Page 19 of Thief of Night
“Shut up,” the goatee guy said. “You might actually learn something.”
Charlie tried to tune out the podcast voice, butthe kind of man who is welcome in any roomreminded her of Rand. He’d told her something similar about con artists:You’ve got to be able to fit in anywhere, Charlie. Dive bar. Michelin-starred restaurant. The con artist must be a chameleon. Succeed and no door is shut to you.
He’d tried to teach her to be like that. To be able to slip in and out of anywhere. To seem to belong with anyone, even the powerful.
And hey, look at Charlie Hall now.
11Mr. Punch
Twenty-five minutes later they pulled into the driveway of a house in the woods of Leverett. Light spilled out of a wall of glass windows, illuminating a sloping yard. The edge of a cliff was visible along one side, with the carpet of trees below. AFOR SALEsign was prominently displayed on the lawn.
“This belongs to a Cabal member?” Charlie asked. She wasn’t sure what she’d been picturing, but Bellamy’s masks operated out of an abandoned tower in the woods, complete with spray paint and crumbling cement. This place had a two-car garage.
“No,” the ginger-haired man told her. “Mr. Punch is borrowing it.”
“Mr. Punch?” Charlie echoed.
“New head of the puppeteers,” said the guy with the goatee.
“What happened to Malik?” Charlie hadn’t particularly liked him—being able to control the bodies of others was an appalling use of shadow magic and Charlie was highly suspicious of anyone who wanted to specialize in it, much less lead that Cabal—but he’d never done anything to give her a specific grudge against him.
“Salt made Malik look weak. Someone inside the organization was eventually going to make a move.”
A coup then, and a recent one. She wondered if Bellamy and Vicereine had supported it or been caught unawares.
The ginger-haired man led her to the door, opened it, and went inside. She followed. In a cathedral-ceilinged living room with huge windows, an older man in a robe and pajamas sat alone on a green velvet couch. His eyes were closed.
“Charlie Hall,” the man said, without opening his eyes. “We meet at last.”
A shiver shook her like she was a pair of pants on a clothesline. This had to be the new puppeteer leader, except, not quite. Was it the homeowner hewas puppeteering? She tried to push down her horror and think rationally. Mr. Punch had a way to hide his identity and show off at the same time. It was meant to freak her out.
And it was working.
“Where’s Vicereine?” Charlie asked, dread in the pit of her stomach.
“Does it matter?” Mr. Punch said with the other man’s throat.
Charlie had assumed that Vicereine had been behind this. That she’d been the one to bring Charlie in for a scolding, no matter who else was in attendance. Now she wasn’t so sure. “I just don’t know why I’m here.”
“Because you serve the Cabals and I am a Cabal leader. You may call me Mr. Punch although that is no more my name than this is my face.” The man made a horrible smile, as though his muscles were fighting against one another. “Now, can you guess why I’ve brought you here?”
“I finished my last assignment.” Charlie gestured toward the bruise from where the guy in the bar had hit her, which wasn’t accurate, but was easier than showing the glued-up wound on her back. “If that’s what this is about.”
“You’re fast,” said Mr. Punch. “And maybe foolish.”
“I’m ambitious,” Charlie said. “My ambition is for Vince and me to be done with this gig as quickly as possible.”
“Shadow, how areyouenjoying the work?” asked Mr. Punch.
Charlie turned to see Red standing behind her, appearing as solid as the rest of them. She hadn’t noticed him manifest and wondered why he had. “Onyx floor,” he mouthed to her.
Fuck, she’d lost her touch. She’d walked across it and hadn’t even noticed.
“Shadow?” the man repeated.
There was a pause where Charlie worried Red was going to refuse to answer the new head of the puppeteers unless she commanded him.
“Killing fellow Blights?” Red returned, finally, in a silky voice that was all threat. “What could I fail to enjoy about that?”
