Page 124 of Thief of Night
“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’sname—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.
