Book of Night(79)

Raven went to a cabinet near a kitchenette and took down a metal dog dish. “I’ve got a couple of things to do. Do you mind if I work while I talk?”

“Go ahead,” said Charlie.

Raven opened a mini fridge jammed into a corner behind the counter and took out a plastic bag of blood. She ripped open the edge with her teeth.

“Hand me one of those coffee mugs?” she asked, nodding toward a sink where a few clean forks and cups rested on a scratched plastic drying rack.

Charlie stared at her incredulously. “You want me to do what now?”

Raven smiled. “Mugs. By the sink. Get one.”

Charlie chose one at random. It read: “KICK TODAY IN THE DICK.”

Raven poured the blood into the cup and then stuck it in the microwave, setting the timer for a minute and a half.

“To get the chill off it,” she said, as though that explained anything.

As the mug went around in circles, Raven turned to her. “Nobody has any real proof. And Salt’s rich. That’s why the Cabal won’t do anything. As for why Knight didn’t use what he had, I don’t know. Depends on what he had.”

“You can’t expect me to believe you didn’t read through Knight’s book while you had it,” Charlie said.

Raven smiled. “Oh, I did. Lots of information, most more relevant to shadow-wearers than alterationists, but absolutely nothing that seemed like it could take down anyone.”

Charlie frowned. “Other than whatever Knight had, would Salt have any reason to want him out of the way?”

“Knight was against his being a Cabal member, and now that Knight’s gone they’re bending the rules and letting Salt join, even though Malik’s already representing the puppeteers.”

“So they’re not going to have anyone from carapace?”

Raven’s gaze went to the mug, turning on the plate, her expression remote. “It’s not fair. Knight helped build the Cabal. He was one of the early gloamists to be open about shadow magic.”

Charlie opened her coffee and took a sip, thinking about Red, and what Salt had said about Vince. “What was Knight’s connection to the Liber Noctem?” He might not have one, but she hoped that by putting it like that, Raven would believe she knew more than she did.

“The Book of Blights?” The microwave beeped and Raven dumped the contents of the mug into the stainless dog dish. “He thought it was hilarious that Salt got scammed into paying so much for it, I guess.

“That’s the problem with rich gloamists. They buy up all the magical books, because they can, and then use that knowledge to tie other gloamists to them. Salt wouldn’t follow anyone’s rules, and now he’s going to be the one making the rules.”

There were stories of cults formed by gloamists in the early days of shadow magic becoming public. Lots of bloodletting to juice up their shadows. Lots of creepy robes and creepy sex. And in the end, lots and lots of death.

When Charlie thought of what a gloamist organization run by Salt would look like, she imagined the high-class, corporate version of those cults. But people would join. He had the books and the money. And the bigger his organization became, the more influence he’d have with the other gloamists. His seat on the Cabal would mean no one could stop him.

Shoving the empty, bloodstained mug back into Charlie’s hands, Raven went to the door and set the dog dish down on the step.

“Do I want to know?” Charlie asked, eyebrows raised.

“You will in a minute, whether you want to or not.” Raven appeared immensely amused. “Why do you want to know about the Liber Noctem—didn’t Salt’s grandson make off with that before he kicked the bucket? Why do you want to know any of this?”

Charlie flopped down on a bench, near a stack of flash magazines. “Something’s gone wrong, and I guess I’m caught up in it. I can’t walk away now, even if I wanted to—and I don’t. What I really want is to figure out who’s been lying, and about what.”

Raven snorted. “Probably all of them, about everything.”

Outside, a passing cloud changed the way the moonlight fell. Charlie saw a few shadows slipping toward the bowl.

They were faint, indistinct things even as they moved into the strong light of the bulb over the door. Barely noticeable. But the area around the bowl grew ever darker as more congregated.

The surface of the blood rippled, as though disturbed by some phantom cat tongue. Then it was all ripples.

“There is one thing about the Liber Noctem,” Raven said softly. “Knight knew a guy at an auction house and they let him put on white gloves and take a look before Salt bought it. He copied out some notes on the binding of Blights, but nothing else.”

Could he have overlooked the ritual to give Blights weight and form, or had it seemed so terrible that he simply didn’t want to know it?

Charlie sat there, more frustrated than ever, watching blood drain from the bowl. The shadows thickened around it, dense and dark. “How about the Hierophant? He’s supposed to be hunting down Blights, and you said it must be a powerful shadow that killed Knight Singh. It could be a Blight, couldn’t it?”

Raven sighed and looked out toward the edge of the parking lot, near the trees. “That guy, Stephen. I knew him a little before he was the Hierophant. It wasn’t even that he was a bad thief, it was that he stole the wrong thing from the wrong person. The gloamist who’d hired him hung him out to dry. Then they punished him by stitching that old Blight to him and, well, I don’t think things are going well. A shadow like that—conscious and whispering in your ear? Creepy as fuck. I doubt he’s going to catch anything.”