Her gaze was on Red, who was mostly solid, except for shadow hands that held a Blight the size of a dog. It growled like one too, shifting shape into different ferocious animalistic forms.

  Raven turned. At the sight of Charlie and the line of shadow connecting her to Red, Raven slumped to the floor and sucked in a few breaths that sounded like sobs.

  Charlie held up the onyx netting.

  “Good?” she asked Red.

  Yes, he said in her mind. Throw it.

  She tossed it toward the Blight struggling in his arms. His hands became solid and so did the creature. Charlie wrapped the netting more tightly around it.

  “I’ve got it,” she said. “But I don’t know if I can hold it.”

  “Is he…?” Raven stared at Red with narrowed eyes.

  Charlie had no idea what to say. If he was going to be Remy Vincent Carver with a black card and a private jet, then his true nature would have to be a secret. A secret that Raven would already know. A secret that Raven could blackmail him with.

  “Am I…?” Red echoed, drawing her attention.

  Raven rubbed her eyes. Tattoos covered her brown skin, illustrations of roses, skulls, several goddesses, and the words “El arte es largo y la vida breve” down the inside of her arm. Her flame-colored hair had pulled mostly loose from the clip that held it. Still, she looked remarkably composed as she walked to where she kept her broom. “You’re him, the Blight everyone’s talking about.”

  “I’m tethered,” Red pointed out, gesturing toward the floor. “Which means I’m not a Blight.” In his arms, the netted shadow still squirmed.

  Raven laughed outright.

  “You’re pedantic too. I have no idea what that makes you.”

  Charlie found some zip ties in a cabinet and used them to secure the shadow in the net. It had become smaller, somehow, and more dense. Now it was the size of a furious bobcat. “Where did this thing come from?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t even know it was there until it came inside. I used the onyx dust I had to make the circle and then I piled more near me so if it tried to jump over the barrier, I could throw some at it and then hopefully hit it with the hammer.”

  “Did it try?”

  Raven made a gesture that Charlie couldn’t interpret as she swept up the onyx into a dustpan. “It looked like it wanted to sometimes. It did that weird wiggle cats make when they’re going to pounce. But no.”

  “Do we think this thing is an animal shadow?” Charlie asked, glancing toward Red.

  He shook his head. “It doesn’t remember, but it was human once.”

  “Gloamists sometimes alter their shadows into the shapes of animals,” Raven said. “Tigers or wolves or whatever. Maybe it was one of those.”

  Charlie tried and failed to see something human in the squirming creature. It hissed at her. “So what else did it do? Just pace around?”

  Raven nodded. “It moved through the rooms, padding along as though the blood had given it more awareness or substance or something. Maybe it felt more awake. I don’t know.” She glanced at Red, as though not sure she was offending him, since in all probability, he did know.

  He didn’t correct her, nor did he weigh in.

  “It seemed curious,” Raven went on. “I couldn’t tell if it wanted to eat me or not, but it doubled back to look at me over and over, sometimes sniffing at the edges of the circle, sometimes stepping on it. Every time I raised the hammer at it or made a loud sound, it would back off, but not for long.”

  Charlie imagined that, sitting on the floor, waiting for the thing to get up its nerve. Hoping someone would arrive to help in time. “Sorry we couldn’t get here sooner.”

  Raven shook her head. “At least I had an idea of what to do to protect myself. And maybe in a fight, I could have taken it. I’m an alterationist, after all—not completely defenseless. But it could have gone into anyone’s house. Maybe it had gone into houses before.”

  Charlie thought of the church basement they’d just left.

  “There’ll be more,” Raven said ominously. “More people have an awareness of shadow magic now and notice when their shadow quickens. More people know how to feed their shadows and give them power. And more people are too lazy to do their own magic. They like the idea of a shadow that operates on its own.”

  The disapproval in her voice was clear.

  “And your shadow?” Red asked.

  “It’s an extension of me. Like another arm. Nothing more.” She met his gaze, challenge in her voice. Charlie didn’t think Raven was actually angry with him, though. She’d been frightened and now she had all this excess adrenaline and nothing to do with it.

  “You think it’s irresponsible to create a Blight,” Red said.

  She blinked a few times and seemed to realize to whom she was speaking. “Sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean you. Or anything about you.”

  “I am going to put this creature in the trunk of the car,” he told Charlie. Then he turned back to Raven. “If it’s any consolation, I agree that it’s irresponsible to leave behind something that can’t survive on its own. Half-things or miserable things made of violence and hate.”

  Raven moved to the couch as Red walked down the stairs toward the car. They heard the slam of the trunk. Charlie sat down beside Raven, who groaned, leaning her head back.

  “I didn’t think he would be so … human.” She reached out toward her own shadow, letting it play over her hand as though it were a snake or a low fog. “Is he Salt’s grandson?”

  “You mean, in personality?” Charlie asked.

  Raven nodded. “It’s that guy’s death energy animating him, right?”

  Charlie thought of the first time she’d come to Raven, looking for answers. It was Raven who told her that most Blights were made at a gloamist’s deathbed, when they pushed the last of their energy, along with their pain and fear, into their shadows. To create a Blight without that, Raven had said, would probably require stealing energy, maybe through someone else’s deathbed and someone else’s blood.

  Red had been a Blight long before Remy Carver’s death, probably fed exactly the way that Raven described.

  “Not only Remy’s energy,” Charlie finally answered.

  Raven’s gaze went to the stairs, speculative. Then she turned back to Charlie. “I really appreciate you coming out here, especially after what I said to you way back. For a while I hoped you forgot it, but for what it’s worth, it was a shitty thing to say and I swear I had nothing to do with what they did to you.”

  Charlie hadn’t forgotten, mostly because of how ironic the words had turned out to be. If you fuck me over, Raven had threatened, I’ll make sure you wind up the next Hierophant, with something ancient whispering in your ear while you chase down Blights until one of them catches you and devours you whole.

  Charlie snickered. “Come on, it’s a little bit funny how things turned out.”

  “It’s funny,” Raven agreed. “So long as you’re laughing.”

  19

  Night Out

  Charlie arrived at Rapture two and a half hours late for a six-hour shift. She walked in, backpack on her shoulders, shadow squirming inside, still wrapped in the onyx net.

  Balthazar had said he wanted a Blight in payment for his time. Well, this one was fresh-caught.

  “Darling,” Odette said as Charlie came through the door. “I told you that you could take the night off.”

  “Yeah,” she said, hoping that her backpack didn’t lurch abruptly and give her boss a reason to ask questions. “And I appreciate that. But I needed to come in and see Balthazar, plus I thought I should check if Don wanted to leave.”

  “Balthazar isn’t here tonight,” Odette said apologetically.

  “My luck seems to be holding,” Charlie said ruefully.

  Odette gave a soft laugh. “Well, since you’re here, put your things down and we’ll send Don home.”

  Don gave Charlie a contemptuous look when she returned from the greenroom, having shoved her backpack far enough under the couch that she hoped any movement inside of it wouldn’t draw attention. The last thing she needed was someone thinking they were saving an ill-treated cat, and having a Blight pop out at them.

  “Decided to finally turn up,” Don said. Since he’d already volunteered to cover her whole shift—and been pretty smug about it—she didn’t understand his attitude. He couldn’t have been expecting her.

  “Why don’t you like me?” Charlie asked. “Seriously.”

  He appeared surprised by the question, as though it took some kind of sorceress to divine his feelings about her.

  “It’s not that I don’t like you personally,” he said. “It’s just that I take my job seriously and you don’t.”

  “I was going to be late,” she said. “So I called.”

  “The other day—”

  “I got punched. You can hardly call that a dereliction of duty.”

  “If you hadn’t talked to that guy the way you had, maybe you wouldn’t have gotten hit. I know how you are with people.”

  Charlie could feel her skin flush with indignation. “He was pissed because you told him he was overserved. He didn’t think he could bully you, so he came after me.”

  “That’s not my fault.”

  Charlie pointed her finger at him to punctuate her words. “Maybe, but that doesn’t make it mine either.”

  Don grabbed his coat. “Well, since you’ve decided to actually do your job now, I guess I can finally go home.”

  “You’ll be missed, I’m sure,” Charlie said. “The place will fall apart without your manly shoulders to ride on. You’re the Atlas of the goth bars.”

  She must have hit a nerve or Don must have disliked her even more than she thought; the look he turned on her was chilling.

  Down the bar, a guy in a long leather coat and greasy hair chuckled. She turned and he held up his empty lowball glass. “Since Atlas is gone, how about you pour me a little more bourbon.”

  * * *

  For the rest of the night, as she made drinks, Charlie thought of the Blight squirming in her backpack. Thought of Red, forced to watch the world over her shoulder, pinned to her feet and tied to her fate.

  Halfway through her shift, she texted Malhar: Have you ever heard of Blights acting like animals, hunting in packs?

  He texted back a moment later, as though he had his phone nearby: No. They’re more like ghosts.

  ??? she sent back.

  He didn’t answer.

  She shook up an extra-dirty martini for a woman with a chipped tooth and a sly smile, made Manhattans for two tattooed ladies and a man with curly silver hair, all of whom were absorbed in an intense conversation about comic book industry gossip, and louched absinthe for an elderly guy who took it downstairs to Balthazar’s shadow parlor without a word.

  “Stories teach us to hope for what has yet not been but still could be,” one of the tattooed ladies said to the other.

  Charlie would like to have hope like that.

  “Stories are baloney,” said the man with the silver hair. “But who doesn’t like baloney?”

  “Who even says ‘baloney’?” asked the third.

  Rachel, Odette’s assistant, in a cute, blue retro dress with a pattern of dreidels around the bottom, cleared tables and occasionally stopped to chat with a patron.

  When Charlie glanced at her phone again, Malhar had replied with a paragraph: I don’t remember if I said this during that first interview (probably when the tape was off if I did) but ghosts are usually, although not always, described as being stuck in a traumatic memory. Like, if they died by the side of the road, they’re described walking that stretch over and over. Or drowning again and again. Or the opposite—they died in a car crash, but they really loved their coin collection, so they can be seen hovering around it. Most Blights are like that. Stuck in some kind of loop. Often loaded with the pain and fear that the dying person projected into them. So they can be aggressive. Most hang around a place that they were familiar with, sopping up whatever blood comes their way. Some move around a little more. But to be a Blight like OUR FRIEND is very rare.

  Charlie found his explanation frustrating. It didn’t help her understand anything that happened in the church. She texted back: So shadows are ghosts?

  Malhar sent back an immediate reply: No, but they run on the same energy.

  After she made the next drink, Charlie made a decision. She texted Malhar: I am coming over after work. Late. I need to show you something.

  This isn’t a great time, he texted back.

  She frowned at her phone, her fingers flying over the keys. The something I need to show you is a Blight.

  Oh, he texted back. Oh shit. Come whenever you can.

  When she looked up, Rachel stood at the bar. She opened her mouth and Charlie braced herself to get scolded for texting instead of taking orders. Then Rachel’s eyes closed.

  “Found our villain yet, Charlie Hall?” Rachel rasped.

  For a moment, Charlie didn’t understand. Then she did. That wasn’t Rachel speaking, it was Mr. Punch. Bad enough to see people she didn’t know puppeted, but this was infinitely more horrible. “Stop that,” she growled. “Get out of her.”

  Instantly, Mr. Punch’s shadow flooded into Charlie, forcing her mouth open, past a jaw that tried to lock and teeth that bit down hard. “I’ll be a good girl and do what I’m told,” she heard herself say before Red thrust the shadow from her, hard enough that she staggered back.

  She could feel him around her, like armor. The shadow slid toward her again, then seemed to think better of it. A moment later, it slithered away like a snake.

  It appears that I am the better monster. He won’t like that. Red’s words echoed in her head.

  Still half in shock, she looked around the room for Mr. Punch. Someone was heading for the door, someone with a man’s height. She saw a flash of bright hair, copper or gold, the shine reflecting red under the holiday lights. That had to be him.

  Do you see that guy— she started to say, when Rachel began to speak again.

  “Did I just ask you something?” Rachel’s hand went to her lips. Then she seemed to reconsider. “Never mind.”

  Charlie shrugged, allowing Rachel to play it off. There was no good way to explain, at least not in a way that didn’t lead to a confession no one wanted.

  Rachel shook her head. “I’m sure it will come back to me.”

  Charlie’s heart pounded as Rachel walked away.

  By then orders had slowed, but Charlie still managed to accidentally drop a wineglass and pour half a strawberry daiquiri down her own shirt. Her hands were unsteady. She was not finishing her shift in a blaze of glory.

  As bad as things had gone thus far that evening, she still wasn’t prepared for Adeline to walk in, with three beautiful twentysomethings trailing behind her. They headed for the bar, their expressions as amused as you might expect from someone at a zoo, looking at an animal they were seeing for the first time.

  “Charlie! This is Madison, Topher, and Brooks,” Adeline said, looking very pleased with herself. She wore a black sweater over a black plaid skirt with a lipstick-red belt that matched her boots and her absurdly tiny Chanel purse. Her hair had been straightened into a silky blond sheet.

  “You really work here,” Topher said. His brown hair flopped over his eyes and he pushed it back in the manner of someone who liked how he looked when he did that. He had on a pair of brown cords, with a collared sweater buttoned over a crisp blue shirt and a navy peacoat over that. A plaid scarf was wound twice around his throat. “We thought that Adeline was having a laugh.”

  “Don’t mind Topher,” said Madison, with a cruel little smile. She had on a black dress, a white puffer coat, and bright white platform boots. “He’s high as a helium balloon, which if you gave him, he would immediately try to suck on.”

  Their clothes all looked as if they were dressed for somewhere far from Easthampton.

  “Oh fuck off, dearest,” said Topher.

  “Where’s Carver?” asked Brooks, speaking for the first time. He had tight curls, and wore a striped sweater with just the collar points of his shirt sticking out.

  Carver. Charlie blinked. The name Adeline had wanted Red to use. There seemed to be something that made monied people enjoy calling each other by their last names—Salt, for instance, instead of Lionel—but Carver suited Red a little too well.

  “He’s going to pick me up when my shift is over,” Charlie said, keeping her gaze on them and not glancing at her shadow.

  “We’ll wait for him too,” Adeline said. “Then we can go out, just like I said we would.”

  Charlie recalled Adeline telling her about Remy’s friends wanting to see him—but she hadn’t thought they’d just show up at Rapture. “Have fun.”

  “You’re coming too, silly,” said Madison.

  Two in the morning was the legal closing time for pretty much all bars in Massachusetts. “Not a lot of places open at this hour.”

  The four of them planted themselves on stools. Adeline checked her watch. “Oh, don’t worry about that. But since we’re here, what do you have to drink?”

  “The basics,” Charlie said discouragingly. “Gin. Vodka. Whiskey.”

  “Espresso martinis then,” Adeline said. “Black. No cream.”

  “You do have an espresso machine, don’t you?” asked Brooks, looking around Rapture with grave concern.

  “We use cold brew,” Charlie told him.

  Brooks’s expression remained skeptical. “Fine. I suppose.”

  At least Charlie had a reason to walk away from their narrowed stares. As she dumped the ingredients in the shaker and shook it hard, she sent her thoughts at her shadow. Red, this would be a good time to show up.

  Make me. She heard the words in the back of her head, as intimately as if they were whispered against her throat. Heard the teasing in his voice.

  “You really are a monster,” Charlie whispered, shaking her head as she poured out the martinis.

  The fancy foursome drank their drinks and laughed together, ignoring her. Charlie made every interaction with other patrons last as long as she felt she could reasonably get away with, and then took her time to close up.