Malik frowned. “I think it’s time the Cabal spoke with you and Stephen separately, Lionel.”

  Salt reached into his pocket and took out his matte black gun, pointing it directly at Charlie. “You have made a very bad mistake crossing me, Charlatan—”

  Charlie froze. Vicereine’s shadow cat roared as three shadows spread from Malik, their mouths full of teeth. Bellamy drew a sword of shadow.

  “Lionel,” Malik said. “There’s no need for this.”

  Behind Salt, Vince lifted his wrists and the cuffs came away, falling to the ground. He stepped forward with inhuman swiftness, pressing the point of a letter opener to Salt’s throat.

  Adeline made a sharp sound that was almost a scream.

  The sounds of the party seemed very far away.

  “You said I was a creature of hate.” Vince spoke into Salt’s ear. “And I do hate you. For Remy, whose blood is my blood, whose flesh is my flesh, and whose hate is my hate. For Char, who will survive tonight. Aim that gun somewhere else, or I will hurt you and go on hurting you until there is nothing but pain.”

  “You can’t—” Salt began, voice trembling.

  “I’m sorry, Char.” Vince wore a small, sad smile. “It was always going to happen like this. I knew he’d let me get close to him, and it’d give me a chance.”

  When they found Vince waiting in the library, alone, Charlie should have realized something was off. Should have seen what the disappearance of the man in the suit meant. Should have realized what Vince had been making in the hotel room—faux onyx tiles. Ones that made him seem safely cuffed when he was entirely able to pull his hands free.

  He had known that, Charlie or not, Salt was going to show him off to the Cabal. And then he’d planned to slip his cuffs and kill Salt before anyone would be able to stop him.

  And after that?

  Vince pressed the knifepoint harder, and a bead of blood trickled down Salt’s throat like the track of a single tear.

  He made a choking sound, and his arm sagged, although he didn’t drop his Glock.

  Still, it wasn’t pointed right at her face. Charlie let herself breathe.

  “Drop the gun on the rug, Lionel,” Vicereine said. “The Blight will remove the knife, won’t you?”

  “Will I?” Vince asked lightly. “I didn’t come here planning on leaving.”

  Lionel Salt’s face had paled and his eyes darted around. How odd the moment must be for him. Malhar had called shadows “ghosts of the living,” but Vince was the shadow of a dead man.

  Vince, who was almost Salt’s grandson. Who was that grandson’s avenging specter.

  “You’re going to leave,” Charlie told Vince. “With me. Plans change. The Cabal knows what he’s done. Surely they’re not going to ignore the murder of one of their own.”

  Vince lifted the point of the knife infinitesimally away from Salt’s artery.

  “I have done nothing—” Salt’s words came to an abrupt stop as the Hierophant stepped between him and Charlie. His back was to Salt and his eyes blazed.

  The Blight looking down at her through Stephen’s eyes was ancient. And wrathful. He held the Liber Noctem in his arms.

  “Tell me,” he said. “Tell me about this book. Tell me about his lies.”

  Charlie cleared her throat. “Vince could probably answer this better—”

  “You,” the Blight said.

  She nodded. “Okay. When Remy died, he pushed all his energy, his last breath of life into his shadow. That’s how Red became able to pass for human.” She looked directly at the Hierophant, not allowing herself to flinch. “The ritual, the one that was supposed to have made Red like this? It doesn’t exist. It’s not in the Liber Noctem. It’s not anywhere. That was the thing I couldn’t figure, at first. Why would Mr. Salt tell me to find a book when it was locked away in his safe?”

  She sucked in a breath and let it out slowly, forcing herself to pause for dramatic effect. “Because he’d promised you something he could never give.”

  The Hierophant’s fingers closed over the metal, pressing hard enough to bend the edge.

  “He convinced you to compromise yourself for him,” Charlie said. “And you know that young man you’ve been possessing isn’t doing well. There’s not much more energy there to take. Killing Knight Singh was for nothing. Killing Paul Ecco was for nothing. Killing Adam Lokken was for nothing.”

  Salt laughed, although it sounded forced. “Is that what this is about? Of course I know how Red became the way he is now. It’s all in The Book of Blights.”

  It was hard to argue convincingly against an old man with a knife to his throat. She decided to ignore him. “Red was already pretty solid because Remy had put so much of his own energy into him, and then cut him loose for short periods of time, over years. He started to appear like Remy, and to hold that shape. Isn’t that right, Adeline?”

  She gasped in surprise, as though Charlie had asked her something awful.

  “You murdered your own grandson?” Vicereine asked. “And Knight?”

  “You lied to me.” The words boomed out of Stephen’s mouth, but the voice was nothing like his. “Deceiver, I will strip the flesh from your bones. I will—”

  The sound of the gun going off cracked through the air.

  The Hierophant fell on the rug, blood seeping from the wound, fingers clutching at it. Mouth opening.

  And behind the body, the shadow of the Hierophant rose larger and larger.

  “Breath of life,” it said.

  The shadow swept over the body it had worn. Stephen gave a wordless howl as he withered, his skin shrinking in on itself, his body curling and then going limp. The blood around the bullet hole was dry, crystallized.

  The shadow towered over them, crackling with fresh energy.

  “Oh god,” Vicereine said. “Oh shit.”

  Salt ducked away from Vince’s hand, bringing his hand up to touch the shallow cut at his throat.

  The Blight looked down at them, growing so that the library lights dimmed as shadow covered them. “If no one will give me flesh, then I will take it.”

  “We have to contain it,” said Malik.

  “I have weapons,” Salt said. “Devices. Down through that corridor.”

  But there wasn’t time.

  The Hierophant lunged. Vicereine’s shadow cat leapt to meet him, claws raking, but the Blight only struck it aside. Bellamy stepped forward, holding up his shadow sword. The Hierophant grabbed hold, and the blade turned to smoke.

  Charlie grabbed Vince’s arm. He looked at her the way he had that night out in the cold when he hadn’t seemed to believe she would still touch him.

  “Come on,” she said. “We have to go. Now.”

  He shook his head.

  “I serve no longer,” the Hierophant threatened in a voice that was the rush of wind in the sky, the echo of an empty room. Not human in the least. “I was made from your kind, but I am greater than you now. I will take all that I want, and you will serve me.”

  Bellamy rushed down the hall toward the great room, calling a warning as he drew a dagger of shadow from his coat. Malik’s shadow triplets circled his body, preparing for an attack.

  “No more hiding.” Vince took her hand.

  His body started to blur at the edges. It was his eyes that went first, from hollow to empty to smoke. Then the gold of his hair, like sparks flying off a bonfire. Darkness licked at his body, as though threatening to devour him.

  “Vince!” Charlie shouted.

  The Hierophant’s voice moved through the room, like the howls of wind through trees. “All of you who bound me, who tied me to your weak wills and mewling ambitions, know me. I am Cleophes, and I will paint the—”

  Vince lunged into him. They crashed together, down the hall. Shadows on the walls, but where they hit, drywall shattered, plaster rained down. A painting was knocked loose, falling and cracking its frame.

  The Hierophant’s hands became long claws, each one coming to a thin point. Its mouth opened wide, full of sharp teeth. It ran for the great room, Vince’s shadow chasing after it.

  Charlie moved to follow when she felt cold metal against the back of her head. A gun.

  “Turn around,” said Salt.

  She did. In all the commotion, no one remembered the Glock. At point-blank range, there wasn’t much she could do if he shot her, but he basked in the satisfaction of having her for a moment too long.

  Charlie knocked his arm sideways. The shot went off, hitting the bookshelves and taking off a chunk of wooden trim.

  He swung the gun at her head as though he was going to bludgeon her with it. She grabbed his wrist and bit down on it as hard as she could.

  Howling in pain, Salt dropped the gun. She kicked it with her foot, sending it skittering across the floor.

  “You’re nothing,” he told her. “A smudge. A blotch on the universe. And no blotch is going to be my downfall.”

  He punched her in the head with his other hand. She staggered dizzily back and he hit her again. He was an old man, but he was strong, and used to hurting people.

  “I should have killed you when I had the chance,” he told her.

  “Oh, absolutely,” Charlie said. “Because you’re not going to kill me now.”

  He grabbed hold of a poker by the fireplace and swung it toward her. Charlie ducked and grabbed for another tool from the stand. This one was disappointingly tipped with a metal dustpan, but she brought it up anyway, knocking back another attack.

  The metal clanged together and she felt it all the way up her arm.

  Charlie’s sole experience in this kind of fighting was playing with Posey in the lot by their old apartment, swinging sticks at one another. Unfortunately, that was the level of sucking she was bringing to this fight now.

  She needed to hit him hard enough that he’d go down and not get up.

  She knew it, and yet part of her was horrified at the thought. She hated Salt. She would have been glad if he were dead. But actually making him dead was another thing.

  He swung the poker at her leg. She jumped out of the way. He was an old man. Surely, he’d tire out fast, wouldn’t he?

  But the wild-eyed glee in his face made her think otherwise. He wanted to see her sprawled on the rug. Wanted to crack her skull open. Would be delighted to see her bleed.

  He whipped his poker toward her head as something grabbed for her hands. She threw herself to one side so that the poker skimmed over the side of her hip without really connecting.

  She hit the rug.

  His goddamn shadow, that’s what had grabbed for her. She wasn’t fighting just him, but his shadow as well.

  On the ground, Charlie rolled over and scrabbled for the gun. She whipped it up toward him, finger on the trigger.

  He stopped, his shadow drifting toward her like a cobra, moving back and forth on the wall above her.

  Charlie got up, keeping the gun trained on him. “Stay where you are.”

  “You’re not going to shoot me,” he scoffed.

  With her free hand, Charlie pulled the onyx knife out of her bra. She removed the duct tape sheath by biting down on it and yanking.

  Salt looked amused. “What are you planning on doing with that?”

  “That shadow of yours—it’s not exactly yours, is it? It belonged to a gloamist before you. A good one, I bet. You wouldn’t want anything less than excellence.”

  “So what?” he said.

  She squatted down, keeping the gun on him. “So, I bet it hates you.” And with one long slash of the dagger, his shadow slipped free.

  Salt backed up so quickly that he tripped. On the ground, the shadow had formed a puddle on the floor, like an oil slick, and from the center something was starting to rise.

  “Guess you were right about me not shooting you,” she said, and left the library.

  Charlie got to the great room in time to see Vince and the Hierophant clash, figures splashed on the wall, huge as titans. Someone had thrown open the doors to the garden, and cold air blew through the room, sending the curtains dancing.

  “I have lived two hundred years,” the Hierophant howled in his voice that wasn’t a voice. “And I will live thousands more.”

  Screams were all around Charlie. People were rushing from the room, bumping into her, or drawing weapons of onyx. One gloamist flew up on wings of shadow, holding out a glistening black blade. The Hierophant tore the shadow from her back, sending her spiraling down onto a coffee table.

  A flurry of onyx arrows flew toward the Blights. The shafts sunk into both figures. Vince contorted in pain and surprise, before the shafts fell from both, scattering on the floor. One archer ran to retrieve them, while others cocked back more arrows.

  I didn’t come here planning on leaving.

  Vince wasn’t going to survive this fight. She’d seen the way those teeth and claws and arrows sank into his body. The way his movements slowed and took on a staggering, drunken quality.

  The Hierophant reached out his hands, and the nails of his fingers tore long lines into the wall along both sides of the room.

  “Stop fighting me, Red. Together, we can become more powerful than any Blights since the Massacre. We will be like the Blights of old, and devour the very edges of the world.”

  Vicereine used long black daggers to guide gloamists out onto the lawn.

  Malik stood in the gallery on the second story, some glittering cloth in his hands. Two other gloamists were with him.

  Adeline stepped into the mouth of the hall, near where Charlie stood. Her fingers were flecked with blood.

  Vince was fighting to a purpose, Charlie realized. Steering the Hierophant backward. He might get in a hard, staggering blow, might slice Vince’s chest with those nails, but Vince kept pushing. Kept making the Hierophant give ground.

  Too late, she realized what he was about to do.

  With unsteady hands, Charlie stripped off her triple onyx ring, the one that looked like fancy brass knuckles. She put it back on, the onyx facing the inside of her palm. Then she ran for the fireplace.

  Because that’s what Vince had been backing the Hierophant toward. Vince, who maintained his position, even when it meant absorbing hits instead of dodging them. Charlie felt the brush of electric air as the shadows moved above her.

  Vince threw himself at the Hierophant. She saw the Blight’s nails sink into Vince’s side. And then Vince rolled them both toward the fire, where he was going to immolate the Heirophant even if it meant feeding himself to the flames.

  Charlie only had time to lurch toward them, reaching out and grabbing his indistinct shape. She held on, the onyx forcing Vince solid in her hands, making him collapse on top of her as the Hierophant gave a furious scream. The flames leapt up, so high that they set the bottom of Salt’s painting on fire.

  Malik and his assistants dropped a netting of jet beads moments later, catching Vince and Charlie inside.

  33

  THIEF OF NIGHT

  No one would let Charlie talk to him.

  Vicereine brought her to the dining room and two people from carapace held her there. Someone gave her a drink from Salt’s fancy liquor cabinet. It was probably the most expensive whiskey she’d ever drink, and she couldn’t taste it.

  They would have taken her back to the library, except they’d found Salt’s body there, letter opener buried in his chest.

  And so Charlie sat, angry, adrenaline still racing through her veins. She stared at the polished wood of the antique sideboard, at the ridiculously ornate silver epergne resting on top, and the hideous oil painting of a bowl of severed heads. Her eye went to the heavy silk drapes with tasseled gimp trim, down to a hand-knotted silk rug that had to be at least a hundred years old. Someone had tracked ash onto it.

  The world was going to be better without Lionel Salt in it.

  She looked down at her red suit, the leg of which had been smeared with soot. Possibly she was the one who’d tracked ash onto the rug.

  “You were right,” Vicereine told her, pouring a highball glass of scotch for herself. “About Salt. About all of it, I suppose. I am sure you wanted someone to say that, so let me start there.”

  “Great,” Charlie said, starting to stand. “So let me talk to Vince.” A gloom stepped toward her, expression grim, and she sat back down with a sigh.

  An unhappy smile came to Vicereine’s lips. “We must contemplate our options when it comes to your Blight. We’ve never seen one that could pass for human.”

  “Vince almost destroyed himself saving you,” she reminded Vicereine.

  “We know, truly. But you must accept that we’re going to have to speak with him and come to a decision about how to proceed.” Vicereine gave a heavy sigh. “He’s too dangerous to ignore, and who knows how many more like him are out there. Go home, Charlie Hall.”

  “I’m not leaving unless you let me talk to him,” Charlie insisted.

  Eventually Bellamy and Malik came into the room, appearing exhausted. Bellamy had a slash in his coat that she thought must have come from shadow claws.

  “I can show you where Salt’s secret dungeon is,” Charlie offered, then raised an eyebrow. “I can actually open his safe.”

  “Although your offer is appreciated, we can handle it from here,” said Malik. “You have my word. We won’t hurt Red. We owe you both a debt.”

  Charlie raised her eyebrows, not feeling particularly trusting. “Wow. Your word. That and a dollar won’t even buy me a decent cup of coffee.”

  Malik scowled at her.

  “He’s too fascinating for me to let anyone touch a hair on his head,” Bellamy said, which she actually believed. “You can come see him at my place in three days’ time. How about that?”

  She glanced between the others, expecting to see some conflict about where he was going to be held, but there was none. Either they’d decided this before, or no one else wanted him.

  “Okay,” Charlie finally said, having run out of other options. “Fine. Three days.”

  On her way out of Salt’s mansion, she pocketed an antique inkpot and shoved a pair of solid silver candlesticks up her sleeve.

  * * *

  Posey was waiting for her in the station wagon, dozing in the driver’s seat. When Charlie got in, she jumped up in alarm. Then, seeing it was only her sister, she yawned.