Page 7 of Thief of Night
I am not going to make you do anything you don’t want to do.
Everyonesaid that. Salt had certainly said it to Remy in the beginning, when he’d first come to live at the manor. Remy had even said it to Red, though by then he’d made Red do plenty. All saying it meant was that the person wouldn’t make you do something awful right away.
So it didn’t matter that Charlie gazed at him with convincing warmth in her big brown eyes or treated him as though she really thought he was a person. He didn’t believe she’d been willing to put her own life on the line to save his. He didn’t believe any of it. She was a con artist and this was a con.
5Hall Family Curse
Charlie’s little sister, Posey, looked up from packing at the slam of the screen door. The kitchen cabinets were all open, half their contents haphazardly piled into cardboard boxes with wildly random, yet highly specific Sharpie’d labels—TINY UMBRELLAS, MUGS, SPATULA, TONGS & PASTA STRAINERSorLEMON SQUEEZER, KNIVES, TIARA & COFFEE GRINDER. Their cat, Lucipurrr, was in the box markedWORM BUCKET, barely visible except for the shine of her green eyes.
“You’re finally back,” Posey said to her sister, glancing up. “Want to order a pizza?”
Charlie smiled as though she wasn’t hurting. “Sure.”
“I found us a place,” Posey went on. “The people from State Street called back. We just have to go over and sign the lease. We can be in next week.”
“In Northampton?” Charlie asked, suspicious of good news. “You’re sure we can afford it?”
“You’d be surprised—it was kinda cheap,” Posey said. “No idea why. Maybe a different murder happened there.”
A man named Adam had been killed by the previous Hierophant in the Hall sisters’ current rental. His shadow had painted the walls of the living room with Adam’s blood.RedRedRed,written all the way up to the ceiling in gruesome letters, because it had been Red he was looking for.
Charlie and Posey had moved back in as soon as the crime scene tape was taken down and the blood removed. But their ruthless practicality hadn’t mattered to the horrified owner, who’d offloaded the place as fast as he could onto some oblivious Brooklynites moving to the Valley after the birth of their second child. They were closing on the house just before Christmas, so that was the deadline when all of them—girls, cat, Blight—needed to be out.
“So what do you need from me for the deposit?” Charlie wasn’t flush withcash, but she would be due a bounty for this Blight. And she’d caught two—albeit small and not that impressive or lucrative—before that. Plus, if she needed to, she had a couple of things she’d lifted from Salt’s mansion that she could pawn.
“Nothing yet,” Posey said.
Which might mean she’d need the whole thing and just didn’t want to give Charlie the bad news. Posey had been working as a tarot card reader over Zoom for more than a year, a job that had never been immensely profitable. And since Posey became a gloamist, she’d been going out, when previously she’d been unwilling to leave the house for months at a time. Posey’s socioemotional health was on the rise, which was a relief to Charlie, but her wallet had taken the hit. These days, Posey barely seemed to work at all.
Even if the place was cheapish, Charlie doubted she could make enough at Rapture to reliably pay the entirety of the rent. She was going to have to catch or kill a lot more Blights.
“What happened to your face?” Posey asked, then sniffed. “And why do you smell like a campfire?”
Charlie’s gaze went to Posey’s quickened shadow. It was magical, but it wasn’tconscious.She didn’t think it was, anyway. It gave Charlie a strange feeling when she looked at it, and not just because it had once been part of her. Sometimes she felt she ought to do something—talk to it, make sure it was okay?—but didn’t know how.
Posey fed it frequently. Charlie had noticed the shallow cuts on her calves and the packet of stainless steel razor blades that frequently sat on the edge of the tub, without a razor in sight. Charlie saw her researching shadows late in the night, poring over old books and practicing shadow manipulation again and again.
It was easy to worry about what else she might be doing when no one else was around. Worry she’d already tried bleeding herself more than was safe.
If Salt was anything to go on, the way to power up a shadowfastwas to feed it someone else’s blood, and a lot of it.
“Seriously,” Posey said. “What happened to you?”
“Just a job,” Charlie told her, walking to Posey’s laptop, where it rested on the kitchen table. She pulled up the menu of the pizza place down the street. “Olives, peppers, and mushrooms?”
A chat was open in the background of the screen, members complaining about some retreat for wealthy people who wanted to awaken their shadows.
SkepticalChili82:Ice baths for the rich
temporary_earnestness:Ice picks for the rich would be better
“Fuck the Cabals,” Posey said. “They’re trying to get you killed.”
Charlie didn’t think they were actuallytrying,but that didn’t mean they wouldn’t succeed.
“I’m fine,” she said, exhausted. “It won’t be forever.”
Posey gave an exaggerated sigh. “Years.And you’re not taking it seriously. You’re the Hierophant and you haven’t even split your tongue.”
