Book of Night(10)

But dig a little deeper into the morass of links and articles, past the gloss of general interest, and you got to theories about how people became gloamists. Legitimate sources weighed in with a measured manner. A scientist from the Helmholtz Research Centres was quoted in a now-viral interview in The New Yorker as saying “Shadows are like the shades of the dead in Homer, needing blood to quicken them.” But it seemed as though every wellness influencer and would-be wizard had a hunch to sell. YouTube and TikTok became crammed with bogus tutorials. How I Woke My Shadow with Pain, Shadow Quickening After Fistfight, Magic Ability Discovered After Drowning, Safe Asphyxiation Techniques with Plastic Bag—Guaranteed Results. And in the depths of 8kun, the ideas were much weirder and much worse.

Charlie could remember before, when actual magic had seemed impossible. And then the confusion when no one seemed to be sure what was real and what wasn’t. But Posey had gone from a childhood belief in magic into an adulthood where magic was real—just denied to her.

Charlie vividly recalled coming home to a bathtub half filled with melted ice and her sister sitting on the floor, wrapped in a towel, her lips blue with cold. “I should have stayed in longer,” Posey had told her, teeth chattering. Charlie begged her not to try anything like that again.

Instead, Posey had gotten a piece of fishing line to tie to a tongue piercing and begin the slow and painful-looking process of splitting her tongue. Apparently once you got used to using the muscles on both sides simultaneously, it trained your brain to a “bifurcated consciousness.” The second thing every gloamist needed, after a quickened shadow.

As far as Charlie could tell, all Posey got out of it was a slight lisp.

Charlie yawned and checked the messages on both her phones. On her real phone, there was an invitation to a barbecue from Laura, her closest friend from high school, who these days had three kids and not a lot of time. A plea to bartend at another friend’s backyard wedding. Spam from a shop with a sale on onyx charms.

She took out her burner and texted Adam, giving things another try:

Can we meet up? Somewhere private. I don’t want us to be spotted together.



This was the tricky bit, getting him to bite. Once he told her where he was, he was screwed.

Then Doreen could go scream at him and drag him home.

If only it could be that easy for Charlie to fix things for Posey. But there was no con or heist, no scam she could think of that would help.

Tomorrow?



With her car out of commission, that was going to be tight. Sure, Charlie typed. I can come over in the morning, before class.

No mornings.



She ground her teeth in frustration. If she didn’t know when he was going to be there, then she’d have to stake out the place. And since she was pretending to be Amber the gloamist, it made no sense for her to even have some other job. Charlie decided to go for vague. I have a thing until midnight. I can meet you after.

He sent her a thumbs-up and a winking emoji. When he followed up with the number of his hotel room at the MGM in Springfield, she felt a little guilty, as though she was scheduling a rendezvous.

You’re not doing anything wrong, she told herself.

Okay, she was doing something wrong, just not what it looked like.

“Have you been paying attention to what I said at all?” Posey demanded.

“Definitely,” Charlie lied.

Posey rolled her eyes and kicked the leg of Charlie’s chair with a slippered foot. “There’s this video where people take ayahuasca and are guided through waking their shadows. Everyone on the message boards are flipping out over it. I know someone with a lake house over by Lake Quinsigamond, and he wants a bunch of us to re-create it—if someone can get the DMT.”

Charlie raised her eyebrows. “That’s the stuff that makes you vomit all night. And grosser stuff.”

Posey shrugged. “Can you get it?”

“DMT?” Charlie said, trying to decide how bad an idea it really was. “I don’t know. Ask around Hampshire College. If someone is dealing it locally, they’re dealing it there. Or maybe when you start at UMass you can see if someone can synthesize you some in the bio lab.”

Charlie’s sister had spent the last few years bingeing Reddit threads, watching videos, and chatting with other gloamist hopefuls until dawn. But lately things had gotten worse. Posey had started staying up for days at a stretch and not leaving the house for weeks. Despair seemed to be chasing her heels as her shadow refused to quicken. She’d gone so deep down the rabbit hole that Charlie worried it had become an oubliette.

That was why it was so important for Posey to go to school. At UMass, she could study umbral science with actual professors instead of yutzes from the internet. Maybe she’d even discover some other interest.

The only problem was the number of forms and fees and surprise charges. While Charlie had gotten together most of the money for this last bill, she didn’t have it all. But she could get it once Doreen’s brother came through and bought them a little more time.

So Charlie fell back on the family tradition of mostly ignoring the situation and occasionally, guiltily, suggesting that her sister try to go to bed earlier. Acting like her problem was insomnia.

Like they didn’t both know Posey was drinking buckets of coffee and soda and maybe popping Adderall to stave off exhaustion. At least that would serve her well in undergrad.