Chapter Thirty-One
CHAPTER
Thirty-One
GOD, CASSANDRA HATES this bar.
She didn’t used to hate it; in fact, there was a time where she’d probably liked it a little too much, if she can admit it to herself.
When she was still willing to read for people, it had been nice to be courted for her skills, to have drinks paid for and tabs settled without ever having to reach for her wallet.
To be admired for the prowess that Chiron had refused to recognise.
It had felt like a certain amount of armour, to walk into a room and know that she had a level of command and respect, however she’d won it.
How fucking cocky she’d been.
But if this is a bar where no one paid too much mind to a little blood spilt, then it’s also the kind of place where no one pays too much mind to who’s doing the spilling, or whether it’s in pursuit of a few answers.
This is, after all, where she’d first met Roth, surrounded by his entourage of opportunists and thieves, as well as genuine admirers.
Roth might have ingratiated himself with some new society, but she’s willing to bet that he hasn’t entirely parted ways with the people in this room. Or that they’re not ignorant of his new entanglement.
“Cass Holt,” someone says fondly. “Who the hell told you to come back here?”
A bearded man in flannel sets his drink down next to her. Fred Conley is a thief of the more general variety; for him, books are just a small cog in the larger world of rare, unusual and cursed antiquities. Friendly enough, if no one looks too closely. Cassandra only made that mistake once.
“I missed you?” she suggests.
He laughs. “Bullshit.”
She settles herself onto a stool at the bar, catches the bartender’s eye.
He winks at her, another familiar face that she’s flirted with, teased, argued with when necessary.
After a few months of struggling to prove herself as an owner, it’s odd to find herself back here, slipping into the role of someone more powerful.
Fred leans a little closer to her. “Seriously, what are you up to these days? It’s like you just disappeared. We were beginning to think that something had happened to you. But then Victor said he thought he saw you at the fair recently.”
Evidently, someone had managed to sneak past security, then.
For a few minutes, she forces herself to make small talk. Cassandra walks a careful tightrope of lies: too much, and she’s liable to draw unwanted attention; but too little, and Fred would wonder what she’s hiding.
Eventually, the small talk turns to larger talk.
What’s moving on the market, who’s been caught in the act and punished appropriately, or vanished entirely—which happens, from time to time.
The last guy she’d made the mistake of falling for wasn’t Roth—for which she thanks Lady Fate every day—but a reader, like her.
A little shy, a little charming, he’d stolen her heart, an entire first edition set of Lang’s Fairy Books and then her client list. The latter two had unsurprisingly been less endearing than the first.
Last she’d heard, he’d disappeared while working for two Russian oligarchs, playing one off against the other. There’s only a story to tell, after all, if there are bones.
“Speaking of disappearing acts, has Roth been here recently?” she asks.
Fred taps his chin thoughtfully. “Roth? Nah, haven’t seen him around lately. He got kicked out, oh, maybe three or four months ago? For trying to beat up some old guy.”
“That sounds like Roth,” she says drily.
“Does he still owe you money?” Fred swills the remains of his drink around his glass. “If so, you’re shit out of luck. Think he owes just about everyone something or other.”
Great. So not only is she unlikely to find out what happened with Roth, but the chances of him ever walking into this bar again are zero.
“You’ve missed a strange few months, Cass,” Fred continues. “Sources vanishing on us. Books not doing what they’re promised—or disappearing entirely.”
The river, she thinks, with a low pang of foreboding.
It hadn’t escaped her notice that the bar is looking tired these days.
The booths are scratched and pocked with holes, the drinks stingy and at least two lights broken in the back.
And there are fewer patrons, with the weary look of desperation teased out to breaking point.
Proving, if nothing else, that thievery really doesn’t pay—not anymore.
“Seen some odd people here, too.” Fred shrugs. “Like this guy who barged in. Chiron.”
Cassandra nearly falls off her stool.
She manages to save herself, but not her drink, which disappears off the countertop in a cascade of liquid and glass. In between the moments of apology, clean-up and a new drink being poured, she thinks frantically.
Chiron, in this bar. Chiron, sitting amongst thieves and liars like it wasn’t everything he held abhorrent.
A bar she’d frequented, right up until the disastrous reading.
Had he been… waiting for her? Because if so, he would have seen Cass Holt, cheap criminal and ruthless opportunist, haggling prices over a skill that should never have been available to buy.
He would have seen her rowdy, brazen, mean, cruel.
Shame, hot and clinging, steals over her.
What other reason would he have to be here?
“So you were saying about this guy,” she says, trying to keep her voice steady.
“Yeah, an owner, apparently. He was in here a few times, asking about a couple of books. Obviously had no clue what he was doing, though.”
“Chiron?” she says. “Are you sure that’s what his name was?”
Fred looks at her, his eyes suddenly narrowed. “Why, do you know him?”
“I—” She has to get it together. “No. I just…”
But she doesn’t have an excuse put together for this. There is a part of her, still five minutes behind, hearing Fred mention Chiron again and again.
A hand comes down on her shoulder.
She glances up at her would-be saviour and grimaces.
Edmund Sharpe looks down at her with the distaste of a man who has found an insect in his drink and doesn’t quite know what to do with it.
Cassandra has the short-lived relief of being faced with an immediate problem, all thoughts of Chiron pushed to the back of her mind.
“Can I borrow your companion for a second?” Edmund says.
Fred looks like he wants to say more, but he just shrugs. “She’s not mine to borrow, but sure.”
Cassandra waits until Fred is out of earshot, though she notes the way that he glances back to them. Then she turns to Edmund. Up close, he reminds her of the men who had broken into Sharpe’s, strangers in their heft and inhuman strength. How little he resembles Lowell, in anything but that scowl.
She gives him a smile that she knows he’ll find infuriating. “I’d ask what you’re doing here, but scum always floats to the top,” she says. “So if you’ll excuse me—”
Edmund pins her arm against the countertop, trapping her. “I knew I’d find you here. We need to talk.”
She’s not sure she’s ever disliked a man more instantly. At least Roth’s charming facade had been entertaining.
“Does Lowell know where you are, right now?” she asks sweetly.
Edmund’s face darkens. “Don’t you dare drag him into this.”
“He’s already in this. You did it when you made him run Sharpe’s.” She pauses, her mouth working around the question. “Look, if you don’t like the bookshop, fine. Why not give it to Lowell? Is it spite?”
She’s spent a little of her time—okay, a fair amount of her time—researching Edmund Sharpe since they ran across each other.
Just to have something in her pocket for nights like tonight, in case he tries anything.
Most people seem to be unaware that he’s an owner, much less the owner of Sharpe’s, but the murky portrait had been unflattering.
Enough to believe that he would withhold someone else’s dream, just because he can.
He stares at her. “You don’t even know, do you?” He shakes her head. “The old man taught you nothing.”
Cassandra bristles. “Chiron was better than all of us.”
Edmund laughs, low and unpleasant. “You think Chiron was such a saint? He sat in this shitty bar, too.”
“So I’ve heard,” she says. “That, and he was looking for something.”
Edmund sighs. “And now the old bastard is dead. Which should tell you something about what he found.”
“What was he looking for?” she asks.
He surveys her, something keen and calculating in his expression. She waits, thinking about the implication of Edmund’s words. It seems to her that lately there have been one too many people who have taken Chiron’s murder as fact.
“If I tell you, will you leave Lowell alone?”
Cassandra pauses. She should have no problem telling Edmund that yes, she’ll never darken Sharpe’s doors again.
Lowell is just another bookseller, and a competitor at that.
Too observant of her faults, too adherent to the many, many rules that she’s broken.
Too close to unravelling her secrets, and the poison that comes with them.
Really, Edmund is asking her something that she should have done ages ago.
But there’s Lowell’s last note to her in her pocket, still there because every once in a while, she’ll take it out to read it again. Because when she sees their exchange, written out like proof, something warm and delightfully unfamiliar shakes itself awake deep inside her.
“Yes,” she says, and feels the lie down to her bones.
Edmund leans back on his stool. “Then I have a question for you first, Cass. What do you think is happening to the river?”
Cassandra hesitates. “It’s dying.”
She keeps checking for signs of its weakening in Chiron’s bookshop, listening carefully to the strength of its whisper. What would she be if the river slipped away from her? Where would she even begin to go?
Edmund’s eyes darken. “Yes.”
There it is, in unmistakable finality.