Book of Night(11)

Charlie had a sinking feeling that her sister already had an idea about where she was going to get DMT, and that it’d involve boosting something. Most likely, Charlie boosting something.

Posey’s cell pinged, and as she checked it, Charlie devoted herself to the drinking of her coffee. She was going to need it.

“Mom pulled the Seven of Cups today,” Posey muttered, holding up her phone so Charlie could see the photo of their mother holding a tarot card.

The card of a daydreamer, a searcher. Their mother was living in a long-stay motel with a new guy, but there was always a new guy. She liked to have Posey weigh in on her fortunes, since divinations were free for family.

Charlie ignored a familiar stab of guilt, dulled by time but never totally gone. “What are you going to tell her?”

Posey scowled. “What do you care? It’s not like you believe I know what I’m talking about.” At her tone, Lucipurrr looked up from the sink and hissed.

“That’s not fair,” Charlie said. “And you’re upsetting the cat. She hates it when people fight.”

Posey ignored her. “There’s a reason they cut shadows off people and sell them. Everyone wants magic. It’s not just me.”

Charlie glanced automatically toward the bathroom where Vince was showering. She lowered her voice. “I wasn’t criticizing you. Stop being so fucking paranoid.”

When Charlie was a kid, someone had given her a box of tricks for a birthday. A handkerchief that pulled inside out to change colors. A hat with a false bottom. A stack of marked cards. She’d practiced night after night. But in the end, it was just another kind of fakery. A different way of lying.

Of course, Charlie knew what it was like to want magic.

Posey dragged her laptop over. “Let me show you something.”

Charlie took another sip of coffee and started to make a pile of the mail scattered over the table. Catalogs, electric bill, propane bill, cell phone bill, another letter from the hospital marked in red, and three from a collection company. The total crept higher each month, with interest. Plus, she was going to have to resuscitate a 1998 Toyota Corolla, before it got towed. But first, Posey.

“Think about all the things that have been covered up,” Charlie’s little sister said. “Testing radiation on dead babies, forcing companies to poison the stuff used to make bootleg alcohol during Prohibition. And not just our government, or any government. Companies. Institutions. If there was a way to quicken a shadow, they’d hide it from us.”

Posey turned around the screen of her computer to show a video of teenagers sneaking around a hospital. Underneath, the file claimed to be undoctored surveillance footage. The kids’ eyes glowed in the green infrared light. It was creepy, seeing them giggling beside sleeping patients, snipping with their fingers like they were playing Rock, Paper, Scissors—and only picking scissors, over and over and over.

“What are they using all those shadows for?” Posey asked. “They must have a way to wake them.”

Charlie frowned at the screen, unimpressed. She didn’t think much of shadow robbers. They were the sloppy stickup artists of the magical crime world. And she figured shadow dealers were selling to people who’d lost their shadows through excessive alteration, or used them for experiments. If someone really knew how to quicken a shadow, it seemed unlikely to Charlie they’d just sit on that information when the world would be full of money ready to rain down on them.

“You ever heard of shadows ripping?” Charlie asked, partially because she wanted to know, and partially to change the subject.

Posey scowled. “What?”

“I saw one—last night—that was—I don’t know—it looked like it had been through a shredder or something. And there was a man who…”

Posey stared at her so oddly that Charlie let the last sentence trail off. Posey, who believed everything, didn’t appear to believe her. Charlie wished there was a way for her to prove the shadow had come from a tattered plastic bag. That the man had been wearing gray gloves. But Charlie knew what she’d seen.

“Someone must have been trying to cut it off,” Posey said finally. “They say it’s like having your soul cut away from your body to lose a shadow.” She dropped her voice to a whisper. “And you know Vince—”

“Oh, come on, stop,” Charlie said, cutting her off. “He has a fucking soul.”

“There’s something wrong with him,” Posey said. “He couldn’t do that grim shit job of his if there wasn’t.”

Vince cleaned hotel rooms after something happened involving a lot of blood or a body—a stabbing, a shooting, an overdose. His boss handled dispatch, farming out the work to three freelancers who worked off the books: Winnie, an older woman with grown children who had been a professional clown before she started this. Craig, who said he was doing it for a year to learn what gore looked like before he applied to Tom Savini’s school for special effects makeup. And Vince.

“You’re one to talk about shit jobs,” Charlie said.

Posey ignored her. “He’s too quiet. And I think he’s been lying about speaking French.”

Charlie gave a weird snort-laugh, surprised by the ridiculousness of the accusation and the seriousness with which Posey spoke. “He’s done what now?”

Posey scowled. “We were watching television and there was an episode where one of the characters said something in French and he grinned before the show explained what any of it meant. It wasn’t just bonjour or whatever, either; he understood an entire French joke.”