Page 25 of Thief of Night (The Charlatan Duology #2)

Raven

Halfway to Rapture for her shift, Raven called Charlie.

She swiped her finger over the screen, glad that Red was driving. “Hey.”

“I need your help, as the Hierophant.” Raven’s voice was a whisper, as though she didn’t want to be overheard.

The hair rose along Charlie’s arms. “Okay.”

“Can you come to my studio?” Raven asked. “Right now.”

“I’m on my way to work. How serious is this?” Charlie pointed toward the shoulder of the highway. Red pulled the Porsche to the side, idling, then flicked on the hazard lights. He raised his eyebrows.

“I don’t know,” Raven said. “It’s eating—it’s eating all the little shadows. Um, now it’s licking the blood out of the bowl.”

Yeah, that sounded serious. “I’m on my way.”

“It’s looking at me, I think,” Raven whispered.

Charlie got out of the car, walking around to the driver’s side.

Red let her switch places with him without any hesitation.

A few moments later, she pulled away from the curb, one hand on the wheel, making a totally illegal U-turn into traffic.

“Do you have any onyx?” An SUV sounded its horn in annoyance at being cut off.

“I’ve got some dust,” Raven said. “I’m getting it now.”

“Maybe you should leave .” The gears of the Porsche ground as Charlie shifted badly. Red winced.

“I don’t want to run,” Raven said. “It’s getting dark. If I’m not in the light, I won’t know where it is.”

It was terrifying to be chased by a Blight you couldn’t see, but it wasn’t great to wait for one to find you either. “Can you—” Charlie started.

“I’ve got to go,” Raven whispered, cutting her off. “Get here soon.”

Pittsfield wasn’t close. Normally, it took her about forty minutes to get to Raven’s. On the highway, Charlie accelerated well past seventy, knowing it wasn’t going to be enough. With her right hand, she grabbed for her phone.

Red got to it first. “Who do you want to call?”

“Work,” she said, pressing the button to dial.

He plugged it into a port on the center console of the Porsche and pressed a few buttons. Ringing echoed from the speakers around her.

“Hands-free,” Red said. “Every luxury blood money can buy.”

If Charlie hadn’t been concentrating on the road, she would have liked to observe his face when he said that.

Don picked up. “Rapture Bar and Lounge.”

She gritted her teeth. “This is Charlie. Can you cover for me? I’m going to be a little late.”

“Like ten minutes?” She couldn’t tell if he sounded more smug than usual.

“Like an hour,” Charlie admitted, thinking that was optimistic.

“I take my job seriously,” Don told her. “I heard about you and how difficult you were to work with. You’re proving all those people right.”

“If you can’t cover for me, just say so and put Balthazar on.” Charlie hated asking Balthazar for help, but at least he’d understand. And maybe he’d have some advice.

“Just a second,” Don told her.

A moment later, it was Odette’s voice she heard. “Charlie? Is all well?”

Her stomach dropped. This was exactly what she’d wanted to avoid.

Odette had seen a little shadow magic—maybe more than a little—but she knew only about as much as most people.

She didn’t understand the Cabals or the role of the Hierophant.

As worldly as she was, she might be one of the many people who thought Blights were made-up stories, urban legends like white crocodiles hunting in the sewers of New York.

“I’m going to be late,” she said. “I’m really sorry. I was just asking Don if he thought he could cover part of my shift.”

“Oh, that’s fine. He can cover the whole shift if you need him to, the dear boy.” Odette sounded unruffled, but if all Don wanted to tell Charlie was that, he wouldn’t have gotten their boss involved.

Well, Charlie supposed that he’d found a way to slither into Odette’s good graces after all—and at her expense. “Don doesn’t need to do so much.”

“Oh, let him. And you finish up whatever it is that’s keeping you.”

That was generous. Too generous. The kind of generous that put you on thin ice and maybe made you worry the ice was already cracking.

“I’ll be there for my next shift, on time. I promise.”

“See you then, darling,” Odette said and disconnected.

Charlie stared at the road. She couldn’t get distracted by work. She had to keep focused on getting to Raven and what she was going to do when she got there.

Charlie had kept many useful things to capture or kill Blights in the back of the van.

A set of three onyx knives—one of which she’d brought into the mill building.

An onyx-inlaid box the size to fit a scroll, because, she supposed, shadows could squish down small.

That, she’d lifted from Salt’s mansion. Not to mention her lockpicks, a random wig, and other criminal bits and bobs.

The only thing she had with her in the Porsche was what was in her work bag—one knife and a piece of netting with onyx beads she’d been lucky enough to get out of the last Hierophant’s stash, because she could have never afforded it.

An item, it was worth noting, that she’d never so much as tried to use.

“I wish I had onyx armor,” she complained, although she wasn’t sure such a thing existed. If it did, it was likely to be too fragile to be useful and so expensive that she’d need a big chunk of Remy’s inheritance to afford it.

“You would look like a chess piece,” he said, but he smiled as he said it. “Besides, you have me.”

Charlie recalled the lessons at Balthazar’s place, the feeling of shadow wings wrapped around her. “We should have practiced more.”

For protection, she wore onyx earrings and a single flat disc of onyx that hung over her heart on a silver chain—certainly not as much as she would have been wearing if she’d known this was where her night would take her.

Tension knotted her shoulders as she wove in and out of traffic, wondering if she would be too late. Wondering if Raven was going to call her back. Wishing she could call, although the last thing Raven needed while she was hiding out from a hungry Blight was the buzz of a phone to give her away.

For a while they were quiet, Charlie’s eyes on the road. Then she glanced at him. “Why are they like this?”

Red frowned. “Who?”

“Blights. They’re not mindless, but they seem very focused on murder.”

“Most of us are made in terror and rage,” Red said, including himself in the number. “Most of us don’t have much else giving us life.”

Charlie huffed a breath. It just didn’t make sense, but she wasn’t sure how to explain. “Can they… grow out of it?”

“Of course,” Red said, not including himself this time. “But they’ve still got to eat.”

Moments later, the Porsche pulled into the parking lot of the strip mall that contained Raven’s studio, Eclipse Piercing & Shadow Modifications.

It sat between a chicken place and a closed laundromat, with a strip of woods behind it.

When she pulled around to the back, she found it eerily quiet, the hum of cars on the road dimmed. Darkness surrounded them.

Charlie got out, reached into the back seat, and took her limited gear out of her bag.

On the concrete steps outside the door, she spotted a stainless steel dog dish, licked clean.

She remembered the first time she’d seen Raven put it out, full of microwave-warmed blood for the little shadows.

Charlie hadn’t believed there could be so many of them close by.

All Blights, all hungry, none strong enough to attack, if that was even what they wanted.

Raven had taken one to use like thread in her alteration.

Charlie wondered whether it would be possible to create a more powerful Blight from something so small as she moved past the empty dish.

At the very least, leaving out blood had brought the little Blights to Raven’s door, but maybe it had also lured something larger.

Something that was less interested in blood than on feeding on the smaller shadows.

Charlie’s shadow slid sideways, at an impossible angle from the setting sun.

“Red,” she breathed.

“Didn’t mean to startle you,” he told her, a dark, hungry look of anticipation on his face. “But you should wait here.”

Then he slipped under the door.

She stared at the thread that connected them. For a long moment there was silence, then a loud scream that sounded a lot like Raven. Something crashed to the ground.

Charlie yanked the door open.

Raven was standing in a circle of powdered onyx, looking like a witch caught in her own summoning circle. In her hand she held an onyx hammer, probably the only weapon she could find in short order. She was breathing hard and tears streaked over her already-wet cheeks.

Her gaze was on Red, who was mostly solid, except for shadow hands that held a Blight the size of a dog. It growled like one too, shifting shape into different ferocious animalistic forms.

Raven turned. At the sight of Charlie and the line of shadow connecting her to Red, Raven slumped to the floor and sucked in a few breaths that sounded like sobs.

Charlie held up the onyx netting.

“Good?” she asked Red.

Yes, he said in her mind. Throw it.

She tossed it toward the Blight struggling in his arms. His hands became solid and so did the creature. Charlie wrapped the netting more tightly around it.

“I’ve got it,” she said. “But I don’t know if I can hold it.”

“Is he…?” Raven stared at Red with narrowed eyes.

Charlie had no idea what to say. If he was going to be Remy Vincent Carver with a black card and a private jet, then his true nature would have to be a secret. A secret that Raven would already know. A secret that Raven could blackmail him with.

“Am I…?” Red echoed, drawing her attention.