Book of Night(35)

As she opened the door, exhaustion settled over her as adrenaline ebbed away.

Posey was standing at the stove, frying chopped meat and onions. She looked over as the screen door banged behind Charlie and gasped. “What happened to you?”

“Someone came into Rapture looking for a guy. The one I told you about, with the shredded shadow. I got knocked around a little.”

Posey put her hand on her hip. “A little?”

Charlie made herself shrug. “Could have been worse. What are you making?”

“Spaghetti Bolognese. Who cares? You want to tell me what’s really going on?”

She had to say something. And she needed a minute or two to figure out how to jump-start her brain. “After a shower. I’m soaked with liquor; it’s disgusting and stinging the hell out of the cuts.”

Posey pushed the metal spatula violently through the meat. “Where’s Vince? I thought he was going to get you.”

“I sent him to pick something up. Band-Aids.” A wobbly lie, given the hour, but they had become something of a nocturnal family. Bats, with their night work and their night feasts and their night-mart shopping. By the time he came back empty-handed, Posey would have the pressing matter of magic to worry about.

Posey was clearly restraining herself from another speech about how there was something wrong with Vince in the soul department when Charlie escaped into their bathroom.

Her sister knew about her past as a thief. Charlie had brought a few books home for her, digital copies that were slightly suspect but still interesting, and once, a slim volume of shadow magic notes of a basic sort from the beginning of the industrial age. What Charlie had avoided, though, was telling Posey about the scary stuff. The times she’d almost been caught. The cons that had gone pear-shaped. The ways magic had been used by gloamists against one another, and against people without quickened shadows.

It had been easier to portray her whole career as a lark. A series of adventures. And if Charlie could just get herself together, she was sure she could make this sound just as unserious.

Their small shared bathroom contained a single sink and a tub shower. A dollar-store curtain, waxy with dried soap, hung from plastic hooks around it. Charlie turned the tap as hot as it would go.

As the room began to fill with steam, Charlie carefully removed her clothes. Even having done her best to dust off her hair and skirt, she found tiny shards of glass visible on her skin. Wadding up the fabric of her bike shorts and wetting it, she tried to blot off the last of the splinters. When she was done, she rolled up all her clothes and shoved them into the small metal trash can, mashing down a bunch of crumpled tissues. She never wanted to wear any of it again.

A powerful shudder rippled over her as the hot water hit her skin. The stink of alcohol wafted up in a cloud. Images of the night washed over her—the rain of bottles, the feeling of lightning crackling over her skin as the shade struck her, Vince reflected in the shining mirrors, holding the bearded man against his chest, the thick dark rolling toward her, the electric flavor of the shadow against her tongue. She thought of the constellation of names—Paul Ecco, the Hierophant, Hermes, Edmund Carver, Lionel Salt. Thought of ragged shadow and white jutting bones.

Charlie forced herself to squirt some Dr. Bronner’s peppermint soap into her hands and scrub herself, rinsing her hair twice and rubbing a washcloth over her skin with such vigor that it turned pink and raw. The soap stung. A few of the bandages Vince had applied were already coming off, swirling through the tub water to be caught against the drain.

Vince, who had been hiding plenty. A spike of anger went through her at the thought that he’d been conning her, of all people.

She should have noticed. He’d been entirely too free of strings, even for someone who abandoned an old life. No one is a blank slate, a tabula rasa, without enemies or friends. No one meets you and likes you so much right off the bat that they’re willing to move in with you and your kooky sister, willing to pay half the rent even though they take up a third of the space.

He’d said he wanted his name off the lease because of some bad credit. The same reason why he had a prepaid phone. He worked off the books for his employer. But wasn’t it better that way, since he brought his whole paycheck home? All of it had made sense separately, but now it added up to a cold pit in her stomach.

He saved your life.

Whatever secrets he’d kept, she couldn’t deny what he’d done. She was glad Hermes was dead and that she was alive.

Had Vince been a gloamist? There were two usual ways to tell. If you shone a light from two different directions at a regular person, their shadow split. But a quickened shadow remained whole. The second way was the split tongue that most glooms had.

Vince’s tongue was whole, and there was no way to test if his shadow split now that it was gone. But if he wasn’t a gloamist, then who was he? What had he left behind?

Wrapping a towel around herself, she padded out barefoot, dripping on the tiles.

As she was pulling on a robe, headlights splashed across the room and then away. Vince was pulling into the drive. But when she came back to the table, he wasn’t there, although the food was, spaghetti steaming on the plate.

She filled a bowl and sat down, spinning her fork in the noodles and red sauce.

“Charlie,” Posey said.

“Yeah?” There was something in her sister’s voice that made her look up in alarm. Posey’s gaze was on the linoleum.