on the chandeliers had been dimmed low in the ballroom. In place of cocktail tables, someone had brought in dozens of leather couches that were arranged back-to-back around a dance floor. Lots of people Charlie didn’t know lounged in shimmery dresses and fancy suits and tuxedos. A band, all of the members wearing silver masks, played music for guests to sway to.

  Red stood near one of the couches, the light turning his hair to bright gold, a contrast to all the shining silver decorating the room. He had a gentle half-smile on his face. His grandmother pointed into the crowd, looking as though she was telling him a story about someone there. Adeline hovered nearby, throwing her head back as she laughed at something Topher said. Her long hair spilled over her shoulders and her strapless cocktail dress of deepest blue.

  The last thing Charlie wanted was to face Adeline’s friends again, although she should have suspected they would be around. More surprising was Fiona standing by Red’s side. She’d been at the courthouse, but there could have been many reasons for that. Laughing with him now was something different.

  Charlie knew she should go up to Red and let him know she’d arrived, but she hesitated. Instead she stuck to the outskirts of the room. Contrasted against the backdrop of this environment, she was conscious of how her dress had wrinkled on the way over, how her earrings were costume. Even her perfume was a half-full bottle swiped off a Macy’s countertop.

  Delaying, she moved from room to room in her cream satin dress. People stared, clocking her as not one of them. Perhaps a singer, part of the entertainment? When she caught an image of herself reflected in the glare of a window—hair slicked back, bangs pinned away from her face with a rhinestone clip, her lipstick red as a button you only pushed in an emergency—she thought she looked good. She just didn’t look like she belonged.

  Bartenders in tidy uniforms of black pants and white button-up shirts were mixing drinks, most of them involving Krug, poured golden from enormous magnums. She didn’t recognize a single person on the staff. Even the bartenders were too fancy to be people Charlie knew.

  To have something to do while she wandered, she drank. Coupe glass of champagne after coupe glass of champagne, cycling through the things that might be put into one—sugar cube and bitters for a classic champagne cocktail; Chambord for a kir royale; gin and lemon for a French 75; peach juice for a bellini; and then plain old vodka, just to wake up the bubbles.

  By the time she ordered that last one, Charlie was well on her way to drunk.

  “Your shadow!” a girl exclaimed, staring at the space where Charlie’s shadow should have been. Then the girl slapped a hand over her mouth. “Sorry! Everyone is always reminding me not to just say what I think because it can be very rude.”

  She was younger than Charlie, probably in her early twenties, and had that highly scrubbed polish that made her seem more beautiful than the set of her features alone. She had a faint accent, and spoke as though she’d learned slightly too-proper English.

  “I’m fine,” Charlie reassured her. “Are you a friend of Adeline’s?”

  “Her cousin,” said the girl. “On her mother’s side.”

  Her mother the model, who’d fled back to Europe after divorcing Salt. The one who disapproved of bad manners in children, though she’d abandoned her own, leaving Adeline alone with her sinister father. It occurred to Charlie how odd it was that Adeline’s mother had never made an appearance after Salt’s death. But then, perhaps Adeline wouldn’t have welcomed such a belated visit.

  “I’m going to be her assistant for the next year,” the girl said. “We’re going to Amsterdam in a week. She wants to buy a place in New York before we leave, so I have to look at all this property, but it moves so fast. We have a flight tonight down to the city for the three of us, right after midnight. Private helicopter.”

  “The three of you?” Charlie echoed.

  “Remy is coming, which is good because she’s nicer when he’s there.” The girl sighed. “See! That’s the kind of thing that I am not supposed to say.”

  So he’d invited her tonight for some final farewell? Charlie’s polite smile turned poisonous. “Is that drink for Adeline?”

  The bartender was pushing a second coupe glass in the girl’s direction. “Yes?” the girl said, something in Charlie’s tone making her hesitate.

  “You go ahead and mingle,” Charlie told her. “I’ll bring her the champagne.”

  Now that she had a purpose, it was easy to cut across the ballroom. This conversation had been coming, but Charlie thought that she’d pull Adeline discreetly to the side. That had been foolish. In her real life, Charlie had never been much for discretion.

  “Your drink,” she said, handing the glass to Adeline.

  Red spotted her. “Char,” he said, breaking off from the conversation he’d been engaged in.

  Fiona elbowed him in the side. “What a pretty dress. Tell her.”

  “Where’s—” Adeline began.

  Charlie’s poisonous smile was still in place. “Your cousin? Around somewhere. I told her I’d bring you the drink since we need to talk.”

  “Do we?”

  “Let’s take a turn around the party,” Charlie said.

  “If you like,” Adeline replied, her smile faltering. “But I think you ought to have a conversation with Red first. There are some things he needs to tell you.”

  “Nah,” Charlie told her, with a flash of a smile in his direction. “Let’s put business before pleasure.”

  “Well, then,” said Adeline, taking a sip of her champagne. They walked into the hall, toward one of the parlors where there was less of a crush. As they passed a crystal bowl filled with tinsel hats and curled-up party horns, Charlie took one, turning it in her fingers.

  Adeline paused beside a black-and-white photograph of her younger self, hair in pigtails as she sat in a garden full of flowers.

  “All new art,” Charlie observed.

  “We dragged it out of storage,” she said. “I am bringing some with me to New York.”

  “Great,” Charlie said. “But you’re not bringing Red.”

  Adeline’s eyebrows rose and her mouth curved in a smile, as though she was looking forward to a particular treat. “And why do you say that?”

  “You think you have something over him because you could, what? Tell everyone what he is? Maybe make it seem like he did something bad? And of course, you have that paperwork he must have signed.”

  Adeline gave a half shrug at that. She didn’t want herself portrayed as manipulative and probably thought the specifics weren’t important.

  Charlie opened her clutch and put the party whistle inside. Then she took out her phone. Pulling up the record app, she pressed play.

  “I watched. I watched plenty of people die so shadows could eat. Maybe I even cut a few throats myself.”

  “It’s not legal to record someone without their permission,” Adeline said. “That’s a felony.”

  Charlie smiled. “Well, I am a criminal.”

  The smugness returned to Adeline’s expression. She folded her arms over her chest. “You can’t use it.”

  “Of course I can,” Charlie said. “I can put it online, hosted in places that will ignore your takedown notices. I could get arrested, I guess, but one thing you ought to know about me—I have a terrible sense of self-preservation.”

  “So what do you want?” Adeline smiled. “Not money, I imagine. Or perhaps not a small amount of money.”

  “Leave him alone,” said Charlie. “Red isn’t going anywhere he doesn’t want to go and he’s not doing anything he doesn’t want to do. You’re going to let him walk away as Remy Vincent Carver without you telling him who that is.”

  “What could you possibly get out of that?” Adeline asked, acid in her voice. “You think that he will love you when he doesn’t need you anymore? Or do you think he’ll love you for this, for saving him from me, of all people?”

  “He doesn’t need to know about our conversation,” Charlie said. “He just needs to know he’s free. Pretend you’re a good person, if you want.”

  Adeline’s lips pulled back in a snarl that was almost a smile.

  “I don’t care about you,” Charlie said, stepping closer to her. “But I care about him. He’s not your toy. And before you say something disgusting about me and him, he’s not a toy at all. For a while I thought you didn’t think he was a person and that’s why you treated him the way you did, but I realized that wasn’t it at all. There’s a house full of staff here you’d treat the same way. You don’t think of people as people, do you? We’re all toys to you.”

  Adeline shook her head. “You’re wrong. You don’t understand anything about my relationship to Remy, or to Red. For a long time, all we had was one another. We looked out for one another. Cared for one another.”

  “If you really believe that,” Charlie said, “there’s only one way to know if he feels the same. Let him decide for himself.”

  “He will never be yours,” Adeline told her.

  “Oh, I know,” Charlie said. He’d gotten her out of prison. He’d brought a shadow army to save her from Mark. She’d been a lot of trouble.

  “This has been an interesting chat,” Adeline told her. “Now I believe I have other guests to be extorted by.”

  “The first person I will give this recording to is Fiona,” Charlie said, with a tight smile. “So tell him tonight.”

  Adeline took a sip from her coupe glass. “No,” she said, after a long moment. “I don’t think I will.”

  As she walked off, Charlie half-collapsed onto a chair. She closed her eyes for a long time and when she opened them, Red was standing over her.

  “I’m glad you could come,” he said.

  “Malhar and Posey might be robbing you right now.”

  Though his smile was wry, his voice stayed soft. “I’m sorry I couldn’t come to your family’s place for Christmas. I needed to get some things in order.”

  She nodded. “I understand.”

  “I spoke to Bellamy,” he said. “He told me about the arrangement you made.”

  “There are advantages to not being a gloamist,” Charlie said, not wanting him to worry about her. “Since I don’t have a shadow, I can’t be possessed.”

  “But why would you want to do such a thankless job?” he asked. “Alone?”

  “Someone has to do it,” Charlie said. “Maybe I can make it a better position than it was when it was foisted on us. And if some Blights never get caught, well, then I have the easy excuse of my own incompetence.”

  He didn’t look convinced. “Will you stay, after midnight, after the others leave? It doesn’t have to be for long.”

  Charlie thought of Adeline’s helicopter flight out. Was he aware of it? Did he know she was expecting him to accompany her? Was he planning to give some final speech to Charlie just before his departure? “If you want.”

  He gave her a smile full of promise. “This house is mine now. Adeline preferred a bit of extra money. It turns out that I’m the sentimental one.”

  Charlie refused to let his ownership of the house bother her. He’d grown up here, no matter what horrors he saw. “You ought to have it if you want it. You ought to have whatever you want.”