Char,
I don’t know how to say goodbye to you.
Charlie sat there for a long time, staring at the ghost of a letter.
While she didn’t understand what it was, Vince was out there executing a plan of his own. And given what he’d written, he didn’t seem optimistic about how it was going to turn out. She needed to think.
Paul Ecco had a page of the book. He’d gotten it from someone.
And Knight had seen the book, although he hadn’t found the ritual that made The Book of Blights famous. The ritual that Red was hoping to enact.
Maybe Knight had missed that part. After all, a quick flip-through in an auction house wasn’t enough time to be certain there was nothing important inside. Charlie had seen plenty of secrets that weren’t readily apparent. Tiny words written in artwork. Lemon-juice print revealed by heat. Ciphers that were all but impossible to decipher without an equally well-hidden key. Any of the puzzles that gloamists created for one another.
But Knight had said he had the means to bring someone down, and she had every reason to believe that person was Salt. So there had to be something.
Fetching Knight Singh’s book, she smoothed out its leather cover and thumbed through the pages, skimming for Salt’s name. For anything to do with Blights, or immortality, or the breath of life.
Nothing. And Raven, who’d read it, claimed not to have found anything either.
Charlie went through the book again, more carefully. She felt each page’s thickness, to see if any had been glued together. She checked the spine, to see if anything had been inserted into it. Then she checked the endpapers, running the pads of her fingers over them to check for any unevenness. On the back inside cover, she found light glue marks along one edge, as though perhaps the paper had been removed and replaced. Getting the knife attached to her keys, she tried scraping at the edge. Sliding it into the seam, she pried up the edge, loosening the leather. And there, underneath, were papers written in an unfamiliar hand:
There seem to be various ways to cut a dormant shadow away from a living person. Remy is able to make Red pick up the shadow of a knife and wield it. （Interestingly, the knife does permanently lose its shadow, and the next morning, I perceived spots of rust on the blade, which warrants further investigation.） Remy, as a gloamist, can use his fingers and, while making a snipping motion, use those “scissors” to sever the bond between person and shadow. It was also possible for me to cut away a shadow using an onyx knife.
All those means can also be used to remove a shadow from a corpse, but this shadow has a discernable difference in texture and weight. This also warrants further investigation.
That had to have been written by Salt. It wasn’t quite a confession, but it was damning nonetheless.
The next page was worse.
I cut her wrist several times, thinking that perhaps that would be enough trauma to quicken her shadow, but she died like all the rest, despite the alterations done to her.
Yeah, that was bad. Charlie wasn’t sure if any of this would be admissible in court, but it would lead investigators to look for evidence, which was almost certainly out there.
And it would ruin him in the court of public opinion. Not to mention what the Cabal would be forced to do, since it was other gloamists he’d been targeting.
The third page was about Red.
Remy has been doing experiments of his own, ones he’s been hiding from me. He has been setting his shadow free. I have no idea how he’s managed this, and have it return to him, but it does.
Does he feed it excess blood? And if so, how much? How long has he been doing this? Now I will be paying close attention.
Another thing I must know—is he controlling it? And if not, does that mean Red is self-aware? Cogito, ergo sum? And if so, what has it stolen from Remy to become that way?
And then a final page.
I have made a mistake, one I hope I will be able to correct.
If I can’t have Red, then I will have to kill him.
If Salt knew that Knight Singh had those papers, then he would certainly have wanted Knight dead. Salt had to have been the client paying Adam, the one he’d hidden from Balthazar.
Now she had the leverage, if she could figure out what to do with it. If she could solve the puzzle in time.
A con, after all, was about uncovering the truth. Warping it, sure, but uncovering it first. It was the closest thing Charlie had to Posey’s tarot, a belief in something larger than herself. Just like Posey could put down cards in neat little rows, Charlie could plan out her schemes. But eventually she had to surrender to improvisation and trust her instincts.