Page 11 of Thief of Night (The Charlatan Duology #2)

Bad Advice

Charlie woke in the dark, dragged out of dreams of Blights and birthday cakes and crowds of sticky children holding hands with shadows as they spun in circles, singing Ring around the gloom, pockets full of moons. Shadows! Shadows! We all fall into doom.

She sat upright, alert but not sure why, until she heard a too-heavy tread on the floor. Enough to make the floorboards creak.

Rolling on her side, Charlie felt around for the iron bar she’d shoved underneath her mattress after the events of this past autumn.

“Is someone there?” she heard Posey call sleepily. Posey didn’t sound scared, which scared the hell out of Charlie.

She shoved open her bedroom door, iron bar held high.

Two men stepped into the hall, their shadows looming around them. One had a gun, the other held a net threaded with onyx beads. Both of them wore dark clothes, boots, and coats. For a moment, they just stared.

Not at Charlie or Posey. At Red, who was forming in front of them.

“What do you want?” Posey demanded, a quaver in her voice.

The combination of the looming shadow; Charlie in her t-shirt, underwear, crowbar, and black eye; and Posey in Demon Slayer pajamas, laptop tucked casually under one arm, had to be disorienting.

Oddly, though, they looked as though they’d come expecting something much worse.

“You,” a man with a thin goatee said to Charlie. “One of the Cabal leaders wants to see you.”

“In the middle of the night?” When Balthazar gave her the message from Vicereine, it hadn’t sounded this imperative.

“When one of them jerks on your leash, you come immediately,” said the other guy, a much younger redhead.

Charlie rubbed her face with the back of her free hand. “This is ridiculous. You don’t need to do all this.”

“If you need a stronger reminder that the Hierophant serves at the pleasure of the Cabals, we can supply it,” said the goateed goon.

“Can you?” Red asked, soft and menacing.

It came to her that when she didn’t respond to messages, Vicereine might have thought something happened. Maybe that Red happened. Perhaps these guys had come here to see if a dangerous Blight was on the loose.

“You’re seriously telling me that Vicereine wants me to come see her now ? I did her goddamn job, and I’m alive. Just go back and tell her that.”

“Put on some clothes,” the guy with the goatee said. “We’re in a hurry.”

Red faded a little, becoming obviously and unnervingly inhuman. Shadow streamed off his body like smoke. “Come a little closer and I’ll kill you fast. Since you’re in such a hurry.”

The men glanced at one another. The redhead took a step back.

“You better leave,” Posey said, appearing pleased with Red for once.

Charlie had witnessed Red murder before. Though the thought of how easily these guys forced their way into her house made her sick, she didn’t want to watch them die.

“No, I’ll come,” Charlie said, forcing herself to roll her eyes, to behave casually even though her heart thundered in her chest. “I’m up now anyway.”

“Charlie—” Posey cautioned.

“It’s fine,” Charlie said.

Red took another step toward the goons and for a moment, she thought he wasn’t going to stop. But he did, staring at them as if daring them to make him change his mind.

Hoping Red stayed stopped, Charlie headed back in the direction of her room, heart not slowing a bit. She’d been in too many fights over the last twenty-four hours. Her cortisol was on a whole other level.

She forced herself to pull on jeans and a sweatshirt. When she went for her coat, she realized how badly the back of it was scratched up, the foam lining fully spilling out. She grabbed her leather jacket and a scarf instead.

Red stood in the doorway. Charlie startled, not having heard him come in.

“You could give it to me,” he told her.

She frowned in confusion. He couldn’t mean the coat. “Give you what? I didn’t think you wanted anything from me. Wasn’t that what you indicated last night?”

“I mean whatever you’re feeling. All the bad bits. You can give them to me.”

“Won’t you feel bad then?” Charlie cut him a look.

He shrugged.

“Do you want to feel the way I do right now?” Her voice cracked and she was abruptly worried she might cry.

“Like I’m about to jump out of my skin or throw up or throw things?

Like I can’t keep my sister safe? Like everyone believes you want me dead and I’m a fool for letting myself think otherwise? ”

“I don’t want you dead,” he said.

“Good to know,” she told him. “And for your information, whether or not you want to feel all the trash I am feeling right now, you’re not going to get to because it’s my trash and you can’t have it.”

He gave a huff of breath that might have been a laugh. “You are a very strange person, Charlie Hall.”

“Yeah? Well, you’re kind of a weirdo yourself,” she said, and slammed out of the room and down the hall to the bathroom where she put on deodorant, brushed her teeth, and cried a little without being entirely sure why.

Posey came in as she was staring at herself in the mirror, looking at the bruise coming up violet and black at the corner of her very puffy left eye.

“Did he hit you?” Posey demanded.

“No.” Charlie grabbed some concealer and dabbed it on uselessly.

“The Cabals are dangerous,” Posey said. “You should let me come with you.”

“I won’t be alone,” Charlie reminded her.

Posey gave her a skeptical look. “I heard you two arguing—I mean, I couldn’t hear what you were saying, but I could hear your tone of voice. Vince used to be kind—maybe a little bit of a pushover, but kind. He’s not that way now.”

“You didn’t like him back then.”

“Well, now I miss him,” Posey admitted. “And I don’t trust Red.”

Vince had lied, but Charlie didn’t mind lying.

Lying was the better story. Unlikely tales were very often true ones, but lies—lies were the world as we wanted it to be or most deeply believed it was.

Lies were art, wishful thinking, and deepest dread.

Charlie had felt the closest to people when she was lying to them, but the closeness usually only went one way. “I miss him too.”

“So can I come?” Posey asked.

“Absolutely not,” Charlie told her sister. “If I’m not back by midday, call Raven. I’ll give you her number.”

Posey laughed without any mirth. “What’s she going to do?”

“I don’t know,” Charlie said. “But she knows the Cabals. Promise her I’ll do whatever favor she wants and she can use her contacts to find out what happened. If I’m in trouble, I’ll need you on the outside.”

“Fine.” With a glare, Posey slammed out of the bathroom. However pissed she was, that was still better than her putting herself in danger. The last thing Charlie’s current terrible situation needed was another person caught up in it.

Once she left the bathroom, the Cabal goons were waiting for her.

“Come on.” The goatee guy led her by the arm.

Outside, the air had gotten even icier. Dawn was still at least an hour off. Charlie’s breath clouded in front of her face as the Cabal enforcers brought her to a black Jeep with a pair of fuzzy white dice hanging from the rearview mirror.

She got in the back, receiving a smirk in the mirror from the redhead. The guy with the goatee fussed with his phone and started playing a podcast through the car speakers as they pulled out of the driveway. Some motivational bro was giving a lecture:

Women are attracted to success, but look closer, everyone is attracted to success.

If you weren’t attracted to success, you wouldn’t be listening to me.

You wouldn’t care what I had to say if you didn’t want what I have—money, respect, and, sure, ladies, but let’s be real, if you get the money and the respect, the bitches are going to show up.

And to get that, you’re going to have to have discipline.

You’re going to have to work hard, and smart.

You’re going to have to see yourself as the kind of man who is welcome in any room.

“Why do we always have to listen to this bullshit?” the redhead asked.

“Shut up,” the goatee guy said. “You might actually learn something.”

Charlie tried to tune out the podcast voice, but the kind of man who is welcome in any room reminded her of Rand.

He’d told her something similar about con artists: You’ve got to be able to fit in anywhere, Charlie.

Dive bar. Michelin-starred restaurant. The con artist must be a chameleon. Succeed and no door is shut to you.

He’d tried to teach her to be like that. To be able to slip in and out of anywhere. To seem to belong with anyone, even the powerful.

And hey, look at Charlie Hall now.