Vince was a dependable guy. Tough, hardworking. The halting quality to the way he told stories about his family made it clear he was uncomfortable sharing much about his past, but she’d been sizing up marks for long enough to make some good guesses. The calluses on his hands were new, and he had the kind of straight teeth that were the result of braces. Knew the kind of stuff you learned in college but didn’t have any debt. He’d come from money.

  Charlie wondered if they’d turned their backs on him after he lost his shadow. She’d tried to ask, but his answers were evasive. And she hadn’t tried hard, because she wasn’t sure she wanted to hear about that better life, and how far he’d fallen from it.

  After all, he was willing to look the other way when the real Charlie Hall emerged, the one attracted to trouble, prone to bleak jags where she barely got out of bed. The one who’d spent years trying to blot out the ouroboros of her thoughts with too much alcohol, too many men, and a string of heists. People said that a person without a shadow didn’t experience emotion as fully or deeply as other people. Maybe that’s why it didn’t bother Vince, what she was and what she’d done.

  At home with Vince, she tried to be both fabulist and fabulist’s creation, a woman whose past as a con artist was long over and who wasn’t fighting down the urge to go off the rails again.

  And if he was slightly too good a listener, if she sometimes suspected that he could hear the hurt, feral part of her yearning to lash out, at least he didn’t push her away.

  “Come on,” Charlie said, poking Vince’s leg with her foot. She wanted him to come to bed with her, needed his breath in her hair and the weight of his arm across her to protect her from thinking about white bone or drying gore or men with shadows for hands.

  Vince opened his eyes. Stretched. Turned off the television. He had that tall man’s habit of hunching a little when he stood, like he was trying to be less intimidating.

  “Did you find the food?” he asked, passing her on the way to the bedroom, his fingertips sliding across her back. She shivered greedily, inhaling the perfume of bleach that still clung to his skin from work.

  “You’re a good guy,” she told him.

  He smiled in answer, confused but pleased.

  Vince paid his bills. He took out the trash. He was kind to the cat. And if he longed for another life, he was with Charlie now. It didn’t matter what was in his heart any more than it mattered what was in hers.

  3

  THE PAST

  When Charlie was thirteen, she told her mother she’d had a visitation. Mom had gotten deeply into crystals and divination after her divorce and had a friend who got “messages from angels,” so it wasn’t like the idea came from nowhere. Charlie claimed that the spirit of a witch who had died during the Inquisition had started speaking to her, and then through her.

  It wasn’t a good plan, in retrospect. But Mom wouldn’t listen to her any other way. And Charlie was desperate.

  Enter Elvira de Granada—a character half based on an anime seen late at night and half on bullshit from grocery-store horror novels. But Elvira could say all the things that Charlie Hall couldn’t. Elvira could spit out all the pent-up rage that filled an already-scarred heart.

  The problem was that Mom really, really, really needed to be convinced that her new husband was a bad guy—and fast. Travis was mean and hated Charlie and Posey.

  But he wasn’t stupid. When he smacked Posey—for nothing, for just jumping around and annoying him and refusing to go to bed on time—he did it when Mom wasn’t there to see, and instead of acting like nothing happened, he claimed Charlie hit her sister and that Posey was covering.

  Charlie got punished, of course. And so did Posey, for lying.

  From then on, Travis knew he had the upper hand. He told their mother that she needed to set more boundaries with the kids, that their dad had let them get away with “bloody murder,” that they were sneaky, lied for attention, and stole from his wallet, and if Mom didn’t do something soon, they would never respect her, plus they’d probably wind up in prison.

  When he hit Charlie, she didn’t even try to tell.

  Mom was fascinated by the idea that her daughter might be a medium. She was astonished when Charlie told her facts about relatives, although they were just things she’d remembered or stories she’d overheard. Occasionally, they were straight-up lies about dead people that seemed impossible to disprove.

  But even Elvira de Granada couldn’t convince Charlie’s mother that Travis was no good. Charlie’s mother decided that Elvira was bitter and distrustful on account of being tortured to death. And that’s when Charlie came up with Alonso Nieto, warlock. Unlike Elvira, he wasn’t just accused of witchcraft—he admitted to being a practitioner.

  It turns out that men have more authority, even when they’re not real.

  Mom loved talking to Alonso. Charlie had thought she’d been convincing when playing Elvira, but with Alonso, Mom wanted to be convinced.

  Charlie knew she had to be careful, all the same. If Alonso was going to successfully persuade Mom to leave Travis, the warlock needed to give them something concrete.

  It didn’t hurt that Travis’s badness was starting to leak out. When they were first married, he made a big show of telling Mom how perfect she was and how great their life was going to be, but he couldn’t keep it up. Now, when they argued, he’d start in with comments about her weight and about how she wasn’t that smart. Flowers and date nights faded away, and so did a big chunk of his contribution to their finances.

  Charlie knew she had an opportunity, but she needed help. So she let her little sister in on the plan.

  Posey had been confused by Elvira and Alonso, although happy someone was talking shit about the stepdad she hated. Still, it had clearly creeped her out to see her sister possessed. Now that she knew it was a game, though, everything was different.

  Professional psychics usually specialize in one of two types of readings, although neither sister knew that at the time. The first kind was a cold reading, the kind that Posey would go on to do as a phone psychic, making up things on the spot, based on observations. The second kind of reading was hot.

  During a cold reading, the psychic might study how often a client looked at their phone, whether their finger had a pale patch of skin from the removal of a wedding ring, the newness of their shoes, or the visibility of their tattoos. On the phone, the psychic had to rely on their word choices, their accent, and the level of agitation in their voice. A good cold reading was the convincer that allowed the client to relax and start supplying information.

  A hot reading was something else. It involved doing research on a person ahead of time. Some celebrity psychics even bugged their intermission halls or sent out assistants to eavesdrop on audience members at performances.

  That’s what Charlie intended to do, a hot reading.

  With Posey’s help, they went through Travis’s pockets. They figured out the password on his computer and scrolled through his browser history, his emails, his Facebook messages. They located his stash of porn, which was gross, but contained nothing weird enough to sink him. It turned out that he wasn’t flirting with anyone else or embezzling money. Travis was evil, and also boring.

  Though Charlie didn’t do great in school and had been long ago sorted into the group of kids who were never going to college, she read a lot and she paid attention. She was smart.

  But smart kids can still be plenty stupid.

  Charlie decided that since she couldn’t find anything on Travis, she’d create evidence. She made a new Facebook page with his name and picture, then started flirting with women. Soon that became texting on a burner phone. Managing being Travis part of the time and Alonso the rest of the time was exhausting. It was playing pretend on steroids.

  But rather than getting tired of it, she found herself frustrated by all the time she had to spend as Charlie Hall, who was still a kid with a lot of math homework. She looked forward to improvisation, when it seemed like all the right words came out of a part of her that she didn’t even know was there.

  Even though she was able to fake up evidence, she wasn’t sure it would be enough to convince her mother. She enlisted Posey to manipulate their environment. To flash lights in rooms on the other side of the apartment, turn on the stove, and leave little things where their mother could find them. To show off Alonso’s power. They reinvented the Victorian spiritualism movement from first principles.

  Charlie had stumbled into one of the headiest delusions that existed—Alonso told Mom that she was important, special, chosen. He was vague on the details, but the details didn’t matter.

  It wasn’t long before Mom was on the hook. In fact, sometimes it seemed to Charlie that her mother was more interested in Alonso than in her, more excited to spend time with him than with her kid. Sometimes Charlie felt like the most important thing about her was being a vessel.

  After a bad night where Travis yelled at Charlie to clean up her room and, when she didn’t do it to his satisfaction, ripped her copy of Howl’s Moving Castle in half, she decided it was time. Three days later, Alonso told Mom to look in the glove compartment of Travis’s car, where Posey had already planted the burner phone.

  After that, things started moving very fast.

  Mom looked through the messages on the phone and saw the promises “Travis” had made to these women and the awful stuff he’d told them about her. Travis denied it all, becoming more and more furious when he wasn’t believed.

  Sucks to be you, Charlie thought with satisfaction, remembering how many times her mother had believed him instead of them.

  Charlie was glad when they moved out, gladder still when her mother filed for divorce, thrilled to be moving into their small new apartment, even if money was tighter than ever. But Charlie was a little afraid of what she had done. It was a heavy weight to know that she had committed a betrayal so big that if her mother found out, Charlie might never be forgiven.

  And she was in no way ready for her mother to introduce Alonso to her friends. Charlie refused to go. She cried and insisted that she didn’t want to, that she didn’t like letting him talk through her anymore.

  She was teetering on the cusp of adulthood. Three-quarters child, one-quarter yearning. Her dreams were confused kaleidoscopes of swanning through the sets of TV shows, drinking cocktails that looked like vodka martinis and tasted like Sprite, wearing lipstick and pumps covered in red craft glitter, and marrying someone who was half pop star and half stuffed animal.

  She knew she had to stop pretending to be Alonso before she got caught, but she didn’t know how to stop without disappointing her mother.

  Just let him come through. This will be the last time. I promise, honey.

  Her mother convinced her to talk to the friends once, and then a second time. By the third visit, Charlie could tell that some of them had grown skeptical. Rand, a portly man with a beautifully waxed mustache, tried to trip her up with historical questions, and Charlie panicked. She talked too much. On the car ride back, she could feel her mother’s gaze on her, disheartened and on the verge of disillusionment. Charlie’s whole body felt as heavy as lead.

  The third time, she didn’t protest going, although her mother seemed conflicted. Still, Charlie had looked up historical facts, and between those and Alonso’s probable ignorance about things like antibiotics and gravity, she thought she could push through one more time.

  More important, Charlie had remembered what worked on her mother. Charlie didn’t need to convince them of anything.

  She needed to make them want to believe.

  And so instead of answering their questions, she spun a jagged-edged fantasy. She knew all her mother’s friends well enough to guess who hoped her sculptures would be featured in a magazine, who wanted love, who wanted her children to move closer.

  Alonso told them what they wanted to hear, with a kick in the ass.

  You have already met the man you are destined to be with and you know who he is and why you’re not together.

  Your children will be at their happiest near a lake, but they will resist this knowledge.

  Your work will be celebrated after your death.

  And then Alonso told them he had fulfilled his purpose, and that he would finally be allowed to move on. After solemn and tearful goodbyes, Charlie let her whole body go limp. She fell to the floor and pretended unconsciousness for a full minute—until she worried they were going to call an ambulance.

  Even her mother’s most skeptical friend plied her with cookies and herbal tea after that.

  She never had another “visitation.”

  Sometimes her mom looked at her strangely, but Charlie tried not to notice. And Posey, jealous of the attention Charlie had gotten, started reading tarot cards and cultivating a thousand-yard stare.

  While Charlie felt as though she had been left with only the least interesting parts of herself and lost the rest.

  4

  MORE COFFEE

  Bright morning light flooded the kitchen. Lucipurrr was in the sink, paws balanced on a dirty plate, licking the leaky faucet.

  Charlie poured coffee, noting the shine of Posey’s bloodshot eyes and the restless way her leg moved under the table. She was still in the pajamas she’d been wearing the night before, adding unicorn-shaped slippers, their fur a stained gray.

  “Did you stay up all night?” Charlie asked, although the answer was obvious.

  “I found a new channel to follow.” Posey’s tone suggested she expected Charlie to argue with her. On the message boards Posey frequented and in the videos she sought out, dangerous advice was passed around on quickening one’s shadow, the first step to becoming a gloamist.

  Most of the mainstream articles written about shadow magic were about alterations—clickbait like Is Magic the New 1%? Hollywood Actress Starts New Shadow Trend. Rip Out Cravings for Junk Food at the Root. Most Useful Shadow Alterations for New Moms. Is Removing Desire the New Lobotomy? In those stories, gloamists were the providers. The dealers. The grocery stores of magic. The Old Saint Nicks of magic.

  Celebrities had their shadows altered more frequently now that the trend had caught on, changing them like other people might change their haircuts, dressing up for the Met Ball with shadows in the shapes of dragons or swans or large hunting cats. They had their emotions triggered to better prepare for roles, or to be able to write more evocative songs.

  And if a few people starved to death, or threw themselves off bridges, or had so much of themselves removed that they seemed to float through their days, that was a small price to pay. When shadows withered or burned up or failed to graft, the wealthy could always buy new ones.

  But dig a little deeper into the morass of links and articles, past the gloss of general interest, and you got to theories about how people became gloamists. Legitimate sources weighed in with a measured manner. A scientist from the Helmholtz Research Centres was quoted in a now-viral interview in The New Yorker as saying “Shadows are like the shades of the dead in Homer, needing blood to quicken them.” But it seemed as though every wellness influencer and would-be wizard had a hunch to sell. YouTube and TikTok became crammed with bogus tutorials. How I Woke My Shadow with Pain, Shadow Quickening After Fistfight, Magic Ability Discovered After Drowning, Safe Asphyxiation Techniques with Plastic Bag—Guaranteed Results. And in the depths of 8kun, the ideas were much weirder and much worse.

  Charlie could remember before, when actual magic had seemed impossible. And then the confusion when no one seemed to be sure what was real and what wasn’t. But Posey had gone from a childhood belief in magic into an adulthood where magic was real—just denied to her.

  Charlie vividly recalled coming home to a bathtub half filled with melted ice and her sister sitting on the floor, wrapped in a towel, her lips blue with cold. “I should have stayed in longer,” Posey had told her, teeth chattering. Charlie begged her not to try anything like that again.

  Instead, Posey had gotten a piece of fishing line to tie to a tongue piercing and begin the slow and painful-looking process of splitting her tongue. Apparently once you got used to using the muscles on both sides simultaneously, it trained your brain to a “bifurcated consciousness.” The second thing every gloamist needed, after a quickened shadow.

  As far as Charlie could tell, all Posey got out of it was a slight lisp.

  Charlie yawned and checked the messages on both her phones. On her real phone, there was an invitation to a barbecue from Laura, her closest friend from high school, who these days had three kids and not a lot of time. A plea to bartend at another friend’s backyard wedding. Spam from a shop with a sale on onyx charms.

  She took out her burner and texted Adam, giving things another try:

  Can we meet up? Somewhere private. I don’t want us to be spotted together.

  This was the tricky bit, getting him to bite. Once he told her where he was, he was screwed.

  Then Doreen could go scream at him and drag him home.

  If only it could be that easy for Charlie to fix things for Posey. But there was no con or heist, no scam she could think of that would help.

  Tomorrow?

  With her car out of commission, that was going to be tight. Sure, Charlie typed. I can come over in the morning, before class.

  No mornings.

  She ground her teeth in frustration. If she didn’t know when he was going to be there, then she’d have to stake out the place. And since she was pretending to be Amber the gloamist, it made no sense for her to even have some other job. Charlie decided to go for vague. I have a thing until midnight. I can meet you after.

  He sent her a thumbs-up and a winking emoji. When he followed up with the number of his hotel room at the MGM in Springfield, she felt a little guilty, as though she was scheduling a rendezvous.