Charlie nodded.

  “But most Blights are formed on the deathbed. Gloamists often push parts of themselves into their shadow in those last moments—often all of their fear and pain. Scary things get made like that. But powerful things. To create a Blight without that would probably require stealing energy, maybe through someone else’s deathbed and someone else’s blood.”

  Charlie thought of Salt and what he’d done to her, of her fingers around a knife. “If it was powerful enough, could it control you? Could it puppet you?”

  Raven studied her for a long moment. “I’ve never heard of a shadow being able to control the person to whom it’s attached, but there’s only one way to be entirely safe. To have no shadow at all. The shadowless can’t be controlled. There’s a door shut inside of them.”

  The shadowless can’t be controlled. Could that be why Vince cut his shadow loose? To avoid being puppeted by his grandfather the way she had been? To avoid being controlled by Red?

  Raven turned to Charlie. “I think that’s enough answers for you. And so help me, if you fuck me over, 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.”

  “I’ll bring you Knight’s papers,” Charlie promised.

  “Bring more bear claws when you do,” Raven said, sending Charlie back into a night that felt more full of shadows than before.

  * * *

  The next afternoon, Charlie sat at the kitchen table with pens in either hand and two sheets of notebook paper with tattered edges beneath them. In synchronized movements, she wrote the same words over and over, on both pages.

  HEY DUMMY IS YOUR BRAIN SPLIT YET?

  “I didn’t know you were ambidextrous,” Posey said, frowning at her.

  “Not sure I am,” said Charlie. “But maybe good enough is good enough.”

  Posey got a seltzer out of the fridge and popped the tab. She leaned against the counter and watched Charlie write. “Do you feel like your consciousness is bifurcating?”

  Charlie sighed and stopped writing. “I don’t know. If it was, what could I do?”

  Posey pointed to her shadow. “Try moving your fingers. Those fingers, I mean.”

  Charlie frowned in concentration, focusing on attempting to feel a hand that wasn’t attached to her. But no matter how hard she stared or tried to shift her consciousness or tried to think in two places at once, there was no perceptible change.

  Posey shook her head. “Okay, what about lengthening it?”

  That seemed even harder to Charlie, but she complied, attempting to imagine her shadow spreading, like it was melting. She tried to make it ooze, even just to blur a bit at the edges. Again, nothing. “I’m trying,” she told her sister, forestalling any criticism.

  “Maybe you could try to inhabit your shadow,” Posey said.

  Charlie threw up her hands in frustration. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Posey shrugged.

  They went on like that, with Posey looking up exercises online, and Charlie becoming increasingly frustrated.

  Eventually, Posey had a Zoom call with a client, bringing their session to an end. Charlie was relieved to give up. She pulled out her own laptop and stared at the screen.

  With a sigh, she pulled up the article about Edmund Carver’s death, copying over the name of the girl whose body was found in the car with his and putting it into the search engine.

  Rose Allaband.

  There weren’t many mentions of her, the longest being from a week after she went missing:

  Family and friends of Rose Allaband are asking the public to share any information that could lead investigators to her location.

  Allaband, 23, went missing a week ago, after what was described by witnesses as a heated argument with a friend. According to investigators, she’d been spending time with some new people. Her cell phone was found by the side of Interstate 91, just past exit 19B, with the SIM card removed.

  Allaband’s mother extends this plea: “Rose was a nice girl who trusted people too easily. She thought magic was all fun, and didn’t understand how people would use her for what she could do. I am terrified to think what might have happened to her. If anyone has seen my daughter or has any information about her whereabouts, please, we’re begging you to call 911 and report anything, no matter how small.”

  Vince could have had something to do with Rose Allaband’s disappearance. He’d convinced Charlie to trust him, after all. She’d gotten in his van lots of times. A nice girl wouldn’t have stood a chance.

  But to be that person, he would have to be what Salt had called him—a shape-shifter. Because the Vince she’d known was the kind of person who’d go to the store and get those stupid bran flakes because they were healthy, and Charlie had been wanting to eat healthier. Who’d patched up Charlie’s cuts just because she’d been bleeding.

  But if Red had committed the murders, Vince would feel responsible. Red had been part of him, after all.

  Lucipurrr came over and butted her head against the edge of the laptop. Absently, she scratched under the cat’s chin.

  Lionel Salt wanted Charlie to believe that Vince was planning to use the Liber Noctem to make his shadow into some kind of immortal monster. According to Knight Singh, it wasn’t worth what Salt paid for it. But the Hierophant sure acted like the book did something.

  If Salt were right, and Vince intended to do this ritual with Red, what was he waiting for? He’d had the book for a year, and it wasn’t like he was a procrastinator. He didn’t put off stuff. He was the only person in her household who had ever taken lint out of the dryer.

  Impulsively, she typed “Edmund Carver + Adeline Salt” into the browser window. Scrolled through articles with more photos of them—Vince with a scarf around his throat, Adeline hanging off his shoulder as though trying to appear far more sober than she was, a small smear of lipstick at the very corner of her mouth.

  Then a gossip blog article, with aerial photos of some people on a yacht.

  Charlie squinted. On the prow, two bodies were entangled with one another, half hidden by a shade sail. The woman’s blond hair was tossed to one side, and her bikini top was pushed up. The man was bent over her, but she knew him even without seeing his face. She knew them both. Adeline and Vince.

  IS HEIRESS CHEATING ON SHIPPING TYCOON?

  Charlie couldn’t help remembering how Adeline had outright said she was glad he and Charlie weren’t together anymore. And all those photos of Adeline and Edmund together at all those fundraisers, balls, and parties in New York. Never anyone else by his side, or hers.

  Couldn’t help thinking of the photo in his wallet.

  Posey came in, leaning against the doorframe. She was holding a pack of worn tarot cards in her hand. “What are you looking at?”

  “Proof the Hall family curse is real,” Charlie said, and closed her laptop.

  “How about you shuffle the deck and pick three cards.”

  Charlie gave her a look. “Oh, come on.”

  “Think of tarot as a psychological tool,” Posey told her. “Accessing the unconscious. Jung was all for it. And you need to get at the part of your mind that’s holding you back from being a gloamist.”

  “Fine,” Charlie said, accepting the stack. She shuffled them as though she was about to play poker.

  “Concentrate on your question,” Posey told her. “It helps if you close your eyes. Ask the cards what’s blocking your magic.”

  But what Charlie wanted to know about was Red.

  She flipped over the top three cards without looking and handed them to Posey. Maybe this is why people went to psychics, in the end. Because they needed help and stopped caring how they got it. Any port in this motherfucking storm.

  “These are all major arcana,” her sister said, frowning at them. “Interesting.”

  “What does that mean?”

  Posey didn’t look happy. “That something big is going on.”

  “Okay,” Charlie said uncertainly. “What else?”

  Posey set down the first card. “The Magician. The conversion of the spiritual into material. It’s a card of new beginnings, so I am guessing this is about you being a gloamist.”

  “Nothing we don’t know,” Charlie said, although she was a bit impressed.

  Posey set down the second. “The Fool.”

  Charlie rolled her eyes.

  “See how he’s about to step off that cliff? And is oblivious to the danger.”

  “I see.”

  Charlie’s sister looked at the final card, raised an eyebrow, and grinned. “Ooooh. Looks like there’s a taboo that you’re in danger of breaking.”

  Charlie frowned. “Which card is that?”

  Posey showed it to her. A religious figure sat on a throne in red robes holding up his hands as two monks knelt before him. The Hierophant.

  * * *

  That night, Charlie went down to the basement and took out the aerial silk that she hadn’t practiced on for months, the one that was supposed to keep her limber enough to slither through windows like the Grinch.

  She strung the cloth up on a hook, shook off the dust and at least one annoyed spider. Then she climbed in and went through the old exercises. The ones she used to do every morning, before pickpocketing practice. She was stiffer than she used to be, but as her muscles warmed, she found herself relaxing into the rhythm of it.

  On the wall, her shadow followed every pose.

  24

  SAD SONGS ON REPEAT

  The next morning, Charlie brought a cup of coffee back to her mattress on the floor and finally returned the call from Rapture. They wanted her to come in the following night and then go back to working regular hours for the rest of the week.

  Charlie was fine with that, so long as she could take off Saturday, for Salt’s party. Book or not, she was going to have to attend.

  Then, after taking a huge sip of coffee, as the lazy golden light spilled over her worn sheets, she called the bursar’s office at UMass. A grouchy-sounding woman picked up.

  “Can you look up my outstanding bill?” Charlie asked. “It’s under Posey Hall.”

  “Hold on,” the woman said with a long-suffering sigh.

  Charlie bit the skin around the edge of her thumb, trying not to play out the worst possible scenarios.

  “It looks like you missed a deadline,” the woman said. “There’s a hold on your account.”

  Charlie’s heart kicked up. “No, I had until the end of the month. I have the letter around here somewhere.”

  “End of last month,” the woman said.

  For a moment, all Charlie could do was stare at the wall. It was possible that Doreen had gotten her brother to do this, but it was equally possible that Charlie had made a mistake.

  “I can get it to you,” she said. “Monday.”

  “Monday, or you wash out and have to reapply for next semester,” the woman said impatiently, and hung up.

  Charlie flopped back on her bed, looking up at the ceiling, trying to convince herself to keep going. If she stopped, she might not get out of that bed for weeks.

  She dialed Vince’s boss, a story ready. But as soon as he picked up the phone, he launched into a tirade. “Tell that son of a bitch that he’s dead to me! You hear that? You tell him that he can’t just go on a bender and expect to have a job when he sobers up.”

  “He’s not—” Charlie started, but he’d already hung up. And even if he hadn’t, he obviously had no idea where Vince was.

  Three calls. Two hang-ups. Maybe she’d lost her touch.

  Charlie sighed, letting her head fall back to her pillow. She missed him, and wasn’t sure she’d ever known him. She might be able to guess where Vince would go, but Remy Carver was an utter mystery.

  But maybe not to Dr. Liam Clovin, who’d sold three valuable books to Paul Ecco. Who’d obviously known a lot more than he’d let on.

  Charlie got up and started pulling off the sweatpants she’d slept in, her shadow following her motions. She watched it against the wall, stepping into panties, tugging its bra over its head, tying back its hair with an elastic band.

  “We’re magic,” she whispered to her shadow, to herself.

  There was no response.

  “Are you hungry?” she asked.

  As she moved her hand to her leg, the hairs stood up on the back of her neck and prickled all along her arms. She hooked a nail under the hard edge of a scab and pulled at it, like she was ripping off a Band-Aid. Blood came sluggishly, beading up and running off her ankle.

  It never hit the floor.

  * * *

  After a breakup, it was normal to listen to sad songs on repeat. It was normal to spend hours staring at old photos and letters, or burning them on the grill, or even drawing devil horns on every picture you could find of your ex. Normal to eat an entire carton of ice cream on the couch and wash it down with a bottle of chardonnay. Normal to talk about the guy incessantly to your friends, to call his number just to hear his voice on the answering machine and then hang up without leaving a message.

  But just because people did those things didn’t mean they were good ideas. More like pressing a bruise to check if it still hurt.

  Going to bother your ex-boyfriend’s roommate felt a lot like one of those things people did but shouldn’t.

  It took a few more calls, but Charlie discovered that Liam Clovin was a resident at Baystate Medical Center. That made getting to him more difficult in some ways and simpler in others. Charlie couldn’t just make an appointment and confront him when he came in to treat her for her bunions, or whatever.

  But medical residents are famously exhausted, and exhaustion means limited attention. Liam was going to be concentrating on his job, which meant that he’d have nothing left over to detect a trap before it sprang.

  Not only that, but Liam Clovin was on the cusp of all his hard work paying off. He’d sacrificed a lot of wild nights to get where he was, put in the time studying, took out loans. As a medical resident, he was so close to six figures that he must be able to taste them. He had plenty to lose.

  Charlie had practically nothing.

  There were several ways to waylay medical students, but the simplest was to hang out in the cafeteria around lunchtime. They might have lectures, or other duties keeping them from a particular hour, but if she waited, he’d get hungry eventually.

  But to spot him, she was going to have to figure out what he looked like. Her initial searches online were fruitless. No photos of him with other medical residents at Baystate, although she scrolled through official images for the better part of an hour. He didn’t seem to even have a Facebook. Finally, she discovered a picture of him in Remy’s graduating class at NYU. There he was, Liam Clovin, red-haired, squinting against the sun. And not far off, Edmund Vincent Carver, looking straight into the camera.

  Charlie pulled out clothes she used for this kind of role. A pale blue turtleneck to cover her tattoos. Her regular jeans. A brown bobbed wig that she could shove her hair under. Neutral makeup.

  By the time she’d driven to Baystate Medical Center and parked as far out into the visitor lot as was possible, she’d slid into character.

  Inside, she gave her driver’s license to the bored woman at the desk, and when asked, claimed to be meeting a cousin in the cafeteria. That part of the hospital was open to the public, so no one had any follow-up questions.

  She asked for directions at the gift shop, her gaze checking for cameras as she went. There were plenty.

  The Baystate cafeteria reminded her of the one at the community college where she’d taken two classes in psychology before dropping out and taking a six-week bartending course instead. It had steel counters, no surface that couldn’t be quickly wiped clean. The smells were familiar too—reheated frozen things in gravies thickened with cornstarch, milky chowder, onions, and hazelnut coffee.

  Charlie found a table in a corner and waited. After the first half hour went by without incident, she got up and found herself a prepackaged ham with swiss on rye, a coffee, and a water. By the time Charlie returned, someone had snagged her table. She found a new spot, chewed, and checked her phone.

  She had an angry—and possibly booze-soaked—message from Adam on her real phone:

  you bitch you should have just left us alone. You think that _oreen is I to leave me bacuase of what you said to her then you ha ve another thing comgin. she is as angry at you as I am and amybe more now that I told her the wayt hat you tricked me and stoe what was mine. She tld me everything/ bitch bitch bitch I hoper you die.

  She set the cell down on the table, feeling as though it had bitten her. She ought to have seen that the situation was going to go bad once she’d lifted the book. Hell, Suzie Lambton had told her it was going to blow up in her face way before that.

  I hoper you die too, fuckknuckle, Charlie thought, and deleted the message.

  She was trying to calculate just how much she’d screwed up, when Liam Clovin walked into the cafeteria. He was pale and skinny, with a reddish beard. Since he was a classmate of Edmund’s, she knew he had to be around her age, but the scrubs and facial hair made him seem older.

  Because he’d done something with his life. Not like her. Charlie Hall, spending half her time trying to blunt her fangs and the rest of it hunting.

  She waited until he’d gotten his food and found a table.

  “Hello,” she said, sitting down next to him. “Mind if I sit here?”

  Now, some guys think that women con artists have it easy. That all they have to do is show some leg, like Bugs Bunny hitchhiking in drag, and the mark screeches to a halt, tongue lolling.

  First of all, that’s not even a little bit true.

  And second of all, if a woman decides a low-cut top is necessary, that’s because cons work differently for her. Offer a man a business opportunity and he’s suspicious, not that it’s a con, but that because she’s a woman she doesn’t know what she’s talking about. It’s a delicate business, to act clever enough to be taken seriously and still make him feel like he can screw her over.