And it would help if there was someone else to throw suspicion on.

  Certainly, it would be satisfying to hang the whole thing on Mark. But he was a wild card, and it would be better to point Archie toward one of the puppeteer gloamists—anything to discredit them until Malhar was out of there. If that was impossible, then maybe it would be possible to make them believe that Malhar was being puppeted by Mr. Punch to further hide his identity. That wouldn’t work long term, but it might buy some time. And once they left, she’d have to discredit Archie to Mr. Punch.

  But even then, she wasn’t sure if it would be possible just from him figuring out that he’d been impersonated. And Charlie had no idea what to do about that.

  Her first step would be to get badges off Vera. I am coming to your cottage at 6:30 a.m., she texted her sister. Order coffee.

  She heard the chime of her sister responding, then set her phone down. Told herself that she had to be brave. Took a last slug of wine and turned to Red.

  He met her gaze with the hollows of his smoking eyes. Despite everything, she felt her heart jolt with a kick of animal fear.

  Then, she leaned forward to kiss him. He kissed her back with an intensity that felt at least partly like relief. Maybe he was nervous too. The thought made her bold. Her fingers tangled in his hair and she gave it a short tug.

  He made a sound against her mouth.

  “You like that?” A whole year she’d lived with him and hadn’t known.

  He drew back, looking down at her with a wild intensity. “I—yes.” He swallowed whatever else he had been about to say.

  “I am going,” she told him, sliding her hands over his skin, letting her nails scratch him lightly as she went, “to spend the rest of tonight figuring out everything you like.”

  * * *

  The conference wasn’t supposed to start until nine, but according to the schedule, check-in started at seven thirty in the morning. That was when Charlie showed up, Malhar and Posey in tow. Red hung back, waiting for his cue.

  “Act like you’re in charge,” she reminded Malhar just before he opened the door. He wore the suit jacket from the night before over a t-shirt and jeans as though he was a bro from Silicon Valley.

  In jeans and a black sweater with an onyx knife hidden in her borrowed Prada boots, Charlie worried she was overdressed. She needed to appear as though she was a member of Mr. Punch’s staff.

  Inside the room, a woman with short gray hair and wearing a dark blue pantsuit set more gift bags out on an already loaded table. Vera, the overworked assistant. Badges were being spit out of a small printer, beside a pile of lanyards. She hadn’t assembled all of it yet, which was perfect.

  The game was simple. Charlie needed Vera away from the computer long enough to officially enter her and Red into the attendees registry. Simple, but not exactly easy. But Charlie had one thing going for her—no one would suspect the mysterious guest of honor of wanting that level of petty interference.

  “Good morning,” Malhar said.

  “Mr. Punch!” Vera looked distressed to see him. “Is something the matter? Didn’t you get your materials? They were supposed to be sent to your room this morning and you should have received an email—”

  “It’s not that,” Malhar said. “One of the hotel staff had some questions about the breakfast menu, but I couldn’t find Archie.”

  “Oh.” She looked around at her piles. “Well, you can tell him Archie won’t be long.”

  “I’m afraid I may have promised that you would speak with him, since I heard you were in charge of logistics. My apologies.” This was what they’d practiced, and Malhar was doing a good job of selling it.

  “No, that’s fine.” She sucked in a deep breath. “I’ll talk with the hotel. I just have to lock this room up—and find a way to put up a sign on the door in case someone comes looking for their badge.”

  “We can help,” Charlie said. “We just move bags to that table and stuff these lanyards? That won’t be a problem.”

  “I can’t let you do that.” Her smile stiffened.

  “It’s no trouble at all.” Charlie moved over to where the bags sat. “And if someone comes, we’ll tell them you’ll be right back.”

  “You’re not worried about us being in here, are you?” Malhar delivered his most important line. Archie would have cautioned his assistant not to offend the Cabal leader.

  “I’ve just got my system is all,” Vera demurred.

  Charlie gave her a smile, trying to project clueless innocence. “What if we guard the room until you get back, but promise not to touch anything? If anyone comes in, we’ll direct them to wait.”

  Charlie could see Vera debating. What she wanted to do was lock the room up, but that would involve kicking them out and she would get in a lot of trouble if Mr. Punch was offended.

  “That would be wonderful,” she said, finally, caving.

  “He said he would be in the main office,” Malhar told her, as though just remembering.

  “Did you get his name?” Vera asked.

  “Afraid not.” Malhar made a face.

  Vera was going on a fruitless errand. But it would stop her from going out to reception and coming immediately back. The walk to the main office, the frustration at finding it closed, and then returning would give Charlie an admittedly small window, but one she could work with.

  “And you won’t touch anything?” Vera asked, looking as though she thought one of them could possibly push a big, red button and have the whole retreat come down around their heads.

  “I promise,” said Posey, speaking for the first time.

  “Absolutely,” Malhar told her, holding up his hands in surrender.

  She must have felt guilty, because she stopped scowling. “I know you’re only trying to help. I do appreciate it.”

  “We’re not going to cause any trouble to your process,” Charlie promised.

  Then, with obvious reservations, Vera left, looking for a hotel employee that didn’t exist, in an office that wasn’t due to open for forty-five minutes.

  Charlie went immediately to the laptop on the table. The file Vera had been printing from was open, so it was easy to add “Lena Hall” and a deliberately misspelled “R. V. Caver” to the spreadsheet of attendees. It was possible that Archie had checked to see if Remy was on the list after last night. Hopefully, the misspelling would explain why he hadn’t come up in a search.

  Once that was done, Charlie checked Vera’s Google Calendar. And there on the screen were a series of appointments. The first one was marked for 8 a.m., which meant they’d missed intervening. One quickened shadow was already gone. The second was set for 11:30 a.m. That was the window for their heist. Charlie had worked with less.

  When Vera returned, more flustered than ever, she thanked them for waiting and printed their badges.

  Red came in a few minutes later, conveniently stepping out of shadow just before the doorway. It took a little longer to get his badge, as first Vera had to find it in the system, then he had to explain the whole thing about ID to her, and then she had to call Archie. By the time he and Charlie left, more people were coming in. They went on to breakfast.

  “Morning,” Red said, under his breath.

  Even that made Charlie feel a flush of heat prickle on her skin. This was ridiculous. She needed to focus.

  In the hall, talking with a person she didn’t recognize, she saw the redheaded puppeteer who’d dragged her out of her house to see Mr. Punch. She turned her head, hoping he didn’t see her.

  “Tonight we leave,” Charlie said. “After the cocktail party.”

  Posey looked mulish. “Nothing happened last night.”

  “The person who killed Rooster is here somewhere,” Charlie reminded her. “We don’t know who he’s looking for.”

  Red put his hand on Malhar’s shoulder. “Very possibly Mr. Punch.”

  “You think the psycho who murdered all those people in Hatfield wants to kill me?” Malhar said.

  “It’s not really you,” Red reminded him unhelpfully.

  “I am going to prepare for my speech,” Malhar told them. “And, apparently, my demise.”

  He must really like Posey to have let her talk him into this.

  “If anyone seems like they’re following you, call,” Charlie told him. “And Posey, keep watching the shadows.”

  Her sister nodded, heading off with Malhar.

  The breakfast area was set up as a buffet. Charlie and Red walked down the line. She filled her plate with fruit and something labeled BLUEBERRY & MASCARPONE–STUFFED FRENCH TOAST. Red got a bowl of congee, bacon, and three soft-boiled eggs. Then they seated themselves at a table with two strangers who immediately introduced themselves with firm handshakes.

  “I’m Lars,” the first one said, pushing hair a brighter blond than Red’s back from his face. He wore plaid pants with a dark blue polo shirt and neon blue socks. “I flew in from Sweden. There are so many retreats that promise so many things. I hope this one is sincere in its claims.”

  “Lena,” Charlie said. “And this is—”

  “Hej,” Red said. “Call me Carver.”

  Lars laughed. “Hej! Very good.”

  “And I am Shawn,” the other guy interrupted. He wore a baseball cap over dark hair, dusted with gray. With his jeans and sneakers, he looked casual, but the labels made it clear the outfit was expensive. “From Los Angeles. I want some unvarnished truths. Like, did you know the Cabals started because one guy stole a bunch of books from a library? He and his friends read them and then they burned them. That was the start. But no one talks about that.”

  Charlie had no idea if Shawn’s origin story was true or not, but she leaned heavily toward not.

  “Instead of wanting knowledge to be for everyone, they decided it would just be their little anti-elite clique. So they came up with the idea of the Cabals.”

  That definitely wasn’t true. No one called themselves “cabals”—it’s not like that was a particularly nice descriptor. That word just hung on them so long that it stuck.

  The guy was on a roll, clearly pleased to have an audience. “Then these Cabals sprang up all over the world. They managed to gather up all the resources just because they were the first. But they have no business sense. I’ve met some Cabal members and let me tell you—they’re like any downline in an MLM—already so invested that they have to exploit others to justify what they’ve already done.”

  Charlie let out a surprised snort of breath. He wasn’t exactly wrong.

  Lars, though, was not having it. “The Cabals rose up because that’s the traditional way things work—some authority at the top. An apprenticeship for new gloamists. But I admit they may turn out to be too old fashioned. They cling to the idea that the solution to their problems is going to be found in musty old tomes. And they can be ridiculously hierarchical. They delight in being enigmatic. Still, they’re what we have and I look forward to hearing whatever they have to teach us.”

  “And they haze like a fucking fraternity,” Shawn put in.

  Charlie wished Posey was there to hear this. But more than that, she wished she could speak to Red, mind to mind. She’d love to hear his running commentary.

  Charlie took a sip of coffee and poked at her breakfast. She wasn’t sure these guys disagreed with one another, but they were definitely not to be outdone.

  Shawn went back to complaining. “They make you do a bunch of things for them and only give you a tiny bit of knowledge in exchange. They want to gatekeep shadow magic. You remember that book, years ago, that led to so many deaths? I think it was a Cabal plant, to make sure that people outside of the Cabals knew they better join.”

  “So why are you willing to listen to one of their leaders?” Charlie asked.

  “If he has secrets to impart, I want them and—” At that point Lars stopped, because Archie was standing at the front of the room and clearing his throat, Malhar beside him.

  “Welcome, everyone. I trust we’ve all had a good breakfast and enough caffeine to face what is ahead,” Archie began in his big booming voice. “First of all, I thank you for being the people you are—successful in your own rights, and yet still curious.”

  Charlie couldn’t help thinking of Curiosity Books and its slogan: The world belongs to the curious. Its proprietor died for following his own advice.

  “We are here to lend our time, energy, and yes, money, to the building of a better world. A world in which the depths of human consciousness and human power are tapped. I know there are doubters among you who believe nothing new will be revealed. I doubted too. Your skepticism speaks well of you. No one gets to where you all are without being able to spot the difference between fool’s gold and real gold.

  “To get us into the right state of mind, we’re going to start the day with a guided meditation to get us relaxed. So when you finish up your food, please head to the conference area and we will begin.”

  Charlie rose and started out when she spotted Mark in the back of the room. He was dressed in a leather coat, black jeans, and a white shirt that was stained with sweat around the collar.

  She still couldn’t look at him without one of the worst times in her life flooding back. The bullet. The sound of it cracking through the windshield. The man in the passenger seat thrown back by the force of it striking. She’d screamed and screamed and screamed, her car slamming into a Jeep parked on the curb.

  And with that, the memory of him, before. Of lying in bed together. I love you to the moon and back, he’d whispered in her ear.

  Charlie strode toward Mark. As she came toward him, her expression steely, he ducked toward the convention space.

  She rushed after him, just short of breaking into a run. He still got into the room before she could catch him.

  As she crossed the threshold, she realized that enough people were looking at her that she couldn’t drag him out without someone stopping her—or at least asking a lot of questions. She could, however, sit next to him.

  “I know what you’re doing here,” Charlie said in a low voice and was gratified to see his eyes widen. “And you should leave.”

  “Charlie Hall,” he grated out after a moment. “You always think you know everything and you’re always wrong.”

  Prison had not been kind to him. He looked haggard and gaunt, fingernails yellowed, swathed in his coat as though he was cold. If she needed further proof that he was involved in this scheme somehow, it was that no one who was that much of a rumpled mess would get into Solaluna without a much better outfit or actual money. The only effort he seemed to have made was dousing himself in a lot of cologne.

  “If I’m so wrong,” she said, “tell me how.”

  He snorted. “Later.”

  A young woman in loose flowing purple and a lot of gold woven into her braids entered the room. The program was about to begin.

  “Just trust me for once,” she said, exasperated. “Or don’t and face the consequences.”

  “You never face consequences,” Mark told her.

  Charlie got up as the woman began taking them through a ritual meditation. So much for his apologies. It just figured that somehow he’d gone back to blaming her for the situation he found himself in.

  Well, if her luck held, she’d have time later to try to get information out of him. Right now, she needed to get to Archie’s room.

  In the hall, Charlie took Red’s hand and pulled him toward the stairs. “Never mind Mark. I shouldn’t have bothered. Let’s get this done.” It was easy to give him a besotted grin, hoping that if anyone saw them, there would be absolutely no question as to why they were sneaking off.

  “I like watching you work,” he told her as they moved into the hall of the second floor.

  Room 210 was at the end of a hall, set off from the others. Probably a suite. Luxurious, but not a cottage. Even with selling shadows, Archie wasn’t feeling flush.

  Charlie looked down the hall as Red spilled into darkness. He didn’t flow under the door, though. A moment later, he re-formed beside her. “Onyx,” he said. “I can’t get in.”

  “Guess I’m still good for something,” Charlie told him.

  Despite the cost of this place, the locks on the doors were older and blessedly not all that secure. Charlie supposed people willing to pay the exorbitant prices didn’t need to steal trinkets from one another. Taking out Topher’s credit card, she jammed it into the gap between the door and frame.

  “Keep watch on the hall without seeming like you’re keeping watch on the hall,” Charlie said, pushing it harder. She went down on one knee.

  “I don’t know how to do that,” Red said.

  Well, then she better be quick. She wiggled the card lower and felt the moment it hit the strike. She dragged it down, hard, sawing it back and forth to try to catch the edge of the latch bolt.

  With a click, the card slotted into place. Charlie turned the handle and the door opened.

  “You’re fast,” he said, slipping past her and entering Archie’s room.

  “So they say,” Charlie offered, following.

  It was a suite, but the living area opened onto the bedroom, making for a large space but with little privacy.

  On the floor, suitcases stood open, clothing scattered around them. A dopp kit sat on the bed, bottles of pills spilling out of it. The ironing board had been left open and when Charlie glanced into the bathroom, she saw the sink covered in a smear of shaving cream, flecked with hair.

  On the bright side, no matter what they disarranged, Charlie doubted it would be noticed. But it was going to be hard to find anything, much less shadows.

  “He can’t really mean to bring people back here, can he?” Charlie asked. “This is a mess.”

  Busy opening and closing drawers, Red didn’t answer.

  Charlie went into the bathroom and looked under the sink. Extra toilet paper, but otherwise empty. A large claw-foot tub had a damp towel thrown across it. The shower had a tipped-over shampoo bottle, opalescent goo pooling around it.

  Archie had been running late, obviously. And stressed. But had he intended to come back here? Was this really where he was keeping a bunch of incredibly valuable shadows?