“These little shadows—they’re nothing. No cleverness in them, barely any consciousness. Might not even survive being stitched to a person. But you’re right that, strictly speaking, they’re Blights. Shadows that have survived being apart from their wearer.”
On the steps, Charlie could see a few slinking off now that their feast was over, but some still remained, a translucent darkness, like a film in the air.
“This part might freak you out,” Raven said. “You can close your eyes if you want.”
There was absolutely no way she was going to look away, like a coward. “I’m good.”
Raven took the shadow and dropped it into her open mouth.
Charlie bit her lip to keep from making an astonished sound. That hadn’t been at all what she was expecting.
Raven continued with a smile. “When a gloamist puts a piece of their consciousness into their shadow, they grow a kind of homunculus. Power is only part of what makes a Blight. If you don’t want your shadow to be separate from you, don’t consider it as separate. Never name it. And never feed it blood that’s not yours, because that’s giving it energy that also isn’t yours.”
Charlie nodded.
“But most Blights are formed on the deathbed. Gloamists often push parts of themselves into their shadow in those last moments—often all of their fear and pain. Scary things get made like that. But powerful things. To create a Blight without that would probably require stealing energy, maybe through someone else’s deathbed and someone else’s blood.”
Charlie thought of Salt and what he’d done to her, of her fingers around a knife. “If it was powerful enough, could it control you? Could it puppet you?”
Raven studied her for a long moment. “I’ve never heard of a shadow being able to control the person to whom it’s attached, but there’s only one way to be entirely safe. To have no shadow at all. The shadowless can’t be controlled. There’s a door shut inside of them.”
The shadowless can’t be controlled. Could that be why Vince cut his shadow loose? To avoid being puppeted by his grandfather the way she had been? To avoid being controlled by Red?
Raven turned to Charlie. “I think that’s enough answers for you. And so help me, if you fuck me over, I’ll make sure you wind up the next Hierophant, with something ancient whispering in your ear while you chase down Blights until one of them catches you and devours you whole.”
“I’ll bring you Knight’s papers,” Charlie promised.
“Bring more bear claws when you do,” Raven said, sending Charlie back into a night that felt more full of shadows than before.
* * *
The next afternoon, Charlie sat at the kitchen table with pens in either hand and two sheets of notebook paper with tattered edges beneath them. In synchronized movements, she wrote the same words over and over, on both pages.
HEY DUMMY IS YOUR BRAIN SPLIT YET?
“I didn’t know you were ambidextrous,” Posey said, frowning at her.
“Not sure I am,” said Charlie. “But maybe good enough is good enough.”
Posey got a seltzer out of the fridge and popped the tab. She leaned against the counter and watched Charlie write. “Do you feel like your consciousness is bifurcating?”
Charlie sighed and stopped writing. “I don’t know. If it was, what could I do?”
Posey pointed to her shadow. “Try moving your fingers. Those fingers, I mean.”
Charlie frowned in concentration, focusing on attempting to feel a hand that wasn’t attached to her. But no matter how hard she stared or tried to shift her consciousness or tried to think in two places at once, there was no perceptible change.
Posey shook her head. “Okay, what about lengthening it?”
That seemed even harder to Charlie, but she complied, attempting to imagine her shadow spreading, like it was melting. She tried to make it ooze, even just to blur a bit at the edges. Again, nothing. “I’m trying,” she told her sister, forestalling any criticism.
“Maybe you could try to inhabit your shadow,” Posey said.
Charlie threw up her hands in frustration. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Posey shrugged.
They went on like that, with Posey looking up exercises online, and Charlie becoming increasingly frustrated.
Eventually, Posey had a Zoom call with a client, bringing their session to an end. Charlie was relieved to give up. She pulled out her own laptop and stared at the screen.
With a sigh, she pulled up the article about Edmund Carver’s death, copying over the name of the girl whose body was found in the car with his and putting it into the search engine.