Page 42 of Thief of Night (The Charlatan Duology #2)

Solaluna

when Charlie got back to the new, fancy apartment, she led a barely conscious Red into the elevator and then into their place. Posey wasn’t home, although the pizza boxes and bottles from the previous night’s move-in party still littered the large, marble kitchen island.

After settling Red in her bed, Charlie ate an entire loaf of bread, all the slices of cheddar cheese, most of a jar of peanut butter, and six apples.

Giving Red so much of her energy had left her with a ravenous hunger.

When she was done, she filled a pitcher with water from the tap, drank the whole thing, then refilled it and did it again.

Finally, she felt satiated enough to sit down and put together what she knew.

The person who’d nearly killed Red had to have been the same person who slaughtered those people in the basement of Grace Covenant.

There were filters from the same brand of cigarette she’d found at the edge of the church graveyard and victims similarly bitten and desanguinated.

The killer was moving around, hunting for more blood—to feed Rose?

To feed some other Blights he’d charmed or shadows he’d stolen?

At least Charlie could see why Rose was so desperate to get away from him.

So where was Rooster? Dead, she’d theorized, but then where was his body?

Charlie considered the question from another angle.

If she’d slaughtered a lot of people, including Rooster, and wanted to hide only one of the bodies—leaving aside the question of why only hide the death of Rooster—how would she do it?

The murderer didn’t seem super organized, and she doubted the killer was a person who made complicated plans.

Nearby, then.

Charlie recalled hanging out at the Moose Lodge in Chicopee with a bunch of retired racketeers and scammers.

Remembered drinking burnt coffee and learning card counting from Willy Lead, whose late wife, to hear him tell it, was the greatest stickup artist to ever knock over a liquor store.

Listening to Benny brag about seducing rich widows and give instructions on making the perfect old-fashioned.

A story told by a guy named Fishtail John had come into her mind.

It was about three bank robbers back in the 1960s.

According to John, they were brothers on the run from the cops.

One had been shot and was unconscious, without long to live.

The other two knew that if the body of one brother was found, it would be obvious that the other two had been involved.

But where could they hide a body forever?

When she’d said she didn’t know, John gave her the answer like it was a punch line—they buried the dead brother in a graveyard, because who’d look for a body there?

Charlie took her phone, engaged the app that hid her number, and called the anonymous tip line for the police. She opened another app to disguise her voice. “There’s another body outside the church,” Charlie said. “In the graveyard. In a grave.”

Then, before Red woke, she decided it was time to go see Mr. Punch.

The massive brick Victorian on the leafy main street of Northampton, near Smith College, might have been the most beautiful house Charlie ever broke into.

She hopped the ironwork fence and walked up the smooth stone path, but didn’t bother knocking on the massive wooden door, even though she was tempted by the knocker in the shape of a brass hand holding an apple.

Instead, she went around the back, checking the windows as she went.

The third one had a loose screen. The sixth one wasn’t locked.

She pushed it up, past the window rail, not worrying about leaving behind fingerprints. No one was going to the cops.

Heaving herself up, she slid over the sill and inside.

She found herself in a parlor. The walls were dark, wallpapered in a William Morris blackberry print. Victorian-style, wood-trimmed sofas in burgundy velvet sat opposite one another. She took a seat, listened, and waited.

About an hour later, she heard a car in the driveway. Keys rattled in the lock of the back door, then a man walked in. She heard something thunk down on the counter. Heard the fridge open. When the microwave turned on, Charlie got up and, using the sound as cover, slunk into the doorway.

The man jumped. “What the fuck?”

She smiled. “Mr. Punch, I presume.”

He opened his mouth to claim he didn’t know who she was or what she was doing there, but it was too late. She’d seen the recognition in his face and she certainly knew him.

“You weren’t in any of the family photos,” Charlie said to the man who had sat on the couch in that house in Leverett. The one she’d thought was the husband, at least at first. “They should have taken them down for the staging, but they didn’t.”

He glowered at her. In his tweed jacket and chinos, he looked as though he could be a professor at Smith, which was unsurprising since that’s what he was. “So you knew what I looked like, but how did you find this place with nothing else to work from?”

“The Valley isn’t very big,” Charlie said.

“Gloamists know other gloamists, even if they aren’t aware of their specialty or position within the Cabals.

I asked around about people who look like you, Professor Frank.

From there, it was just a matter of going through your public records.

Looks like you bought a house recently.”

“Where’s your shadow, Charlie Hall?” he asked her, voice full of menace. She could feel his shadow at the edge of her mind.

“Coincidentally, not attached. Which is how I like to approach a puppeteer.” The shadowless couldn’t be possessed, possibly because they didn’t have souls.

“I could just kill you instead,” he said.

She snorted, walking past him to pick up an apple out of a bowl. “This house is ridiculously nice.” Then she took a big bite, snapping it between her teeth. Sweetness bloomed on her tongue.

He raised his eyebrows. “Not worried?”

“Why would I be when I’m here to give you answers? You wanted to know what happened to Rooster Argent. Well, he’s dead.” She leaned against the counter.

His microwave beeped. They stared at one another.

“Where’s the body, then?” he asked.

Charlie turned the bitten apple in her hand. “Is that the important part? Rather than who murdered him and who’s responsible for the massacre in the church basement?”

“Well?” he said. “Let’s have it.”

“I don’t know his name, but I bet you do. The same person who was harvesting shadows for you to sell to the wealthy and desperate at Solaluna this coming weekend.”

Mr. Punch shook his head, a smirk on his face. “Not possible. He’s nothing. A gloamist for a year, maybe a little more.” At her look, he went on. “He’s a coward who basically traded his life to Salt for some kind of indentured servitude.”

Charlie tried not to react at the mention of Salt’s name.

Mr. Punch hadn’t denied that there was a harvester, nor that he’d been planning on selling the shadows at Solaluna.

Charlie tried to keep her feelings from showing on her face.

Had the harvester made an alliance with the shadows he harvested?

With the gloamists he intended to harvest from?

She thought of that house and the dead couple on the couch. “That’s why he needed all that blood.”

Mr. Punch didn’t laugh this time. “So where can I find him?”

“I know where he was as of yesterday,” Charlie said and rattled off the address.

He nodded, clearly grudgingly impressed. “You did well. I don’t say that lightly. I am prepared to reward you. Money, of course, and more opportunities.”

“All I want is what you promised,” she said. “Backing me to the Cabals.”

“Of course,” he said, entirely too easily, as though that was a favor he didn’t expect her to ever call in. “I don’t suppose you’d like to harvest shadows? You’d be good at it, I think. Better than you are at hunting down Blights. But, of course, they’d be useful too.”

Charlie would be good at it. She could steal shadows and be rolling in wealth.

But stealing a part of a person wasn’t like stealing books from wealthy collectors or even elite institutional collections.

And did he really think he was the first one who’d ever suggested she do it? “That’s not for me.”

“A thief like you can’t afford morals?” Mr. Punch told her. “Shadows aren’t exactly an ethically sourced commodity.”

He looked so normal, standing in his kitchen with countertops of local limestone and handmade tiles on his backsplash.

He didn’t look like a man who could make your friends walk into traffic.

“Rooster was doing this before you got involved, back when Malik was the one in charge. Malik didn’t know, did he? ”

Mr. Punch waited for a long moment. “You’re good, but there’s such a thing as being too good.”

“I’m not stealing shadows,” Charlie said. “Not for anyone.”

“Then make sure you stay out of my way,” he told her, opening a door under his sink and reaching inside.

He came out with something that looked like a brick, wrapped in duct tape and Target bags.

“Take this and forget we ever met. If I find out that you gave so much as a hint about my identity, you will live only until you first lose everything you’ve ever cared about. Now get out.”

Charlie headed for the door, chucking the bitten apple onto his manicured lawn.

Once she got to the van, she ripped open the wrapping on the brick. It contained a chunk of money, in mixed denominations, all of it dirty.

According to its website, Solaluna specialized in health and wellness.

It hosted a variety of high-end yoga retreats, exclusive seminars, and tasteful weddings featuring a lot of billowing white cloth.

The spa offered craniosacral massage, aromatherapy, and crystal chakra realignment.

If Charlie’s mom won the lottery, she’d rent a room and never leave.