“But the more people I talked to, the more I became interested in quickened shadows, and their own ethnography. I was surprised by how differently shades were viewed in different eras, and among different groups. Which didn’t fit the original concept of the thesis. So, uh, my thesis ballooned. I started collecting historical references and comparing them with modern accounts. And then I needed more interviews. I’ve been spending a lot of time defending my work to my professors. And my classmates. And my parents.”

  “They should be glad you’re doing it,” Charlie said. “Isn’t the University of Massachusetts interested in, like, founding a school for witchcraft and wizardry someday?”

  Malhar snorted. “There are physicists experimenting with aphotic shadows. And folklorists collating stories. Biologists sewing cat shadows onto mice. But I am supposed to be an ethnographer, and everyone seems to think that I am in too deep.”

  “Ah,” Charlie said. “You’re the one interested in founding the school of witchcraft and wizardry.”

  He shook his head, but he was smiling. “You know I am going to edit anything embarrassing that I say out of the transcript, right?”

  “What if I say something I want off the record?” Charlie asked.

  “I’ll stop the tape for the duration of any comment you want to make and restart when we’re done,” he said. “Is there something you want to say that you don’t want on the tape?”

  “Maybe,” she said.

  Malhar waited for her to say more, and when she didn’t, nodded encouragingly, as though he was used to interviewing paranoid weirdos. Finally, he cleared his throat. “Can you give me an account of what led to the change in your shadow?”

  Charlie took a sip of the coffee, trying to figure out how to tell this story in a way that wouldn’t come back to bite her in the ass. “A man came into my job and used his shadow to rough me up. His shadow was like a fog one minute, and then something that was sorta like a paper doll cutout of a person crossed with a black hole. A shape made from a lack of light. It could become solid enough to knock over some bottles of liquor. And it—”

  Charlie stopped at the memory of the thing flooding her lungs, the helplessness of that moment. She drank the rest of the coffee in a gulp, hoping the bite of bitterness would help. Unfortunately, it was bland and watery all the way to the bottom.

  “Then the shadow went down my throat. It felt thick and heavy, like I had swallowed a storm cloud. I couldn’t breathe.” She looked down at the chipped nail polish on her thumb so she didn’t have to look at either of them. “I was unconscious, although not for long.”

  She thought of hearing Vince’s voice when she woke. The softness in it when he’d spoken to Hermes. The softness in his voice when he spoke to her on the steps. I wish he was alive so I could kill him again.

  “Just some clarifications,” Malhar said. “Can you tell me how far the shadow was able to move from the person’s body?”

  “Probably about twenty-five feet,” Charlie told him, glad to focus on the technical details instead of how she’d felt. “But usually less than ten.”

  He went through a series of questions like that. How often had it become solid, how solid had it become. Had it seemed connected to the gloamist. Had the gloamist seemed strained in any way or stopped to provide it blood. Had Charlie bled, and if she had, did the shadow seem distracted or interested in the blood.

  He made a note. “And did the shadow speak at any time?”

  Charlie shook her head, surprised by the question. Blights spoke, or at least some of them did. The very powerful ones, like Rowdy Joss, who’d been responsible for the Boxford Massacre, or Xiang Zheng, who dictated many observations about the world to scholars around 220 A.D. and had been thought of as a ghost. Most Blights were less clever than animals—a little low cunning borrowed from their human memories, mixed with the madness that afflicted most of them.

  But shadows were still tethered. They couldn’t speak, at least not on their own. Well, she’d thought they couldn’t.

  Posey must have been wondering the same thing. “They can talk?”

  Malhar hesitated, not like he was trying to decide to answer, but like he was trying to decide how to put what he was about to say. “I don’t know what you know about the mechanics of energy exchange that exists between gloamist and shadow.”

  Posey frowned. She didn’t like to admit what she didn’t know, but Charlie figured this was one of the things she’d want some definitive answers about.

  “Tell us,” Charlie said.

  “The average human, at rest, produces enough energy to power a lightbulb. To charge a phone. And if we run, we produce enough to power an electric stove.” He shook his head. “I am being inexact. According to the first law of thermodynamics, energy can neither be created nor destroyed. So we don’t make the energy. We convert it from food and water.”

  Posey nodded along with his explanation.

  “That’s the energy that’s passed along to shadows. They’re a little like a parasite. The body produces excess energy anyway, and the magical parasite drains it off. The more energy it stores, the more powerful it becomes.”

  “And that’s how you make it do things,” Posey said.

  “I noticed that you had your tongue split,” Malhar said, “so I’m sure you’ve heard of the bifurcated consciousness. Gloamists train their brains to be able to control their shadows simultaneously with controlling their own bodies. Ambidextrous people have an advantage. If you see a gloamist without a split tongue, odds are that they’re ambidextrous.”

  “Sure,” Posey said impatiently. To her, this was basic stuff.

  “The problem is that a quickened shadow, on its own, doesn’t store much energy. So, say a gloamist wants to do something that requires more energy than their shadow has—they can open a tap to their shadow, letting it pull energy from the gloamist. But leave the tap open too long and the gloamist will die. That’s where the bifurcated soul comes in.

  “If a gloamist puts some of themselves into their shadow, they can create a separate entity which holds energy. The shadow becomes a mirror self, reflected self, second self, upside-down self. But the more powerful your shadow grows, the more it controls you.”

  “Blights,” Charlie said.

  Malhar nodded. “When the gloamist dies, yes. But I believe they are conscious long before that.”

  It occurred to Charlie that Malhar said he was studying the ethnography of shadows, and suddenly understood why his advisors might have thought he was in too deep. Was he hoping to interview one? Had he interviewed one?

  “Uh, well, we should get to the testing part,” he said, perhaps seeing the expression on her face. “There are three things I’d like to try, but I am going to have to set up something first.”

  “You’re filming video?” Charlie asked.

  “It’s part of the test,” he said warily.

  Charlie frowned as he got out a stand and plugged a cord from his laptop into his phone. “Don’t even think about showing our faces.”

  He nodded distractedly as he got out the ring lights. Then he took out a finger-stick lancet in plastic packaging.

  “Charlie, do you mind standing?” he asked, after he’d gotten his equipment where he wanted it to be.

  She got up.

  “Now, can either of you tell me what you observed that made you believe your shadow might have been affected by the experience?”

  “It moved weirdly,” Posey said. “Not like she was controlling it or anything, but weird.”

  He turned to Charlie. “Did you feed it blood?”

  “I was cut up that night,” she said. “And then, in the bathroom today I picked off a scab. So I don’t know. Maybe.”

  Posey looked betrayed to be hearing this for the first time, but considering that none of this would be happening if she hadn’t betrayed Charlie’s confidence, Charlie refused to feel bad about it.

  “Would you be willing to prick your finger now?” Malhar asked. “In front of the camera.”

  “Sure.” Charlie picked up the lancet and opened the package. She jabbed the tip into her finger and watched a sudden bead of red appear.

  All of them watched in silence. Nothing happened. Finally Charlie licked her finger. “Okay, that didn’t work. Are we done?”

  She wasn’t sure how to feel. She didn’t think she’d like to be a gloamist, but it still felt like failing a test.

  “Can you try to make it move?” Malhar asked, although he must have known it was useless.

  Charlie concentrated. She was at least a little bit ambidextrous, but her brain didn’t feel particularly bifurcated.

  “Are you trying?” Posey asked.

  Charlie gave her sister a look.

  “Okay, last one,” Malhar said. He turned on the lights.

  The first sent her shadow towering against the wall to her left.

  Then the second came on. That ought to have doubled it, and yet it did nothing at all.

  Charlie stared, unwilling to believe what she was seeing. “Is it…?”

  Malhar nodded, and when he spoke, his voice was hushed. “You have a quickening shadow. It’s not fully there yet, but a day or two more of feeding it blood and it will be. I don’t think I’ve ever seen one at this stage.”

  Charlie stared at her own shadow towering over her, her heart speeding. It was a part of her, she knew, but she couldn’t help being a little afraid of it. “What do I do?”

  “You could stop feeding it,” Malhar said. “It would settle.”

  She nodded.

  “But you wouldn’t do that,” said Posey, as though the option itself was an insult.

  Charlie took the neglected third cup and drank some more lukewarm watery coffee.

  “Or you could become a gloamist.” Malhar started breaking down the lights with a grin. “Some people are uncomfortable with the idea of quickened shadows. There are even fringe groups that believe we’re being deceived as to their nature.”

  Posey snorted. “He’s talking about the people who think the shadows are demons.”

  He nodded. “Or aliens. They think our minds are misinterpreting what our eyes are seeing, because the truth is too horrible for the human mind to comprehend.”

  “But Charlie’s not crazy,” Posey said.

  Charlie wasn’t too sure about that. “Okay, so what are quickened shadows?”

  “Theoretically?” Malhar cautioned. “You’ve probably heard of dark matter: the stuff that’s keeping gravity from ripping our galaxy apart. It has to be there, or all the other mathematical calculations fall apart, but no one can prove it. And, well, dark energy is even more theoretical than that.

  “Dark energy was used to explain ghosts, but is better suited to shadows. In some way, you could consider them ghosts of the living. And just like ghosts seem to be echoes of traumatic events, aphotic shadows are said to be formed out of trauma. Some professors here believe that aphotic shadows, like ghosts, reenact memories rather than have true life. Which is bullshit, by the way.”

  “Aphotic?” Charlie said.

  “Growing in the absence of light,” Malhar said apologetically. “The term caught on in academia.”

  “So trauma is what quickens shadows?” Posey’s voice was a little breathless now that they’d come to the part of the conversation she was most interested in.

  Malhar frowned. “It seems to be, but trauma is highly individual. There are some very disturbing videos of people doing extreme and irresponsible things to wake their shadows. But they’re unlikely to work because they don’t carry emotional weight. Trauma is more than pain.”

  Charlie gave her sister a look. “So, no ayahuasca?”

  Malhar burst out laughing.

  Posey, caught between embarrassment and anger, went silent.

  “We should go,” Charlie said, standing up, trying not to take too much satisfaction in the moment.

  Malhar picked up his cell off the table. “I’d like you to talk to me again, so I can monitor your shadow’s progress. I hope you know you can trust me.”

  “Can I ask you a question off the record?” Charlie asked.

  He stopped the recording, frowning. “Sure.”

  “Have you heard of a book called the Liber Noctem?”

  His eyebrows went up. “The Book of Blights?”

  She nodded.

  “I heard about the auction,” he said. “There were a lot of wild claims—that it was written by a Blight, one that ‘captured the breath of life.’ I’d love to get a look at it. One of the books everyone wants to study, like The Luctifer Treatise or Codex Antumbra, or Fushi-no-Kage.”

  “You think any of the claims are true?”

  He shrugged. “Like that it was written by a Blight? That would be fascinating. Almost all of the books on shadow magic are from the point of view of the gloamist, but what would it look like from the point of view of a shadow, one that was becoming conscious and learning how to follow its own desires?”

  Charlie wasn’t entirely sure she wanted to know, but she was getting an idea why another Blight might want to read it.

  Minutes later, Charlie and Posey walked across the lawn to the parking lot. Knots of students passed them.

  “Did you actually think my shadow was quickening?” Charlie asked her.

  Posey shook her head. “Did you?”

  “Of course not.” Charlie stuck her hands deep in the pockets of her leather coat. “I would have told you.”

  Posey snorted, as though she wasn’t so sure.

  “You fit in here,” Charlie said, looking around.

  Her sister didn’t reply.

  “I’m serious,” she said. “You’re like these people.”

  Posey kicked a few wet leaves. “We’re behind on the bills, and as you remind me, we can only afford the house because Vince is paying a chunk of the rent. School is a stupid expense. And besides, everything is going to be different now. You’re one of them. In a year, when you’re a gloom, we can do whatever we want. Even if what you want is for me to have a useless degree.”

  Charlie scowled at the ground, at her shadow. She’d never considered a future where she was one of the people with power. It would be nice to believe that meant she could give Posey something that would make her happy. But ever since they were kids, Charlie seemed to get things Posey wanted. Their mother’s attention. Money in her pockets. And now, real magic.

  But even if good things might be coming, first she was going to have to deal with Vince, who’d betrayed her, who was a liar with a hidden book, a connection to Salt and to violence. Knowing Vince’s secrets felt like having a belly full of flies. Open her mouth, and she didn’t think she could stop them from flooding out in a disgusting swarm.

  15

  THE PAST

  With Rand gone, Charlie spent a few weeks kicking around. At school, she hung out with her friends. She had more time to go over to their houses and to party on the weekends.

  For years she’d told herself that he was the one forcing her to participate in his schemes. But without them, Charlie found herself fidgety. She seemed to need more intensity than the people around her, required a higher dose of adrenaline before she felt anything.

  Six months after Rand was buried, Charlie found herself back at the Moose Lodge. Benny laughed when he saw her walk through the door.

  “Oh, come on, honey,” he said. “You don’t belong around here. Don’t want to get the truant officer after us.”

  She dumped her backpack on one of the tables and walked around to the back of the bar. Checked the ice machine, which produced pellets that fused together and required vigorous use of the pick. She made him a martini just the way he liked it, cold vodka in a glass with the garnish of several olives to take the sting out.

  “I want to do a job on my own,” she told him as she pushed his drink toward him. “And I don’t want to work for Knight.”

  He frowned at her. “The glooms are the ones that are hiring, these days.”

  “Okay,” she said, although her palms had started to sweat. “Just not him.”

  He shrugged. “Willie’s nephew, Stephen, got into stealing shadows. Says it’s easy money. Says he can slash off a shadow the way you’d slash the strap of a purse; all you need is one of them onyx knives.”

  “So, what, you mug people?” She made a face, having picked up from Rand a dislike of crimes that didn’t require any real talent.

  “He’s getting two hundred fifty a pop,” he said. “Twenty times that if it’s one of those magic ones, but that’s dangerous.”

  She nodded thoughtfully.

  He looked at her skeptically. “But you want a real job.”

  She straightened her shoulders. “What is it?”

  “The kind of thing one of us might have attempted in our heyday, you know? You know the Arthur Thompson House?”

  “Sure,” Charlie told him. She’d gone there with her class, freshman year.

  “There’s this group of young gloamists who threw together some money and want someone to break in and steal a single page from one of the notebooks in a locked cabinet. It’s supposed to have something to do with the use of shadows as absorbable energy to alter other shadows blah blah magical crap. You think you can do that?”

  Arthur Thompson had invented harvesting electricity from storms and founded the first lightning farm around thirty years ago. That’s what he’d been famous for, before the Boxford Massacre. That’s what he ought to be best remembered for, according to Charlie’s teachers, who wanted to preserve the legacy of a local legend in the face of kids’ interest in the gruesome.

  In addition to his interest in lightning, Arthur Thompson was interested in shadow magic. Being a man of science, when he discovered a booth at the county fair run by a group of fundamentalists who believed that gloaming was the work of the devil, he and two of his friends stopped to argue.

  Long story short, they all got shot, Arthur died, and his shadow became a Blight who killed over a hundred people. But his house was preserved just the way he left it, including his workshop with all his notes.

  “What does it pay?” Charlie asked.