Charlie raised her eyebrows, not feeling particularly trusting. “Wow. Your word. That and a dollar won’t even buy me a decent cup of coffee.”
Malik scowled at her.
“He’s too fascinating for me to let anyone touch a hair on his head,” Bellamy said, which she actually believed. “You can come see him at my place in three days’ time. How about that?”
She glanced between the others, expecting to see some conflict about where he was going to be held, but there was none. Either they’d decided this before, or no one else wanted him.
“Okay,” Charlie finally said, having run out of other options. “Fine. Three days.”
On her way out of Salt’s mansion, she pocketed an antique inkpot and shoved a pair of solid silver candlesticks up her sleeve.
* * *
Posey was waiting for her in the station wagon, dozing in the driver’s seat. When Charlie got in, she jumped up in alarm. Then, seeing it was only her sister, she yawned.
“Where’s Vince?” Posey asked, squinting at the black, star-spattered sky as though she could tell time by it. “How long were you in there?”
Charlie shook her head. “Drive. I’ll explain. We have one stop before we go home. Do you remember Tina?”
After their detour, Posey took them back to their rental house, even though it was still taped off as a crime scene. Charlie crawled through the window to her bedroom, showered in her own bathroom, and slept on her own mattress. Her sister slept beside her, Charlie’s shadow curled around them both.
When she woke, the scent of bleach in her nose, she realized the sheets still smelled like Vince.
She held her hands up in the air. Long fingers. Black nail polish, already chipped. Clever hands, capable of picking a lock and opening a safe.
She thought of reaching out for a shadow, grabbing Vince. If she hadn’t guessed what he was going to do, if she hadn’t gotten there in time, the momentum would have taken him into the fire.
There wouldn’t even have been a body.
The thought made her feel hollowed out as she went through the motions of taking a shower. Part of her felt trapped in that upside-down world, where he was already gone. Her gaze fell on the wall tiles, staring at the nothing that was where her shadow ought to be.
The absence hadn’t just shut a door inside her mind; it shut a door on a potential future. She wasn’t going to be a gloamist. She hadn’t been sure she wanted to be, but still.
Would Vicereine and the rest of them have listened to her more if she’d had a quickened shadow? Would they have let her see Vince?
She’d been so certain he’d want to come home with her, but after thinking about it, maybe she shouldn’t have been. When he met her, he wasn’t used to being alone in the world and had limited options. Maybe he hadn’t seen a future for himself past the end of Salt, but now he was in that future and, for perhaps the first time, could shape it as he wished.
If the Cabal let him, of course.
She wondered what he thought of the swing-for-the-fences-and-damn-the-consequences Charlie Hall that he’d never met before. Maybe they both had been holding themselves back, when the other person had been capable of rising to the challenge. When the other person might have been thrilled by the challenge.
After she was clean and dressed in her own clothes, she waited for Posey.
“Mom sent me, like, seventeen messages about bringing back the station wagon,” her sister said, emerging from her bedroom in fresh clothes. Charlie glanced behind Posey, at her shadow.
Her sister followed her gaze. Her brow furrowed with worry. “Is it weird?”
“I don’t know. Is it weird for you?” Charlie asked.
Posey moved her lips silently and the shadow swept around her, curling over her shoulders, looking for all the world as though it preferred to be there. Charlie couldn’t help a shiver that was part recognition.
“It’s the most perfect thing that’s ever happened. You won’t believe all the things I’ll teach myself to do.” Posey’s eyes were bright in a way they hadn’t been in a long time, and that Charlie didn’t want anything to dim.
She headed to the window and jammed it open. “Well, come on. If Mom and Bob are desperate to get the station wagon back, we better get out of here, since I want to stop for coffee first,” she said.
“Thank all the gods,” Posey said fervently.
They stopped at Small Oven Bakery, where Charlie got three espressos in tiny paper cups and lined them up in front of her like shots. Posey poked at a sticky bun while looking at her phone.