“You said I was a creature of hate.” Vince spoke into Salt’s ear. “And I do hate you. For Remy, whose blood is my blood, whose flesh is my flesh, and whose hate is my hate. For Char, who will survive tonight. Aim that gun somewhere else, or I will hurt you and go on hurting you until there is nothing but pain.”
“You can’t—” Salt began, voice trembling.
“I’m sorry, Char.” Vince wore a small, sad smile. “It was always going to happen like this. I knew he’d let me get close to him, and it’d give me a chance.”
When they found Vince waiting in the library, alone, Charlie should have realized something was off. Should have seen what the disappearance of the man in the suit meant. Should have realized what Vince had been making in the hotel room—faux onyx tiles. Ones that made him seem safely cuffed when he was entirely able to pull his hands free.
He had known that, Charlie or not, Salt was going to show him off to the Cabal. And then he’d planned to slip his cuffs and kill Salt before anyone would be able to stop him.
And after that?
Vince pressed the knifepoint harder, and a bead of blood trickled down Salt’s throat like the track of a single tear.
He made a choking sound, and his arm sagged, although he didn’t drop his Glock.
Still, it wasn’t pointed right at her face. Charlie let herself breathe.
“Drop the gun on the rug, Lionel,” Vicereine said. “The Blight will remove the knife, won’t you?”
“Will I?” Vince asked lightly. “I didn’t come here planning on leaving.”
Lionel Salt’s face had paled and his eyes darted around. How odd the moment must be for him. Malhar had called shadows “ghosts of the living,” but Vince was the shadow of a dead man.
Vince, who was almost Salt’s grandson. Who was that grandson’s avenging specter.
“You’re going to leave,” Charlie told Vince. “With me. Plans change. The Cabal knows what he’s done. Surely they’re not going to ignore the murder of one of their own.”
Vince lifted the point of the knife infinitesimally away from Salt’s artery.
“I have done nothing—” Salt’s words came to an abrupt stop as the Hierophant stepped between him and Charlie. His back was to Salt and his eyes blazed.
The Blight looking down at her through Stephen’s eyes was ancient. And wrathful. He held the Liber Noctem in his arms.
“Tell me,” he said. “Tell me about this book. Tell me about his lies.”
Charlie cleared her throat. “Vince could probably answer this better—”
“You,” the Blight said.
She nodded. “Okay. When Remy died, he pushed all his energy, his last breath of life into his shadow. That’s how Red became able to pass for human.” She looked directly at the Hierophant, not allowing herself to flinch. “The ritual, the one that was supposed to have made Red like this? It doesn’t exist. It’s not in the Liber Noctem. It’s not anywhere. That was the thing I couldn’t figure, at first. Why would Mr. Salt tell me to find a book when it was locked away in his safe?”
She sucked in a breath and let it out slowly, forcing herself to pause for dramatic effect. “Because he’d promised you something he could never give.”
The Hierophant’s fingers closed over the metal, pressing hard enough to bend the edge.
“He convinced you to compromise yourself for him,” Charlie said. “And you know that young man you’ve been possessing isn’t doing well. There’s not much more energy there to take. Killing Knight Singh was for nothing. Killing Paul Ecco was for nothing. Killing Adam Lokken was for nothing.”
Salt laughed, although it sounded forced. “Is that what this is about? Of course I know how Red became the way he is now. It’s all in The Book of Blights.”
It was hard to argue convincingly against an old man with a knife to his throat. She decided to ignore him. “Red was already pretty solid because Remy had put so much of his own energy into him, and then cut him loose for short periods of time, over years. He started to appear like Remy, and to hold that shape. Isn’t that right, Adeline?”
She gasped in surprise, as though Charlie had asked her something awful.
“You murdered your own grandson?” Vicereine asked. “And Knight?”
“You lied to me.” The words boomed out of Stephen’s mouth, but the voice was nothing like his. “Deceiver, I will strip the flesh from your bones. I will—”
The sound of the gun going off cracked through the air.
The Hierophant fell on the rug, blood seeping from the wound, fingers clutching at it. Mouth opening.
And behind the body, the shadow of the Hierophant rose larger and larger.
“Breath of life,” it said.
The shadow swept over the body it had worn. Stephen gave a wordless howl as he withered, his skin shrinking in on itself, his body curling and then going limp. The blood around the bullet hole was dry, crystallized.
The shadow towered over them, crackling with fresh energy.
“Oh god,” Vicereine said. “Oh shit.”
Salt ducked away from Vince’s hand, bringing his hand up to touch the shallow cut at his throat.
The Blight looked down at them, growing so that the library lights dimmed as shadow covered them. “If no one will give me flesh, then I will take it.”
“We have to contain it,” said Malik.
“I have weapons,” Salt said. “Devices. Down through that corridor.”
But there wasn’t time.
The Hierophant lunged. Vicereine’s shadow cat leapt to meet him, claws raking, but the Blight only struck it aside. Bellamy stepped forward, holding up his shadow sword. The Hierophant grabbed hold, and the blade turned to smoke.
Charlie grabbed Vince’s arm. He looked at her the way he had that night out in the cold when he hadn’t seemed to believe she would still touch him.
“Come on,” she said. “We have to go. Now.”
He shook his head.
“I serve no longer,” the Hierophant threatened in a voice that was the rush of wind in the sky, the echo of an empty room. Not human in the least. “I was made from your kind, but I am greater than you now. I will take all that I want, and you will serve me.”
Bellamy rushed down the hall toward the great room, calling a warning as he drew a dagger of shadow from his coat. Malik’s shadow triplets circled his body, preparing for an attack.
“No more hiding.” Vince took her hand.
His body started to blur at the edges. It was his eyes that went first, from hollow to empty to smoke. Then the gold of his hair, like sparks flying off a bonfire. Darkness licked at his body, as though threatening to devour him.
“Vince!” Charlie shouted.
The Hierophant’s voice moved through the room, like the howls of wind through trees. “All of you who bound me, who tied me to your weak wills and mewling ambitions, know me. I am Cleophes, and I will paint the—”
Vince lunged into him. They crashed together, down the hall. Shadows on the walls, but where they hit, drywall shattered, plaster rained down. A painting was knocked loose, falling and cracking its frame.
The Hierophant’s hands became long claws, each one coming to a thin point. Its mouth opened wide, full of sharp teeth. It ran for the great room, Vince’s shadow chasing after it.
Charlie moved to follow when she felt cold metal against the back of her head. A gun.
“Turn around,” said Salt.
She did. In all the commotion, no one remembered the Glock. At point-blank range, there wasn’t much she could do if he shot her, but he basked in the satisfaction of having her for a moment too long.
Charlie knocked his arm sideways. The shot went off, hitting the bookshelves and taking off a chunk of wooden trim.
He swung the gun at her head as though he was going to bludgeon her with it. She grabbed his wrist and bit down on it as hard as she could.
Howling in pain, Salt dropped the gun. She kicked it with her foot, sending it skittering across the floor.
“You’re nothing,” he told her. “A smudge. A blotch on the universe. And no blotch is going to be my downfall.”
He punched her in the head with his other hand. She staggered dizzily back and he hit her again. He was an old man, but he was strong, and used to hurting people.
“I should have killed you when I had the chance,” he told her.