Page 51 of Thief of Night (The Charlatan Duology #2)

Fool’s Gold and Real Gold

Charlie returned to her cottage on shaking legs, flushed despite the cold, alone.

Turning the key, she walked in to find that some staff member had turned down their sheets, lit a fire, and set out a complimentary bottle of red wine with a card from the management, along with two glasses.

Shivering, she went to sit near the flames, twisted the cap off the bottle, and took a swig straight from the neck. She felt fantastic and also on the edge of panic, entirely too vulnerable, everything uncomfortably close to the surface.

Grabbing a blanket from the couch, she took out her phone. She’d missed four texts from her sister.

Posey: thats archies room

Posey: why

Posey: pokepoke

Posey: Charlie!!!!!???????

With a sigh, Charlie started typing a response.

Charlie: am ok

Charlie: you at cottage yet

Her sister responded immediately.

Posey: just leaving bar

Posey: had drink with guy buying shadow like he was totally open about it & said friend did it last year& his appt is tomorrow night

Posey: holy shit

Charlie hoped that Malhar hadn’t introduced himself as Mr. Punch, but she supposed that would only be delaying the inevitable. He had a speech the following day.

Charlie: I think someone was hanging around your cottage, maybe the person who killed rooster

Charlie: and the gloamists archie hired as guards are in the cottage across from you

Charlie: come stay with us

There was a delay this time. Charlie watched the three dots as her sister typed and retyped.

Posey: at our place

Posey: it’s incredible!!!!!!!

Posey: Malhar borrowed onyx from department so we have lots. we can block entrances &windows. don’t worry about us

Posey: Malhar is sending you an email &says its info you need for tomorrow

Charlie sighed and took another swig from the wine bottle. She couldn’t make her sister’s decisions for her.

Charlie: ok. call if anything seems scary

She knew Posey thought that Charlie, who was not currently a gloamist, couldn’t protect her. Unless things were very bad, she wouldn’t call.

Charlie opened the message from Malhar. It came with three screenshots of a Google document. The email read:

Archie hinted around about the shadows. I didn’t entirely know what he was talking about, but he made it clear he was expecting more of something from me.

He has an assistant named Vera, who’s staying at a cheaper hotel closer to town so not here now. She’s bringing in gift bags, lanyards, and badges in the morning.

They’ll have extra green lanyards, which would be easy to get, but not particularly useful.

Archie told me that “these people” need a whole staff to wipe their asses—his quote—and never think to register them.

Staff aren’t allowed into the program rooms. They’re getting green lanyards, but the people who pay get purple ones.

And Archie, myself, and the other speakers get red.

What about Vera? Charlie typed back. And security?

Another email came in a few minutes later. Yellow for Vera. But I think she’s the *only* one with a yellow badge. Archie didn’t want her to feel bad so he didn’t give her a green one, but he also didn’t want to give anyone but us the red ones. Security is also green. Same deal.

The door opened and Red walked into the cottage, blurry around the edges, and eyes streaming something like smoke. She felt her whole body go hot with some combination of desire and shame.

Charlie held her phone toward Red and her voice only wavered a little as she spoke. “Why is Archie complaining about rich people? I thought this guy was rich?”

Red walked to sit beside Charlie. “Not rich enough,” he told her when he was finished reading. “His parents are wealthy, but not private-plane-second-house-in-the-Hamptons-third-house-on-the-Riviera wealthy. He has hustle and a quickened shadow.”

Interesting. When Archie was talking about gloamists, he hadn’t mentioned being one. That meant he could be stitching on the stolen shadows himself.

“Where did you meet him?” she asked, because focusing on profiling Archie as a mark was important. And if it allowed her to shove aside what had happened between them, so much the better.

Not that it was complicated. They wanted one another. They’d had freaky sex. They were fine.

“We ran into him in Mykonos during the summer break junior year,” Red said.

“He spotted that Remy was a gloamist too. After that, he stayed in touch. He was good at making connections. He thought Remy was standoffish—a snob. He didn’t understand that if Remy brought Archie into his circle, Salt would have noticed him and that would have been a disaster. ”

It must have been horribly lonely, keeping apart from people you liked for their protection. However much she thought Remy had been unfair to Red, it was clear there had been no one else for him to lean on.

“He seemed to like you tonight,” Charlie said.

“He did,” Red said, letting her draw whatever conclusion she would from that.

Charlie opened the screenshots that Malhar sent her and looked at the schedule:

7:30 a.m.—Check-in opens

9 a.m.—Breakfast and welcome

10:30 a.m.—Morning meditation led by Paula Essex

11:00 a.m.—Talk and Q&A with a prominent Cabal leader

1:00 p.m.—Lunch

2:00 p.m.—The Blight and the Shadow: Urban Legend and Belief

3:30 p.m.—Practical shadow demonstration

5:00 p.m.—The business of magic

9:00 p.m.—Cocktail party

Charlie had no way of knowing when appointments had been made for Archie to distribute the shadows, but he’d seemed relaxed at dinner, not like someone who had a night of alteration ahead of him. She suspected the appointments would begin on the first day of the conference.

The woman who’d left the message for Mr. Punch was probably Vera, but she might not have even known what she was asking about. Either way, it suggested that the shadows were being kept in Archie’s room.

What Charlie needed to do was get into room 210 after Archie joined the conference, get the shadows, and then go back like nothing happened. Leaving early was tempting, but they would need to stick it out if they didn’t want it to be incredibly obvious that they were the thieves.

And it would help if there was someone else to throw suspicion on.

Certainly, it would be satisfying to hang the whole thing on Mark.

But he was a wild card, and it would be better to point Archie toward one of the puppeteer gloamists—anything to discredit them until Malhar was out of there.

If that was impossible, then maybe it would be possible to make them believe that Malhar was being puppeted by Mr. Punch to further hide his identity.

That wouldn’t work long term, but it might buy some time.

And once they left, she’d have to discredit Archie to Mr. Punch.

But even then, she wasn’t sure if it would be possible just from him figuring out that he’d been impersonated. And Charlie had no idea what to do about that.

Her first step would be to get badges off Vera. I am coming to your cottage at 6:30 a.m., she texted her sister. Order coffee.

She heard the chime of her sister responding, then set her phone down. Told herself that she had to be brave. Took a last slug of wine and turned to Red.

He met her gaze with the hollows of his smoking eyes. Despite everything, she felt her heart jolt with a kick of animal fear.

Then, she leaned forward to kiss him. He kissed her back with an intensity that felt at least partly like relief. Maybe he was nervous too. The thought made her bold. Her fingers tangled in his hair and she gave it a short tug.

He made a sound against her mouth.

“You like that?” A whole year she’d lived with him and hadn’t known.

He drew back, looking down at her with a wild intensity. “I—yes.” He swallowed whatever else he had been about to say.

“I am going,” she told him, sliding her hands over his skin, letting her nails scratch him lightly as she went, “to spend the rest of tonight figuring out everything you like.”

The conference wasn’t supposed to start until nine, but according to the schedule, check-in started at seven thirty in the morning. That was when Charlie showed up, Malhar and Posey in tow. Red hung back, waiting for his cue.

“Act like you’re in charge,” she reminded Malhar just before he opened the door. He wore the suit jacket from the night before over a t-shirt and jeans as though he was a bro from Silicon Valley.

In jeans and a black sweater with an onyx knife hidden in her borrowed Prada boots, Charlie worried she was overdressed. She needed to appear as though she was a member of Mr. Punch’s staff.

Inside the room, a woman with short gray hair and wearing a dark blue pantsuit set more gift bags out on an already loaded table. Vera, the overworked assistant. Badges were being spit out of a small printer, beside a pile of lanyards. She hadn’t assembled all of it yet, which was perfect.

The game was simple. Charlie needed Vera away from the computer long enough to officially enter her and Red into the attendees registry.

Simple, but not exactly easy. But Charlie had one thing going for her—no one would suspect the mysterious guest of honor of wanting that level of petty interference.

“Good morning,” Malhar said.

“Mr. Punch!” Vera looked distressed to see him. “Is something the matter? Didn’t you get your materials? They were supposed to be sent to your room this morning and you should have received an email—”

“It’s not that,” Malhar said. “One of the hotel staff had some questions about the breakfast menu, but I couldn’t find Archie.”

“Oh.” She looked around at her piles. “Well, you can tell him Archie won’t be long.”

“I’m afraid I may have promised that you would speak with him, since I heard you were in charge of logistics. My apologies.” This was what they’d practiced, and Malhar was doing a good job of selling it.