But all it did was drift a short ways forward and then stop, halfway in and halfway out of a parking spot.
She slammed both hands down on the steering wheel, but that did nothing. Turning the key in the ignition did even less.
Finally she got out, slung her bag over her shoulder, and pushed the car so the back of it wasn’t sticking out. It was on a weird angle and taking up more than one parking space because of it, but there wasn’t much she could do.
At least her car had gotten her to the motel before it died.
There was no white van in sight, which wasn’t a great sign. But then, Vince might have gone out—or even stolen himself a new vehicle. She could hear a television on in room 12B and some moaning from 15B. Her gaze went to the locks on the rooms with a professional eye.
They were digital, but not expensive and not all that secure. Unless someone had done up the dead bolt, it was possible that she could force it with a well-aimed kick.
The blinds on 14B were drawn and shut. She hesitated, hand on knob, thinking of walking into another darkened room just hours before. Thinking of the husk of Adam’s body and a single dripping word written all over the walls.
The idea that Vince might actually be on the other side of the door gave her pause too, as much as she hoped for it.
She needed to be ready for the possibility that Remy Carver wasn’t much like Vince. He could have played her. He could have been acting. He might even be in a relationship with Adeline, which was deeply messed up, but people in messed-up families did messed-up things.
If Vince didn’t exist, then better she observed it for herself. Like going to an open casket funeral: sometimes that was the only way you could accept someone you loved was truly gone.
She tried her Big-Y-card-in-the-seam trick, but the lock resisted. In her car, she had a wire bent into an under-the-door-device. These didn’t look great to use, since you had to squat down and shove a wire into the seam between the door and ground. Once inside, the wire bent up, and if you angled it right, the loop at the end grabbed the lever. You tugged, and the knob turned.
Glancing around the parking lot, she was ready to go back for the wire when a woman came out of one of the rooms, holding an ice bucket.
While she waited for the woman to get her ice, then mess around with the vending machine, Charlie wondered if there was a simpler way to get inside the room.
Her shadow. She sent it out deliberately for the first time. Pushed it through the open spaces between door and frame. Her vision split, and a headache started between her eyes.
She tried to concentrate on her shadow hand becoming solid enough to turn the lever, but it felt like grasping at nothing. Part of her was conscious of the woman moving back toward her room, of a light drizzle starting up. The rest of her was fumbling in the dark.
She tried to push energy into her shadow. She wasn’t sure if she was doing it correctly, until her hand became briefly solid, and the lever turned.
Her shadow flowed back to her in a rush, and the sensation was so intense and strange that Charlie had to lean against the wall, shudders running through her. It was as though moths alighted everywhere on her skin and then were somehow absorbed into her.
And even more overwhelming—the possibilities that opened up, the vast expanse of things she would be able to do, the places she’d be able to worm her way into, unfurling in front of her.
Taking a deep breath to steady herself, Charlie pushed the door the rest of the way open.
She flipped the lights and had to smother a scream. A massive bloodstain covered the gray patterned rug. It took her a few moments of standing there, light-headed, fighting down panic, to absorb that it was only a stain, and an old one at that. There were smears at the edges, where scrubbing had made the blood blur.
That was why the room couldn’t be rented. It needed a new carpet.
Charlie closed the door slowly behind her, making sure it didn’t slam.
Photographs had been taped up along the wall, above a cheap-looking pressboard cabinet. A bed resting in the middle of the floor had a stripped-down mattress covered in clothes. The blinds on the window had been taped over from the inside with garbage bags, and a rolled-up towel rested near the door, probably used to hide any light from peeking out while Vince was inside.
Torn packaging from Williamson’s Clothier was scattered over the chair near the bathroom—a shoebox, a heavy wooden hanger, and one of those zip-up body bags fancy suits came in.
As she stepped into the room, she realized the lamp on the bedside table had been knocked over and smashed. The bed itself was pushed a bit diagonal, as though something heavy had shoved it. And on the other side, she found a chair, turned on its side.
There’d been some kind of struggle. Was the absence of the van in the parking lot evidence that Vince had escaped his assailants? Or had Salt taken him and the van both?
Charlie forced herself over to the wall. Photos of the Hierophant had been taped there—standing on a street corner, meeting with Malik from the Cabal. A shot of him covered in what looked like shadowy armor, as though he were some kind of knight.
And beneath them, a printout of an article from two years before: Suspect in Shadow Theft Case Has All Charges Dropped, Victims Outraged. The photo of him was small and blurry from being printed off the internet, but she recognized him right away. The Hierophant’s name was Stephen Vorman.
But she still didn’t understand the connection between him and Red, unless the Blight to whom Stephen had been tethered was Red. But he’d wanted her to give Red a message, so that couldn’t be right. It bothered her, the idea that she wouldn’t be able to tell. If she knew Vince, she ought to know his shadow.
On the nightstand, she found a notebook, rinds of paper stuck in the coils left over from pages that had been ripped out.
In the bathroom, she found a comb and pomade.
And in the trash can beside the toilet, she found a glued-together box with clay inside of it, a Styrofoam cup stained with black paint, a bottle of clear nail polish, and two empty plastic containers that had a two-part resin in them.
He’d obviously been molding something, but what? Turning over the box, she noted the squarish-shaped depressions.
Charlie went back to the bed, with the notebook. Fishing around in her bag, she came out with a pencil and did the old trick of running the graphite lightly down the page so the marks of previous writing would be revealed.
Char,
I don’t know how to say goodbye to you.
Charlie sat there for a long time, staring at the ghost of a letter.
While she didn’t understand what it was, Vince was out there executing a plan of his own. And given what he’d written, he didn’t seem optimistic about how it was going to turn out. She needed to think.
Paul Ecco had a page of the book. He’d gotten it from someone.
And Knight had seen the book, although he hadn’t found the ritual that made The Book of Blights famous. The ritual that Red was hoping to enact.
Maybe Knight had missed that part. After all, a quick flip-through in an auction house wasn’t enough time to be certain there was nothing important inside. Charlie had seen plenty of secrets that weren’t readily apparent. Tiny words written in artwork. Lemon-juice print revealed by heat. Ciphers that were all but impossible to decipher without an equally well-hidden key. Any of the puzzles that gloamists created for one another.
But Knight had said he had the means to bring someone down, and she had every reason to believe that person was Salt. So there had to be something.
Fetching Knight Singh’s book, she smoothed out its leather cover and thumbed through the pages, skimming for Salt’s name. For anything to do with Blights, or immortality, or the breath of life.