Page 60 of Thief of Night (The Charlatan Duology #2)

“I really don’t,” she said, and then she explained the scheme.

“It started with Rooster and Archie, but somehow Mr. Punch found out, so he got dealt in. I don’t know if he discovered what they were doing until after he took over the Cabal from Malik, or if he’d known it before and that helped him to advance to the top position, but—”

“Are you going to let her lie like that? About one of us?” Mr. Punch’s puppet lurched toward Vicereine, pointing a hand at her.

Bellamy stepped between them. He glanced toward Charlie. “Go on.”

“I know he worked with Mark, who Rooster sprung from prison in exchange for harvesting shadows. Shadows taken from new gloamists, who would have probably become Cabal members. Who certainly would have been alive.”

“As a well-known liar, you tell a compelling story,” said Mr. Punch, speaking through the man. “But do you have any proof?”

“Sure,” Charlie said. “I blackmailed you into taking my part against Vicereine and Bellamy. Why else would you have done it? I promised I wouldn’t say anything if you did, but as you say, I’m a liar.”

Bellamy laughed in delighted surprise.

“You lunatic,” Mr. Punch’s puppet spat. “You mad bitch.”

“You would have fucked me over the first chance you got,” Charlie told him, allowing herself a small smile. “You’re just mad I got there first.”

“Only you,” said Bellamy. “Only you would have the nerve to use something like that as proof.”

“But you believe me,” said Charlie.

“We believe you,” said Vicereine. “Now get out.”

On shaking legs, Charlie left the alterationist stronghold, walking toward the Porsche, adrenaline singing in her veins. She drank in gulps of cold, crisp air. And she grinned up at the cold sky, at the stars shining down on her. She grinned and couldn’t stop grinning.

She had just turned onto route 9 when a police car began tailing her. Just before the bridge, the lights started.

Charlie pulled over, cursing her luck. Of course, she couldn’t have an hour of triumph over the world before the world batted her back down. Of course, Adeline wasn’t going to let Red just drive off with a car if he wasn’t doing what she wanted.

Charlie took a deep breath and prepared to try to talk her way out of this.

Stolen, officer? I had no idea. My boyfriend said it belonged to him. Remy Carver? That’s right. Is there a problem?

Two more police cars, sirens going, pulled in ahead of the Porsche on the side of the road, boxing her in.

Well, she supposed it was a valuable car and it wasn’t like there was much going on locally.

This was a town that had to regularly collect drunken college students from unlocked living rooms, where they stumbled in and fell asleep on floors.

“Get out of the car and put your hands where I can see them.” The voice boomed from the vehicle behind her, spoken through a horn. “Get out of the car now.”

Charlie stepped out.

“Put your hands on your head.”

She did, fingers sinking through her short hair as she tried to think if there was anything it would be bad to find in the car. On her.

Blood, mostly.

Officers were getting out of vehicles, shouting instructions. She felt her wrists jerked behind her, cuffs cold against her skin.

“Are you Charlotte Hall?” one of them was shouting.

“I didn’t steal the car!” she insisted.

The cop frowned at her in puzzlement. “What car?”

“This car,” Charlie said, equally confused. “I didn’t steal it.”

“Lady,” he said. “You’ve got bigger problems than that. The detectives want to talk to you about murder.”

The detectives kept Charlie waiting in a room for the better part of an hour. She stared at the chipboard table with pieces dug out of it. She watched a spider build a web in a corner of the room.

Finally, the door opened. In strode a middle-aged woman with two manila file folders under her arm. A younger male colleague with short, curly hair followed.

“Charlotte Hall?” the woman asked, although, obviously, she knew.

Charlie nodded. “I prefer Charlie.”

“I’m Detective Vitolo and this is Detective Rudden. We have some questions for you,” Detective Vitolo said.

Like any career criminal, Charlie knew better than to agree to talking right off the bat. “Can I leave?”

“Technically we can hold you for twenty-four hours before charging you,” Detective Vitolo said. “So, no.”

“Charging me with what?”

Detective Vitolo opened the first manila folder and set out three pictures. The first was Charlie entering the abandoned mill building. The second was Charlie in the Walgreens with blood in her hair. The third was the body of the drifter.

“You want to tell us what happened here?” asked Detective Rudden.

All the breath left Charlie’s body. The triptych of photographs told a story that Charlie had no idea how to deny.

“I saw the body,” Charlie admitted. “But he was already dead.”

“Why didn’t you call the police?” asked Detective Rudden.

There Charlie was on firmer ground. “I didn’t want to wind up here.”

“Tell me about Solaluna,” said Detective Vitolo.

“There was a conference of rich seekers held there recently,” Charlie said.

“Four guests died,” said Detective Vitolo.

Charlie shook her head. “You know I wasn’t responsible for any of that. You must have eyewitness accounts from the kind of people that cops actually listen to.”

Detective Vitolo frowned.

“Some of those accounts link you with the killer.” Detective Rudden flipped a few papers, as though trying to find the relevant testimonies.

Charlie slumped back in her chair. “Bullshit.”

Detective Vitolo raised her eyebrows consideringly. “There was an attack on your workplace a few months ago. A murder in your rental house. You seem to have the devil’s own luck, being in all those places and somehow avoiding getting hurt.”

“I have shit luck,” Charlie said. “Or I wouldn’t have been there.”

“We have enough to charge you for the drifter,” Detective Rudden said.

Charlie was sure that was an invitation, but not what she was being invited to do. “You know I didn’t do it.”

“Do I?” The man leaned forward. “Then tell me who did.”

“There was a Blight,” she started.

Detective Vitolo’s eyebrows rose again. Detective Rudden smirked.

Blights were discounted by a lot of people outside of the gloamist community.

Considered to be stories, like the one about the girl who had a lump in her cheek that hatched spiders.

“Okay, let’s say I believe you,” said Detective Vitolo. “What happened to the Blight?”

I killed it was on the tip of Charlie’s tongue. But that seemed easy to twist into a murder confession. “I don’t know,” she said instead. “It attacked me. That’s why I was bleeding at Walgreens.”

“And who was responsible in Solaluna?” asked Detective Rudden.

“Mark Lord,” Charlie said. “You must know that. Someone must have said.”

The detective flipped a few more papers. “According to our records, he’s in prison.”

“He should be,” Charlie said. “That’s on you, not me.”

“Reports have you leaving Solaluna with him.”

“Don’t remember, due to being unconscious.”

Detective Vitolo shook her head. “And you got away. Just like you got away from the Blight?”

Charlie felt the weight of despair press down on her. They might not be sure what she’d done, but they were sure she’d done something . “Not the same way. But it’s true that I got away from both.”

Detective Rudden shifted his chair. “What if I said that your DNA was found at another murder scene?”

The place outside Solaluna where Mark brought her . Charlie’s DNA would be there. Would be on the French fries she dipped in tartar sauce. Would be in the bathroom, where she touched the counter as she looked into the mirror. Would be on the zip ties that bound her legs and wrists.

“Where do you think I got away from?” Charlie asked.

“And, again, you didn’t contact the police,” Vitolo said.

“No,” said Charlie. “I went to the Cabals. After all, you don’t even believe in Blights.”

Detective Rudden snorted. “You think they’re your friends?”

“What?” Charlie said, making it a challenge.

“Who do you think gave us your location? One of them.”

That fucker.

Mr. Punch managed to get his revenge after all.

“I guess I should have come to you,” Charlie admitted. “And now I’m here.”

She and the detectives went around and around like that.

They didn’t fingerprint her. Didn’t charge her. Eventually they stuck her in a holding cell with half a dozen tired-looking women, a bench, and a steel toilet clogged with paper.

Charlie sat on the cold floor of the cell and contemplated how, of all the things she had done, it was perhaps fitting that the crime she got picked up for was one she didn’t commit.

She thought of the footage of her walking into that Walgreens, the blood dripping across her forehead as she walked through the aisles, picking up Steri-Strips and Twizzlers.

If they charged her, no one was going to believe she hadn’t done it.

Across the cell, sitting close to the open metal toilet, a woman in a heavy coat whispered to herself. A young girl with a shiny ponytail and a UMass sweatshirt was sitting on a cot and crying.

Another woman, middle-aged, with a swollen eye and short pajamas, whispered to Charlie, “It’s always so fucking cold in here.”

Charlie pulled her sweater over her head and offered it to the woman. “Take it.” That left her only with a t-shirt, but it hardly mattered. Where she was going, they were going to give her a whole new orange wardrobe.

The woman put on another layer gratefully. “I’m Molly,” she said. “That was nice of you. This your first time?”

“Yeah.” As a criminal, Charlie had been a huge success. But she’d wound up here anyway.

“Don’t let it eat at you,” the woman said. “Just think about who you’re going to call. Make it someone that really likes you. Someone with money.”