Page 86 of Thief of Night
Charliewouldbe good at it. She could steal shadows and be rolling in wealth. But stealing a part of a person wasn’t like stealing books from wealthy collectors or even elite institutional collections. And did he really think he was the first one who’d ever suggested she do it? “That’s not for me.”
“A thief like you can’t afford morals?” Mr. Punch told her. “Shadows aren’t exactly an ethically sourced commodity.”
He looked so normal, standing in his kitchen with countertops of local limestone and handmade tiles on his backsplash. He didn’t look like a man who could make your friends walk into traffic. “Rooster was doing this before you got involved, back when Malik was the one in charge. Malik didn’t know, did he?”
Mr. Punch waited for a long moment. “You’re good, but there’s such a thing as being too good.”
“I’m not stealing shadows,” Charlie said. “Not for anyone.”
“Then make sure you stay out of my way,” he told her, opening a door under his sink and reaching inside. He came out with something that looked like a brick, wrapped in duct tape and Target bags. “Take this and forget we ever met. If I find out that you gave so much as a hint about my identity, you will live only until you first lose everything you’ve ever cared about. Now get out.”
Charlie headed for the door, chucking the bitten apple onto his manicured lawn.
Once she got to the van, she ripped open the wrapping on the brick. It contained a chunk of money, in mixed denominations, all of it dirty.
According to its website, Solaluna specialized in health and wellness. It hosted a variety of high-end yoga retreats, exclusive seminars, and tasteful weddings featuring a lot of billowing white cloth. The spa offered craniosacral massage, aromatherapy, and crystal chakra realignment. If Charlie’s mom won the lottery, she’d rent a room and never leave.
That’s what Charlie managed to pull up on her phone before she fell asleep on the couch, a veggie burrito still spinning in the microwave.
When she woke, muzzy-headed, but finally no longer hungry, she checked on Red, who was still sleeping. Then she brushed her teeth and went to see if Posey’s laptop was available to borrow. It was resting on her bed, beside an old book with a worn leather cover. The spine read:On the Perils of Possession: A Gentylman’s Guide to Spirites, Influence, and Commande. It looked like something Charlie would have been sent to steal.
Resolving to ask her sister about its provenance, Charlie grabbed the laptop and brought it out to the common area.
Searching “Solaluna,” and “gloamist” yielded a glossy website advertising the dates—starting on Thursday, the last weekend before Christmas—for the Umbral Elevation Retreat, a “life-altering long weekend, teaching those of you who have had success in the rest of your lives to finally access the incredible power of your shadow” with special guest TikTok star Rooster Argent, as well as a Cabal leader who must remain anonymous, but would speak at length about “the secrets of the gloamists.” To find out more, you were encouraged to fill out a form. Charlie clicked through and noted that to submit it, you had to pay a nonrefundable hundred-dollar deposit.
It seemed a violation of privacy to look at Posey’s super-secret, self-deleting chat, but Charlie didn’t feel the same way about using Posey’s Reddit account to access private boards. Charlie had worked Posey’s password out ages ago: Lucipurrrlovesmice91.
Her sister’s icon was an anime-style cutesy version of Posey with a giant shadow looming menacingly over her. Charlie huffed a laugh. Then she pulled up the subreddit r/glooms—one of the bigger private shadow magic discussion boards. She searched “elevation” because that didn’t seem like a word that got used a lot.
As she hoped, a thread about the conference popped up. A lot of the discussion around it was speculative. Were a bunch of one-percenters about to get scammed or were they about to gatekeep the secret to waking shadows? It was rumored to cost $55,000 per person, not counting the lodging or food. Everyone was pissed off about it.
That certainly qualified as hideously expensive.
Charlie went back to the Umbral Elevation website to put in a request for information for a Vincent Carver. She paid the hundred-dollar surcharge with a credit card she’d nicked from Topher’s wallet.
The reply she got was immediate and obviously automated. All the spots for the retreat were taken, but not to worry, her money would be counted as credit toward the next retreat and she’d be on an early list for the invites. Ah well, she’d tried.
And what was she even doing this for? She had a brick of cash and the promise of a Cabal leader to back her—better, she had something to hold over his head, since she knew his identity and his address. Once Bellamy figured out that the vial with the remains of Red’s shadow was no longer in his vault, she’d need him on her side.
But Mr. Punch selling stolen shadows to the wealthy wouldn’t leave Charlie’s mind. Quickened shadows, ripped from people like the girl she’d seen crying in that shadow parlor. New gloamists, excited about having magic, who were going to be shadowless for the rest of their lives. They would be crushed. There would be a new “harvester” who wasn’t Charlie, who would be stealing more shadows so wealthy people could burn them up as fast as they bought them.
Unless someone blew up the whole scheme. Unless someone stole those shadows before the rich got what they wanted, so they would no longer consider the Cabals a reliable source.
To do that, with no possible benefit, a person would have to be a fucking idiot.
With a sigh, Charlie went to the booking page for Solaluna. No rooms were available on the weekend when the Umbral Elevation Retreat was scheduled. Nor did the on-site restaurant have any tables available the entire four days, despite being theoretically open to the public.
Maybe that was a sign for her to leave this the hell alone.
She dialed the number on the website.
“I really need your help,” she told the soft-voiced woman who answered, allowing herself to sound as flustered as she felt. “I’m trying to book a room. Wait, let me start over—I just got this job as an assistant and I am going toget in so much trouble. My boss is Mr. Carver and his grandmother told him that Solaluna would be the perfect place for him to recuperate and now he’s obsessed and won’t consider anywhere else. But he says it has to be this weekend, and you’reall booked up.”
The woman on the other end of the phone was quiet for a moment. “What are the dates he’s hoping for?”
Charlie gave the specifics, trying to keep her voice a little high and panicked. It wasn’t hard.
“I see,” the woman said. “What did you say the name was?”
