Page 59 of Thief of Night (The Charlatan Duology #2)

The Drifter

“Charlie Hall, as the Hierophant, help me understand why you released seven Blights into the world.”

Vicereine stood in the middle of a large room in the alterationist Cabal stronghold, a luxuriously converted church not far from where Emily Dickinson had once written poetry and renounced the world.

The size, furnishings, and large iron gates made it clear that the alterationists took in more money than all the other Cabals combined.

Light streamed through the windows. Low couches in bottle-green velvet beckoned invitingly.

The other Cabal leaders were spread out around the room.

Vicereine lounged against the mantel of a fireplace trimmed out in arts and crafts tiles, with a phrase carved above the firebox: ART IS NOT A THING; IT IS A WAY.

Vicereine, representing the alterationists; Bellamy, the masks. And in Mr. Punch’s place, a balding man in a tweed jacket, slender and professorial.

None of them offered Charlie a seat.

She took a deep breath. “Not seven . Four, maybe.”

After leaving Mark to his fate, Charlie, Posey, Malhar, and Red had gone back to Solaluna.

Charlie had taken a shower and used allllll the fancy body products in all the tiny little bottles.

Red got bandages and antibiotic ointment from their personal butler, who asked absolutely no questions.

A few of the shadows returned, some hoping for help finding their people.

Others unable to continue without blood.

Charlie got a meager amount of sleep before Vicereine messaged her to meet the Cabal leaders.

Leave now, the text said. And bring Vince if you know what’s good for you.

Charlie almost never knew, no less did, what was good for her. She’d shown up alone.

“Where is the very dangerous Blight we put in your custody?” Vicereine asked.

With Malhar and Posey, reuniting shadows with gloamists, unaware of Charlie’s plan to face the Cabals alone. “He’s around.”

“Do you even know the location of Remy Carver’s shadow?” Bellamy asked.

“Not this very second,” Charlie admitted.

Vicereine shook her head. “You were supposed to—”

“We were separated trying to do a job,” Charlie said.

“Your position as the Hierophant is a punishment, ” Vicereine reminded her, clearly not pleased at being cut off. “One that you have always failed to take seriously. If you seek to be punished in some other way, that can happen. Perhaps Red would be better off tied to another gloamist.”

“I think Red’s fine on his own,” Charlie said, crossing her arms over her chest. “The Hierophant is a bullshit, made-up position, named after a tarot card. A punishment because the assumption is that everyone in the magical community is going to spend all their time acquiring power and neglecting everything else. But there aren’t a lot of people who are any good at it, are there?

Even fewer who are particularly devoted. ”

Vicereine hesitated just long enough for Charlie to know she was right.

“I tracked down the murderer of Rooster Argent,” Charlie said. “The person responsible for the Hatfield Massacre.”

“This time,” Vicereine said. “This time it wasn’t a Blight.”

“He was responsible for stealing shadows from gloamists,” Charlie said. A glance at Mr. Punch’s puppet showed that his eyes were closed, his face empty of expression. It had to be easier to lie when you didn’t have to worry about what showed on your face.

“Mark Lord,” Bellamy said. “A former associate of yours.”

“Oh come on.” Charlie snorted. “This is the Valley. Everyone is a former associate of everyone else.”

“Shall we table this discussion and talk about how you stole from us?” he asked. “From me.”

“If you want.” Charlie wheeled around to face him. “You ripped a piece of Vince away to blunt his power. He needed it if he was going to survive the night. It never should have belonged to you. I took it and I am not the least bit sorry.”

“No one wanted him to die.” Bellamy sounded exasperated.

No, you just wanted to experiment on him. But there would be no profit in saying that. “Then we are on the same page.”

“Who are you to speak with us this way?” snapped Mr. Punch, speaking from the unconscious professor’s mouth. “You’re no gloamist. You’re not even a person with an unquickened shadow. You’re shadowless.”

“Are you one of those superstitious people who believe that means I don’t have a soul?”

“I think there was always something missing inside of you,” he said in a flat voice. “It’s just that now others see it.”

Charlie felt the bright spark of rage. The kind that might make her do or say something stupid.

She swallowed it. Mr. Punch had good reasons to act like he didn’t like her.

He had good reasons not to like her, full stop.

She shouldn’t let it bother her so long as he followed through on his commitments and backed her to the rest of the Cabal leaders.

“Look,” Charlie said. “I am willing to submit to whatever punishment you want, but Vince is done being bound.”

“He’s done when we say he’s done,” Vicereine informed her.

What was it that Salt had called her? A piece of gristle stuck in his teeth? She could work with that. “Let Vince discover what it means to be a Blight who walks among humans. Surely Bellamy is curious. Let him work for the Cabals willingly instead of being forced to do it.”

Vicereine and Bellamy exchanged a look.

“We should discuss your future,” said Mr. Punch. “Without you here to make more ridiculous demands.”

Vicereine waved toward an alterationist girl standing in a corner of the room, wearing a plaid skirt and a white button-up shirt with a man’s tie. For a moment, Charlie pictured Posey standing there. On a different day, she would be.

“I’ll take you to the kitchen,” the girl said.

Charlie allowed herself to be escorted deeper into the house. The girl’s shadow slid behind them.

The kitchen itself was large and open, with industrial appliances, as though used to supporting frequent catering. Charlie got a glass of water from the tap while looking out the window. Two people walked a dog. A man raked the backyard of a neighboring house. A woman waited for a bus.

The girl left the room.

A few minutes later, footsteps sounded on the tiles. “Charlie,” came a voice from behind her. The real Mr. Punch, obviously furious. “What did you do?”

Charlie weighed the truth against better-sounding lies and decided on the lies. “Saved your life. He was hunting you at Solaluna. You and Archie.”

“And you, Charlie.”

“I didn’t know that,” she insisted. “If you’d told me who he was—if you’d given me Mark’s name —things would have been a lot simpler.”

“You never told me you were going to Solaluna or I might have,” he reminded her.

Obviously she hadn’t, since she’d gone to stop him from dealing shadows to the wealthy. But with Archie dead, he had no way of knowing what she’d done. “We miscommunicated. I’m sorry.”

“You helped someone impersonate me,” Mr. Punch told her.

“We flushed Mark out, didn’t we?” She drank her water. “And we made your identity even more confusing.”

“You’re proud of being a trickster, but tricksters don’t win in the end,” Mr. Punch said.

“They’re clever, of course. In story after story they steal the meat off the table and we laugh along with them, because we like to see the powerful brought low.

But they’re the butt of the joke in the end.

They get got and order is restored. The laughs at their antics are a lot easier when they’re gone. ”

“Okay, professor,” she said.

His eyebrows furrowed. “I am going to help you today, Charlie Hall. But after this, you serve me, do you understand?”

Charlie nodded.

“That means harvesting shadows for me too.”

She licked her lips. “Blights?”

He shook his head sadly, as though disappointed in her lack of imagination. “Not just Blights. I set a quota of quickened shadows we need and that’s what you supply.”

Getting Red out of this arrangement had been Charlie’s goal, but once achieved, nothing would tie them together. That seemed a greater gamble on loyalty and love than asking him to come save her had been. “You make sure Red is free and I’ll do it.”

“I am a bad enemy to make,” he told her.

That was true, but he was still an excellent lever to push.

So excellent that it was easy to put off the future for another day.

If she didn’t do what she promised, he’d hunt her down.

He’d have to. He couldn’t allow her to know his secrets unless she compromised herself too. Until they were guilty together.

“Now, I must concentrate,” he said, heading toward the back door. He kicked leaves as he made his way across the lawn.

It took twenty more minutes for anyone to summon Charlie back into the room. When they did, she had no idea what to think because no one looked happy.

“We have an answer,” Vicereine told her.

“Red can stay a Blight, but you must remain in your role as the Hierophant. Keep doing well or I will make an example out of you. You know how alterationists can remove desire or pain? Well, Charlie Hall, fail us, and I will take everything. I will hollow you out.”

Charlie nodded once. This was them giving her what she wanted. Of course it had to come with a threat.

Vicereine went on. “Some among us don’t believe that you can be the Hierophant without being a gloamist. It’s never been done by anyone who wasn’t.”

“I can do it,” Charlie said.

“Succeeding at what should be impossible is your most annoying trait,” said Bellamy.

The flush of victory was heady enough for her to want to burst out grinning, but she couldn’t. Not quite yet. “About that,” she said. “There’s something I have to tell you. It’s about one of your number. He’s betrayed you.” She turned toward Mr. Punch.

The professorial puppet lurched unsteadily to his feet with such force that the man woke up suddenly, blinking before his eyes went blank again. “You forget yourself.”