Even if the place was cheapish, Charlie doubted she could make enough at Rapture to reliably pay the entirety of the rent. She was going to have to catch or kill a lot more Blights.

  “What happened to your face?” Posey asked, then sniffed. “And why do you smell like a campfire?”

  Charlie’s gaze went to Posey’s quickened shadow. It was magical, but it wasn’t conscious. She didn’t think it was, anyway. It gave Charlie a strange feeling when she looked at it, and not just because it had once been part of her. Sometimes she felt she ought to do something—talk to it, make sure it was okay?—but didn’t know how.

  Posey fed it frequently. Charlie had noticed the shallow cuts on her calves and the packet of stainless steel razor blades that frequently sat on the edge of the tub, without a razor in sight. Charlie saw her researching shadows late in the night, poring over old books and practicing shadow manipulation again and again.

  It was easy to worry about what else she might be doing when no one else was around. Worry she’d already tried bleeding herself more than was safe.

  If Salt was anything to go on, the way to power up a shadow fast was to feed it someone else’s blood, and a lot of it.

  “Seriously,” Posey said. “What happened to you?”

  “Just a job,” Charlie told her, walking to Posey’s laptop, where it rested on the kitchen table. She pulled up the menu of the pizza place down the street. “Olives, peppers, and mushrooms?”

  A chat was open in the background of the screen, members complaining about some retreat for wealthy people who wanted to awaken their shadows.

  SkepticalChili82: Ice baths for the rich

  temporary_earnestness: Ice picks for the rich would be better

  “Fuck the Cabals,” Posey said. “They’re trying to get you killed.”

  Charlie didn’t think they were actually trying, but that didn’t mean they wouldn’t succeed.

  “I’m fine,” she said, exhausted. “It won’t be forever.”

  Posey gave an exaggerated sigh. “Years. And you’re not taking it seriously. You’re the Hierophant and you haven’t even split your tongue.”

  “You don’t need to disguise your lecture as sympathy,” Charlie said. “This is like live action concern trolling.”

  Splitting the tongue woke dormant muscles in it. Learning how to control those—so that you could move both halves at the same time—supposedly helped to trigger what gloamists called a bifurcated consciousness, the ability to control your body and your shadow simultaneously. Controlling a shadow as though it were a separate limb was the “ethical” way to be a gloamist.

  The easier and less ethical way was to put pieces of yourself into your shadow. Memories were especially good for that. Enough pieces created a powerful shadow that could operate with limited instruction. And if that eventually resulted in a Blight, well, wasn’t there some saying about omelets and breaking eggs?

  “Being a gloamist is a big deal. I just want you to fulfill your potential,” Posey told her, which made Charlie think of their mother and how, once she believed Charlie’s lies about being a medium, she hadn’t wanted Charlie to give it up. She’d given the same reason. A waste of potential.

  “I’m not like you,” Charlie told her sister firmly. “I’m a charlatan. I’ve been a fake magician, a fake medium, a fake ghost—but always a fake. Once this is over, that’s what I am going to go back to being, because that’s what I’m good at.”

  “And if they won’t let you?” Posey asked.

  “What was it you said before? Fuck the Cabals,” Charlie reminded her.

  The computer was still open on the table and she could see that the chat had moved on to discussing the murders in the church basement in Hatfield.

  quirky_fraud00: they were all seekers right?

  LoutishProgressive: not all I know a gloamist who was part of that group

  SkepticalChili82: wasn’t some cabal guy supposed to be speaking there that night? Is he dead too?

  Butzzzzzz: nothing on rooster’s tiktok

  Charlie got up. “I am going to take a nap.”

  “Wait! We’re not done talking,” Posey said. “You’ve got to do something.”

  “I am doing something,” Charlie said.

  “About him,” Posey said, lowering her voice, as though that was going to stop Red from hearing. “What if he never gets his memories back?”

  “Malhar says it’s possible he’ll remember.” She managed to sound calm, but was worried her distress bled through their tether. Madurai Malhar Iyer was a graduate student who’d been studying Blights for his thesis. He believed a lot of things were possible.

  “Whatever he says,” Posey said, “he still thinks what you’re doing is—as he put it, ‘tantamount to gambling with your life.’”

  “You’ve been spending a lot of time with Malhar lately,” Charlie observed. “Anything you want to tell me?”

  Posey put a hand on her hip. “Yes. That you need to learn more about being a gloamist because one day you might need to … stop him. Stop Red.”

  Stop him from draining her. That’s what Posey was worried about.

  “Posey—” Charlie held up a hand to try to forestall whatever was coming next.

  “You’re bound together,” Posey reminded her. “Stuck with one another. Like a marriage, but more permanent. And he’s an actual murderer! Again, I am not saying he’s a bad person, because it wasn’t like he had a choice, but—”

  “Don’t talk like that,” Charlie snapped, feeling the change in the air, like an electric charge.

  Posey frowned. “Like how?”

  Red appeared in the doorway, the way he might have if he had merely stepped in from the other room, rather than stepping out of shadow.

  Posey sucked in a startled breath.

  “Like he’s not here,” Charlie told her.

  6

  Holiday Party

  The alarm on Charlie’s phone woke her in the late afternoon. The clock beside her mattress was blinking uselessly since she’d failed to reset it after the last power outage. Fumbling, she found her beeping cell in the pocket of her coat, screen spiderwebbed with cracks after last night’s bout with the Blight. There were two missed calls from Adeline and a bunch of texts that no amount of tapping on the message icon would let her see.

  At least one would be from the manager of Rapture Bar & Lounge, reminding her that she had a shift tonight.

  Charlie moved stiffly into the bathroom, feeling her movements tug at the wound she’d glued closed. Part of her wanted to call out sick, but it was a Thursday night and would probably be slow. She might hurt even more tomorrow. Pain was like that. It wore on you.

  Charlie got into the shower, letting the hot water sluice off the rest of the blood on her back and whatever had dried in her hair. Being naked when Red was always nearby was embarrassing, but nothing next to all the other ways she felt stripped bare. God, it was humiliating to be watched while living her life. Do not look at me while I’m peeing! she’d yelled that whole first week after they’d been bound. But that had also meant: Don’t look at me while I’m crying. Look away when I drool in my sleep. Don’t notice all the ways humans are disgusting. Don’t notice all the ways I am human.

  Charlie put on her softest sports bra, hoping it wouldn’t drag on the wound too badly, and then one of the new Rapture shirts, featuring two whips crisscrossing on the front. Then after tugging on stretchy jeans, warm socks, and stompy boots, she went to the mirror to put on some concealer and eyeliner. Finally, she smudged cherry-red lipstick into her cheeks to bring a little color back into her face. By the time she was done, she looked less tired and sore, even if she wasn’t.

  Posey seemed to have finished the leftover pizza, so Charlie ate black Twizzlers for breakfast, along with an enormous coffee made quick and dirty from instant espresso. After that start to her day, she headed over to Rapture Bar & Lounge.

  Odette’s new personal assistant, Rachel, stood on a ladder near the entrance, hanging white tinsel around nails on the painted black wall, along with glass ornaments of liquor bottles, tiny Krampuses, and striped candy canes. During the winter holidays, Odette went in for big, vampy, campy decor. A small pile of red wreaths festooned with fetishy versions of Santa and his elves were waiting to go up next, their legs in fishnets and high heels.

  “First holiday party tonight,” Rachel called down to her, by way of explanation. She was a curvy, relentlessly organized woman in her early twenties who wore thick glasses and fifties-style pinup dresses. Even Don liked her in that puzzled way a handsome man likes a girl he thinks ought to be all over him, but who barely remembers his name. And if she had slightly too much interest in Balthazar’s shadow parlor in the basement of the building, well, hopefully she also had the good sense to avoid it.

  “’Tis the season,” Charlie said as her dreams for a restful night went up in smoke.

  Holiday parties were good for business, but not great for the staff. People never tipped well when they didn’t have to pay for their drinks, especially now that most people didn’t have cash on hand. Plus people went hard at holiday parties—drinking a lot, awash with their pent-up office resentments, and taking out those bad feelings on anyone unlucky enough to be in their way. Charlie hated holiday party season.

  Odette, the retired dominatrix who owned Rapture, looked up from where she was sitting with two friends as Charlie crossed the floor. Odette’s silvery hair was pulled severely back from her face into a bun and she wore a caftan of what looked like liquid silver. Around her neck, a rope of heavy onyx beads provided practical ornamentation. Ever since a gloamist used his shadow to trash Rapture, Odette had been a lot more careful about protection.

  “Darling,” she called to Charlie. “Once you’re settled, will you make us all a round of pink squirrels before things get too busy?”

  “On it,” Charlie assured her.

  Don was already behind the bar, wiping down glasses. They’d known each other through the local restaurant scene, but they’d never worked together before. He’d spent years at Top Hat, a bigger and more mainstream bar, and hadn’t exactly taken to the spirit of Rapture. He felt that dry ice in drinks was playing too fast and loose, and hated that he was supposed to set actual fire to sugar when someone ordered absinthe. Despite that, he clearly believed it was only a matter of time before he was put in charge of all the important decisions and would be able to change whatever he didn’t like.

  Which was probably why he made a sour face as Charlie put her bag in the cubby behind the bar, along with her coat. Some stuffing gaped out of the rips on the back. She pretended not to notice.

  “Odette could have asked me for the drinks,” Don said, as though Charlie taking the order was somehow a dig at him.

  Charlie Hall, fired from all of the decent bars around town and most of the less decent ones, probably didn’t seem like someone who ought to have seniority at Rapture, or be well-liked by their boss.

  “You know who is hosting this party?” Charlie asked, attempting to change the subject.

  “The Ford dealership over on Main.” He gave her an impatient look, like she should have known. That one was probably on her.

  A guy from the ramen place down the street, Daikaiju, started bringing in aluminum trays of karaage chicken and setting them up with Sternos on the folding table set up against one wall. The scents of soy, garlic, and mirin made Charlie’s stomach growl.

  Trying to put that out of her head, she started mixing the crème de cacao and Crème de Noyaux for Odette’s drinks. As she poured the pink liquid into coupe glasses, a young guy with spiky hair and a silver puffer vest entered, carrying DJ equipment.

  “You want to batch some stuff?” she asked Don, but he only shrugged and started cutting up limes. At Top Hat, people didn’t order cocktails the way they did at Rapture, since Top Hat was known for their extensive beer menu with two dozen IPAs on tap, all flavored with banana or aged in whiskey barrels under a full moon. He didn’t know what he was in for.

  Charlie carefully carried the pink squirrels over to Odette and her friends, then placed them on the café table, along with a stack of cocktail napkins. A drag performer in a Barbiecore jumpsuit with giant pink spider earrings and a wig to match saluted Charlie as she took her Pepto-Bismol-colored drink.

  The DJ system sprang to life in a sudden crash of sound, playing the Pogues’ “Fairytale of New York” loudly enough to make everyone jump.

  “Is there a special menu for tonight?” Charlie asked Odette.

  “Entirely open bar,” Odette said, obviously pleased by the dealership’s budget and commitment to partying. “But if you want to make up a few specials, go ahead. I may have over-ordered Canton.”

  “I’ve got some ideas.” Charlie went over to the chalkboard hanging on the wall beside the hallway—the one that led to the backstage greenroom, as well as Odette’s office and occasional dungeon—and started half-assing some cocktails. She was fairly sure they had a lot of cranberry juice and allspice dram that no one had so much as opened.

  When she looked up, she found Don glaring at her from behind the bar. “You can’t do that,” he said.

  “Do what?” Charlie glanced back at the board. Three specials, based on popular orders—a seasonally appropriate cranberry margarita, a ginger corpse reviver with the Canton, and a spiced negroni that she was going to make with allspice dram.

  “Just make up stuff without running it by anyone.”

  She glanced toward Odette, who was in deep and oblivious conversation with her friends. Don had no idea what Charlie had said to her, and even less whether Odette approved of her specials menu. The person he was complaining about Charlie not running it by was him.

  “You want to add something?”

  “I’m just saying,” he muttered and got back to work. Maybe he’d expected her to lose her temper, but she was too tired and sore for that.

  Soon the car dealers and their office staff started arriving, and the DJ adjusted his volume to compensate for the rising level of conversation. The holiday partiers were decked out in everything from cocktail dresses to suits to t-shirts and jeans, accessorized with the occasional snowflake earrings or Christmas-tree pin. Most of their shadows were unaltered and, from what Charlie could tell, all were unquickened. One of the younger salesmen had a shadow that loomed larger and was more square-shouldered than the man himself, but it was subtle enough that it took a second look to notice.

  A short, squat, unsmiling older woman in a red sweater with blinking lights on it sat at the bar immediately and asked for a double-pour of a nice rye with ice on the side. She placed a twenty on the wood countertop. “For you. Keep ’em coming.”

  Charlie admired her style.

  A man with large, blindingly white teeth rapped loudly on the bar. “I need a half-dozen cranberry margaritas and you need to make them right away. This is my party, make me happy.”

  “Sure,” Charlie told him, glancing over at Don to see if he was going to be any help. He was busy giving a lecture about local breweries to an older blonde in a green sequin dress.

  Since Charlie had batched ahead, the margaritas weren’t too time-consuming. Just a lot of salting rims and shaking. But after the guy left, looking grudgingly pleased, the bar got crowded. She got lost in the momentum of making endless cocktails, and disappearing the few tips that came her way into her apron. The bar grew warmer from the heat of humans in a too-close space, and Charlie could feel the sweat collect under her arms and at her collarbone. More drinks were ordered. Vodka seltzers. Martinis, extra dirty. Coronas with lime.

  Her pattern was disrupted by Balthazar Blades settling himself at one end of the bar, smiling with all his disreputable charm. “Make me an amaretto sour and put it on their tab.” His curls were pulled back in a ponytail and he yawned as though he’d only woken up in the last hour. Maybe he had. The shadow parlor he ran speakeasy-style below Rapture was a largely nocturnal affair.

  Charlie rolled her eyes. “I don’t think so.”

  “Oh come on,” Balthazar said. “It’s not like they’re going to notice.”

  The head of the dealership was on the dance floor, cranberry margarita in hand, pumping his fists to the Vandals’ “Oi to the World.” She decided to just make Balthazar the drink.

  “By the by,” he said after taking a sip, “Vicereine says she wants to see you as soon as possible. What’s wrong with your phone?”

  Had she been one of the texts that Charlie hadn’t been able to see? The last thing she needed was trouble with the Cabals.

  “I cracked the screen.” She didn’t bother telling him details. “Anyway, she doesn’t need to check up on me. I did her job.”

  Balthazar swirled the liquid still in his glass. “Tell her yourself. I’m not your messenger boy.”

  “Hey there, doll,” interrupted one of the sales guys, a balding man with a face flushed from drink and the heat of wearing a blazer indoors.

  Doll?

  “Hey there, time traveler,” Charlie said.

  The sales guy looked confused. And overserved. “Your friend there won’t give me a drink.”

  Charlie glanced at Don, who was steadfastly ignoring the situation. Balthazar finished his amaretto sour and got up, shooting her a pitying look as he abandoned her.

  “And you think I look like a soft touch?” she asked.

  “A soft touch? I don’t know … but I’d like to find out.” He leaned closer, damp fingers closing on her wrist. She pulled back, really wishing she’d used another phrase.

  He hung on, his smile turning less friendly.

  “Let go,” she told him.

  He squeezed her wrist, hard. “You’re going to get me a drink, right?”

  “Let GO,” Charlie shouted. Fuck Christmas and Santa and all of his elves. Fuck the social contract. And fuck this guy.

  Abruptly, her wrist was free and the man was on the ground. Red stood over him. If he’d appeared as though he came out of nowhere, that was because he more or less had.