And if he wants to screw her too, well that’s an even more delicate business.

  But while the disadvantages that a woman con artist had were manifold, there were advantages. For instance, women seemed less threatening. If a man had sat down across from Liam, he would have reacted differently. He might not want Charlie there, but he didn’t seem worried she was dangerous.

  “No,” he said, annoyed. “I mean, yes, I do mind. I really don’t want compa—”

  She reached over and took his hand. He jerked it away from her. Which made sense. Who wanted a total stranger grabbing you?

  Charlie let her eyes fill with tears. She pressed her fingers to her mouth in horror. “But it’s the truth!” she sobbed, loud enough for people—including nurses and doctors—to hear her.

  He started to stand. No doubt he wanted to get away from her as quickly as possible. A totally reasonable reaction. The problem with reasonable reactions, though, was that they were easy to predict.

  She grabbed his wrist, and this time she spoke low enough that only he could hear. “Sit the fuck down, Liam Clovin, or I am going to make such a scene that everyone in this room is going to believe that when you treated my dying father, I smelled alcohol on your breath. I am going to be loud, and I am going to be convincing. Or you can tell me what I want to know, and I will act like you’re a sympathetic doctor comforting a patient through a tragedy. You can even pick the tragedy, if you like.”

  That was the other advantage women con artists had, the flip side of not being taken seriously. To the public, they looked like marks.

  “Who are you?” He was obviously furious, but he sat in the chair across from her. “What do you want?”

  “This won’t take long,” she said. “I just have a few questions about Edmund Carver.”

  His frown deepened. “You were at my door the other day.”

  She probably had only a few minutes before he managed to shake her. “Where is he?”

  “Dead,” he said.

  “Try again,” she told him.

  He started to stand. “I don’t need to tell you anything.”

  “Maybe you also got me pregnant,” she mused.

  “This isn’t a soap opera!” he hissed.

  “Not yet, it isn’t,” she told him, eyebrows raised.

  He glared, but he sat. Put his head in his hand. Then he grabbed his sandwich and started taking it out of the plastic. “Look, he paid me to let him keep some stuff at my apartment and to use the address for mail he didn’t want his grandfather to see. That’s it.”

  “What did he keep there?” Charlie asked, wondering if it could be this easy.

  “He had a closet with a padlock on it. It wasn’t any of my business what he kept in there.”

  “But you knew,” Charlie said, hoping that if she sounded sure, he’d believe she was sure.

  “Some.” Liam looked across the cafeteria, as though hoping to spot someone who could save him. “A spare phone. Books from his father’s collection. Clothes. His driver’s license. A fucking krugerrand, if you can believe it. He was planning on leaving, I know that.”

  “Then you—what? Broke in there and sold his books to Paul Ecco.”

  “He asked me to sell them!” Liam said, a little too loudly.

  She smiled to let him know that he’d screwed up, because the sale of those books occurred after Remy was supposed to be dead. “And when was that?”

  Liam sighed. “Okay, I saw him that night, okay? He showed up absolutely out of his mind. He was practically naked, wearing a woman’s robe he told me he swiped out of a laundromat. Bare feet. Wasn’t himself. Said he needed me to sell some books for him. I did it. I didn’t know about the girl. I didn’t know about any of it.”

  “And then you helped him fake his death,” Charlie said. “You got a body out of the hospital, is that it?”

  “No!” Liam half stood before realizing how many people had turned to look at him. He sat back down, even angrier. “No, of course not. I had nothing to do with that. Any of it.”

  “What did he say happened to him?”

  He shrugged. “He didn’t. What I worry is that he came from killing someone and got rid of his clothes because they were covered in blood. But back then, I figured his grandfather had thrown him out after he discovered Remy had a plane ticket booked for Atlanta.”

  Something drove Vince away from that house, after years of going along with whatever monstrous business his grandfather was engaged in. On his own, he’d be broke, after more than a decade of living like a prince. And he’d been poor enough that he wouldn’t have had any illusions about what that would be like—or how quickly a couple of grand of stolen money could get spent. “What was in Georgia?”

  Liam nodded, rubbed his face. “His mother. She was the one whose letters he was trying to hide from his grandfather. She died of an overdose the night before he showed up at the apartment. It must have pushed him over the edge.”

  “Did he seem like the kind of person who could kill someone?” Charlie knew the way she was asking was wrong, that it was giving him cover to deny it. She wanted him to deny it.

  Liam considered the question. “Remy had a morbid sense of humor, but I’ve heard worse. I’m a doctor. Gallows humor is our thing.”

  She smiled encouragingly.

  “Anyone can do anything under the right circumstances,” he went on. “And look—one of the doctors that works here is known for being generous with prescriptions. I saw Remy’s cousin Adeline buy some ketamine off him. Rich partiers like prescription drugs. They’re more expensive than street drugs but come in safer formulations, and you’re dealing with people unlikely to roll you. Who knows what Remy was into when he wasn’t around me.”

  “Ketamine?” Charlie’s friends were more a weed-and-oxy crowd.

  “It makes you dissociative,” Liam said. “In lower doses, it confers feelings of euphoria. In higher doses, people enter a state not unlike a coma, except they’re partially conscious. Sometimes unable to speak, they can have hallucinations, and memory loss.”

  Charlie wondered what had been in her drink, all that time ago.

  “And that’s enough from me,” Liam said, moving to stand. “I don’t know where he is, and I don’t know where the book is either. Okay?”

  “The book?” Charlie echoed.

  Liam snorted. “You think you’re the first person to come around looking for it, or him? Two months after Remy showed up half naked, this young guy comes by, muttering to himself. Never taking his hands out of his pockets. Threatening me. There have been other visits since too. If I knew where Remy was, I would tell the police, not any of you.”

  Charlie took out her phone and flipped to a photo of her with Vince. They were at the Loews in Hadley on Throwback Friday, waiting to see The Bride of Frankenstein. It wasn’t a great picture; he was a little blurry, but it was still obviously him. “I was his friend. See?”

  Liam appeared visibly relieved. “I still don’t know anything. Remy’s gone.”

  “He mailed me something.” Charlie reached into her pocket and took out a tiny key. It was actually to a music box their mother had given Posey, but it was small and silver and might have gone to anything. “And said that if anything happened to him, I’d know where to look. But I have no idea where to even start. He insisted it was important, that it had something important in it. I was hoping it would prove he was innocent. If you can’t help me find him, you can help me find that.”

  It wasn’t the worst story Charlie had ever come up with.

  Liam frowned, considering. “Back in college, Remy’s grandfather would yank him out for weeks at a time, on a whim. And when Remy came back, he’d be a mess.”

  “What kind of mess?” Charlie asked.

  “Angry,” Liam said. “But because he didn’t know when it was going to happen, he hid stuff, even back then. He used to talk about how there are places rich people will never see, even if they’re staring right at them. If he really hid something, he would hide it in a place like that.”

  Charlie wondered if, when Liam was a surgeon, and rich, he would look past those places too. Wondered if that was the dream.

  She reached across the table to put her hand on his arm, trying to radiate sincerity. “Thanks for talking with me, even though I pressured you into it. Remy always said you were a good guy.”

  Liam gave her a sad smile. “I thought he was too.”

  * * *

  Out in the parking lot, the sun had sunk low and red behind the buildings. Charlie checked the time on her phone. One more night before she had to be back at Rapture. Four more days before Salt wanted his book.

  Liam’s description of the person who’d been looking for Vince had matched the Hierophant. She knew he wanted the book and had apparently been wanting it for a while. But what she still couldn’t figure was, lies aside, what all these people actually wanted the thing for.

  The sound of footsteps interrupted her thoughts. A man was behind her, his footfalls faster the closer he got.

  25

  BLACK CAT. TOAD. CROW.

  There’s a moment of dissonance when people break the social contract. A moment when the civilized mind searches for some reason why a person might be running toward you that doesn’t mean they’re out to get you.

  Luckily, Charlie’s mind wasn’t particularly civilized. She raced for her car.

  He chased after, boots thudding dully on the asphalt.

  She ran, full-out. Eight hours on her feet most nights meant her leg muscles were no joke.

  But he was already too close and had momentum on his side. He caught her arm, spinning her around. She stumbled against her car and looked up into his face.

  “Adam?” His eyes were bloodshot and his breath could peel paint, but it was him nonetheless.

  He grabbed hold of her wig and tugged hard. It ripped loose, pulling pins and hair with it. “Charlie Hall. You miserable, monstrous bitch. Thought you were going to con me, and then rob me?”

  “Yeah, something like that,” Charlie said evenly, meeting his gaze. No point in denying it.

  He hit her, knuckles hard against her cheek. The back of her head hit the window of her car. She would have fallen except her fingers caught the handle of the door and she was able to hold on and stay mostly upright.

  He punched her in the stomach.

  All the air went out of her. She curled around the pain like a pill bug.

  Charlie might talk tough, but she had never been in a real fistfight. Even with her sister, they’d mostly resorted to hair pulling and the occasional mean scratch.

  Think, Charlie, she told herself, but shock and pain dulled her thoughts.

  “Where’s the book?” he shouted. “Give it to me!”

  “Gone,” she managed.

  “I am going to break your face,” he told her. “Your ugly fucking face. I am so sick of hearing about you. Everyone thinks you were so great, but I’m better. You hear that? I was always the best.”

  She spat at him. Saliva sprayed his cheek. He flinched in surprise, closing his eyes, giving her a moment to tear out of his arms.

  Racing around to the other side of her car, she jerked open the door. He grabbed her throat.

  And then she was in two places, as though there were more than three dimensions to the world. Her consciousness split. She was both the person screaming and trying to claw at his hand and she was something else, which rammed into him from the side.

  Her shadow. She felt a pull somewhere in the center of her. And she saw it, a figure all of darkness, as though someone cut a hole in the universe. Her and not her. A mirror that reflected back no light.

  He stumbled, and her butt hit the seat before he got hold of her again.

  Animal instinct took over. Her body went wild, kicking and screaming. One kick landed against his upper arm, another scraped his knuckles. He howled in pain and let go of her. Charlie yanked the door shut. She slammed her hand down on the lock button.

  The clicking sound from all four doors felt deafening.

  Adam pulled on the door handle and Charlie had a horrible moment of being sure that it would open.

  He beat his fists against the glass window.

  She just sat there, her fingers running over the steering wheel. He was shouting at her, but her mind felt far away, numb with shock.

  Even though she’d known Adam was terrible and that she’d robbed him—she’d underestimated the danger. A year out of the game, and she was fucking up left and right.

  Though it was dormant, there was something new between Charlie and her shadow, a buzzing of sensation, an almost umbilical connection. A phantom limb. A homunculus.

  With shaking hands, Charlie rooted out the key from her bag. Thankfully, the car roared to life. Adam pounded on the hood, and Charlie gave him a momentary warning of revving the engine, before hitting the gas. He reeled back just in time to avoid being hit. Heart thundering, Charlie steered herself out of the parking lot.

  At the first red light, everything looked a little hazy, as though she was seeing it through a Vaselined lens. She realized her eye was starting to swell.

  Also, she thought she might be having a slight panic attack.

  She pulled over at a gas station about a mile away and checked her face in the mirror. Her left eye was purpling. Her mouth was cut, upper lip swollen like an aesthetician had gone ham with a needle full of filler.

  Charlie was a mess. There were enough people wanting to knock her around that they were going to have to take a number, like at a deli counter.

  And what it had taken out of her shadow. She remembered Vince’s words about unspooling. Remembered that it was freshly quickened, with no reserves of energy.

  She had to feed it.

  Charlie couldn’t remember where she’d first seen an image of a witch feeding her familiar from a third nipple. She recalled a woodcut, or an illustration meant to look like one. It must have been in the research she did for the Inquisition, back when she was Alonso.

  As a kid, Charlie hadn’t believed third nipples could be real until she looked them up. It turned out they could show up anywhere on the body. Imagine having a nipple on the back of your calf. Or on the knuckle of your finger.

  It made her think of a pronouncement some misogynist barstool scholar once made with great seriousness: Martinis are like breasts; one is too few, and three are too many.

  Which was bullshit. Ask anyone who’d been through surgery to remove a tumor. Or any fan of science fiction. Or anyone who liked martinis.

  Ask her shadow, which was curled around her, nursing as tightly on her skin as any familiar. Black cat. Toad. Crow. Spirits sent from the devil to make mischief in the world. One wound was fine for it, although even a few drops of blood are hard to squeeze out when your scabs were shallow and are healing.

  “You’re okay,” she soothed, as though to a child after a fall. “You’re okay now, right?” So hard not to think of it as a separate thing. So hard not to treat it like one.

  So hard not to love it. Or not feel responsible for it.

  It settled back into place, a cloak on her back, a carpet at her feet, a veil. Real magic. Her magic.

  It was never great to get punched in the face, but Charlie found herself smiling through her split lip. Until she realized that to have followed her from the hospital, Adam must have tailed her to the hospital. Which meant that he knew where she lived. And as angry as he was, he might drive straight there.

  She picked up her cell and, cradling it painfully against her cheek, called Posey.

  It rang. And rang.

  “I know you’re awake,” she muttered.

  Posey’s voice mail started up. She must be Zooming with a client. Charlie tried her again, letting it ring, hanging up and calling right back.

  Finally, Posey picked up. “Charlie, I’m—”

  “You’ve got to get out of the house. Now.”

  “Why do you sound so weird?”

  Charlie didn’t have time to explain about her swollen lip. “Seriously. Now. A coffeeshop. The drugstore. Doesn’t matter where. Just pick up your laptop and your wallet, go out the back door, and hop the low fence into our neighbor’s yard. The one with the trampoline.”

  “What’s—”

  “I am going to stay on the line while you do it.”

  “I’m in the middle of a card reading,” Posey protested.

  “It’s got to be right now,” Charlie said.

  “Gimme a sec.” Charlie could hear her talking to someone in a conciliatory way, although she couldn’t make out the words. Hopefully explaining to her client that she had to go.

  She came back a moment later. “You know I can’t drive.”

  “I will be with you the whole way,” Charlie said, keeping her voice calm and low. Radio voice. Hostage negotiator voice. “I promise. I’m coming to pick you up.”

  There was a long silence on the other end of the phone.

  “Please, Posey.” So much for staying calm. “Hurry.”

  “Fine. The backyard?”

  “So you’re not visible from the street.” Charlie wanted to get on the highway and race toward home, trying to beat Adam, but she knew it was better to focus on getting her sister out of the house. “Just. You know. Quick.”

  As Posey moved through the house, grabbing some things she said she needed and herding Lucipurrr into a cat carrier, Charlie dug her fingernails into the mound of her thumb. She wanted to scream at Posey to move faster. She wanted to do anything but sit there in the parking lot, hurt and powerless.

  Some huffing and rustling later, Posey said, “Okay, I’m outside with the cat. I’m heading toward the back.”

  “Go over the fence,” Charlie said. “You’re almost gone.”

  “You’ve got to explain—”

  “I will, I promise. And I’m sorry.”

  “What if the neighbors—”