“You know, you’ve got a whole salad in your drink,” Charlie said as she took a seat.

  Fiona laughed. “This place! I can’t decide if they’re delightful or insane.” She pushed a menu in Red’s direction. “You can add a lobster tail to anything. Anything.”

  Red sat on the other side of the table, looking around the room like he was counting the exits.

  “So,” Charlie said. “You know Odette, right? She’s my boss. She talks about you sometimes.”

  Fiona’s eyebrows rose. “She could tell you some stories about me that would make your hair stand on end. Are you one of her protégées?”

  “Am I … Oh! No.” Charlie could feel her face heat. “I’m just a bartender.”

  “Ahh.” Fiona took a sip of her martini and made a motion toward the waiter. “That’s why you’re offended by my drink.”

  “I’m not offended,” Charlie said as the waiter descended on them. “I just think that if you added a tomato, you might be able to convince me it was a Bloody Mary.”

  Fiona turned to Red. “And what will you be having, dear?”

  He frowned at the menu. “A steak?”

  “The strip,” Fiona clarified to the waiter. “I’ll have your onion soup and a dozen Coffin Bay oysters.”

  Charlie decided fast on something that seemed safe. “The turkey burger.”

  “Would any of you like a lobster tail with that?” the waiter asked. Charlie bit the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing.

  “So,” Fiona said, when he left. “Tell me about your people, Charlie Hall.”

  “My grandmother’s in prison for murder,” she said, going for brutal honesty. She needed to establish some quick intimacy between them, if she was going to gain Fiona’s trust. It was a gamble, but she thought it could work.

  Fiona didn’t seem rattled by Charlie’s disclosure. “My ex-husband was a monster, so if I think badly of you, I will be obligated to think worse of myself. Are your parents also criminally inclined?”

  “Dad’s homesteading with his new wife. Mom’s sitting on a fortune of rare Magic cards.” She didn’t mention that she was the one who was criminally inclined. “My sister can tell your future.”

  “I see,” Fiona said.

  “Also, if this is one of those situations where you were going to take me aside and offer me some money to stay away from your grandson, don’t bother. That’s not going to work.”

  That made Fiona laugh. “Oh, am I supposed to think you are corrupting Remy Vincent Carver? Teaching him a love of spray cheese or inducing him to graffiti the sides of buildings? Ruining his good name?”

  “You both know I am also at the table, correct?” Red asked, but the talk of names had to make him a little uncomfortable.

  Charlie rolled her eyes. “Okay, fine. But Adeline’s friends said as much last night.”

  “She’s very possessive of him,” Fiona said diplomatically, with a glance in Red’s direction. “She always has been. I suppose that before Remy came, she was all on her own in that big house. I’ve always thought she was terrified of being alone again. And scared of what my ex-husband would do to her if he didn’t have Remy as a target for his ire. That’s the only excuse I can come up with for her choices.”

  Was Fiona talking about the lawyers and the strings Adeline was putting on Red getting his inheritance? Did she know about the other stuff?

  No, Charlie realized. She was angry for a totally different reason. She believed the story that he’d been locked in the basement of the mansion for a year while everyone thought he was dead and that Adeline never went to the police, never reached out to Fiona, never did anything to help him.

  “And you two always got along like a house on fire,” Fiona went on.

  “Exactly like that,” Red agreed, his tone making the words mean something else.

  “So I need to say this.” Fiona looked down at her drink. “You don’t have to protect me. I want you to understand that I am not frail, even if I’m old. I buried a daughter. You’re all I have left in the world.”

  “No,” Red said. “I’m not.”

  The waiter returned with their food, placing the plates down in front of them. Ignoring him, Fiona grabbed hold of Red’s hand and squeezed it.

  “You are,” she insisted.

  “What do you know about shadow magic?” he asked, pulling his hand free. Charlie’s heart thudded. Surely, he wouldn’t tell her. Surely, he wouldn’t.

  Fiona’s attention sharpened. “Not so much, but not nothing. I was aware my ex-husband had an unhealthy interest in the occult and I was curious about what had so captivated him. There are people in my circles with Cabal connections, ones who’ve bought shadows at events held for that sort of thing.”

  “The Cabals punish members who are involved in selling shadows,” Charlie said.

  Fiona took another sip of her drink. “Well, it is hideously expensive, so I imagine there’s some risk on their end.” Then she turned to Red. “I should never have let you go to Salt. That’s what he wanted from you, wasn’t it? Your friend, the one you talked to all the time? The one I thought wasn’t real?”

  Charlie dragged a fry through truffle mayonnaise and put it into her mouth. The flavor wasn’t precisely good, but somehow, she wanted more of it.

  Fiona spoke into the silence. “I didn’t realize until many years later after you left my care that you had shadow magic. I don’t know if it was something you wanted. I don’t know what you can do, but I am sorry for the position it put you in.” She frowned. “Are you still part of that world?”

  “I never won’t be,” Red told her.

  “Whatever Salt asked you to do,” Fiona said, “whatever you’ve done, I want you to understand. I am always on your side.”

  “Stop,” Red told her.

  “Even if you’d killed that Rose Allaband girl, I would have been on your side. I wouldn’t have liked it, but I would have helped you.”

  “Stop,” Red said again, more firmly, a note of panic in his voice.

  She reached across the table, as if she meant to take his hand again. “I know you have every reason to be angry with me—”

  He rose to his feet, cutting her off. “I’m not mad. I love you. But I am not Remy.”

  Fiona’s mouth opened and closed soundlessly, but it was Charlie who felt as though she couldn’t breathe as Red melted into a shadow that spread out from where he’d stood, a shadow that pitched the entire room into an eerie darkness.

  Panicked gasps went up around the room.

  The old woman pointed to Charlie. “Explain,” she demanded in a shaking voice.

  “He’s your grandson,” Charlie said, standing. “Just as much as Remy ever was.”

  Fiona shook her head in horror.

  And Charlie, coward that she was, headed straight for the door.

  22

  Not a Pet

  She staggered to the Porsche where she saw the keys on the front seat. Sitting down hard on the driver’s side, she saw her face mirrored in the windshield. No makeup, like an actor offstage. Around her eye, the remains of her bruise.

  What did you do? she asked Red.

  He was nearby, looking like nothing more than the shadow she should have cast. Still, he didn’t answer. She imagined he didn’t want to talk about how he’d blown up his spot and alienated the one person who could have helped him avoid Adeline’s legal traps. Charlie put her hands on the wheel, but couldn’t make herself start the engine. Her emotions were all over the place, her thoughts wouldn’t settle. She’d given up grifting after Mark, afraid of how thoroughly she’d destroyed him, guilty about the man who died by a bullet meant for her. And then she’d gone back to being a con artist after all, because it was what she was good at.

  Who would she have become without Rand taking her under his wing? Someone less traumatized? More boring? Rand had the gift of making people feel special, including her. He’d made her believe in the higher calling of their profession.

  But sitting in the Porsche, hungover, with Red silent and in shadow, Charlie felt a familiar despair settle over her. She didn’t know how to fix anything. She didn’t know how to be better. She didn’t know how to give Mr. Punch what he wanted or even be a halfway decent Hierophant, for all her bragging.

  Well, she’d promised to let Malhar have a look at the Blight in the trunk. And then she’d promised it to Balthazar for services he’d already rendered. She could do that much, at least.

  * * *

  Malhar met Charlie at the door to a house with a scrubby yard, a couch on the porch, and a lot of cars in the driveway. Typical Amherst share house among students who’d outgrown the dorms but couldn’t afford to be on their own.

  Skinny, in jeans ripped at the knees and a maroon sweater, dark hair rumpled as though he hadn’t gotten around to brushing it, Malhar blinked at her like a man who hadn’t realized how late it had grown. He appeared surprised by the early winter dark.

  “How many roommates do you have?” she asked him as she walked inside his place, squirming backpack over one shoulder.

  Malhar shrugged, waving vaguely toward the kitchen. “Half a dozen usually, but they get into relationships or have someone crash with them and then we get an extra one or two. Or sometimes people get into relationships and move out instead—it varies.”

  Charlie suspected he couldn’t actually give her a number.

  Two more couches rested in the living room, one very close to the television. A young Black man was playing a video game that seemed to involve a guy with a lot of armor fighting something with a squid for a head. He grinned at them as they passed by.

  “Deon is getting his MFA in writing,” Malhar said, low-voiced. “He’s spent two semesters avoiding finishing his novel.”

  “Endings are elusive,” Deon called after them defensively.

  The kitchen held two more roommates, one tossing a bunch of garbanzo beans and zaatar in a plastic bowl, the other drinking coffee from an enormous mug. A big pot of lentils simmered on the stove. Over the sink, someone had strung holiday tinsel, along with a string of colorful fairy lights.

  Malhar gestured toward them. “Ibrahim is chemistry. Aron is film.”

  “That’s right. I am film. I am gigantic. I am unavoidable,” one of the guys—Aron, she supposed—said. “Your guest want any coffee? I just brewed a fresh pot.”

  “I do,” Charlie said, before Malhar could demur on her behalf.

  “We’ll come back for it,” he said and ushered her into his bedroom. A desk had been shoved against one wall and two monitors loomed above it, both with screen savers of faraway places sweeping across them.

  His bed, shoved against the opposite wall, was tidily made, although the end was covered in what seemed to be freshly washed but unfolded laundry. The floor was mostly clear, with the exception of a water bottle by the bed and a stack of files under the desk. The door to the closet was ajar and there seemed to be a mess threatening to spill out from there—she thought she spotted a three-piece suit, of all things. By student standards, the place was spotless.

  “Do you have it?” he asked, a little breathlessly.

  She nodded and shouldered off her backpack.

  “And Red?” Malhar asked.

  At the question, his shadow lengthened and thickened. Then Red stood at the other end of the tether, formed out of darkness.

  “Shit,” Malhar said. “Shit.”

  “It’s weird to watch him do it, right?” Charlie said.

  “Every time,” Malhar confirmed.

  Red gave them a self-conscious half-smile. He went over to the chair by the desk and sat down.

  Charlie unzipped her backpack, then pulled out the onyx netting, hoping the thing inside wasn’t about to bite her.

  “Is that the Blight?” Malhar asked, squatting down beside the bed to peer into the netting. It wasn’t solid in the way that Red was, but the onyx kept it solid enough to have a shadowy shape. It was still roughly the size of a bobcat and occasionally opened something like a mouth to show off shadowy teeth. “Can it talk?”

  Red shook his head.

  “I promised Balthazar a shadow,” Charlie said. “But before that, I wanted to see if you could—I don’t know, learn something from it?”

  Malhar peered down at the thing. Experimentally, he put his fingers into the bag, then yanked them back out just as fast.

  “Did it try to bite you?” Charlie asked.

  He shook his head. “It moved. I panicked. I’m not sure about its intentions. You’re really going to give this thing to Balthazar?”

  “It’s better than it hurting someone—or being ordered to kill it as the Hierophant. What would you do, keep it as a pet? Like a reptile in an onyx fish tank you drop crickets into from time to time?”

  “No,” Malhar said reluctantly. “Although when you put it that way it sounds pretty great.”

  Red gave another of his barely there smiles.

  “I think this thing was eating shadows. Small ones,” Charlie said. “Absorbing their powers.”

  “Interesting.” Malhar peered at it.

  Charlie focused on the creature in front of her. She thought of the scrapes on the wall of the Grace Covenant Church basement. “There’s something I want to know. Would there be a way for someone to control more than one shadow at a time?”

  Malhar raised an eyebrow. “You know that’s not my area of study, but I guess you could make each one an offer.”

  “Could a Blight like this one even understand me?” Charlie gestured toward the creature she’d trapped.

  “We could do a quick experiment. Unless…” Malhar looked at Red.

  He rolled his eyes. “There is no secret shadow language.”

  Malhar sighed, slumping. “Right, sorry.”

  Charlie got an onyx knife out of her pack, then pressed the tip against her finger with a wince.

  “You’re going to feed it?” Red asked.

  She wondered if the thought bothered him; she hadn’t fed him in days. It felt dangerous, letting him feed, even though the Cabal leaders had warned her that the real danger was in not doing it.

  “Hopefully that guy it’s meant for—Balthazar—won’t mind sharing,” Malhar said.

  Charlie got his meaning. “This won’t bond me to it, right?”

  Red smiled. “I have had a great deal of blood from many people, living and dead, and I care nothing for most of them.”

  Maybe Malhar was used to Red being scary at him, because he didn’t look at all disturbed by that comment.

  “Okay, little Blight,” Charlie said. “Sorry we stuck you in a backpack for a full day. How about this? I’ll give you a little blood if you, uh, hiss three times.”

  The shadow didn’t hiss, although it did press eagerly against the netting as though straining to lick the proffered finger.

  “Let’s try again,” she said. “I’ll give you blood if you lie down.”

  The shadow only strained harder against the netting.

  With a sigh, Malhar reached for a plastic wrapper from among the detritus on his desk and offered it to Charlie. Smearing her blood on it, she pushed the wrapper beneath the netting. Immediately, the shadow covered it, making wet noises.

  “I think we eliminated the theory it can understand you,” Malhar said. “But that could be that it’s too distracted by hunger, or that it isn’t fully manifested.”

  Red regarded the Blight with some curiosity.

  “But I could control it if it were tied to me,” Charlie said. “Could a person attach more than one shadow to themselves? A boy said he saw the Nine-Shadow Man, like from a fairy tale. Is that possible?”

  Malhar sighed. “That would be an incredibly unethical experiment to undertake, but if you consider the energy that shadows consume to be measurable, I don’t see how one gloamist could sustain two, much less more shadows, without being drained.”

  “If it’s an unethical experiment, the masks have already done it,” Red said.

  Asking Bellamy might give her an excuse to be inside his stronghold, close to where her map said that piece of Red was being kept. But it would be tricky for her to explain why she wanted to know, since this job for Mr. Punch was off the books.

  Which made her wonder again why investigating a massacre was something he wanted none of the other Cabal leaders to know about. Sure, it wasn’t technically her job unless Blights were involved, but it wasn’t like the Cabals would mind getting extra work out of her.

  There are people in my circles with Cabal connections, ones who’ve bought shadows at events held for that sort of thing. That was what Fiona had said. Her words had gotten lost after Red’s revelations, but there was something there.

  Was Mr. Punch getting her to investigate another Cabal member who’d been selling shadows? Was he planning some blackmail of his own?

  As her thoughts returned to Bellamy, the missing part of Red, and unethical experiments, Malhar continued studying the Blight.

  “A little parasite,” Red said, looking down, his gaze going to Charlie’s bleeding finger.

  “We’re all parasites when we aren’t fully developed,” Malhar said.

  “It’s old,” Red said. “I can tell that much about it.”

  “How?” Charlie asked.

  He blinked at her. “I … I don’t know.”

  “You sure there isn’t some secret shadow language?” Malhar asked.

  Red gave him an exasperated look. Then he turned to the shadow. “Hiss or I will rip you to pieces and devour the pieces,” he said, in a voice so sweet that the contrast between his words and tone made the hairs stand up all along Charlie’s arms.

  A small hissing sound came from the shadow as it flattened itself low in the netting.