Page 48 of Thief of Night (The Charlatan Duology #2)

If Mark was here, it stood to reason that he had something to do with the retreat.

Could Mr. Punch have found him and given him the job he’d offered to Charlie?

Could Mark be the next harvester, stealing shadows for the Cabals?

If so, following him could lead her to where the shadows were being kept.

The third course was pork medallions with spicy juniper. Charlie ate it, wondering if she could make an excuse to knock the man’s notebook to the floor by way of introduction. She tried not to look at Mark, although she couldn’t help a sidelong glance from time to time.

Charlie was halfway through the orange wine that had been paired with the pork when Red spoke.

“I haven’t been very fair to you,” he said.

“You’ve sent me some mixed messages,” Charlie admitted. “Like maybe you hate me, but also think I’m kinda hot?”

He leaned back, eyes half-lidded, smile pulling at his mouth. “I never hated you.”

“Oh?” Charlie’s gaze didn’t waver.

Red took a sip of wine. His eyes were dark. “You made me feel things I didn’t want to feel. Things I’d never felt before. Selfish, ugly things. Desperate things.”

“I don’t know what to do with that,” she said. “It doesn’t sound good.”

“It frightened me,” he said. “Do you know the fairy tale about the boy who doesn’t know fear?

It’s bizarre. A boy who has never been afraid leaves home to seek his fortune and is challenged to spend the night in some haunted house.

Many headless ghosts and other things try to scare him to death the way they’ve done to everyone else, but he’s not scared because, well, no fear.

He gets his reward and winds up marrying a princess—and on his wedding night, his new wife learns about his lack of fear.

To teach him, she pours a bucket of eels on him in their marriage bed.

The squirming of the eels is so strange that he shivers and shakes and believes that he has finally felt fear.

“Fiona read that to Remy when we were children and I thought it was the weirdest story I’d ever heard. For a long time, I thought eels had something to do with marriage.”

Charlie raised her eyebrows. “So what does it mean?”

“Look, it’s still bizarre. But I think the fairy tale is about how desire is terrifying. Love is terrifying.” He shook his head. “And for someone who has tried not to feel for a long time, it’s threatening. It feels like an attack.”

“So you do like me,” Charlie said, trying to figure out what he meant. “But you wish you didn’t?”

Red put his head in his hands. “I am terrible at this.”

But he was trying. He was trying to tell her something that wasn’t easy, but was true. “No,” she said. “Go on.”

“In Salt’s house, whenever you cared about someone, he would find a way to turn that against you.

To make you betray one another.” Red shook his head.

“I thought you couldn’t possibly have sacrificed what you did, knowing what I was.

You couldn’t be as brave and reckless as you seemed.

And then when I realized you were, I’d already made a mess of things. I like you so much, Charlie.”

Unused to being told anything like that, Charlie could only reply, “My level of recklessness is pretty unbelievable.”

“What if I never get my memories back?” Red went on, as though now that he’d started talking, he couldn’t stop.

“I know you hoped that if I got the part that the Cabals stole, I would be him again. I know that sometimes when you look at me, you see him. But I’m not him.

And I don’t want to be. I’m afraid to lose what little self I have.

I am afraid that everything you like in me isn’t me at all. ”

Of course someone who had memories thrust upon him didn’t want more. Of course the idea of not remembering something was as frightening as being made to remember. In his mind, being Vince was tangled up with being Remy. She could hardly blame him, when he was being forced to answer to both names.

And it made sense that he was afraid that anyone who liked him, really liked someone else.

“I’m glad you’re the one here with me.” She leaned forward to take his hand. “You and no one else.”

He smiled across the table at her, the curve of his mouth and the smoldering light of his eyes full of promises.

She wondered what would happen when they got back to the cottage. Then she looked up and saw that Mark was no longer at the table.

“He’s gone,” she blurted out. “I was supposed to follow him.”

Charlie shouldered off Red’s suit jacket and walked swiftly out of the dining room, into the parlor and bar area next door. Mark wasn’t there. She looked around wildly, but there was no sign he’d ever been in the building.

She felt the sting of embarrassment in the back of her throat. She’d gotten so distracted that she hadn’t even noticed him leaving. With no better explanation for wandering around, she tried to act like a person who’d been looking for the bathroom and gotten turned around.

On her way, she overheard two of the servers whispering together. “Did you hear? That guy sitting alone. His father tortured him. The whole story is messed up.”

Charlie froze.

“Must be why he keeps her around,” whispered the other. “The shadowless girl. It would creep me the fuck out to have that near me.”

Giving them both a lethal look, she headed into the bathroom. There, she fixed her lipstick and stared at herself in the mirror. In the slip dress, tattoos and curves on full display.

It was said that a person without a shadow was without a soul.

And while Charlie had never believed that, people’s superstitions had been easier to dismiss when they weren’t about her.

Now she couldn’t help wondering if there really might be something wrong with her, some essential part of herself that was missing.

Something’s been wrong with you a lot longer than you haven’t had a shadow, she told herself.

When she left the bathroom, a waiter spotted her. “Miss?” he asked. “We’re just serving dessert at your table.”

Gritting her teeth, she squared her shoulders and headed back, distracted enough to knock into a bald man coming into the dining room.

“Excuse me!” the man snapped.

“Sorry,” she said, then threw herself into the chair opposite Red.

At her expression, he looked worried. “We can go. We’ll find him.”

“New plan.” Charlie opened her hand, flashing him the room key she’d lifted when she’d bumped the man, then closed her hand again. “We find the welcome packet that everyone at this retreat got and go from there. But we don’t have much time.”

“Do my eyes deceive?” a voice boomed from across the room. “Remy Vincent Carver! Back from the dead like Lazarus.”

A big, red-bearded man came into the room and turned immediately toward Red, throwing his arms open for an embrace.

Red stood and made a performance of hugging him and slapping the man on the back with feigned enthusiasm.

The diners turned toward the commotion, but the man didn’t seem to care.

He was in the same dark jeans, brown cashmere sweater, and Allbirds as several of the more casually dressed men in the room, but on him the clothes looked rumpled and a little sloppy.

He seemed familiar, but Charlie couldn’t place him.

“It’s been what? A decade—no, not quite that, but nearly,” the man was saying.

“Archie,” Red said, a little stiffly. This was the first time since they came to Solaluna that she saw his performance falter.

The man didn’t seem to notice. “I can’t believe it’s you!” he said. “After all this time. And with what you’ve been through. I mean, I read what they’ve written in the paper.”

Then, Charlie realized that she knew him from the TikTok he’d made with Rooster.

Charlie took a step closer to Red. Archie seemed to take note of her for the first time.

“Lena,” she said, before he could ask.

“You sitting down to dinner?” Archie asked, then gestured toward their plates.

Some kind of panna cotta, accompanied by a dessert wine.

“Oh, you’ve nearly finished. Well, shit.

” He gave a big laugh. “Not like you want me on your date. But y’all have to be here for the retreat.

At least let me introduce you to the guest of honor. ”

The guest of honor? Wasn’t that supposed to be Rooster?

She thought of the key in her pocket, but nothing they could have found in a random guest’s room could compare to what they could get from Archie. He was the key to all the information they wanted, so long as they played this right.

“I thought that Rooster was…” Charlie began.

“Yes, a tragedy, what happened to him,” Archie said. “But we’re lucky that the guy leading the puppeteers agreed to come in his place. Quite a coup to have him, since he’s very private, even paranoid.”

“The head of the puppeteers,” Charlie repeated slowly.

“Here Mr. Punch comes now,” Archie said, gesturing toward a young man walking into the dining room. “Hopefully ready to give away all those Cabal secrets.”

Madurai Malhar Iyer stopped in his tracks, Posey Hall on his arm. He wore the same suit she’d seen hanging in his closet. Posey was in a white flowy dress that Charlie had never seen before.

After a momentary pause, they walked to the table.

There was a ringing in Charlie’s ears as she realized that Posey had found a way to make it into Solaluna after all, and done it in a way that put them all in even more danger than before.

“Nice to meet you,” Malhar said, in a voice that cracked only a little.

Posey was smiling like a cat sitting in front of a bowl of cream. “Yes, it’s so nice to make new friends.”