Page 50 of Thief of Night
She gritted her teeth. “This is Charlie. Can you cover for me? I’m going to be a little late.”
“Like ten minutes?” She couldn’t tell if he sounded more smug than usual.
“Like an hour,” Charlie admitted, thinking that was optimistic.
“I take my job seriously,” Don told her. “I heard about you and how difficult you were to work with. You’re proving all those people right.”
“If you can’t cover for me, just say so and put Balthazar on.” Charlie hated asking Balthazar for help, but at least he’d understand. And maybe he’d have some advice.
“Just a second,” Don told her.
A moment later, it was Odette’s voice she heard. “Charlie? Is all well?”
Her stomach dropped. This was exactly what she’d wanted to avoid. Odette had seen a little shadow magic—maybe more than a little—but she knew only about as much as most people. She didn’t understand the Cabals or the role of the Hierophant. As worldly as she was, she might be one of the many people who thought Blights were made-up stories, urban legends like white crocodiles hunting in the sewers of New York.
“I’m going to be late,” she said. “I’m really sorry. I was just asking Don if he thought he could cover part of my shift.”
“Oh, that’s fine. He can cover the whole shift if you need him to, the dear boy.” Odette sounded unruffled, but if all Don wanted to tell Charlie was that, he wouldn’t have gotten their boss involved.
Well, Charlie supposed that he’d found a way to slither into Odette’s good graces after all—and at her expense. “Don doesn’t need to do so much.”
“Oh, let him. And you finish up whatever it is that’s keeping you.”
That was generous. Too generous. The kind of generous that put you on thin ice and maybe made you worry the ice was already cracking.
“I’ll be there for my next shift, on time. I promise.”
“See you then, darling,” Odette said and disconnected.
Charlie stared at the road. She couldn’t get distracted by work. She had to keep focused on getting to Raven and what she was going to do when she got there.
Charlie had kept many useful things to capture or kill Blights in the back of the van. A set of three onyx knives—one of which she’d brought into the mill building. An onyx-inlaid box the size to fit a scroll, because, she supposed, shadows could squish down small. That, she’d lifted from Salt’s mansion. Not to mention her lockpicks, a random wig, and other criminal bits and bobs.
The only thing she had with her in the Porsche was what was in her work bag—one knife and a piece of netting with onyx beads she’d been lucky enough to get out of the last Hierophant’s stash, because she could have never afforded it. An item, it was worth noting, that she’d never so much as tried to use.
“I wish I had onyx armor,” she complained, although she wasn’t sure such a thing existed. If it did, it was likely to be too fragile to be useful and so expensive that she’d need a big chunk of Remy’s inheritance to afford it.
“You would look like a chess piece,” he said, but he smiled as he said it. “Besides, you have me.”
Charlie recalled the lessons at Balthazar’s place, the feeling of shadow wings wrapped around her. “We should have practiced more.”
For protection, she wore onyx earrings and a single flat disc of onyx that hung over her heart on a silver chain—certainly not as much as she would have been wearing if she’d known this was where her night would take her.
Tension knotted her shoulders as she wove in and out of traffic, wondering if she would be too late. Wondering if Raven was going to call her back. Wishingshecould call, although the last thing Raven needed while she was hiding out from a hungry Blight was the buzz of a phone to give her away.
For a while they were quiet, Charlie’s eyes on the road. Then she glanced at him. “Why are they like this?”
Red frowned. “Who?”
“Blights. They’re not mindless, but they seem very focused on murder.”
“Most of us are made in terror and rage,” Red said, including himself in the number. “Most of us don’t have much else giving us life.”
Charlie huffed a breath. It just didn’t make sense, but she wasn’t sure how to explain. “Can they… grow out of it?”
“Of course,” Red said, not including himself this time. “But they’ve still got to eat.”
Moments later, the Porsche pulled into the parking lot of the strip mallthat contained Raven’s studio, Eclipse Piercing & Shadow Modifications. It sat between a chicken place and a closed laundromat, with a strip of woods behind it. When she pulled around to the back, she found it eerily quiet, the hum of cars on the road dimmed. Darkness surrounded them.
