“Although your offer is appreciated, we can handle it from here,” said Malik. “You have my word. We won’t hurt Red. We owe you both a debt.”
Charlie raised her eyebrows, not feeling particularly trusting. “Wow. Your word. That and a dollar won’t even buy me a decent cup of coffee.”
Malik scowled at her.
“He’s too fascinating for me to let anyone touch a hair on his head,” Bellamy said, which she actually believed. “You can come see him at my place in three days’ time. How about that?”
She glanced between the others, expecting to see some conflict about where he was going to be held, but there was none. Either they’d decided this before, or no one else wanted him.
“Okay,” Charlie finally said, having run out of other options. “Fine. Three days.”
On her way out of Salt’s mansion, she pocketed an antique inkpot and shoved a pair of solid silver candlesticks up her sleeve.
* * *
Posey was waiting for her in the station wagon, dozing in the driver’s seat. When Charlie got in, she jumped up in alarm. Then, seeing it was only her sister, she yawned.
“Where’s Vince?” Posey asked, squinting at the black, star-spattered sky as though she could tell time by it. “How long were you in there?”
Charlie shook her head. “Drive. I’ll explain. We have one stop before we go home. Do you remember Tina?”
After their detour, Posey took them back to their rental house, even though it was still taped off as a crime scene. Charlie crawled through the window to her bedroom, showered in her own bathroom, and slept on her own mattress. Her sister slept beside her, Charlie’s shadow curled around them both.
When she woke, the scent of bleach in her nose, she realized the sheets still smelled like Vince.
She held her hands up in the air. Long fingers. Black nail polish, already chipped. Clever hands, capable of picking a lock and opening a safe.
She thought of reaching out for a shadow, grabbing Vince. If she hadn’t guessed what he was going to do, if she hadn’t gotten there in time, the momentum would have taken him into the fire.
There wouldn’t even have been a body.
The thought made her feel hollowed out as she went through the motions of taking a shower. Part of her felt trapped in that upside-down world, where he was already gone. Her gaze fell on the wall tiles, staring at the nothing that was where her shadow ought to be.
The absence hadn’t just shut a door inside her mind; it shut a door on a potential future. She wasn’t going to be a gloamist. She hadn’t been sure she wanted to be, but still.
Would Vicereine and the rest of them have listened to her more if she’d had a quickened shadow? Would they have let her see Vince?
She’d been so certain he’d want to come home with her, but after thinking about it, maybe she shouldn’t have been. When he met her, he wasn’t used to being alone in the world and had limited options. Maybe he hadn’t seen a future for himself past the end of Salt, but now he was in that future and, for perhaps the first time, could shape it as he wished.
If the Cabal let him, of course.
She wondered what he thought of the swing-for-the-fences-and-damn-the-consequences Charlie Hall that he’d never met before. Maybe they both had been holding themselves back, when the other person had been capable of rising to the challenge. When the other person might have been thrilled by the challenge.
After she was clean and dressed in her own clothes, she waited for Posey.
“Mom sent me, like, seventeen messages about bringing back the station wagon,” her sister said, emerging from her bedroom in fresh clothes. Charlie glanced behind Posey, at her shadow.
Her sister followed her gaze. Her brow furrowed with worry. “Is it weird?”
“I don’t know. Is it weird for you?” Charlie asked.
Posey moved her lips silently and the shadow swept around her, curling over her shoulders, looking for all the world as though it preferred to be there. Charlie couldn’t help a shiver that was part recognition.
“It’s the most perfect thing that’s ever happened. You won’t believe all the things I’ll teach myself to do.” Posey’s eyes were bright in a way they hadn’t been in a long time, and that Charlie didn’t want anything to dim.
She headed to the window and jammed it open. “Well, come on. If Mom and Bob are desperate to get the station wagon back, we better get out of here, since I want to stop for coffee first,” she said.
“Thank all the gods,” Posey said fervently.
They stopped at Small Oven Bakery, where Charlie got three espressos in tiny paper cups and lined them up in front of her like shots. Posey poked at a sticky bun while looking at her phone.
Charlie took the first of the espressos and downed it.
“Um,” Posey said, and turned the phone toward her sister.
Early this morning the Gazette received pages from a journal alleged to be written by Lionel Salt, implicating him in several open investigations, including that of Rose Allaband. Allaband’s body was found in a burnt-out car along with the body of Salt’s grandson, Edmund Carver, over a year ago. Both may have been Salt’s victims. Other cases are likely to be reopened based on information in the pages, including Randall Grigoras, Ankita Eswaran, and Hector Blanco. Not only does the journal include detailed accounts of their deaths, but drawings of medical experiments conducted on their shadows.
Handwriting examiners were able to confirm with 98 percent confidence that the writing in the journal was consistent with samples of Salt’s handwriting that the Gazette had obtained. We reached out to Salt’s representatives for comment, but we haven’t heard back at this time.
“You did this to Lionel Salt?” Posey said, astonished. “How?”
When Charlie had opened the safe, she’d only been expecting to find the Liber Noctem, but there had been something else in there too. A notebook, from which a few pages had been torn out.
It couldn’t be too often that the Hampshire Gazette got a scoop like that.
Charlie took her second shot of espresso, and then the third. “I didn’t do it to him. He did it to himself.”
* * *
That Sunday, Charlie showed up for her shift at Rapture. Her mind wasn’t in it, though, and she kept having to ask people to repeat their drink orders. She dropped two wineglasses and set an entire highball of absinthe on fire, instead of just the sugar cube. That glass broke too, and in a much more dramatic way.
Partway through her shift, Odette pulled her aside. She thought it was going to be to scold her or ask her about a missing red pantsuit, but instead it was to introduce her to the new bartender, the one taking José’s ex’s shifts. Charlie was surprised to see Don.
“Hey,” he said. “Top Hat got a new manager and I decided I could use a change of scenery.”
“Well, this place is that,” Charlie told him, and proceeded to walk him through what things were put where, how to use the register, and how many dry ice pellets to float on a drink.
“They swallow it, we get a lawsuit,” she told him.
“Maybe we shouldn’t have it on the menu?” Don suggested.
“It’s going to take you a minute to get the vibe of this place,” Charlie predicted.
Around closing time, Balthazar came to the bar. “Pour us a last drink. Whatever you’re having,” he told her.
“Oh, I’m drinking too?” She smiled.
“If I were you, I would be.”
She couldn’t argue with that. Took down the brand-new Laphroaig 15, opened it, and poured them both two fingers.
“So, your guy,” he said.
Charlie nodded. “I guess you heard. Quite a thing.”
“Does this mean you’re back in business?” he asked.
She shrugged. “After the spectacle I made of myself, I should probably lay low for a while.”
“Oh, I don’t know. The Charlatan’s reputation is at an all-time high,” he said, taking a sip of his drink and then wincing. “Ugh, this tastes like someone poured gasoline over a tire, set it on fire, and then put the fire out with dirt.”
Odette made her way over and sat down next to Balthazar. “Having some cocktails, are we? Well, don’t leave me out.”