Posey was clearly restraining herself from another speech about how there was something wrong with Vince in the soul department when Charlie escaped into their bathroom.
Her sister knew about her past as a thief. Charlie had brought a few books home for her, digital copies that were slightly suspect but still interesting, and once, a slim volume of shadow magic notes of a basic sort from the beginning of the industrial age. What Charlie had avoided, though, was telling Posey about the scary stuff. The times she’d almost been caught. The cons that had gone pear-shaped. The ways magic had been used by gloamists against one another, and against people without quickened shadows.
It had been easier to portray her whole career as a lark. A series of adventures. And if Charlie could just get herself together, she was sure she could make this sound just as unserious.
Their small shared bathroom contained a single sink and a tub shower. A dollar-store curtain, waxy with dried soap, hung from plastic hooks around it. Charlie turned the tap as hot as it would go.
As the room began to fill with steam, Charlie carefully removed her clothes. Even having done her best to dust off her hair and skirt, she found tiny shards of glass visible on her skin. Wadding up the fabric of her bike shorts and wetting it, she tried to blot off the last of the splinters. When she was done, she rolled up all her clothes and shoved them into the small metal trash can, mashing down a bunch of crumpled tissues. She never wanted to wear any of it again.
A powerful shudder rippled over her as the hot water hit her skin. The stink of alcohol wafted up in a cloud. Images of the night washed over her—the rain of bottles, the feeling of lightning crackling over her skin as the shade struck her, Vince reflected in the shining mirrors, holding the bearded man against his chest, the thick dark rolling toward her, the electric flavor of the shadow against her tongue. She thought of the constellation of names—Paul Ecco, the Hierophant, Hermes, Edmund Carver, Lionel Salt. Thought of ragged shadow and white jutting bones.
Charlie forced herself to squirt some Dr. Bronner’s peppermint soap into her hands and scrub herself, rinsing her hair twice and rubbing a washcloth over her skin with such vigor that it turned pink and raw. The soap stung. A few of the bandages Vince had applied were already coming off, swirling through the tub water to be caught against the drain.
Vince, who had been hiding plenty. A spike of anger went through her at the thought that he’d been conning her, of all people.
She should have noticed. He’d been entirely too free of strings, even for someone who abandoned an old life. No one is a blank slate, a tabula rasa, without enemies or friends. No one meets you and likes you so much right off the bat that they’re willing to move in with you and your kooky sister, willing to pay half the rent even though they take up a third of the space.
He’d said he wanted his name off the lease because of some bad credit. The same reason why he had a prepaid phone. He worked off the books for his employer. But wasn’t it better that way, since he brought his whole paycheck home? All of it had made sense separately, but now it added up to a cold pit in her stomach.
He saved your life.
Whatever secrets he’d kept, she couldn’t deny what he’d done. She was glad Hermes was dead and that she was alive.
Had Vince been a gloamist? There were two usual ways to tell. If you shone a light from two different directions at a regular person, their shadow split. But a quickened shadow remained whole. The second way was the split tongue that most glooms had.
Vince’s tongue was whole, and there was no way to test if his shadow split now that it was gone. But if he wasn’t a gloamist, then who was he? What had he left behind?
Wrapping a towel around herself, she padded out barefoot, dripping on the tiles.
As she was pulling on a robe, headlights splashed across the room and then away. Vince was pulling into the drive. But when she came back to the table, he wasn’t there, although the food was, spaghetti steaming on the plate.
She filled a bowl and sat down, spinning her fork in the noodles and red sauce.
“Charlie,” Posey said.
“Yeah?” There was something in her sister’s voice that made her look up in alarm. Posey’s gaze was on the linoleum.
“There’s something wrong with your shadow,” Posey said in a hushed voice.
Charlie looked down. There was no ripple, but it had acquired a slight delay between her actions and its response. In all other ways, her shadow followed her movements exactly, yet Charlie had the disturbing feeling it was mimicking them.
“Do you know what’s going on with it?” Charlie asked, thinking of an article she’d seen. Ten Ways to Wake Your Shadow, according to BuzzFeed. Put a bag over your head. Hold your breath underwater. Hit your hand with a hammer. One thing that hadn’t come up: being attacked by another shadow.
Posey frowned as though this was the beginning of a particularly unkind joke. And it would be, for Charlie to get what Posey most wanted. No one knew why some shadows quickened while others never would. Trauma seemed to be a component, but not a surefire method. But if Charlie had magic, well, it was hard to think past the idea that her sister would hate her.
“Are you going to tell me what happened?” Posey asked, effectively changing the subject.
Charlie sighed. “The guy made his shadow change shape. It became solid. Knocked things over. Knocked me over.”
“From one of the gangs?” Posey asked.
Charlie thought of Salt and shook her head. “I think he was working for someone independent.”
Her sister looked skeptical. “You take something from him?”
“Not yet.” Charlie stood, walking her half-empty plate over to the sink. As she did, she saw that the white van was in the driveway, parked, lights off. No one seemed to be sitting inside. She remembered the splash of headlights. “Did Vince come back?”
Posey shrugged as though nothing could interest her less. “I don’t know. Did he?”
“I’m going to go see if he’s okay.” Charlie stuck her bare feet into a pair of work boots that Vince had abandoned near the door, the soles encrusted with dirt. They were much too big and her feet slid around in them, but she thought she could manage a slow stagger.
“He’s fine. Why wouldn’t he be?” Posey asked, standing. “I’m going to go check in with some friends. We have a chat tonight.”
“You can’t tell anyone what I told you,” Charlie cautioned.
“I don’t need to say it happened to my sister,” Posey said, exasperated, as though the idea of not telling people was ridiculous.
“No one,” Charlie insisted.
“Whatever,” Posey said, lifting her phone to take a video of Charlie’s shadow. At Charlie’s expression, she sighed dramatically. “I’m just trying to figure out what’s wrong with your shadow.”
Charlie had been waiting for Posey to at least float the possibility that it had quickened. That she hadn’t was a relief, and if Charlie felt some small measure of disappointment, it was easily ignored.
Charlie headed outside, the slam of the screen cutting off her thoughts on the subject. Her feet sloshed around in Vince’s too-large boots as she walked around to the side of the house, and she tightened her robe against the icy breeze.
She found Vince on the back steps, staring up at the stars.
He seemed to have lost his jacket. He had his arms folded over his knees, forehead resting on his wrists, t-shirt pulled tight across his shoulders. The motion-sensing lamp over the back door gave off a faint golden glow, gilding him. Moths circled, sending little shadows over his shadowless body. He must have been sitting there for a while.
When he turned, his face was carefully blank, as though he’d made it that way for her.
Charlie rested her hand on the chilled skin of his arm, and he sucked in his breath.