Page 10 of Book of Night
She ground her teeth in frustration. If she didn’t know when he was going to be there, then she’d have to stake out the place. And since she was pretending to be Amber the gloamist, it made no sense for her to even have some other job. Charlie decided to go for vague.I have a thing until midnight. I can meet you after.
He sent her a thumbs-up and a winking emoji. When he followed up with the number of his hotel room at the MGM in Springfield, she felt a little guilty, as though she was scheduling a rendezvous.
You’re not doing anything wrong,she told herself.
Okay, she was doingsomethingwrong, just not what it looked like.
“Have you been paying attention to what I said at all?” Posey demanded.
“Definitely,” Charlie lied.
Posey rolled her eyes and kicked the leg of Charlie’s chair with a slippered foot. “There’s this video where people take ayahuasca and are guided through waking their shadows. Everyone on the message boards are flipping out over it. I know someone with a lake house over by Lake Quinsigamond, and he wants a bunch of us to re-create it—if someone can get the DMT.”
Charlie raised her eyebrows. “That’s the stuff that makes you vomit all night. And grosser stuff.”
Posey shrugged. “Can you get it?”
“DMT?” Charlie said, trying to decide how bad an idea it really was. “I don’t know. Ask around Hampshire College. If someone is dealing it locally, they’re dealing it there. Or maybe when you start at UMass you can see if someone can synthesize you some in the bio lab.”
Charlie’s sister had spent the last few years bingeing Reddit threads, watching videos, and chatting with other gloamist hopefuls until dawn. But lately things had gotten worse. Posey had started staying up for days at a stretch and not leaving the house for weeks. Despair seemed to be chasing her heels as hershadow refused to quicken. She’d gone so deep down the rabbit hole that Charlie worried it had become an oubliette.
That was why it was so important for Posey to go to school. At UMass, she could study umbral science with actual professors instead of yutzes from the internet. Maybe she’d even discover some other interest.
The only problem was the number of forms and fees and surprise charges. While Charlie had gotten together most of the money for this last bill, she didn’t have it all. But she could get it once Doreen’s brother came through and bought them a little more time.
So Charlie fell back on the family tradition of mostly ignoring the situation and occasionally, guiltily, suggesting that her sister try to go to bed earlier. Acting like her problem was insomnia.
Like they didn’t both know Posey was drinking buckets of coffee and soda and maybe popping Adderall to stave off exhaustion. At least that would serve her well in undergrad.
Charlie had a sinking feeling that her sister already had an idea about where she was going to get DMT, and that it’d involve boosting something. Most likely,Charlieboosting something.
Posey’s cell pinged, and as she checked it, Charlie devoted herself to the drinking of her coffee. She was going to need it.
“Mom pulled the Seven of Cups today,” Posey muttered, holding up her phone so Charlie could see the photo of their mother holding a tarot card.
The card of a daydreamer, a searcher. Their mother was living in a long-stay motel with a new guy, but there was always a new guy. She liked to have Posey weigh in on her fortunes, since divinations were free for family.
Charlie ignored a familiar stab of guilt, dulled by time but never totally gone. “What are you going to tell her?”
Posey scowled. “What do you care? It’s not like you believe I know what I’m talking about.” At her tone, Lucipurrr looked up from the sink and hissed.
“That’s not fair,” Charlie said. “And you’re upsetting the cat. She hates it when people fight.”
Posey ignored her. “There’s a reason they cut shadows off people and sell them. Everyone wants magic. It’s not just me.”
Charlie glanced automatically toward the bathroom where Vince was showering. She lowered her voice. “I wasn’t criticizing you. Stop being so fucking paranoid.”
When Charlie was a kid, someone had given her a box of tricks for a birthday. A handkerchief that pulled inside out to change colors. A hat with a falsebottom. A stack of marked cards. She’d practiced night after night. But in the end, it was just another kind of fakery. A different way of lying.
Of course, Charlie knew what it was like to want magic.
Posey dragged her laptop over. “Let me show you something.”
Charlie took another sip of coffee and started to make a pile of the mail scattered over the table. Catalogs, electric bill, propane bill, cell phone bill, another letter from the hospital marked in red, and three from a collection company. The total crept higher each month, with interest. Plus, she was going to have to resuscitate a 1998 Toyota Corolla, before it got towed. But first, Posey.
“Think about all the things that have been covered up,” Charlie’s little sister said. “Testing radiation on dead babies, forcing companies to poison the stuff used to make bootleg alcohol during Prohibition. And not just our government, or any government. Companies. Institutions. If there was a way to quicken a shadow, they’d hide it from us.”
Posey turned around the screen of her computer to show a video of teenagers sneaking around a hospital. Underneath, the file claimed to be undoctored surveillance footage. The kids’ eyes glowed in the green infrared light. It was creepy, seeing them giggling beside sleeping patients, snipping with their fingers like they were playing Rock, Paper, Scissors—and only picking scissors, over and over and over.
