Mark wore a smug expression, even as Red’s arm was still against his throat.

  She fished her phone out of Mark’s pocket, hating the feel of his greasy jeans and the proximity of his skin. Then she leaned down and one by one, burned through each of the tethers, turning all his shadows into Blights.

  “If you remain the Hierophant,” Red reminded her, “you’ll be the one to hunt them.”

  “Maybe,” Charlie said. “But not today.”

  “As you wish.” Red released his hold on Mark, letting him drop to the ground.

  Mark dusted himself off as he pushed up, a sneer on his gaunt face. “Couldn’t do it, could you? And you, Blight? Rose told me about you. Told me how much power you have. Why bind yourself to her? She’s nothing.”

  Red put his coat over Charlie’s shoulders. “And yet, somehow you were still tricked.”

  “You think this is over?” Mark sneered.

  A moment later, he seemed to notice the number of shadows fluttering around him. Shadows he’d stolen. Shadows he’d bound. Crowding in, with a sound like the wings of dozens of crows.

  He took a step back.

  “Oh, it’s over,” Charlie whispered as Red led her toward the van, its engine running, her sister behind the wheel.

  Behind them, Mark began to scream.

  And no matter what more Charlie heard, she didn’t look back.

  32

  The Drifter

  “Charlie Hall, as the Hierophant, help me understand why you released seven Blights into the world.”

  Vicereine stood in the middle of a large room in the alterationist Cabal stronghold, a luxuriously converted church not far from where Emily Dickinson had once written poetry and renounced the world. The size, furnishings, and large iron gates made it clear that the alterationists took in more money than all the other Cabals combined.

  Light streamed through the windows. Low couches in bottle-green velvet beckoned invitingly. The other Cabal leaders were spread out around the room. Vicereine lounged against the mantel of a fireplace trimmed out in arts and crafts tiles, with a phrase carved above the firebox: ART IS NOT A THING; IT IS A WAY.

  Vicereine, representing the alterationists; Bellamy, the masks. And in Mr. Punch’s place, a balding man in a tweed jacket, slender and professorial.

  None of them offered Charlie a seat.

  She took a deep breath. “Not seven. Four, maybe.”

  After leaving Mark to his fate, Charlie, Posey, Malhar, and Red had gone back to Solaluna. Charlie had taken a shower and used allllll the fancy body products in all the tiny little bottles. Red got bandages and antibiotic ointment from their personal butler, who asked absolutely no questions. A few of the shadows returned, some hoping for help finding their people. Others unable to continue without blood.

  Charlie got a meager amount of sleep before Vicereine messaged her to meet the Cabal leaders.

  Leave now, the text said. And bring Vince if you know what’s good for you.

  Charlie almost never knew, no less did, what was good for her. She’d shown up alone.

  “Where is the very dangerous Blight we put in your custody?” Vicereine asked.

  With Malhar and Posey, reuniting shadows with gloamists, unaware of Charlie’s plan to face the Cabals alone. “He’s around.”

  “Do you even know the location of Remy Carver’s shadow?” Bellamy asked.

  “Not this very second,” Charlie admitted.

  Vicereine shook her head. “You were supposed to—”

  “We were separated trying to do a job,” Charlie said.

  “Your position as the Hierophant is a punishment,” Vicereine reminded her, clearly not pleased at being cut off. “One that you have always failed to take seriously. If you seek to be punished in some other way, that can happen. Perhaps Red would be better off tied to another gloamist.”

  “I think Red’s fine on his own,” Charlie said, crossing her arms over her chest. “The Hierophant is a bullshit, made-up position, named after a tarot card. A punishment because the assumption is that everyone in the magical community is going to spend all their time acquiring power and neglecting everything else. But there aren’t a lot of people who are any good at it, are there? Even fewer who are particularly devoted.”

  Vicereine hesitated just long enough for Charlie to know she was right.

  “I tracked down the murderer of Rooster Argent,” Charlie said. “The person responsible for the Hatfield Massacre.”

  “This time,” Vicereine said. “This time it wasn’t a Blight.”

  “He was responsible for stealing shadows from gloamists,” Charlie said. A glance at Mr. Punch’s puppet showed that his eyes were closed, his face empty of expression. It had to be easier to lie when you didn’t have to worry about what showed on your face.

  “Mark Lord,” Bellamy said. “A former associate of yours.”

  “Oh come on.” Charlie snorted. “This is the Valley. Everyone is a former associate of everyone else.”

  “Shall we table this discussion and talk about how you stole from us?” he asked. “From me.”

  “If you want.” Charlie wheeled around to face him. “You ripped a piece of Vince away to blunt his power. He needed it if he was going to survive the night. It never should have belonged to you. I took it and I am not the least bit sorry.”

  “No one wanted him to die.” Bellamy sounded exasperated.

  No, you just wanted to experiment on him. But there would be no profit in saying that. “Then we are on the same page.”

  “Who are you to speak with us this way?” snapped Mr. Punch, speaking from the unconscious professor’s mouth. “You’re no gloamist. You’re not even a person with an unquickened shadow. You’re shadowless.”

  “Are you one of those superstitious people who believe that means I don’t have a soul?”

  “I think there was always something missing inside of you,” he said in a flat voice. “It’s just that now others see it.”

  Charlie felt the bright spark of rage. The kind that might make her do or say something stupid. She swallowed it. Mr. Punch had good reasons to act like he didn’t like her. He had good reasons not to like her, full stop. She shouldn’t let it bother her so long as he followed through on his commitments and backed her to the rest of the Cabal leaders.

  “Look,” Charlie said. “I am willing to submit to whatever punishment you want, but Vince is done being bound.”

  “He’s done when we say he’s done,” Vicereine informed her.

  What was it that Salt had called her? A piece of gristle stuck in his teeth? She could work with that. “Let Vince discover what it means to be a Blight who walks among humans. Surely Bellamy is curious. Let him work for the Cabals willingly instead of being forced to do it.”

  Vicereine and Bellamy exchanged a look.

  “We should discuss your future,” said Mr. Punch. “Without you here to make more ridiculous demands.”

  Vicereine waved toward an alterationist girl standing in a corner of the room, wearing a plaid skirt and a white button-up shirt with a man’s tie. For a moment, Charlie pictured Posey standing there. On a different day, she would be.

  “I’ll take you to the kitchen,” the girl said.

  Charlie allowed herself to be escorted deeper into the house. The girl’s shadow slid behind them.

  The kitchen itself was large and open, with industrial appliances, as though used to supporting frequent catering. Charlie got a glass of water from the tap while looking out the window. Two people walked a dog. A man raked the backyard of a neighboring house. A woman waited for a bus.

  The girl left the room.

  A few minutes later, footsteps sounded on the tiles. “Charlie,” came a voice from behind her. The real Mr. Punch, obviously furious. “What did you do?”

  Charlie weighed the truth against better-sounding lies and decided on the lies. “Saved your life. He was hunting you at Solaluna. You and Archie.”

  “And you, Charlie.”

  “I didn’t know that,” she insisted. “If you’d told me who he was—if you’d given me Mark’s name—things would have been a lot simpler.”

  “You never told me you were going to Solaluna or I might have,” he reminded her.

  Obviously she hadn’t, since she’d gone to stop him from dealing shadows to the wealthy. But with Archie dead, he had no way of knowing what she’d done. “We miscommunicated. I’m sorry.”

  “You helped someone impersonate me,” Mr. Punch told her.

  “We flushed Mark out, didn’t we?” She drank her water. “And we made your identity even more confusing.”

  “You’re proud of being a trickster, but tricksters don’t win in the end,” Mr. Punch said. “They’re clever, of course. In story after story they steal the meat off the table and we laugh along with them, because we like to see the powerful brought low. But they’re the butt of the joke in the end. They get got and order is restored. The laughs at their antics are a lot easier when they’re gone.”

  “Okay, professor,” she said.

  His eyebrows furrowed. “I am going to help you today, Charlie Hall. But after this, you serve me, do you understand?”

  Charlie nodded.

  “That means harvesting shadows for me too.”

  She licked her lips. “Blights?”

  He shook his head sadly, as though disappointed in her lack of imagination. “Not just Blights. I set a quota of quickened shadows we need and that’s what you supply.”

  Getting Red out of this arrangement had been Charlie’s goal, but once achieved, nothing would tie them together. That seemed a greater gamble on loyalty and love than asking him to come save her had been. “You make sure Red is free and I’ll do it.”

  “I am a bad enemy to make,” he told her.

  That was true, but he was still an excellent lever to push. So excellent that it was easy to put off the future for another day. If she didn’t do what she promised, he’d hunt her down. He’d have to. He couldn’t allow her to know his secrets unless she compromised herself too. Until they were guilty together.

  “Now, I must concentrate,” he said, heading toward the back door. He kicked leaves as he made his way across the lawn.

  It took twenty more minutes for anyone to summon Charlie back into the room. When they did, she had no idea what to think because no one looked happy.

  “We have an answer,” Vicereine told her. “Red can stay a Blight, but you must remain in your role as the Hierophant. Keep doing well or I will make an example out of you. You know how alterationists can remove desire or pain? Well, Charlie Hall, fail us, and I will take everything. I will hollow you out.”

  Charlie nodded once. This was them giving her what she wanted. Of course it had to come with a threat.

  Vicereine went on. “Some among us don’t believe that you can be the Hierophant without being a gloamist. It’s never been done by anyone who wasn’t.”

  “I can do it,” Charlie said.

  “Succeeding at what should be impossible is your most annoying trait,” said Bellamy.

  The flush of victory was heady enough for her to want to burst out grinning, but she couldn’t. Not quite yet. “About that,” she said. “There’s something I have to tell you. It’s about one of your number. He’s betrayed you.” She turned toward Mr. Punch.

  The professorial puppet lurched unsteadily to his feet with such force that the man woke up suddenly, blinking before his eyes went blank again. “You forget yourself.”

  “I really don’t,” she said, and then she explained the scheme. “It started with Rooster and Archie, but somehow Mr. Punch found out, so he got dealt in. I don’t know if he discovered what they were doing until after he took over the Cabal from Malik, or if he’d known it before and that helped him to advance to the top position, but—”

  “Are you going to let her lie like that? About one of us?” Mr. Punch’s puppet lurched toward Vicereine, pointing a hand at her.

  Bellamy stepped between them. He glanced toward Charlie. “Go on.”

  “I know he worked with Mark, who Rooster sprung from prison in exchange for harvesting shadows. Shadows taken from new gloamists, who would have probably become Cabal members. Who certainly would have been alive.”

  “As a well-known liar, you tell a compelling story,” said Mr. Punch, speaking through the man. “But do you have any proof?”

  “Sure,” Charlie said. “I blackmailed you into taking my part against Vicereine and Bellamy. Why else would you have done it? I promised I wouldn’t say anything if you did, but as you say, I’m a liar.”

  Bellamy laughed in delighted surprise.

  “You lunatic,” Mr. Punch’s puppet spat. “You mad bitch.”

  “You would have fucked me over the first chance you got,” Charlie told him, allowing herself a small smile. “You’re just mad I got there first.”

  “Only you,” said Bellamy. “Only you would have the nerve to use something like that as proof.”

  “But you believe me,” said Charlie.

  “We believe you,” said Vicereine. “Now get out.”

  On shaking legs, Charlie left the alterationist stronghold, walking toward the Porsche, adrenaline singing in her veins. She drank in gulps of cold, crisp air. And she grinned up at the cold sky, at the stars shining down on her. She grinned and couldn’t stop grinning.

  She had just turned onto route 9 when a police car began tailing her. Just before the bridge, the lights started.

  Charlie pulled over, cursing her luck. Of course, she couldn’t have an hour of triumph over the world before the world batted her back down. Of course, Adeline wasn’t going to let Red just drive off with a car if he wasn’t doing what she wanted.

  Charlie took a deep breath and prepared to try to talk her way out of this.

  Stolen, officer? I had no idea. My boyfriend said it belonged to him. Remy Carver? That’s right. Is there a problem?

  Two more police cars, sirens going, pulled in ahead of the Porsche on the side of the road, boxing her in. Well, she supposed it was a valuable car and it wasn’t like there was much going on locally. This was a town that had to regularly collect drunken college students from unlocked living rooms, where they stumbled in and fell asleep on floors.

  “Get out of the car and put your hands where I can see them.” The voice boomed from the vehicle behind her, spoken through a horn. “Get out of the car now.”

  Charlie stepped out.

  “Put your hands on your head.”

  She did, fingers sinking through her short hair as she tried to think if there was anything it would be bad to find in the car. On her.

  Blood, mostly.

  Officers were getting out of vehicles, shouting instructions. She felt her wrists jerked behind her, cuffs cold against her skin.

  “Are you Charlotte Hall?” one of them was shouting.

  “I didn’t steal the car!” she insisted.

  The cop frowned at her in puzzlement. “What car?”

  “This car,” Charlie said, equally confused. “I didn’t steal it.”

  “Lady,” he said. “You’ve got bigger problems than that. The detectives want to talk to you about murder.”

  * * *

  The detectives kept Charlie waiting in a room for the better part of an hour. She stared at the chipboard table with pieces dug out of it. She watched a spider build a web in a corner of the room.

  Finally, the door opened. In strode a middle-aged woman with two manila file folders under her arm. A younger male colleague with short, curly hair followed.

  “Charlotte Hall?” the woman asked, although, obviously, she knew.

  Charlie nodded. “I prefer Charlie.”

  “I’m Detective Vitolo and this is Detective Rudden. We have some questions for you,” Detective Vitolo said.

  Like any career criminal, Charlie knew better than to agree to talking right off the bat. “Can I leave?”

  “Technically we can hold you for twenty-four hours before charging you,” Detective Vitolo said. “So, no.”

  “Charging me with what?”

  Detective Vitolo opened the first manila folder and set out three pictures. The first was Charlie entering the abandoned mill building. The second was Charlie in the Walgreens with blood in her hair. The third was the body of the drifter.

  “You want to tell us what happened here?” asked Detective Rudden.

  All the breath left Charlie’s body. The triptych of photographs told a story that Charlie had no idea how to deny.

  “I saw the body,” Charlie admitted. “But he was already dead.”

  “Why didn’t you call the police?” asked Detective Rudden.

  There Charlie was on firmer ground. “I didn’t want to wind up here.”

  “Tell me about Solaluna,” said Detective Vitolo.

  “There was a conference of rich seekers held there recently,” Charlie said.

  “Four guests died,” said Detective Vitolo.

  Charlie shook her head. “You know I wasn’t responsible for any of that. You must have eyewitness accounts from the kind of people that cops actually listen to.”

  Detective Vitolo frowned.

  “Some of those accounts link you with the killer.” Detective Rudden flipped a few papers, as though trying to find the relevant testimonies.

  Charlie slumped back in her chair. “Bullshit.”

  Detective Vitolo raised her eyebrows consideringly. “There was an attack on your workplace a few months ago. A murder in your rental house. You seem to have the devil’s own luck, being in all those places and somehow avoiding getting hurt.”

  “I have shit luck,” Charlie said. “Or I wouldn’t have been there.”

  “We have enough to charge you for the drifter,” Detective Rudden said.

  Charlie was sure that was an invitation, but not what she was being invited to do. “You know I didn’t do it.”

  “Do I?” The man leaned forward. “Then tell me who did.”

  “There was a Blight,” she started.