Page 40 of Thief of Night (The Charlatan Duology #2)

“I didn’t want anyone to hurt you,” he said, sounding as though he was speaking from very far away.

She knew that shadows could burn up if a gloamist forced them to use more energy than they possessed, but she’d never seen it happen.

She wasn’t sure how much energy Red had left.

She hoped he had enough time to get where they were going.

Hoped there was enough time to save him. “No one but you, right?”

He didn’t answer.

“I can’t wait to hear your excuse for tonight.”

He still said nothing in return.

“If it boils down to you hating yourself, please hate yourself a little more, on my behalf.” Then she slammed the doors closed, hands shaking.

In the driver’s seat, still not sure how much of the drug remained in her system, Charlie contemplated the steps of her plan.

“I’m taking you to the masks,” Charlie called into the back.

“You really do hate me,” Red groaned, reassuring her that he was still alive.

Charlie smiled as she turned the key. In the dim light, she could see her own teeth reflected in the mirror.

Charlie’s first phone call was to Balthazar, asking him to get Bellamy away from his tower.

“You’ve got a lot of nerve, I’ll say that for you.” In the background, she could hear the bustling of the shadow parlor underneath Rapture. Balthazar sounded annoyed. “You only just paid up and you want to go into debt with me again?”

Panic made her patience next to nil. “Please,” she ground out. “Do this and you can call in any favor. I’ll do whatever job you want. I’ll trade in the Blight I got for you for any better one that comes across my path.”

“She can hear you, you know, and that’s not very nice. She and I are getting along swimmingly.”

“What about you and Bellamy?” Charlie asked.

“I’d never fuck over my new friend for a man, Charlie Hall.

But that doesn’t mean that I would fuck over my man for someone I am not at all sure is a friend.

” She’d known Balthazar for years, but their relationship had always been transactional.

She’d never considered that he might want it to be otherwise.

“Do this and you’re my best friend,” she said. “Seriously. I wouldn’t ask you if it wasn’t life or death.”

“Is it going to come back on me?” he asked.

“No,” she said. “Bellamy will never have any reason to suspect you were part of this.”

“He better not,” Balthazar said and hung up.

Her second call, to someone she swore she would never ask for help, was even worse.

The old watchtower in Holyoke was the place where the masks had held Vince after the death of Salt. That was where he’d been chained, where she’d bargained for his life, and where he’d forgotten her. She absolutely hated that she was bringing him back here, hoping for his salvation.

The whole drive over, Red’s pain was evident.

He made soft, agonized sounds. He shifted, like someone who couldn’t get comfortable.

She wondered why he didn’t return to shadow and was afraid that he couldn’t afford the energy for even that.

And as much as she hated hearing him in pain, so long as he could make sounds, there was still hope.

Charlie had planned to come back to the watchtower on her own, to slither in and tell enough lies that she could make it to the basement vault, to steal from it the part of Red that had been held hostage, the part she had hoped would contain his memories of her, and of being Vince.

Now, she needed to steal it if he was going to survive.

She thought of Red, sitting beside her, hand on the wheel of the Porsche, truth spilling from his lips.

The pain in his voice when he told her that he couldn’t have her, nothing hidden in his face.

Red was Vince, but he was also Vince’s biggest secret.

Crack Vince open and Red had always been inside.

She even remembered moments, looking back, that she’d glimpsed Red.

She just hadn’t known who she was looking at.

If Vince’s memories returned, would she lose Red? Would he hide himself—his truest self—away again? The thought made her stomach hurt.

And made Charlie wonder if there was a secret self inside of her too, waiting to be let out.

As soon as she parked the van, Charlie jumped out and opened the doors to the back.

Red appeared unconscious, beyond pain, but still present.

She reached under him, into her Blight-hunting go-bag, where she pulled out the onyx box she never used, then deposited the black silt from her pockets inside.

Once that was done, she reached over to wake Red, but at least twice, her hand passed right through his skin. The third time, she wound her onyx necklace around her palm. With that, her fingers closed on his elbow and she shook him hard.

He woke enough to help her sling one of his arms over her shoulder. He leaned less than his full weight against her as they limped toward the door.

The same girl with the shaved head and heavy makeup who’d opened it the last time Charlie had come to the watchtower looked at them with a skeptical expression. The piercing on her cheek had healed. It looked good.

“Sally,” Charlie said. Remembering names was an important skill for a grifter. “Let us in.”

Sally narrowed her eyes, unimpressed. “You’re no mask. This place isn’t for you.”

Charlie blew out a frustrated breath. “Tell Bellamy that the Hierophant is here to see him. It’s an emergency.”

Sally frowned at Charlie, then frowned even more at the man leaning heavily on her shoulder, light streaming through him. Finally, she stepped out of the way. “He’s not here, but I guess you can come in and wait in the parlor.

“Milo,” Sally shouted as Charlie half-dragged Red inside. “Call Bellamy. Now!”

That meant the timer had started. Charlie had fifteen minutes to pull this thing off, maybe. Perhaps only ten.

At least five agonizing minutes were spent getting Red into the parlor on the second floor, the one hung with scarlet curtains. She settled him on velvet cushions.

“Hang on,” she told him, firmly, wishing she could speak inside his mind. “You’re going to be okay.”

“He doesn’t look good,” said Milo, who’d come into the room. “I’ve seen a shadow like that before and—”

“I need you to take me to your vault.” Charlie interrupted him before he could tell them something dire. She held up the onyx box and made her voice tremble. “I caught a Blight. A terrible one. Really bad. I need to lock it away.”

The kind of con she had learned from Rand, the kind she had specialized in, unfolded slowly.

It took time to get a mark to trust, to misdirect them, to get them to go along for the ride.

But there was another kind—the street con.

That burned fast and hot, putting marks into a highly vulnerable state, where doing felt important, even if the thing being done was a mistake.

“I’m scared,” she said, turning to them in wide-eyed panic that was pure bullshit. “There were three of them, more powerful than anything I’ve ever seen. He killed one and almost died doing it. The second one is trapped in here. The third—the third is still out there.”

“You’re safe,” Sally said, but she glanced toward the door.

Charlie needed them to be as upset as she was. “I know you have a vault.” She held up the onyx box from the van. “I need to get this inside so it can’t get loose in the world again. It’s killed a lot of people.”

“What people?” Milo sounded nervous. There might not be anyone but these two in the tower right now.

“They were slaughtered like animals!” Charlie shouted, loud enough to startle them. When someone started melting down, there was a natural instinct to try to do whatever it would take to fix things, and also to panic a bit.

“Slow your roll,” Sally told her, entirely too reasonably. “What are you saying?”

Charlie let all the anger she’d felt toward the Cabals come out in her voice. “I am saying that I want to keep this thing locked away in your vault,” she told them, speaking fast. “What is it for if not to keep a Blight secure? What is the use of any of you?”

“I can—” Milo started.

“Take me now!” Charlie pressed the box to her chest, hoping he’d see that volunteering to take it off her hands, even if it meant bringing it where she wanted it to go, wasn’t going to fly.

“I’ll secure it,” Sally tried anyway, although she didn’t look hopeful that Charlie would go for her offer.

“Oh, you don’t want me to know where your vault is?

” Charlie snapped. “I am a master thief! Do you think I don’t already know?

” Thanks to the map Balthazar had gotten her, she was able to describe the way precisely—which she did, in detail, to their growing consternation.

“Now, want me to tell you how I’d break in? ”

“Okay,” Sally said, finally sounding rattled. “But once that Blight is locked up, it belongs to Bellamy and the masks.”

Charlie let the moment draw out, as though she was confronting a hard truth. It had to make them feel good to think they were taking something off her for their boss. “You mean I won’t be able to claim the bounty.”

“No one gets access to that Blight but us. That’s the offer,” Sally told her. “Take it or leave it.”

Charlie looked in the direction of the door, letting the real panic she felt show on her face. They had to be almost at nine minutes from the time Bellamy had gotten the message to return. “Okay, fine. Fine. Let’s go. Quickly.”

“I’ll stay with him,” Milo said, gesturing toward Red. “Bellamy should be here soon.”

Yes, that’s what she was worried about.

Charlie followed Sally down two spirals of stairs into a basement that had been recently built, tunneled below the original watchtower like something out of H. H. Holmes’s house of horrors. It was high-ceilinged and paved in black stone.