Page 116 of Thief of Night
She felt his hand on her arm and then the sting of the razor blade. It was sharp, she’d give him that, so it didn’t hurt as much as it could have. She tried to focus on anything but the wetness on her skin.
Keep him talking,Charlie thought. “I didn’t think people could have more than one shadow. How do you manage to split your consciousnessmorethan two ways?”
His hand caught hold of her ankle and she tried not to tense up, but she couldn’t help it. She felt the glide of the razor again.
“Not many people could, I bet,” he said. “Maybe no one can but me. After I got my third and my fourth, I practiced until I came up with a way. You have to move between them, sliding in and out of different consciousnesses and you have to do it fast. Sometimes I get lost.”
She shuddered at madness in his voice.
“Don’t move,” he said. “I want to hurt you, not kill you. Not yet.”
Shadows had gathered in the corners of the room, as though waiting for his signal. The more blood he spilled, the more eager their movements.
“What about a deal?” she asked. The drag of the razor was a horrible distraction and she didn’t have a lot to work with to start. But if necessity was the mother of invention, then she needed to start inventing. “I could get you Mr. Punch.”
She felt the pause of his movements and opened her eyes. He was watching her warily. All around him were shadows. They’d flocked hungrily to her spilling blood. Still, she felt the rightness of saying what she had in the way his eyes met hers.
“How?” he demanded.
“You probably heard he was at the conference. He’ll be looking for you. And I’m the Hierophant. He trusts me.”
Mark laughed. “Talk about putting the fox in charge of the henhouse.”
“Exactly. I can do it,” Charlie insisted, half a plan forming in her head.
He narrowed his eyes at her. “Why should I trust you?”
“I’m terrified!” she admitted. “I want to survive. And I know you believeeverything has a price—what’s the price for me to get out of this?” They’d both believed that. Everything had a price. Nothing was free. Certainly not loyalty. Definitely not love. In the end, you were on your own.
And yet if she was going to get out of this, she didn’t see a way that didn’t involve gambling on both love and loyalty.
“Aren’t you afraid that no matter what I say, I’ll kill you anyway?” Mark asked. As though to punctuate the question, he drew another line of fire down her arm with the razor. “Maybe you shouldn’t trust me.”
He was 1,000 percent going to kill her anyway. “What choice do I have?”
He grinned as though he liked that answer.
“Okay,” he said, fishing out a burner phone. “Call him.”
She shook her head. “If I use that, he’s going to guess you’re making me do it. I should use my number.”
He seemed to be weighing her words. “What are you going to say?”
“That I got away from you and I need him to pick me up. I’ll promise to lead him to you if he does.”
“How will that make him come alone?” Mark cut another line in her leg. This one hurt more, as though he’d pressed down harder.
“I’m thinking!” she said. “Okay, okay. I’ll tell him that if he doesn’t come within the next fifteen minutes that my next call will to be to Vicereine and I will tell her about his whole shadow operation.”
“He won’t do it,” Mark said. “He’s a coward.”
“You know how convincing I can be.” Charlie hoped she was convincinghim.
He nodded along with that, mouth twisting with memory. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll unbind your hands, then you call. Don’t do anything stupid.”
Charlie sighed. “Are you done bleeding me for your shadows? I think I’ll wait until they’ve fed.”
“You don’t trust me, after all?” he asked, but he didn’t sound displeased.
