But now, this was what he was. If no one stopped him, there would be more murders in church basements. More dead-and-bled innocents with convenient apartments. More shadows shackled to his madness.

  But how could she stop him? She wasn’t a gloamist.

  Charlie looked out the small window. She might be able to wriggle through it, but they seemed to be on the third floor, with a steep drop.

  “If you don’t come out, I’ll send Archer in,” Rosalva said.

  “I’m pissing,” Charlie shouted back and then actually used the toilet. When she was done, she washed her hands and drank five handfuls of water straight from the tap. Then she perched on the edge of the tub and lifted her shirt.

  There, pressed beneath the underwire of her bra, cushioned between her breasts, rested the glass scroll-like vial with a single shadow trapped inside.

  She had no idea if it was strong enough to be a Blight, but if Mark found it, he would bind it to him and she couldn’t risk that. The scroll was stoppered at both ends with wax sealing it airtight. Taking a toothpick out of the medicine cabinet, she stabbed at one end, scraping off enough wax to pop out the stopper.

  Perhaps Charlie’s hands were damp with sweat. They were probably unsteady. Maybe she just wasn’t careful enough. The scroll slipped out of her fingers, shattering on the bathroom floor.

  “What was that?” Rosalva demanded.

  “Sorry,” Charlie called back. “I knocked over a glass.”

  A new shadow stood in the room, a darkness against the tiles that wasn’t there before.

  “Hi,” Charlie whispered to it.

  “I hope you’re finished,” Rosalva scolded.

  Charlie lifted up a shard of glass and cut her palm. It hurt much more than the razor. Then she held out her cupped hands. “In the direction of the mountain, there’s a place called Solaluna. Once you make it there, there’s a shadow named Red. Find him and he can help you get back to your person, if that’s what you want. And if you don’t, he can help you learn how to survive like this.”

  The shadow slid away from her. She had no idea if it had understood her.

  “Be careful,” she whispered after it.

  “Charlie,” came the singsong voice of the NeverMan from outside of the window, a shadow stretching across it. She jumped in surprise, and was suddenly very glad she hadn’t even tried getting out that way.

  Taking a deep breath, she opened the bathroom door to see Archer and Rosalva. She stepped through Rosalva and went back to the couch, picking up the phone.

  “That wasn’t nice,” Rosalva said.

  “Oh, we’re being nice now, are we?” Charlie asked before she thought better of it. She needed Rosalva on her side, if that was at all possible. “I’m sorry. I opened the door to the bedroom, thinking it was the bathroom. All the blood upset me. And then I broke the glass and cut myself.”

  “There are a lot of us,” Rosalva said, sounding defensive. “We’re always hungry.”

  Charlie shook her head. “It’s not you I blame.” That wasn’t entirely true, but all of those bound to Mark were stolen shadows. Whatever they’d been before, they didn’t deserve to be gorged on terror.

  She couldn’t help thinking of Red, being force-fed the lives of others. He wasn’t what he was made to do. Maybe they weren’t either.

  She just hoped that he and Posey were okay.

  Charlie picked up the phone. “It looks like there’s an alley a couple of streets down. I am going to suggest that Mr. Punch meet me there.”

  Rosalva peered at the map. But before she could answer, Mark walked into the room. He had a take-out bag with him, grease darkening a corner of it.

  “You haven’t called yet?” he asked.

  Charlie shook her head as she tapped out the number.

  “Put it on speakerphone,” Mark said.

  Taking a deep breath, she did as he asked. Now that she’d deleted the contact, once it connected, it didn’t display a name.

  “Charlie?” Malhar asked, obvious relief in his voice. “What happened? Are you okay?”

  In the background, she could hear people speaking over one another.

  “I’m fine, Fred. Please put Mr. Punch on,” she said as clearly as she could without seeming unnatural.

  There was a silence at that. Please, she thought. Please understand what I am trying to tell you.

  “Hold on,” Malhar said.

  A few moments later, Red’s voice came over the line. “Hello.”

  Charlie bit the inside of her cheek to keep from sobbing with relief. He was alive.

  A glance over at Mark showed that he was tense, but not yet suspicious. Mr. Punch was secretive and he had Rooster for a middleman. The chance that Mark wouldn’t recall the exact timbre of his voice was high, but not nothing.

  “You’ve got to help me,” Charlie said. “I don’t have long. I made it out of the house, but I can’t see his shadows moving in the dark.”

  Red spoke. “Everyone was very worried. Everyone but me. I’m angry, Charlie. I don’t need a Hierophant who can’t handle herself.” The coldness in his voice was a slap in the face.

  “I need to get out of here. Please.” It wasn’t hard to let panic come into her voice. “He hurt me.”

  “Tell me where you are.” Before, she’d said he was good at playing a role. Now she saw he could play more than one, because there wasn’t a hint of warmth in his voice.

  “There’s a sign near me that says Maple Lane. You have to promise you’re coming right now,” Charlie said. “Or I’ll make another phone call. I’ll tell Vicereine everything. We’ll go down together.”

  “You don’t need to threaten me. I’m getting in my car,” he said, voice icy. “Stay on the line.”

  “I don’t want to chance anyone spotting me because of my phone. Flash your headlights twice when you get here and I’ll know it’s you,” she told him.

  There was a long silence from the other end of the line. “Be careful, Charlie,” he said.

  “There are so many shadows. Please just come soon.” She pressed the button to disconnect the call.

  Mark studied her, then reached out his hand for her phone. She gave it to him.

  “I told you that I could get him to come here,” she said, but her voice shook. Now she had to convince him to keep her alive. “And I can get him out of the car too. You still need me.”

  “Then you better have something to eat,” Mark said, putting the bag of food between them on the table. “We’ve got fifteen minutes until go time.”

  He’d gotten fish and chips. Charlie dragged a few fries through the tartar sauce. She could barely manage to choke anything down.

  You’re fucked, Charlie Hall. And now you dragged Red into your mess.

  She tried to tell herself that this was just another con. She had to misdirect Mark. Keep him off-balance. And then get the hell away from him when Red arrived. It wasn’t as though she hadn’t conned a homicidal maniac before. Salt certainly qualified.

  But back then she’d had time to plan. She’d been prepared. Maybe this was Charlie Hall, finally getting what she deserved. The bullet to the head she’d dodged, taking a year to boomerang around.

  “Eat something,” Mark told her.

  She took another fry, but she still couldn’t bear to take a bite. “So what happens after you kill Mr. Punch?”

  He gave her a considering look. “Then Vicereine. For cutting off my fingers.”

  “And then you’ll have to skip town.” She crossed her arms under her breasts, so they were on more prominent display. “If you forgave me, I could come with you.”

  His gaze dropped, as she’d hoped. Her heart thundered. If Mark thought she was trying to play him, he’d kill her—and she was trying to play him. She needed to be left unrestrained if she was going to escape.

  “You don’t mean that,” he said.

  “I admire ambition,” said Charlie, hoping he believed her. “And obsession.”

  “Not a lot rattles you,” he said. “It’d be good to have someone like that to travel with. Someone they could feed on. I can always kill you later.”

  “Where are you planning to go?” She kept her eyes on him, and tried to make them soft with admiration.

  He grinned. “Maybe get out of the U.S. Let the rich and powerful come to me for shadows. We could go to Dubai. The Maldives. Egypt.”

  “A good place for a god,” she said, heart pounding.

  At that, his smile widened. Mark must have been alone for a long time, harvesting for Rooster. And as he got more shadows, he must have struggled more and more to keep it together. He would have unnerved everyone he met. Part of the reason he hadn’t killed her yet was probably because he enjoyed talking with someone. “You got a passport?”

  As Mark lit another cigarette and wiped the fried fish grease off his mouth with the back of his sleeve, the depressing thought came to Charlie that she probably had more in common with him than with Remy Vincent Carver. “No, but I know a guy who can get passports from the Solomon Islands.”

  “That would work,” he said.

  Charlie leaned forward to take one of his cigarettes and light it in shaking fingers. She hated the taste, but had smoked enough weed not to cough.

  Still holding the cigarette in one hand, she palmed his lighter. Then she went into the bathroom, washed her hands, and picked up the body spray on her way out, shoving it down her shirt, concealed between her boobs in almost the exact spot the scroll had been.

  “When Mr. Punch pulls up, I’ll call from the alley. As soon as he gets out of the car, you’ll be able to handle him, right?”

  Mark’s eyes narrowed. It had been the wrong thing to say, the misstep that might have doomed her. “Don’t like the sight of blood?” he asked.

  “I’m not a gloamist,” Charlie said. “That’s all.”

  He glared. “I don’t have to tie you up again, do I?”

  Charlie shook her head.

  Mark nodded, anger washing out from his expression as quickly as it came. Charlie knew that it would come back before long, though. Anyone who traveled with him—much less someone he had a reason to hate—would wind up saying or doing the thing that triggered his paranoia and rage. He’d kill them, even if he regretted it later. And even if he held out for a while, they’d die some other way. His shadows would get hungry or he would cut too deep. “Good, come on.”

  He led her down two flights of stairs to his car, a white Dodge Dart, shadows wavering around him like windblown balloons.

  The vehicle, dirty with road salt and stained with mud, was even dirtier inside. Take-out containers, grocery-store-sized soda bottles, and candy bar wrappers littered the back seat.

  Mark had talked about his hunger before, and the evidence of that was all around her. He probably needed to eat nearly constantly to stay ahead of the drain. Like an explorer in the arctic eating whole sticks of butter.

  She slid in on the passenger side.

  “You gave him a warning, didn’t you?” Mark snarled as he turned to her.

  “What?” Charlie asked, startled.

  “When you were on the phone. You warned him somehow. They know you did. They keep whispering about it.”

  Charlie’s fingers felt chilled as all the blood seemed to race to her heart. “I wouldn’t do that. I don’t want to die.”

  “You play too many games,” he accused, voice harsh.

  “If I warned him, then he wouldn’t come,” Charlie reminded him. “And you’d kill me. I’ve never been a hero. You know that.”

  He seemed slightly mollified as he pressed the button to turn the car on. But then the engine didn’t turn over. Even the dash light didn’t come on.

  Mark slammed his hands down on the wheel. “Did you do this?”

  Typical Charlie Hall, in trouble because her ex had a shitty car.

  “I think it’s the battery,” she said softly, remembering the van. Around her, Mark’s shadows moved like a slow strobe light. Panic made her heart skip. If she didn’t make it to the rendezvous point, even if she escaped Mark, there would be nowhere to go.

  She reached for the door handle.

  Before she could get out, though, he’d hit the lock button on the doors. “You wait here,” he told her.

  He gave her a stern look as he got out of the car, shadows following him like the train of a bride. As he went to open the hood, he palmed the keys and the doors locked again.

  Looking around, Charlie scrambled to find anything that could be used for a weapon. There was a glass bottle by her feet that she could smash. In the glove compartment, she found a screwdriver, which she tucked into her pocket.

  The registration was in there too. The owner of the car had been named Marie.

  Time seemed somehow to move both fast and slow. Charlie felt sick. If she couldn’t run, she’d have to travel with him until she saw an opportunity to give him the slip—or kill him in his sleep, she supposed, though she’d have to bet against her own squeamishness.

  She imagined how it would be, being on the road with him, the paranoia and casual violence. Breaking into the next home and watching shadows bleed more innocent people. Acting as though she didn’t despise him. Smiling if he touched her.

  She could steal Red from under the Cabal’s nose. Maybe she could even swindle the stars out of the sky. But she couldn’t do what it would take to stay by Mark’s side, not even for her own sake. No one was coming to save Charlie. And maybe she wasn’t going to save herself either this time.

  Mark swore, kicking the front tire of the car violently. The shadows seemed agitated. Archer manifested, gnashing teeth. The NeverMan drifted toward the lit windows of a nearby apartment.

  Taking a deep breath, Charlie slid over to the driver’s side, unlocked the door, and got out. She crouched down behind the car, easing the door closed.

  She tugged the body spray out from under her bra and then took the cap off the can.

  Mark slammed the hood down hard, clearly frustrated. Then he noticed the empty passenger seat. He smiled horribly.

  “Chaaaarrrlie,” he called. “Are you hiding?”

  She bit the inside of her cheek. It just figured that she was going to spend the last moments of her life kneeling on the frozen asphalt of a parking lot.

  Mark’s shadows floated around him, slowly moving in every direction. It wouldn’t be long before they found her. “This is going to be a fun game. And my prize is going to be cutting you to ribbons.”

  Charlie lunged. She flicked the lighter and sent a flaming spray of perfume toward the ground, where a thin tether connected Mark to Rosalva.

  Mark swung toward Charlie, his face a mask of hunger and rage. “I knew you would betray me.”

  “Well, you should have,” Charlie told him.

  Rosalva floated away from him, but the others closed in. The NeverMan caught Charlie by the throat.

  Charlie flicked the lighter. The shadow hand slithered away, half solid and half a thick black fog. “Stay back,” she said, turning slowly, flame in front of her. Archer and JonJon wavered, close by, ready to lunge, but seemingly nervous about the fire.

  “Pathetic,” Mark said, grabbing her by the arm that held the lighter and throwing her to the ground. Her head hit the asphalt and she felt a brief sideways sense of time slipping. Then Mark had his fingers around her throat. He squeezed, bringing his face close to her. Darkness started in spots, bleeding outward, the way old film went bad when exposed to the sun. “No one will care when you’re gone. You were born trash, Charlie, and you’re going to die like trash.”

  She tried to spit in his face, but she couldn’t gather enough breath.

  Red stepped out of the darkness behind Mark.

  For a moment, she thought she was hallucinating as she lost consciousness. Then she saw Red’s fingers grab Mark by his hair and pull back his head before rabbit punching him in the side. Mark gave a high, satisfying cry of pain.

  Charlie sat up, breathing hard.

  He had his forearm pressed to Mark’s neck. Standing behind him was Rosalva, her tether cut. She held Archer and was speaking to him in a low voice.

  The NeverMan and JonJon hovered just beyond them. Charlie rolled to one side and grabbed for her lighter, when she saw why none of them were moving any closer.

  The air was thick with shadows. They doused light as they moved, gathering in a wide semicircle around Red. All of them, Blights. Red had created that pack of Blights they’d speculated about and led them here to save her.

  Mark tried to speak, but Red only pressed his forearm more tightly to Mark’s throat.

  “The shadows,” Charlie said, her voice sounding odd after being strangled. “From the glass scrolls.”

  “Yes,” Red told her. “The one you sent back found me and I thought that they could help. That shadow you saved brought me here. Posey, Malhar, and I were halfway to you when we got your call. You’re an absolute heart attack of a person, Charlie Hall.”

  “You took the battery out of his car,” she said, staggering to her feet.

  “The shadow couldn’t recall the exact apartment you were in. I wanted to make sure you couldn’t leave while I looked.” Red studied her. “I am so angry, Charlie. I am sick with it. What he did to you—if you don’t want him dead, you better tell me now.”

  She looked at the tethers, binding the remaining shadows to Mark—JonJon, the NeverMan, Archer. The NeverMan’s hands were long, knifelike claws, his head in the shape of a scythe blade. JonJon appeared to be holding an axe of shadow. If they were no longer tethered, they would be free to do whatever monstrous things they might want.

  Archer stopped struggling in Rosalva’s arms. She let him go and he snuffled around on the ground.

  “You willing to be responsible for them? Keep them out of trouble?” Charlie asked in a voice that only shook a little.

  “Yes,” said Rose’s shadow.

  Charlie turned to Red. “I think we should let him go. I think we should let all of them go.”

  He raised his eyebrows, not misunderstanding her suggestion as kindness. “Are you sure?”

  She thought about the horror of the apartment three floors up. About the Hatfield Massacre and the house where Red almost died. Thought of shadows being taken from places like that, ripped from the person they belonged with, perhaps even forced to drink that person’s blood. “I’m sure.”