Book of Night(54)

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Charlie had always considered herself prickly as a sea urchin, but if she wanted to be the kind of con artist that Rand had been, she was going to have to get better at charm. It was one thing following his cues, and another being responsible for the whole thing.

She practiced with the basics. The short-change con, where you buy a pack of gum with a twenty, then mess around trying to get the cashier to give you a ten for nine dollars while pocketing your change, then “correct” yourself by turning over a ten and getting your twenty back. It was some bullshit, but it required smooth talking and the appearance of honesty.

Then the pig-in-poke, which was particularly effective for a teenager. Charlie pretended to find a ring on a street that looked like gold, or something similarly valuable, then asked a passerby if it was theirs. Lots of times she didn’t even have to suggest they give her a twenty and take the ring off her hands; they were so sure they were scamming her that they’d do it themselves.

It helped her figure out how much to smile, how shy to be, how eager. And she made sixty bucks, which wasn’t nothing.

That Saturday, she got ready to pull her first job without Rand.

A call to the Arthur Thompson House got her the first bit of information that she needed. She discovered which groups were touring the house Monday, then went to the thrift store closest to the Catholic school the museum staffer mentioned. There, she was able to find herself a school uniform. It looked slightly moth-eaten and the skirt had been hemmed extra short by its last owner, but it cost only twelve dollars for the whole thing, including the white shirt.

At home, she experimented with her hair. Pigtails made her feel as though she was wearing a costume, but when she pulled her hair back into a high ponytail, put on black stockings and lip gloss and popped a piece of bubble gum in her mouth, it looked perfect.

It would be easy to get in—it was a museum, after all, and welcomed visitors—but much harder to get into a locked study and then a locked cabinet without anyone noticing. And much harder to cut a page out of a book and leave with it before getting stopped.

On Monday, she put her plan into swing. She told her mother she was sleeping over at Laura’s house, then forged a doctor’s note for school. Then she took the bus to Northampton. From a discreet distance, she watched the kids troop inside, gave them fifteen minutes, and showed up.

“I’m late,” she told the woman at the front desk, looking as panicked as she was able. “I am so sorry. My mom had to drop me off and I am going to be in so much trouble. They’re here, right? Can I go in?”

The woman hesitated, but only for a moment. “Go in. Hurry.”

Charlie dashed past and joined up with them, relieved that the first part was over. She found the class but stayed clear of them until they went into Arthur Thompson’s study. Then she moved into the flood of students and slid inside. This was the important part, because the door was alarmed and only one group was let in at a time.

Their teacher—a rather young-looking priest with an Eastern European accent—cleared his throat. “Now, we’re going to listen with our ears, not with our mouths.”

Charlie slid behind a bookshelf.

A museum staffer began to go into Arthur Thompson’s childhood, the challenges of Harvard in the eighties, how the prototype of the lightning harvesting mechanism shocked him badly enough that he spent six weeks in a hospital.

“Is that when his shadow became magic?” asked one of the girls.

The priest gave her a speaking look, but the museum staffer nodded. “That’s generally thought to be the case, since he pursued shadow magic after that. He joined some of the early message boards and even originated calculations about the energy exchange between the gloamist and their shadow.”

“So what happened to him?” asked a boy in the back.

“Did you not do the reading, Tobias?” the priest demanded.

“No, I mean the shadow,” the kid said. “Rowdy Joss, he called himself once he was a Blight, right? Like, did they hunt him down?”

“Nothing about that was in the reading,” said the priest. “And we don’t need to waste the time of the staff.”

“I saw the video,” the kid said. “Online.”

The staffer smiled, although the smile had become slightly strained. “No one knows what happened to Arthur’s shadow after the Boxford Massacre. There was some speculation that the transfer of energy created memory loss, or that it was confused. But remember that Rowdy Joss wasn’t Arthur. Arthur died at the Boxford Massacre, a victim like everyone else that day.”

Charlie listened to the conversation follow the familiar pattern, as the teacher and staffer valiantly struggled to get it back on track. Fifteen minutes later, the class filed out, leaving Charlie hidden behind the bookshelf. She waited until the room was empty to scoot out and crawl beneath Arthur Thompson’s enormous desk.

She watched feet move back and forth, realizing she should have come in with the last group and not the third-from-last group. But it wasn’t like she had to worry too much about not making noise or moving or something. Sound was all around her, a cacophony of giggling and gum chewing and lectures.

And then the final group filed out. From the other room, she heard the museum staffers—all two of them—talking together. One of them laughed. Then, distressingly, the hum of a vacuum began.