Page 81 of Thief of Night
That meant the timer had started. Charlie had fifteen minutes to pull this thing off, maybe. Perhaps only ten.
At least five agonizing minutes were spent getting Red into the parlor onthe second floor, the one hung with scarlet curtains. She settled him on velvet cushions.
“Hang on,” she told him, firmly, wishing she could speak inside his mind. “You’re going to be okay.”
“He doesn’t look good,” said Milo, who’d come into the room. “I’ve seen a shadow like that before and—”
“I need you to take me to your vault.” Charlie interrupted him before he could tell them something dire. She held up the onyx box and made her voice tremble. “I caught a Blight. A terrible one. Really bad. I need to lock it away.”
The kind of con she had learned from Rand, the kind she had specialized in, unfolded slowly. It took time to get a mark to trust, to misdirect them, to get them to go along for the ride. But there was another kind—the street con. That burned fast and hot, putting marks into a highly vulnerable state, wheredoingfelt important, even if the thing being done was a mistake.
“I’m scared,” she said, turning to them in wide-eyed panic that was pure bullshit. “There were three of them, more powerful than anything I’ve ever seen. He killed one and almost died doing it. The second one is trapped in here. The third—the third is still out there.”
“You’re safe,” Sally said, but she glanced toward the door.
Charlie needed them to be as upset as she was. “I know you have a vault.” She held up the onyx box from the van. “I need to get this inside so it can’t get loose in the world again. It’s killed a lot of people.”
“What people?” Milo sounded nervous. There might not be anyone but these two in the tower right now.
“They were slaughtered like animals!” Charlie shouted, loud enough to startle them. When someone started melting down, there was a natural instinct to try to do whatever it would take to fix things, and also to panic a bit.
“Slow your roll,” Sally told her, entirely too reasonably. “What are you saying?”
Charlie let all the anger she’d felt toward the Cabals come out in her voice. “I am saying that I want to keep this thing locked away in your vault,” she told them, speaking fast. “What is it for if not to keep a Blight secure? What is the use of any of you?”
“I can—” Milo started.
“Take me now!” Charlie pressed the box to her chest, hoping he’d see that volunteering to take it off her hands, even if it meant bringing it where she wanted it to go, wasn’t going to fly.
“I’ll secure it,” Sally tried anyway, although she didn’t look hopeful that Charlie would go for her offer.
“Oh, you don’t want me to know where your vault is?” Charlie snapped. “I am a master thief! Do you think I don’t already know?” Thanks to the map Balthazar had gotten her, she was able to describe the way precisely—which she did, in detail, to their growing consternation. “Now, want me to tell you how I’d break in?”
“Okay,” Sally said, finally sounding rattled. “But once that Blight is locked up, it belongs to Bellamy and the masks.”
Charlie let the moment draw out, as though she was confronting a hard truth. It had to make them feel good to think they were taking something off her for their boss. “You mean I won’t be able to claim the bounty.”
“No one gets access to that Blight but us. That’s the offer,” Sally told her. “Take it or leave it.”
Charlie looked in the direction of the door, letting the real panic she felt show on her face. They had to be almost at nine minutes from the time Bellamy had gotten the message to return. “Okay, fine. Fine. Let’s go. Quickly.”
“I’ll stay with him,” Milo said, gesturing toward Red. “Bellamy should be here soon.”
Yes, that’s what she was worried about.
Charlie followed Sally down two spirals of stairs into a basement that had been recently built, tunneled below the original watchtower like something out of H. H. Holmes’s house of horrors. It was high-ceilinged and paved in black stone.
They came to a door inset with a mosaic made up of thousands of pieces of onyx forming an ouroboros, a dragon eating its own tail between a moon and a sun. Three holes were visible. Sally stuck her fingers in and turned something inside in a sequence. First the second, then the first. Then she reached into the third. The door swung open.
“Good luck re-creating that,” she told Charlie, sounding snide.
Charlie bit her tongue. After all, there was no need to re-create it; Sally was escorting her straight inside. Allowing people to think they were smarter than you while convincing them to play into your hands was one of the most important skills of a con artist, and one that was surprisingly difficult to cultivate. It wasn’t easy to eat shit and pretend to like it.
But Charlie stayed in character, focusing on the next step. Focusing on the minutes slipping by.
Inside the vault, the chamber carried the scent of dust and a jumble of old cabinets and bookshelves stuffed with folios, tomes, manuscripts, and evenwhat looked like an incunabulum. Odd objects rested beside them—silver scroll cases, glass vials, and a row of onyx urns. Charlie wondered how many had shadows sealed inside.
Then she got back to business, rubbing her eye hard enough to irritate it and make sure she could cry. It was tempting to ease up on an act once things went your way. But she needed to stay visibly upset until they got out of the room.
