Page 5 of Thief of Night (The Charlatan Duology #2)

Hall Family Curse

Charlie’s little sister, Posey, looked up from packing at the slam of the screen door.

The kitchen cabinets were all open, half their contents haphazardly piled into cardboard boxes with wildly random, yet highly specific Sharpie’d labels— TINY UMbrELLAS, MUGS, SPATULA, TONGS & PASTA STRAINERS or LEMON SQUEEZER, KNIVES, TIARA & COFFEE GRINDER .

Their cat, Lucipurrr, was in the box marked WORM BUCKET , barely visible except for the shine of her green eyes.

“You’re finally back,” Posey said to her sister, glancing up. “Want to order a pizza?”

Charlie smiled as though she wasn’t hurting. “Sure.”

“I found us a place,” Posey went on. “The people from State Street called back. We just have to go over and sign the lease. We can be in next week.”

“In Northampton?” Charlie asked, suspicious of good news. “You’re sure we can afford it?”

“You’d be surprised—it was kinda cheap,” Posey said. “No idea why. Maybe a different murder happened there.”

A man named Adam had been killed by the previous Hierophant in the Hall sisters’ current rental. His shadow had painted the walls of the living room with Adam’s blood. RedRedRed, written all the way up to the ceiling in gruesome letters, because it had been Red he was looking for.

Charlie and Posey had moved back in as soon as the crime scene tape was taken down and the blood removed.

But their ruthless practicality hadn’t mattered to the horrified owner, who’d offloaded the place as fast as he could onto some oblivious Brooklynites moving to the Valley after the birth of their second child.

They were closing on the house just before Christmas, so that was the deadline when all of them—girls, cat, Blight—needed to be out.

“So what do you need from me for the deposit?” Charlie wasn’t flush with cash, but she would be due a bounty for this Blight.

And she’d caught two—albeit small and not that impressive or lucrative—before that.

Plus, if she needed to, she had a couple of things she’d lifted from Salt’s mansion that she could pawn.

“Nothing yet,” Posey said.

Which might mean she’d need the whole thing and just didn’t want to give Charlie the bad news.

Posey had been working as a tarot card reader over Zoom for more than a year, a job that had never been immensely profitable.

And since Posey became a gloamist, she’d been going out, when previously she’d been unwilling to leave the house for months at a time.

Posey’s socioemotional health was on the rise, which was a relief to Charlie, but her wallet had taken the hit.

These days, Posey barely seemed to work at all.

Even if the place was cheapish, Charlie doubted she could make enough at Rapture to reliably pay the entirety of the rent. She was going to have to catch or kill a lot more Blights.

“What happened to your face?” Posey asked, then sniffed. “And why do you smell like a campfire?”

Charlie’s gaze went to Posey’s quickened shadow.

It was magical, but it wasn’t conscious.

She didn’t think it was, anyway. It gave Charlie a strange feeling when she looked at it, and not just because it had once been part of her.

Sometimes she felt she ought to do something—talk to it, make sure it was okay? —but didn’t know how.

Posey fed it frequently. Charlie had noticed the shallow cuts on her calves and the packet of stainless steel razor blades that frequently sat on the edge of the tub, without a razor in sight.

Charlie saw her researching shadows late in the night, poring over old books and practicing shadow manipulation again and again.

It was easy to worry about what else she might be doing when no one else was around. Worry she’d already tried bleeding herself more than was safe.

If Salt was anything to go on, the way to power up a shadow fast was to feed it someone else’s blood, and a lot of it.

“Seriously,” Posey said. “What happened to you?”

“Just a job,” Charlie told her, walking to Posey’s laptop, where it rested on the kitchen table. She pulled up the menu of the pizza place down the street. “Olives, peppers, and mushrooms?”

A chat was open in the background of the screen, members complaining about some retreat for wealthy people who wanted to awaken their shadows.

SkepticalChili82: Ice baths for the rich

temporary_earnestness: Ice picks for the rich would be better

“Fuck the Cabals,” Posey said. “They’re trying to get you killed.”

Charlie didn’t think they were actually trying, but that didn’t mean they wouldn’t succeed.

“I’m fine,” she said, exhausted. “It won’t be forever.”

Posey gave an exaggerated sigh. “ Years. And you’re not taking it seriously. You’re the Hierophant and you haven’t even split your tongue.”

“You don’t need to disguise your lecture as sympathy,” Charlie said. “This is like live action concern trolling.”

Splitting the tongue woke dormant muscles in it.

Learning how to control those—so that you could move both halves at the same time—supposedly helped to trigger what gloamists called a bifurcated consciousness, the ability to control your body and your shadow simultaneously.

Controlling a shadow as though it were a separate limb was the “ethical” way to be a gloamist.

The easier and less ethical way was to put pieces of yourself into your shadow.

Memories were especially good for that. Enough pieces created a powerful shadow that could operate with limited instruction.

And if that eventually resulted in a Blight, well, wasn’t there some saying about omelets and breaking eggs?

“Being a gloamist is a big deal . I just want you to fulfill your potential,” Posey told her, which made Charlie think of their mother and how, once she believed Charlie’s lies about being a medium, she hadn’t wanted Charlie to give it up. She’d given the same reason. A waste of potential.

“I’m not like you,” Charlie told her sister firmly. “I’m a charlatan . I’ve been a fake magician, a fake medium, a fake ghost—but always a fake. Once this is over, that’s what I am going to go back to being, because that’s what I’m good at.”

“And if they won’t let you?” Posey asked.

“What was it you said before? Fuck the Cabals,” Charlie reminded her.

The computer was still open on the table and she could see that the chat had moved on to discussing the murders in the church basement in Hatfield.

quirky_fraud00: they were all seekers right?

LoutishProgressive: not all I know a gloamist who was part of that group

SkepticalChili82: wasn’t some cabal guy supposed to be speaking there that night? Is he dead too?

Butzzzzzz: nothing on rooster’s tiktok

Charlie got up. “I am going to take a nap.”

“Wait! We’re not done talking,” Posey said. “You’ve got to do something.”

“I am doing something,” Charlie said.

“About him, ” Posey said, lowering her voice, as though that was going to stop Red from hearing. “What if he never gets his memories back?”

“Malhar says it’s possible he’ll remember.” She managed to sound calm, but was worried her distress bled through their tether. Madurai Malhar Iyer was a graduate student who’d been studying Blights for his thesis. He believed a lot of things were possible.

“Whatever he says,” Posey said, “he still thinks what you’re doing is—as he put it, ‘tantamount to gambling with your life.’”

“You’ve been spending a lot of time with Malhar lately,” Charlie observed. “Anything you want to tell me ?”

Posey put a hand on her hip. “Yes. That you need to learn more about being a gloamist because one day you might need to… stop him. Stop Red.”

Stop him from draining her. That’s what Posey was worried about.

“Posey—” Charlie held up a hand to try to forestall whatever was coming next.

“You’re bound together,” Posey reminded her. “Stuck with one another. Like a marriage, but more permanent. And he’s an actual murderer ! Again, I am not saying he’s a bad person, because it wasn’t like he had a choice, but—”

“Don’t talk like that,” Charlie snapped, feeling the change in the air, like an electric charge.

Posey frowned. “Like how?”

Red appeared in the doorway, the way he might have if he had merely stepped in from the other room, rather than stepping out of shadow.

Posey sucked in a startled breath.

“Like he’s not here,” Charlie told her.