Hanging around them made Charlie feel like maybe there wasn’t anything wrong with her. It didn’t matter if she didn’t fit in at school, or that her body kept changing on her. It was okay when her best friend’s parents took one look at Charlie and clocked her for trouble. When even Laura herself, who’d known her since she was eight, started acting weird. It was fine that she’d given up hoping her mother would notice there was something strange about Rand taking her on trips all the time. All those people who judged her or couldn’t be bothered with her were marks. She’d have the last laugh.
“You gotta be like a shark in this business,” Benny told her, with his soft voice and his slicked-back hair. “Sniff around for the blood in the water. Greet life teeth first. And no matter what, never stop swimming.”
Charlie took that advice and the money from her last job with Rand and got a tattoo. She’d wanted one, and she’d also wanted to know if she could con a shop into giving her the ink, even though she was three years away from eighteen.
It involved some fast talking and swiping a notary sigil, but she got it done. Her first tattoo. It was still a little bit sore when she moved. Along her inner arm was the word “fearless” in looping cursive letters, except the tattooist had spaced them oddly so that it looked as though it said “fear less.”
It reminded her of what she wanted to be, and that her body belonged to her. She could write all over it if she wanted.
* * *
Over the years, as gloaming emerged into the general consciousness of the world at large, Rand became increasingly fascinated with it. He’d been pulling cons based around the occult for years—like the one where Charlie had to pretend to be a ghost child. While he’d particularly liked how a little sleight of hand could really impress wealthy old ladies, with real magic, he sensed larger opportunities.
Willie wasn’t impressed and let everyone at the Moose Lodge know. “When I was a kid, there was that guy, Uri Geller, who could bend spoons with his mind. Guess what came of that? Nothing. Who needs a bent spoon?”
Benny knew a guy, though. Rand returned from the meeting excited. He told Charlie that this person promised them big money if they’d acquire something for him. “The guy probably doesn’t even know how valuable the book he’s got is. He’s a rich old coot, not a gloamist. We just need the right angle.”
“If the guy who’s hiring us is a real gloamist and the mark isn’t, why doesn’t the gloamist steal it himself?” Charlie asked. “Why doesn’t he send his shadow to get it?”
“Because of the onyx,” Rand said, as though that ought to have been obvious. “It makes the shadows solid, so they can’t slip through cracks or whatever.”
Charlie was skeptical. “If the old coot knows that, he probably knows his book is valuable.”
“We can do this,” Rand told her. “If we do, he says he’s got more work for us. If we’re bold, we’re going to get rich, I know it.”
Charlie rolled her eyes. Rand dreamed of the one big score the way that Charlie’s mother dreamed of love. It was the thing that would allow him to live the life of ease to which he thought he was entitled, and of which he was always on the very cusp. Always a mirage, always just over the next dune.
“Our client’s name is Knight, but that’s all I’m going to tell you,” Rand said. “And so long as we bring him his book, he says we’re free to bilk Moneybags for anything else we can get.”
Charlie didn’t like it. They usually worked for themselves. A client could be trouble.
“I’ve finagled us into a meeting in the house of this guy, Lionel Salt. Family wealth in medical manufacturing. That’s where the big money is—making the widgety doodad that fits into a surgical thingamajig. I’ve informed him that I and my young daughter are occultists who communicate with the unseen world, which includes demons. And those demons are going to help him quicken his shadow.” Rand sounded calm, but he kept twisting the end of his mustache.
“Lionel Salt?” she asked. “The guy with the car?” Even then, she’d been aware of his matte black Phantom, discussed in loving detail by half the boys in her class.
“Yeah, him,” Rand said dismissively.
Charlie frowned. “This guy is going to think we’re ridiculous. Demons?”
But Rand wouldn’t be swayed. “Believers want to believe. He wants to quicken his shadow, right? They all do. We can give him hope.”