Page 85 of Thief of Night
Then, before Red woke, she decided it was time to go see Mr. Punch.
The massive brick Victorian on the leafy main street of Northampton, near Smith College, might have been the most beautiful house Charlie ever broke into. She hopped the ironwork fence and walked up the smooth stone path, but didn’t bother knocking on the massive wooden door, even though she was tempted by the knocker in the shape of a brass hand holding an apple. Instead, she went around the back, checking the windows as she went. The third one had a loose screen. The sixth one wasn’t locked. She pushed it up, past the window rail, not worrying about leaving behind fingerprints. No one was going to the cops.
Heaving herself up, she slid over the sill and inside.
She found herself in a parlor. The walls were dark, wallpapered in a William Morris blackberry print. Victorian-style, wood-trimmed sofas in burgundy velvet sat opposite one another. She took a seat, listened, and waited.
About an hour later, she heard a car in the driveway. Keys rattled in the lock of the back door, then a man walked in. She heard something thunk down on the counter. Heard the fridge open. When the microwave turned on, Charlie got up and, using the sound as cover, slunk into the doorway.
The man jumped. “What the fuck?”
She smiled. “Mr. Punch, I presume.”
He opened his mouth to claim he didn’t know who she was or what shewas doing there, but it was too late. She’d seen the recognition in his face and she certainly knew him.
“You weren’t in any of the family photos,” Charlie said to the man who had sat on the couch in that house in Leverett. The one she’d thought was the husband, at least at first. “They should have taken them down for the staging, but they didn’t.”
He glowered at her. In his tweed jacket and chinos, he looked as though he could be a professor at Smith, which was unsurprising since that’s what he was. “So you knew what I looked like, but how did you find this place with nothing else to work from?”
“The Valley isn’t very big,” Charlie said. “Gloamists know other gloamists, even if they aren’t aware of their specialty or position within the Cabals. I asked around about people who look like you, Professor Frank. From there, it was just a matter of going through your public records. Looks like you bought a house recently.”
“Where’s your shadow, Charlie Hall?” he asked her, voice full of menace. She could feelhisshadow at the edge of her mind.
“Coincidentally, not attached. Which is how I like to approach a puppeteer.” The shadowless couldn’t be possessed, possibly because they didn’t have souls.
“I could just kill you instead,” he said.
She snorted, walking past him to pick up an apple out of a bowl. “This house is ridiculously nice.” Then she took a big bite, snapping it between her teeth. Sweetness bloomed on her tongue.
He raised his eyebrows. “Not worried?”
“Why would I be when I’m here to give you answers? You wanted to know what happened to Rooster Argent. Well, he’s dead.” She leaned against the counter.
His microwave beeped. They stared at one another.
“Where’s the body, then?” he asked.
Charlie turned the bitten apple in her hand. “Is that the important part? Rather than who murdered him and who’s responsible for the massacre in the church basement?”
“Well?” he said. “Let’s have it.”
“I don’t know his name, but I bet you do. The same person who was harvesting shadows for you to sell to the wealthy and desperate at Solaluna this coming weekend.”
Mr. Punch shook his head, a smirk on his face. “Not possible. He’s nothing. A gloamist for a year, maybe a little more.” At her look, he went on. “He’s a coward who basically traded his life to Salt for some kind of indentured servitude.”
Charlie tried not to react at the mention of Salt’s name.
Mr. Punch hadn’t denied that there was a harvester, nor that he’d been planning on selling the shadows at Solaluna. Charlie tried to keep her feelings from showing on her face. Had the harvester made an alliance with the shadows he harvested? With the gloamists he intended to harvest from? She thought of that house and the dead couple on the couch. “That’s why he needed all that blood.”
Mr. Punch didn’t laugh this time. “So where can I find him?”
“I know where he was as of yesterday,” Charlie said and rattled off the address.
He nodded, clearly grudgingly impressed. “You did well. I don’t say that lightly. I am prepared to reward you. Money, of course, and more opportunities.”
“All I want is what you promised,” she said. “Backing me to the Cabals.”
“Of course,” he said, entirely too easily, as though that was a favor he didn’t expect her to ever call in. “I don’t suppose you’d like to harvest shadows? You’d be good at it, I think. Better than you are at hunting down Blights. But, of course, they’d be useful too.”
