Page 110 of Thief of Night
Archie’s voice was lower and calmer when he spoke again. “I’m sorry, Sean, but what am I supposed to do? You’re delivering methreemore shadows. That makesthirteenand your boss knows I havetwenty-fiveappointments. I can’t give these people their money back. They don’t care about that—they just care about getting what I promised them. If I don’t get them a shadow, there’s not going to be a conference next year.”
“That’s your problem,” the redhead—Sean—said. “Not mine. And not Mr. Punch’s. Figure it out.”
“I’m going to talk to him myself,” Archie warned. She could hear him at the safe tapping in the code.
Charlie glanced over at Red in the dim light, trying to see if he was thinking the same thing that she was. Archie planned on talking to Malhar.
“Go right ahead.” Sean sounded smug.
There was the clink of glass-on-glass. Something being put in the safe.
“Let’s go talk to him together,” Archie offered. “He’s just downstairs, after all.”
Charlie heard the safe lock engage, then silence.
“What are you talking about? Mr. Punch isn’t here.” Well, that answered one question. At least the puppeteer leader wasn’t actually at the conference.
“Don’t be ridiculous. I spoke to him this morning,” Archie scoffed, which was a testament to either his gullibility or Malhar’s and Posey’s powers of persuasion.
“Yeah?” Sean said, suspicion in his voice. “Then I definitely want to talk.”
Panic made it hard for Charlie to sit still. She itched to get out of there and warn Posey. But in a moment, Archie and Sean would leave and she would be able to act.
Red raised his eyebrows in a question. She wasn’t entirely sure, but she was afraid he was asking if he should keep Archie and Sean from leaving the room. She shook her head minutely. The chances of failure were too high and success… She didn’t like what success looked like.
After a moment, the door opened and shut. Charlie counted to ten, then slithered out from under the bed. She went immediately to the safe and punched in the passcode.
Red frowned. “Don’t you have to do that override thing?”
“I heard the numbers,” Charlie said. “Each one has a distinct sound.”
She couldn’t help but be gratified at how impressed he looked.
The door to the safe opened. Inside, long glass vials stood like scrolls, stoppered at either end with onyx. When she lifted one, it felt both heavy and fragile in her hands. As she tilted the glass, a dark shape wriggled inside.
Kneeling, Charlie took a shirt from Archie’s open suitcase and rolled up the vials in it to pad them. There was one too many to fit, so she stuffed that last vial into her shirt, straight down under her bra. Then she stuffed the bundle into a conference bag. Handing that to Red, she closed the safe and wiped off her prints.
“Let’s get out of here,” she said.
He slung the bag over his shoulder and they left. Charlie was careful to wipe away the rest of her prints on the way out.
“Malhar is supposed to be speaking any minute now,” Red said as they went down the stairs, too fast now to seem natural. Charlie didn’t want to slow him down, though. Not when Archie and Sean were ahead of them.
The hall leading to the conference room was empty. No shouting or sounds of confrontation marred the tranquil atmosphere. She darted toward the door to where the talks were being held.
Opening it, she stepped inside. No Archie. No Sean.
Malhar was already in the room, near the front. He gave Charlie and Red a grin when he spotted them coming in. Before she could signal that they needed to leave, he’d stepped forward and cleared his throat.
“Hello,” he said, giving the audience a wave. He was smiling too much and a sheen of sweat was visible at his brow. “So, time to divulge all my secrets.”
People laughed. It was a good start. But some of the audience looked around, as though wondering why Archie wasn’t there to introduce his most important guest. Charlie cracked the door and peered out, but the hall was still clear.
Perhaps Archie, already worried about his convention attendees, was waiting until after the speech to confront Malhar. Probably, if that was the case, Sean had gone to gather the two other puppeteers from the cottage. The glass vial shoved beneath the underwire of her bra pressed hard against Charlie’s chest.
She slid out her phone and texted Posey:Archie knows.
Malhar continued to speak. “I asked several people what would be the best thing to talk about in front of you all. Everyone said the same thing—quickening shadows.” At that, the room became much more alert. He went on, pacing. “There is a lot of conventional wisdom out there, but I am going to give you an underlying theory. First, I want to tell you a story. When I was in graduate school, I was living with a couple of roommates. One of them had a girlfriend in the psychology department. One night, we were all staying up late talking—and yeah, okay, shrooming—and I got to telling her about the bicameral mind and the bifurcated consciousness.”
