Page 26 of Thief of Night (The Charlatan Duology #2)

Raven rubbed her eyes. Tattoos covered her brown skin, illustrations of roses, skulls, several goddesses, and the words “El arte es largo y la vida breve” down the inside of her arm.

Her flame-colored hair had pulled mostly loose from the clip that held it.

Still, she looked remarkably composed as she walked to where she kept her broom.

“You’re him, the Blight everyone’s talking about. ”

“I’m tethered,” Red pointed out, gesturing toward the floor. “Which means I’m not a Blight.” In his arms, the netted shadow still squirmed.

Raven laughed outright.

“You’re pedantic too. I have no idea what that makes you.”

Charlie found some zip ties in a cabinet and used them to secure the shadow in the net. It had become smaller, somehow, and more dense. Now it was the size of a furious bobcat. “Where did this thing come from?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t even know it was there until it came inside. I used the onyx dust I had to make the circle and then I piled more near me so if it tried to jump over the barrier, I could throw some at it and then hopefully hit it with the hammer.”

“Did it try?”

Raven made a gesture that Charlie couldn’t interpret as she swept up the onyx into a dustpan. “It looked like it wanted to sometimes. It did that weird wiggle cats make when they’re going to pounce. But no.”

“Do we think this thing is an animal shadow?” Charlie asked, glancing toward Red.

He shook his head. “It doesn’t remember, but it was human once.”

“Gloamists sometimes alter their shadows into the shapes of animals,” Raven said. “Tigers or wolves or whatever. Maybe it was one of those.”

Charlie tried and failed to see something human in the squirming creature. It hissed at her. “So what else did it do? Just pace around?”

Raven nodded. “It moved through the rooms, padding along as though the blood had given it more awareness or substance or something. Maybe it felt more awake. I don’t know.” She glanced at Red, as though not sure she was offending him, since in all probability, he did know.

He didn’t correct her, nor did he weigh in.

“It seemed curious,” Raven went on. “I couldn’t tell if it wanted to eat me or not, but it doubled back to look at me over and over, sometimes sniffing at the edges of the circle, sometimes stepping on it.

Every time I raised the hammer at it or made a loud sound, it would back off, but not for long. ”

Charlie imagined that, sitting on the floor, waiting for the thing to get up its nerve. Hoping someone would arrive to help in time. “Sorry we couldn’t get here sooner.”

Raven shook her head. “At least I had an idea of what to do to protect myself. And maybe in a fight, I could have taken it. I’m an alterationist, after all—not completely defenseless. But it could have gone into anyone’s house. Maybe it had gone into houses before.”

Charlie thought of the church basement they’d just left.

“There’ll be more,” Raven said ominously.

“More people have an awareness of shadow magic now and notice when their shadow quickens. More people know how to feed their shadows and give them power. And more people are too lazy to do their own magic. They like the idea of a shadow that operates on its own.”

The disapproval in her voice was clear.

“And your shadow?” Red asked.

“It’s an extension of me. Like another arm. Nothing more.” She met his gaze, challenge in her voice. Charlie didn’t think Raven was actually angry with him, though. She’d been frightened and now she had all this excess adrenaline and nothing to do with it.

“You think it’s irresponsible to create a Blight,” Red said.

She blinked a few times and seemed to realize to whom she was speaking. “Sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean you. Or anything about you.”

“I am going to put this creature in the trunk of the car,” he told Charlie. Then he turned back to Raven. “If it’s any consolation, I agree that it’s irresponsible to leave behind something that can’t survive on its own. Half-things or miserable things made of violence and hate.”

Raven moved to the couch as Red walked down the stairs toward the car. They heard the slam of the trunk. Charlie sat down beside Raven, who groaned, leaning her head back.

“I didn’t think he would be so… human.” She reached out toward her own shadow, letting it play over her hand as though it were a snake or a low fog. “Is he Salt’s grandson?”

“You mean, in personality?” Charlie asked.

Raven nodded. “It’s that guy’s death energy animating him, right?”

Charlie thought of the first time she’d come to Raven, looking for answers.

It was Raven who told her that most Blights were made at a gloamist’s deathbed, when they pushed the last of their energy, along with their pain and fear, into their shadows.

To create a Blight without that, Raven had said, would probably require stealing energy, maybe through someone else’s deathbed and someone else’s blood.

Red had been a Blight long before Remy Carver’s death, probably fed exactly the way that Raven described.

“Not only Remy’s energy,” Charlie finally answered.

Raven’s gaze went to the stairs, speculative.

Then she turned back to Charlie. “I really appreciate you coming out here, especially after what I said to you way back. For a while I hoped you forgot it, but for what it’s worth, it was a shitty thing to say and I swear I had nothing to do with what they did to you. ”

Charlie hadn’t forgotten, mostly because of how ironic the words had turned out to be.

If you fuck me over, Raven had threatened, I’ll make sure you wind up the next Hierophant, with something ancient whispering in your ear while you chase down Blights until one of them catches you and devours you whole.

Charlie snickered. “Come on, it’s a little bit funny how things turned out.”

“It’s funny,” Raven agreed. “So long as you’re laughing.”