Page 55 of Thief of Night (The Charlatan Duology #2)

HenHouse Full of Foxes

Charlie woke on a carpeted floor that stank of cigarettes and the rotten smell of old meat. She looked up at a water-stained ceiling. Gingerly, she experimented with pulling at her wrists, then her ankles. Both were pinioned with what felt like zip ties.

Her head throbbed and her lungs hurt, a dull ache with every breath. A painful pressure on her chest made it worse.

She rolled onto her side.

A woman sat beside her, body as translucent as a ghost. “He’s been looking for you.”

Charlie swallowed a scream.

Rose Allaband had been a beautiful woman, with dark hair and dark eyes. Her shadow was no less beautiful. When she tilted her head, her hair moved as though blown by an invisible wind.

Charlie looked past her to a messy room covered in newspapers and take-out boxes, half of them turned into ashtrays. “Why am I still alive?”

Rose’s shadow shrugged. “He hasn’t decided how to kill you yet.”

“Are you the only one who… talks?”

The girl shook her head. “Not exactly.” She beckoned and several shadow shapes crowded in around her.

Terror washed over Charlie, wiping away her ability to do anything but tremble. There was a horrible wrongness to them, an unnaturalness to their movements.

The girl’s hand rested on the back of a shadow that seemed half wolf and half human.

“This is Archer.” Then she introduced the others—JonJon, Maw, and the NeverMan.

That meant there were maybe five left. She hadn’t really counted, back in the hall of Solaluna.

She wasn’t sure how many they’d started with.

But what she’d been trying not to think about since she woke was everyone she left behind. Red and Posey and Malhar. Were they hurt? Were they alive? Imagining grieving them sent her spiraling into a despair deep enough to temper her fear.

“Where am I?” Charlie managed to ask.

“Our new house,” said the NeverMan. He had a haunting flatness to his voice. “We’ve had a lot of houses.”

“He’s the other one that talks,” the girl said. “Although Archer howls and sometimes Maw whispers things that I don’t think are words.”

“Should I call you Rose?” Charlie asked.

“Rosalva,” she said. “I’m from Rose, but not Rose.”

“A rosy dawn,” said the NeverMan.

“Our new house” meant nothing. Mark could have set up camp close to Solaluna or they could be miles and miles away at a new place. She would know more if she could figure out how long she’d been unconscious, but she suspected their sense of time was probably as bad as their sense of place.

She decided to try another tack. “Could you take the binding off my wrists?”

The shadows pulled back from her, making hissing sounds. Her heart sped.

“We can’t,” Rose’s shadow snarled. “He told us that we can’t.”

Charlie forced herself to keep pushing despite her fear. “Did he tell you that you can’t bring me a pair of scissors?”

“No bloodletters. Only water. And food,” said the NeverMan.

“Scissors aren’t bloodletters,” Charlie pressed.

“ No bloodletters! ” the NeverMan shouted, making it feel as though a gust of air knocked her back. “No tasting your sweet blood. Not yet. Not yet. But not never. He didn’t unpromise never.”

“Okay,” Charlie whispered, voice shaking. “Okay.”

There was a creak of floorboards in the hall and the shadows scattered, like mice hiding when a cat came prowling. Mark stepped into the room. Hollow-eyed, his dark hair greasy and hanging in his face, he smiled at the sight of Charlie.

“It’s good to have you bound and on my floor,” he said.

She remembered him glaring at her from the stand during his trial and how dry her throat had felt. That was nothing compared to how it felt now. But as much as he terrified her, he also made her furious. Even zip-tied and on the ground, she couldn’t help imagining revenge.

“I fucked up things with you,” she said, letting her voice break a little.

His smile widened. “You sure did.”

“I thought I was clever,” Charlie said, trying to project sincerity, though it left a bitter taste in her mouth. “You screwed me over, so I thought I would screw you over right back. I never thought about what they might do to you.”

“It’s a little late for an apology,” he said.

It was important she didn’t tip her hand. If she wasn’t at least a little prickly, he wouldn’t believe anything she said. “Since I got shot, I’m not apologizing.”

He sat down in a chair, brushing aside newspapers. “Wait until you see what I am going to do to you now. You’re the reason I’m this way, you know? I’d like to rip you apart.”

“What’s stopping you?” Charlie snapped, because she was so angry and felt so helpless. Because in the face of danger she made bad choices.

His smile was pure spite. “That I can only do it once.”

She was in so much trouble. If she intended to trick him—even if at the moment, she wasn’t entirely sure how she’d do that—she had to swallow her rage. He’d want Charlie to acknowledge his cleverness, his superiority.

Mark had never seen her as a real con artist, like him. She was a woman and if a woman made a target want them, even love them, that’s what women did, right? It didn’t make her slick the way it did when a beautiful, rogue-hearted man came to town and stole hearts.

Women were supposed to be chameleons, formless and shapeless until the world told them their shape, so it didn’t impress him when she slipped into a role. Maybe he thought all women were con artists.

“How did you… become what you are now?” she asked, focusing on appearing riveted by his answer.

“Vicereine wasn’t the only one who could give me a quickened shadow,” he told her. “I went to someone else.”

“Salt.” Her voice cracked with surprise. That was what Mr. Punch had said about the harvester, that he’d been in some kind of indentured servitude to Lionel Salt.

He appeared delighted to have shocked her. “Didn’t think I had it in me, did you?”

“You didn’t buy that. Salt didn’t need your money.”

“He had a job for me. There were a couple of bodies he wanted me to take downtown and set on fire without anyone knowing. Make it look like a murder-suicide.”

Charlie stared at Mark, feeling cold all over. “That was his grandson. You set his grandson’s body on fire.”

He shrugged, looking annoyed at her judgment. “Nothing I did that night compares to what I’ve done since.”

She wanted to hit him. “You were never locked up, were you?”

“I was, but some Cabal guys got me out a few days later. Left some sucker serving my time, believing he was me.” He grinned, clearly pleased to brag. “I guess that Salt told people I could get things done. Rooster said that if I would work for him, he’d keep me out of prison.”

“Lucky you,” she said.

The amusement left his face. “Working for Rooster and Archie was worse than being in a cell. They made me their harvester. Do you know what that is?”

“You stole shadows,” Charlie said.

It was his turn to be surprised. “Well, yeah. And they wanted me to do it forever. Any time I pushed back, they said they could get me sent back to prison. And that if I did, there’d be people inside to make sure I never got out.”

Charlie could easily imagine what Mark had felt like. He must have believed he was making a great deal, until he was deep in it. And then the frustration, the despair, the growing hatred. The desperate desire for a way out.

“At first, I just wanted a new shadow. It’s not easy when yours looks like a girl—no offense.

But I worried the new shadow wouldn’t be very powerful, so I thought maybe I could wear them both for a while.

” When he looked at Charlie, she could see the madness blooming behind his eyes.

“Then I realized that I could do so much with two shadows. And I knew I needed more.”

“And you had to feed them,” Charlie prompted. “Killing Rooster Argent was one thing. But those people at the church…”

“There are reasons for mysteries. For annunciations.” He licked dry lips. “For magic to have a price, one that must be paid in blood. I have so much power, Charlie. I am like a god now.”

He’d always been dramatic. It had been one of the things she’d been drawn to, along with his cheekbones. He’d been a skinny guy in a leather jacket with long hair in his face and a sadness that she was sure she could fix.

She thought of the fairy tale of the Nine-Shadow Man, how greed and jealousy had consumed him until in the end there was nothing left but the Sisyphean task of getting enough blood for shadows he’d never needed.

Mark might think he was approaching godhood because of the shadows, but it was obvious that they were killing him.

He was too skinny, his eyes bruised. He looked harrowed. She couldn’t help thinking of the last Hierophant and how he’d looked toward the end.

“Any chance you could untie my hands?” she asked. “My wrists hurt.”

“Funny, Charlie,” he said.

The temptation to beg was very strong. “Please don’t do this.”

“Having you here is even more fun than I thought it would be,” he told her eagerly. “How about this? Let’s have you feed my shadows.”

Charlie met his gaze. “If I die, it’ll ruin your fun.”

“Don’t worry. I know how to make a lot of shallow cuts.”

Charlie told herself that he was never going to let her go unharmed. He’d prefer her harmed and humbled, but wouldn’t kill her. Not yet, anyway. After all, as long as she could heal, he could make it last.

I am going to kill you twice.

“I’m scared,” she confessed.

He smiled as though he liked that a lot. “You should be.”

Charlie took a breath. “Can you sit me up on the couch?”

He leaned down and hauled her up from the floor. Together they stumbled to the couch. He cleared some cigarette-filled cups before letting her drop onto the cushions. Then he reached among the detritus on the coffee table, where he hunted up razor blades, a pack of smokes, and a lighter.

He lit a cigarette between cupped palms.