Page 27 of Thief of Night (The Charlatan Duology #2)

Night Out

Charlie arrived at Rapture two and a half hours late for a six-hour shift. She walked in, backpack on her shoulders, shadow squirming inside, still wrapped in the onyx net.

Balthazar had said he wanted a Blight in payment for his time. Well, this one was fresh-caught.

“Darling,” Odette said as Charlie came through the door. “I told you that you could take the night off.”

“Yeah,” she said, hoping that her backpack didn’t lurch abruptly and give her boss a reason to ask questions. “And I appreciate that. But I needed to come in and see Balthazar, plus I thought I should check if Don wanted to leave.”

“Balthazar isn’t here tonight,” Odette said apologetically.

“My luck seems to be holding,” Charlie said ruefully.

Odette gave a soft laugh. “Well, since you’re here, put your things down and we’ll send Don home.”

Don gave Charlie a contemptuous look when she returned from the greenroom, having shoved her backpack far enough under the couch that she hoped any movement inside of it wouldn’t draw attention.

The last thing she needed was someone thinking they were saving an ill-treated cat, and having a Blight pop out at them.

“Decided to finally turn up,” Don said. Since he’d already volunteered to cover her whole shift—and been pretty smug about it—she didn’t understand his attitude. He couldn’t have been expecting her.

“Why don’t you like me?” Charlie asked. “Seriously.”

He appeared surprised by the question, as though it took some kind of sorceress to divine his feelings about her.

“It’s not that I don’t like you personally,” he said. “It’s just that I take my job seriously and you don’t.”

“I was going to be late,” she said. “So I called.”

“The other day—”

“I got punched . You can hardly call that a dereliction of duty.”

“If you hadn’t talked to that guy the way you had, maybe you wouldn’t have gotten hit. I know how you are with people.”

Charlie could feel her skin flush with indignation. “He was pissed because you told him he was overserved. He didn’t think he could bully you, so he came after me.”

“That’s not my fault.”

Charlie pointed her finger at him to punctuate her words. “Maybe, but that doesn’t make it mine either.”

Don grabbed his coat. “Well, since you’ve decided to actually do your job now, I guess I can finally go home.”

“You’ll be missed, I’m sure,” Charlie said. “The place will fall apart without your manly shoulders to ride on. You’re the Atlas of the goth bars.”

She must have hit a nerve or Don must have disliked her even more than she thought; the look he turned on her was chilling.

Down the bar, a guy in a long leather coat and greasy hair chuckled. She turned and he held up his empty lowball glass. “Since Atlas is gone, how about you pour me a little more bourbon.”

For the rest of the night, as she made drinks, Charlie thought of the Blight squirming in her backpack. Thought of Red, forced to watch the world over her shoulder, pinned to her feet and tied to her fate.

Halfway through her shift, she texted Malhar: Have you ever heard of Blights acting like animals, hunting in packs?

He texted back a moment later, as though he had his phone nearby: No. They’re more like ghosts .

??? she sent back.

He didn’t answer.

She shook up an extra-dirty martini for a woman with a chipped tooth and a sly smile, made Manhattans for two tattooed ladies and a man with curly silver hair, all of whom were absorbed in an intense conversation about comic book industry gossip, and louched absinthe for an elderly guy who took it downstairs to Balthazar’s shadow parlor without a word.

“Stories teach us to hope for what has yet not been but still could be,” one of the tattooed ladies said to the other.

Charlie would like to have hope like that.

“Stories are baloney,” said the man with the silver hair. “But who doesn’t like baloney?”

“Who even says ‘baloney’?” asked the third.

Rachel, Odette’s assistant, in a cute, blue retro dress with a pattern of dreidels around the bottom, cleared tables and occasionally stopped to chat with a patron.

When Charlie glanced at her phone again, Malhar had replied with a paragraph: I don’t remember if I said this during that first interview (probably when the tape was off if I did) but ghosts are usually, although not always, described as being stuck in a traumatic memory.

Like, if they died by the side of the road, they’re described walking that stretch over and over.

Or drowning again and again. Or the opposite—they died in a car crash, but they really loved their coin collection, so they can be seen hovering around it.

Most Blights are like that. Stuck in some kind of loop.

Often loaded with the pain and fear that the dying person projected into them.

So they can be aggressive. Most hang around a place that they were familiar with, sopping up whatever blood comes their way.

Some move around a little more. But to be a Blight like OUR FRIEND is very rare.

Charlie found his explanation frustrating. It didn’t help her understand anything that happened in the church. She texted back: So shadows are ghosts?

Malhar sent back an immediate reply: No, but they run on the same energy.

After she made the next drink, Charlie made a decision. She texted Malhar: I am coming over after work. Late. I need to show you something.

This isn’t a great time , he texted back.

She frowned at her phone, her fingers flying over the keys. The something I need to show you is a Blight.

Oh, he texted back. Oh shit. Come whenever you can.

When she looked up, Rachel stood at the bar. She opened her mouth and Charlie braced herself to get scolded for texting instead of taking orders. Then Rachel’s eyes closed.

“Found our villain yet, Charlie Hall?” Rachel rasped.

For a moment, Charlie didn’t understand. Then she did. That wasn’t Rachel speaking, it was Mr. Punch. Bad enough to see people she didn’t know puppeted, but this was infinitely more horrible. “Stop that,” she growled. “Get out of her.”

Instantly, Mr. Punch’s shadow flooded into Charlie, forcing her mouth open, past a jaw that tried to lock and teeth that bit down hard. “I’ll be a good girl and do what I’m told,” she heard herself say before Red thrust the shadow from her, hard enough that she staggered back.

She could feel him around her, like armor. The shadow slid toward her again, then seemed to think better of it. A moment later, it slithered away like a snake.

It appears that I am the better monster. He won’t like that. Red’s words echoed in her head.

Still half in shock, she looked around the room for Mr. Punch. Someone was heading for the door, someone with a man’s height. She saw a flash of bright hair, copper or gold, the shine reflecting red under the holiday lights. That had to be him.

Do you see that guy— she started to say, when Rachel began to speak again.

“Did I just ask you something?” Rachel’s hand went to her lips. Then she seemed to reconsider. “Never mind.”

Charlie shrugged, allowing Rachel to play it off. There was no good way to explain, at least not in a way that didn’t lead to a confession no one wanted.

Rachel shook her head. “I’m sure it will come back to me.”

Charlie’s heart pounded as Rachel walked away.

By then orders had slowed, but Charlie still managed to accidentally drop a wineglass and pour half a strawberry daiquiri down her own shirt. Her hands were unsteady. She was not finishing her shift in a blaze of glory.

As bad as things had gone thus far that evening, she still wasn’t prepared for Adeline to walk in, with three beautiful twentysomethings trailing behind her.

They headed for the bar, their expressions as amused as you might expect from someone at a zoo, looking at an animal they were seeing for the first time.

“Charlie! This is Madison, Topher, and Brooks,” Adeline said, looking very pleased with herself. She wore a black sweater over a black plaid skirt with a lipstick-red belt that matched her boots and her absurdly tiny Chanel purse. Her hair had been straightened into a silky blond sheet.

“You really work here,” Topher said. His brown hair flopped over his eyes and he pushed it back in the manner of someone who liked how he looked when he did that.

He had on a pair of brown cords, with a collared sweater buttoned over a crisp blue shirt and a navy peacoat over that.

A plaid scarf was wound twice around his throat.

“We thought that Adeline was having a laugh.”

“Don’t mind Topher,” said Madison, with a cruel little smile. She had on a black dress, a white puffer coat, and bright white platform boots. “He’s high as a helium balloon, which if you gave him, he would immediately try to suck on.”

Their clothes all looked as if they were dressed for somewhere far from Easthampton.

“Oh fuck off, dearest,” said Topher.

“Where’s Carver?” asked Brooks, speaking for the first time. He had tight curls, and wore a striped sweater with just the collar points of his shirt sticking out.

Carver . Charlie blinked. The name Adeline had wanted Red to use. There seemed to be something that made monied people enjoy calling each other by their last names—Salt, for instance, instead of Lionel—but Carver suited Red a little too well.

“He’s going to pick me up when my shift is over,” Charlie said, keeping her gaze on them and not glancing at her shadow.

“We’ll wait for him too,” Adeline said. “Then we can go out, just like I said we would.”

Charlie recalled Adeline telling her about Remy’s friends wanting to see him—but she hadn’t thought they’d just show up at Rapture. “Have fun.”

“You’re coming too, silly,” said Madison.

Two in the morning was the legal closing time for pretty much all bars in Massachusetts. “Not a lot of places open at this hour.”

The four of them planted themselves on stools. Adeline checked her watch. “Oh, don’t worry about that. But since we’re here, what do you have to drink?”