If he took everything that was being offered to him like he said he was going to, it wouldn’t be pretend. Assuming he could escape the Cabals, that was.

  The woman went on, “We’ll have your things brought to the cottage, but in the meantime, you’re free to tour the main building and the grounds. If you’d like someone—”

  “We’ll show ourselves around,” Red said, with maybe a little too much firmness. He softened his words by slinging his arm around Charlie’s shoulders, leading her off in the direction of the library. “Come on, darling. Let’s get lost.”

  Her neck went hot with what felt like forbidden pleasure. She hadn’t worked like this with anyone since—well, ever. With Rand, she hadn’t been his equal and hadn’t had a choice. With Mark, he’d been too much in competition with her for her to trust him to back her plays. Even with Vince, they had been pretending too much to see one another clearly until the very end.

  Charlie and Red passed the entrance into a dining area. It was mostly empty, save for an elderly couple silently sharing a large teapot and a three-tier spread of sandwiches. They weren’t dressed formally and no labels were obvious on their clothing, but they still exuded the gloss of money.

  She wondered how far off the mark she’d been in her own styling. Her hair was wrong, she decided. But, of course, Charlie didn’t need to pass as a wealthy girlfriend. Only the girlfriend of a wealthy man.

  “We need to find where they’re keeping the shadows. If I could look at the bookings at the front desk, maybe I’d recognize a name.” She’d told Red about her visit to Mr. Punch on the way over. “Otherwise, we’re going to have to search rooms.”

  “The registration for the conference itself might be easier to get to,” Red said.

  Charlie thought it was unlikely that Cabal attendees would be listed in the registration rolls with everyone else, but it would be foolish not to check. “Let’s go befriend someone who can get us access.”

  He smiled back at her, one wolf to another.

  The wood-paneled library featured a long bar with a gleaming pewter top running along the far wall. Cream-colored leather love seats were arranged around low coffee tables with rose quartz tops. Candles flickered in pink glass vessels.

  Charlie thought she heard the word “penumbra” from a table of middle-aged men. That was promising.

  If she paid close enough attention, she could pick out more conference attendees. She needed to know if they had badges or anything else she could easily forge.

  A woman in a button-up white shirt with a tie came over to their table and handed them drink menus with gilded edges. Charlie ordered a glass of rosé that she didn’t intend to drink. Red asked for a martini.

  She raised her eyebrows at him when the woman left.

  “Let me guess—not my usual order,” he said. “But then, I am not my usual self.”

  “I like all of your selves,” Charlie said.

  Red smiled. “Some better than others.”

  “I like you,” she said.

  He looked away, like he couldn’t quite believe it. Or maybe he just didn’t want to hear it from her.

  Charlie made her voice light and changed the subject. “Don’t look, but I think those gentlemen over there are here for the retreat.”

  Red kept his eyes on her.

  Charlie opened her mouth to say something as a man stopped beside their table. He had on a white polo shirt and another of those Solaluna hats.

  “Hello, Mr. Carver? Ms.—”

  “Lena Hall,” Red said, waving toward Charlie.

  She gave what she hoped was the smile of a woman who was about to have a luxury weekend retreat with her boyfriend.

  The man grinned. “I’m Michael, your butler. If you’re done here, I can take you to your cottage. Your luggage has already been moved.”

  “So long as we can bring our drinks,” Red said with lazy swagger.

  “Of course.” Michael caught the eye of the bartender, who was shaking up the martini, and nodded his chin in the direction of the outside.

  “Do we need to settle up—” Charlie said, glancing toward her bag.

  “No need,” Michael told her. “We want things to be easy here.”

  Charlie bit the inside of her cheek, angry at herself. Lena-the-girlfriend shouldn’t be worrying about whether a bill was paid.

  They carried the drinks out to a golf cart. Charlie drank half the wine she told herself she wasn’t going to touch, trying to keep it from spilling as they bumped along a narrow dirt road to a fairy-tale-looking cottage with gingerbread trim and pale blue French shutters.

  Michael parked the golf cart in the driveway, then handed the keys over to Red. “You can call the front desk for a pickup if you don’t want to drive yourself.”

  Red took the keys without comment.

  Michael opened the door and showed them into a sitting area. Two sleek cream couches had been arranged in front of an electric fireplace with an arts-and-crafts-style mantel. A coffee station sat on a long stone-topped side bar, beside a welcome basket overstuffed with fruit, chocolates, cookies, and wine.

  Red walked through to the bedroom while Michael chatted to him about amenities. When they returned to the sitting room, Red sprawled on the couch as though he owned it.

  As Red attempted to arrange some kind of spa visit for Saturday and Michael tried to steer him toward getting massages in the room instead, without explicitly saying that he was trying to keep them away from the Umbral Elevation Retreat, Charlie poked her head into the bedroom.

  A giant four-poster bed dominated the space. Chocolates sat on the pillows, along with lavender sachets. All the windows were lined in onyx, which was interesting. She considered hiding in the bathroom until Michael was gone.

  Charlie found it hard to pretend to wealth and privilege next to Red. It was like trying to pass off moissanite beside a real diamond.

  Through the door to the bathroom, Charlie saw a sunken tub and what she thought might be a steam shower. The tub looked deep enough to disappear into.

  In the main room, she could hear Red arranging a dinner for eight in the evening.

  Charlie headed back into the bedroom, passing a tasteful grouping of morel mushroom watercolors. Her hand smoothed over the stark whiteness of the sheets and she took a deep breath.

  The thought struck her that if their scheme failed, she could still have a fancy, romantic weekend with Red. He’d put down his credit card, so she wouldn’t have to figure out how to pay for all this. What would it be like, to stop worrying about whether she fit in, to stop playing a role, because she was an actual guest and didn’t have to care? They could take the time to figure out what was between them.

  She forced herself to walk back into the sitting room in time to see Michael wave goodbye and go out the door.

  Red looked up at her. “I wish I didn’t have to ask you this, but I need blood.”

  She blinked in surprise, half at the words, half at how he had completely dropped acting the part of Remy.

  “Okay,” Charlie said, sitting on the couch and putting out her hand. She had a hangnail on one thumb and pulled it off with her tooth, watching blood pool up. Not a lot, but the energy was more important.

  She should have guessed he needed it. He was fading at the edges, half shadow when they were alone. He’d been badly hurt recently.

  Red bent over her hand. She shivered as the smoke of his tongue pressed against her skin, then he took her thumb into his mouth, licking her blood. She shuddered. Her skin felt abruptly too tight and the air she breathed was too hot and close. Longing uncurled in her stomach. Her gaze fell on the pink of his lips, the long line of his back, the spread of his thighs.

  After a moment, he leaned back. When he removed his sunglasses, his eyes blazed.

  Her heart stuttered. Maybe hurt. She wondered if this was what it would feel like right before it stopped.

  “You’re very good at playing Mr. Moneybags,” she said, trying to focus on not embarrassing herself.

  Red looked out the window, into the dark. “He’s more a part of me than I think, maybe. Even if I hate it. Living with someone for that long, I suppose it was inevitable that some of it would rub off.”

  “Remy?” she managed to get out. The pressure on her chest eased.

  Red’s gaze turned away from her. “No. Salt.”

  * * *

  Though she would have preferred to curl up on the couch with a bottle of Pellegrino from the fridge and all of the grapes and cookies from the welcome basket, Charlie made herself get ready for dinner. She slid on a strappy black slip dress, one of the few formal things she owned, though it squished her boobs. Then she swooped liquid eyeliner over a little glitter shadow and attempted to cover the last of her black eye with a fresh application of concealer and a great deal of powder. Finally she added distractingly bright lipstick, perfume oil, and gold hoops.

  The girlfriend of a rich guy didn’t have to look insanely wealthy, so it was fine that her dress shoes weren’t designer. Hopefully it would also be okay that she was carrying a vintage metal clutch she’d picked up at a flea market and never had an excuse to use before. She was sure it wouldn’t be noticeable that the gold in her ears wasn’t real.

  She could believe all that until she saw Red. Red, in a gray suit that looked cut sharply over the broad muscles of his shoulders, showing off his thews and sinews with disturbing ease. Red, the collar of his crisp white dress shirt open and his shoes shining like the black carapaces of beetles.

  He blinked at her and she had a moment where she wanted to apologize. I know I don’t look the way I should.

  “I went outside and checked things out,” he told her. “I saw two more cottages within walking distance. I can’t tell if they’re rented or if they’re something else—owner suites, the night staff’s bunks? We can go together later.”

  “After dinner,” she said.

  He put out an arm and for a moment, it was like being in a movie. She rested her hand on his sleeve and he escorted her to the passenger side of the golf cart.

  “When did you learn to drive?” Charlie asked.

  He gave her a sidelong glance.

  “When Remy didn’t want to?” she ventured.

  He shrugged and left it at that. It was obvious that Red didn’t want to say much that was negative about Remy, which meant there was something negative to say. She imagined Remy Carver passed out in the back seat, Red’s hand on the wheel.

  It was creepy to think that a person’s shadow could be awake even when they weren’t. Of course, Red being forced to sleep whenever Remy did would be even creepier.

  Inside the main building of Solaluna, the maître d’ led them to a table near a window that looked out over the snow-covered grounds.

  Charlie sat and thought of the last time she’d been at a table like this one, with Salt. She’d been terrified—and, to be fair, incredibly hungover—and he’d warned her about Red. A Blight who could pass for human, with an endless hunger.

  “Cold?” Red asked.

  “I should have brought a sweater,” she said.

  He shrugged off his jacket.

  “I wasn’t trying to get you to—”

  Red held it out to her, expression steady.

  “You don’t have to, I mean,” she finished, no complete sentence in sight. She took the jacket.

  It settled over her shoulders, warmed with a heat that might have been from her own blood. In the firelight of the candle in the middle of the table, Red’s eyes were scarlet as rubies.

  Their waiter came and placed a small white plate in front of each of them. It contained what appeared to be a tiny puff pastry, a mushroom stuffed with something, and a smear of green sauce. “With compliments from the chef.”

  Charlie forked up the pastry as the waiter poured what he identified as a Veltliner into her glass. The pastry tasted like cheese and sage. She chased it with a huge gulp of the greenish wine, astringent on her tongue.

  “I admire the way you’re playing your role,” she said. “But seeing you here feels like seeing a part of you that I didn’t know.”

  Red let a smile slide across his face. “Does it bother you?”

  She could feel her cheeks heat, because it did. It made her feel as though there was a chasm between them, one deeper than what might come from his being a shadow.

  “You knew too much about fancy watches,” she said. “I should have realized, but instead it made me wonder if you were a burglar.”

  He laughed, not without some bleakness. “I suppose I am, a little. I stole lives at Salt’s behest. And no matter what Remy wanted, I am still made of pieces of him.”

  She met his gaze. “You know when a worm is cut in half and both sides regrow? Can’t both of you have had his life?”

  “It’s not true,” he told her. “It’s a myth.”

  “What?”

  “The worm thing,” he said. “They just die.”

  Charlie didn’t want to believe that. Not only was it less magical, but it meant she’d done very bad things as a child on rainy days when she’d played mad scientist. “Let’s pretend it’s true,” she told him. “For the sake of metaphor.”

  “Is your shadow half of you?” he asked her.

  “I guess I think of it as a sister,” Charlie said, raising her eyebrows at him. “Since my sister is wearing it.”

  Red glanced around the room, perhaps looking for a change of subject. “Anyone worth befriending here?”

  “Groups will be easier to insinuate ourselves into than couples,” Charlie said, studying the possibilities. “Or people here solo.”

  Seven tables were occupied. Six women gathered around one, dressed up and drinking cocktails instead of the wine pairing. At another table, two men sat together, eating a dessert course with tiny cups of espresso, whispering together. At a third, an older man and a woman ate, unsmiling and without conversation—Charlie recognized them as the duo she’d seen earlier. Another man sat alone, writing in a notebook as his appetizer grew cold beside him.

  She turned her gaze toward the fireplace. Then she froze.

  A couple sat in front of the fire. Even though the man had his back to her, so that she could see nothing more of him than his shoulders and untidy hair, Charlie recognized him.

  Mark, her ex-boyfriend, whom she’d last seen at Rapture, making excuses for having shot her. Who she’d hoped never to see again. The only thing that would have brought him to a place like this was a con. If he spotted her, he’d guess the same of her and be equally correct.

  The waiter had returned to set the first course in front of them—a scallop and grapefruit salad, ceviche-style. Another white wine was poured. A Riesling this time.

  Charlie felt the thump of her heart as she caught Red’s eye. “See the guy at the table closest to the fireplace?”

  He glanced over, narrowing his eyes.

  “That’s Mark,” she said. “The fuck is he doing here?”

  Red raised his brows. “My previous offer still stands.”

  “Tempting,” said Charlie, drinking half her wine in one go.

  If Mark was here, it stood to reason that he had something to do with the retreat. Could Mr. Punch have found him and given him the job he’d offered to Charlie? Could Mark be the next harvester, stealing shadows for the Cabals? If so, following him could lead her to where the shadows were being kept.

  The third course was pork medallions with spicy juniper. Charlie ate it, wondering if she could make an excuse to knock the man’s notebook to the floor by way of introduction. She tried not to look at Mark, although she couldn’t help a sidelong glance from time to time.

  Charlie was halfway through the orange wine that had been paired with the pork when Red spoke.

  “I haven’t been very fair to you,” he said.

  “You’ve sent me some mixed messages,” Charlie admitted. “Like maybe you hate me, but also think I’m kinda hot?”

  He leaned back, eyes half-lidded, smile pulling at his mouth. “I never hated you.”

  “Oh?” Charlie’s gaze didn’t waver.

  Red took a sip of wine. His eyes were dark. “You made me feel things I didn’t want to feel. Things I’d never felt before. Selfish, ugly things. Desperate things.”

  “I don’t know what to do with that,” she said. “It doesn’t sound good.”

  “It frightened me,” he said. “Do you know the fairy tale about the boy who doesn’t know fear? It’s bizarre. A boy who has never been afraid leaves home to seek his fortune and is challenged to spend the night in some haunted house. Many headless ghosts and other things try to scare him to death the way they’ve done to everyone else, but he’s not scared because, well, no fear. He gets his reward and winds up marrying a princess—and on his wedding night, his new wife learns about his lack of fear. To teach him, she pours a bucket of eels on him in their marriage bed. The squirming of the eels is so strange that he shivers and shakes and believes that he has finally felt fear.

  “Fiona read that to Remy when we were children and I thought it was the weirdest story I’d ever heard. For a long time, I thought eels had something to do with marriage.”

  Charlie raised her eyebrows. “So what does it mean?”

  “Look, it’s still bizarre. But I think the fairy tale is about how desire is terrifying. Love is terrifying.” He shook his head. “And for someone who has tried not to feel for a long time, it’s threatening. It feels like an attack.”

  “So you do like me,” Charlie said, trying to figure out what he meant. “But you wish you didn’t?”

  Red put his head in his hands. “I am terrible at this.”

  But he was trying. He was trying to tell her something that wasn’t easy, but was true. “No,” she said. “Go on.”

  “In Salt’s house, whenever you cared about someone, he would find a way to turn that against you. To make you betray one another.” Red shook his head. “I thought you couldn’t possibly have sacrificed what you did, knowing what I was. You couldn’t be as brave and reckless as you seemed. And then when I realized you were, I’d already made a mess of things. I like you so much, Charlie.”