Book of Night(102)

She tried to push energy into her shadow. She wasn’t sure if she was doing it correctly, until her hand became briefly solid, and the lever turned.

Her shadow flowed back to her in a rush, and the sensation was so intense and strange that Charlie had to lean against the wall, shudders running through her. It was as though moths alighted everywhere on her skin and then were somehow absorbed into her.

And even more overwhelming—the possibilities that opened up, the vast expanse of things she would be able to do, the places she’d be able to worm her way into, unfurling in front of her.

Taking a deep breath to steady herself, Charlie pushed the door the rest of the way open.

She flipped the lights and had to smother a scream. A massive bloodstain covered the gray patterned rug. It took her a few moments of standing there, light-headed, fighting down panic, to absorb that it was only a stain, and an old one at that. There were smears at the edges, where scrubbing had made the blood blur.

That was why the room couldn’t be rented. It needed a new carpet.

Charlie closed the door slowly behind her, making sure it didn’t slam.

Photographs had been taped up along the wall, above a cheap-looking pressboard cabinet. A bed resting in the middle of the floor had a stripped-down mattress covered in clothes. The blinds on the window had been taped over from the inside with garbage bags, and a rolled-up towel rested near the door, probably used to hide any light from peeking out while Vince was inside.

Torn packaging from Williamson’s Clothier was scattered over the chair near the bathroom—a shoebox, a heavy wooden hanger, and one of those zip-up body bags fancy suits came in.

As she stepped into the room, she realized the lamp on the bedside table had been knocked over and smashed. The bed itself was pushed a bit diagonal, as though something heavy had shoved it. And on the other side, she found a chair, turned on its side.

There’d been some kind of struggle. Was the absence of the van in the parking lot evidence that Vince had escaped his assailants? Or had Salt taken him and the van both?

Charlie forced herself over to the wall. Photos of the Hierophant had been taped there—standing on a street corner, meeting with Malik from the Cabal. A shot of him covered in what looked like shadowy armor, as though he were some kind of knight.

And beneath them, a printout of an article from two years before: Suspect in Shadow Theft Case Has All Charges Dropped, Victims Outraged. The photo of him was small and blurry from being printed off the internet, but she recognized him right away. The Hierophant’s name was Stephen Vorman.

But she still didn’t understand the connection between him and Red, unless the Blight to whom Stephen had been tethered was Red. But he’d wanted her to give Red a message, so that couldn’t be right. It bothered her, the idea that she wouldn’t be able to tell. If she knew Vince, she ought to know his shadow.

On the nightstand, she found a notebook, rinds of paper stuck in the coils left over from pages that had been ripped out.

In the bathroom, she found a comb and pomade.

And in the trash can beside the toilet, she found a glued-together box with clay inside of it, a Styrofoam cup stained with black paint, a bottle of clear nail polish, and two empty plastic containers that had a two-part resin in them.

He’d obviously been molding something, but what? Turning over the box, she noted the squarish-shaped depressions.

Charlie went back to the bed, with the notebook. Fishing around in her bag, she came out with a pencil and did the old trick of running the graphite lightly down the page so the marks of previous writing would be revealed.

Char,

I don’t know how to say goodbye to you.

Charlie sat there for a long time, staring at the ghost of a letter.

While she didn’t understand what it was, Vince was out there executing a plan of his own. And given what he’d written, he didn’t seem optimistic about how it was going to turn out. She needed to think.

Paul Ecco had a page of the book. He’d gotten it from someone.

And Knight had seen the book, although he hadn’t found the ritual that made The Book of Blights famous. The ritual that Red was hoping to enact.

Maybe Knight had missed that part. After all, a quick flip-through in an auction house wasn’t enough time to be certain there was nothing important inside. Charlie had seen plenty of secrets that weren’t readily apparent. Tiny words written in artwork. Lemon-juice print revealed by heat. Ciphers that were all but impossible to decipher without an equally well-hidden key. Any of the puzzles that gloamists created for one another.

But Knight had said he had the means to bring someone down, and she had every reason to believe that person was Salt. So there had to be something.

Fetching Knight Singh’s book, she smoothed out its leather cover and thumbed through the pages, skimming for Salt’s name. For anything to do with Blights, or immortality, or the breath of life.

Nothing. And Raven, who’d read it, claimed not to have found anything either.

Charlie went through the book again, more carefully. She felt each page’s thickness, to see if any had been glued together. She checked the spine, to see if anything had been inserted into it. Then she checked the endpapers, running the pads of her fingers over them to check for any unevenness. On the back inside cover, she found light glue marks along one edge, as though perhaps the paper had been removed and replaced. Getting the knife attached to her keys, she tried scraping at the edge. Sliding it into the seam, she pried up the edge, loosening the leather. And there, underneath, were papers written in an unfamiliar hand: