Book of Night(52)

“Would you be willing to prick your finger now?” Malhar asked. “In front of the camera.”

“Sure.” Charlie picked up the lancet and opened the package. She jabbed the tip into her finger and watched a sudden bead of red appear.

All of them watched in silence. Nothing happened. Finally Charlie licked her finger. “Okay, that didn’t work. Are we done?”

She wasn’t sure how to feel. She didn’t think she’d like to be a gloamist, but it still felt like failing a test.

“Can you try to make it move?” Malhar asked, although he must have known it was useless.

Charlie concentrated. She was at least a little bit ambidextrous, but her brain didn’t feel particularly bifurcated.

“Are you trying?” Posey asked.

Charlie gave her sister a look.

“Okay, last one,” Malhar said. He turned on the lights.

The first sent her shadow towering against the wall to her left.

Then the second came on. That ought to have doubled it, and yet it did nothing at all.

Charlie stared, unwilling to believe what she was seeing. “Is it…?”

Malhar nodded, and when he spoke, his voice was hushed. “You have a quickening shadow. It’s not fully there yet, but a day or two more of feeding it blood and it will be. I don’t think I’ve ever seen one at this stage.”

Charlie stared at her own shadow towering over her, her heart speeding. It was a part of her, she knew, but she couldn’t help being a little afraid of it. “What do I do?”

“You could stop feeding it,” Malhar said. “It would settle.”

She nodded.

“But you wouldn’t do that,” said Posey, as though the option itself was an insult.

Charlie took the neglected third cup and drank some more lukewarm watery coffee.

“Or you could become a gloamist.” Malhar started breaking down the lights with a grin. “Some people are uncomfortable with the idea of quickened shadows. There are even fringe groups that believe we’re being deceived as to their nature.”

Posey snorted. “He’s talking about the people who think the shadows are demons.”

He nodded. “Or aliens. They think our minds are misinterpreting what our eyes are seeing, because the truth is too horrible for the human mind to comprehend.”

“But Charlie’s not crazy,” Posey said.

Charlie wasn’t too sure about that. “Okay, so what are quickened shadows?”

“Theoretically?” Malhar cautioned. “You’ve probably heard of dark matter: the stuff that’s keeping gravity from ripping our galaxy apart. It has to be there, or all the other mathematical calculations fall apart, but no one can prove it. And, well, dark energy is even more theoretical than that.

“Dark energy was used to explain ghosts, but is better suited to shadows. In some way, you could consider them ghosts of the living. And just like ghosts seem to be echoes of traumatic events, aphotic shadows are said to be formed out of trauma. Some professors here believe that aphotic shadows, like ghosts, reenact memories rather than have true life. Which is bullshit, by the way.”

“Aphotic?” Charlie said.

“Growing in the absence of light,” Malhar said apologetically. “The term caught on in academia.”

“So trauma is what quickens shadows?” Posey’s voice was a little breathless now that they’d come to the part of the conversation she was most interested in.

Malhar frowned. “It seems to be, but trauma is highly individual. There are some very disturbing videos of people doing extreme and irresponsible things to wake their shadows. But they’re unlikely to work because they don’t carry emotional weight. Trauma is more than pain.”

Charlie gave her sister a look. “So, no ayahuasca?”

Malhar burst out laughing.

Posey, caught between embarrassment and anger, went silent.

“We should go,” Charlie said, standing up, trying not to take too much satisfaction in the moment.

Malhar picked up his cell off the table. “I’d like you to talk to me again, so I can monitor your shadow’s progress. I hope you know you can trust me.”

“Can I ask you a question off the record?” Charlie asked.

He stopped the recording, frowning. “Sure.”

“Have you heard of a book called the Liber Noctem?”

His eyebrows went up. “The Book of Blights?”

She nodded.

“I heard about the auction,” he said. “There were a lot of wild claims—that it was written by a Blight, one that ‘captured the breath of life.’ I’d love to get a look at it. One of the books everyone wants to study, like The Luctifer Treatise or Codex Antumbra, or Fushi-no-Kage.”

“You think any of the claims are true?”

He shrugged. “Like that it was written by a Blight? That would be fascinating. Almost all of the books on shadow magic are from the point of view of the gloamist, but what would it look like from the point of view of a shadow, one that was becoming conscious and learning how to follow its own desires?”

Charlie wasn’t entirely sure she wanted to know, but she was getting an idea why another Blight might want to read it.

Minutes later, Charlie and Posey walked across the lawn to the parking lot. Knots of students passed them.