Holly Black‘s Book of Night featured a cliffhanger for the ages. As we all waited to see what would happen to Charlie Hall and Vince Red, the prolific author returned back her roots with the release of The Stolen Heir duology. But now she’s officially back in the shadows for the final book in The Charlatan Duology that continues from her debut adult novel and finally gives us what we’ve all been waiting for.
Cosmopolitan has an official first look at Thief of Night by Holly Black, which is set to be released September 23, 2025. The follow kicks off right at the end of Book of Night as we follow Charlie who is now tied to Red, a Blight who does not remember their previous history, in her new role as the Hierophant. Hunting down shadows is no easy feat, but will this new journey allow her to finally restore Red’s memories as Vince? Here’s some more info from our friends at Tor:
The highly-anticipated sequel to the #1 New York Times bestselling author Holly Black’s stunning adult debut, Book of Night.There’d always been something wrong with Charlie Hall. Crooked from the day she was born. Never met a bad decision she wasn’t willing to double down on. She may be good enough to steal a shadow from a tower, but will she be good enough to steal back a heart?
And what better way to find out what happens next than with an exclusive excerpt of not just chapter 1, but also chapter 2! Scroll down to check it out! Just make sure to pre-order Thief of Night and also check out some of Holly’s other reads while you’re at it!
An Excerpt From Thief of Night
By Holly Black
1
The Hierophant
Most of the long-abandoned mill buildings of Easthampton were being slowly resurrected by developers. Out of their desiccated husks sprang apartments and offices, spaces for circus schools, hydroponic beer gardens, webcomic merchandise warehousing, weed dispensaries, and cement countertop artisan showrooms. But a few still remained untouched—brickwork skeletons towering over the trees and river, insides dark and worming with rusty nails and refuse.
Not the kind of places that Charlie Hall wanted to be picking her way through, searching for a dangerous Blight, armed with only a knife, a flashlight, and a lot of resentment.
She was a liar and a con artist. Not a fighter.
But now that she’d fast-talked her way into being the Hierophant, Charlie was expected to find and dispatch untethered shadows, and there’d been a report of one around the mill buildings. Shadows only achieved consciousness if the gloamist they were bound to allowed it. And only shadows with independent consciousness survived the death of their gloamist. But those that did became Blights, full of death energy, piss, and vinegar. Mostly, that meant they killed people, drank blood, and made shadow magic look bad.
Hunting them down really was a shit gig. As far as Charlie could tell, the only thing she currently had going for her was that the moon was high and round and bright, illuminating the filthy, scary rooms she was making her way across.
Of course, that meant there were shadows everywhere.
And at least one of those shadows was alive and hungry.
Her breath clouded in the air. The only noises in the room were a steady drip near the window and her own footsteps.
As she passed, something on the floor caught her eye and she swept the flashlight’s beam toward it. Bones, small and delicate. She took a quick step back. A dead rat, she guessed from the shape of the jaw and the remaining scraps of gray fur.
Well, dead rats. Kicking at the refuse with a booted foot, she uncovered more bones. A lot more bones.
Instinctively, she moved closer to the open window and the moonlight. A droplet fell from the ceiling, splashing the arm of her coat. Another, dark and oily, hit her hand. She had a moment of incomprehension, though she’d seen plenty of it before. Not leaking oil or condensation from some ancient pipe. Blood.
The light of her torch strobed over the walls as her back hit the brick edge of an empty window. Panic made her whole body go still and stiff.
She needed to get the hell out of there. Leave and tell the Cabals that she’d searched the whole building but found nothing. Her real skill was in lying; she ought to lie.
But who’s going to stop the Blight if not you, Charlie Hall?
She took a deep breath, forcing herself to walk toward the stairs, testing each board with her foot as she went. There, she glanced down at her own shadow, the thin skein of darkness that tied her to a Blight even more terrifying than the one she was hunting. Red.
Not Red, she told herself. Vince. Vince, who’d loved her. Vince, who’d lied to her. Vince, who’d seemed like a normal boyfriend—with secrets, sure, but normal secrets, like a nasty fetish. Not secretly being the shadow of a dead man, alive only through blood magic.
Vince, who no longer remembered her since they’d been tethered together.
Who she might be able to summon through the tether, but doubted she could control if he fought against it. Not that she planned to control him.
She’d promised he wouldn’t be a tool in her hands, the way he’d been with Salt. He didn’t believe her, though. To prove the point, he’d made it very clear that he wasn’t going to help her unless she forced him.
Which meant she was in this alone. Again. Typical Charlie Hall, willing to cut her throat to spite the knife.
Trust is earned, she reminded herself. Just like wealth, love, kindness, and friendship. And if most of the time it wasn’t earned honestly, well, so much the better. She was a cheater by nature. She just needed to find her angle and make him trust her, before he discovered how to turn his immense power against her.
With that uncomfortable thought in mind, she gripped the stone knife more tightly and forced herself to climb the stairs instead of running out of the building.
The third level was as covered in filth and refuse as the second. Charlie passed cabinets, the dirt and dust on them so thick that she couldn’t tell the color underneath. Ahead, the floorboards had given out and a hole gaped along one wall. She approached it gingerly. When she looked over the edge, she expected to be able to see all the way down to the basement, but instead there was only darkness.
As she stepped into the next room, she saw a heap of a man in a dirty coat, lying on an even dirtier sleeping bag. Drawing closer, she saw the bag was stained dark with blood. She leaned down, but the brightness of her flashlight did nothing to disturb him. His chest didn’t rise or fall. No breaths clouded the air.
The dead man wore a camo jacket and filthy work boots. Near his feet rested a grocery bag with most of a six-pack of Schlitz and a half-eaten sandwich inside. He must have snuck in to sleep in the building and discovered there was something else already there.
The distinct scent of spilled beer mingled unpleasantly with that of a butcher shop. No smell of decomposition, though. The blood hadn’t even had time to coagulate. His death was so recent that she might have interrupted the Blight during its feeding.
It would be nearby. Maybe still in the room.
“Vince?” she called softly, under her breath, but no answer came. She could feel the thin thread of her connection to him, but nothing else.
A shuffling on the floorboards behind her made her turn, thrusting out her obsidian dagger and sweeping the flashlight after it.
The beam illuminated a rat, eyes shining with reflected light. It looked as surprised as Charlie felt.
“You should get out of here,” she told it, thinking of all the rat bones on the floor below.
The rodent sniffed the air, still watching her. Its whiskers twitched.
“I know. I should get out of here too,” she continued conversationally. “But I historically only make bad decisions.”
The rat gave a surprised squeak before racing off into the maze of debris. Charlie barely had time to turn before the Blight swept over her, washing her in inky darkness.
Her whole body went cold as the thing tried to thrust its way down her throat. Burrow into her chest. She choked, the small discs of onyx she had strung around her neck and braceleting her arms the only things keeping the shadow from smothering her right there.
She stabbed wildly with her knife, no technique at all. Thankfully the blade connected, hitting something solid. With no idea if she was even really hurting the thing, she stabbed again, a cornered animal, fighting only because flight was off the table.
The Blight flowed away, turning solid in front of her, only visible as a deeper darkness, a hole ripped out of the fabric of the world. Its mouth, like a jagged slash, opened wide and then wider.
She should have brought a lot more onyx.
She should have listened to everyone who ever told her that she was a fool and that she was going to get herself killed.
She should have never made that promise to Red.
Charlie turned and ran. She’d faced small Blights before, but they were laughable when compared to this one, full of fresh blood and raw power. She had no idea how to fight this monster made from darkness—in darkness, no less.
She only made it a few steps before the Blight dropped down onto her back. She staggered under the improbable weight as shadow claws sank into her shoulder.
Careening to one side, she attempted to knock the thing against the wall and off her. Instead the shadow dissipated so quickly that all she managed was to slam her own shoulder against the brick.
The Blight re-formed in the shape of a too-tall, spindly man blocking her path, its monstrous fingers reaching toward her.
She jumped to the side, only narrowly evading its grasp. Her breaths had become ragged. The back of her throat felt dry as sandpaper.
The shadow rushed at her once more and she ducked under its arm to sink the onyx dagger into its stomach before twisting away. The Blight twitched, as though trying to shift form again, but the onyx blade in its belly kept it solid, unable to change.
Charlie panted, backing away, out of breath and almost out of ideas.
Red, she thought at him, not sure if he could even hear her. Help! I’m not forcing you, but please.
The Blight stalked toward her, barely slowed by the dagger sticking out of its side.
Charlie didn’t have another onyx weapon. Instead, she dropped her flashlight, the beam spinning wildly on the ground, and grabbed for a splintery plank of wood.
The long shadow was almost to her again as her thumb flicked over the wheel of her lighter. Old, half-rotted, and soaked in something oily, the wood caught fast.
At the sight of the fire, the Blight paused in its approach.
The flames licked downward over the plank, toward her hand. Whatever had caused the wood to catch so easily also made it burn too fast. She felt heat lick at her fingers, then scorch.
With a desperate shout, she hurled the plank at the Blight.
The shadow monster caught fire, an enormous torch in the night. It gave an inhuman howl that sounded half like an owl screech, half like an infant cry, and Charlie staggered back. Flames licked the ceiling before burning up like flash paper. Bright enough to blister the eyes, then gone.
Charlie’s fingers hurt. She put them in her mouth as she stamped out the embers. She noted the oily substance, darker than char. The remains of the shadow.
Then another shadow dropped down from the empty windowsill, landing softly, catlike. Charlie screamed.
When he came into focus, though, it was only Red.
Red.
She wanted to think of him as Vince, but she couldn’t.
Tall and broad-shouldered, with bronze hair and eyes like smoking craters.
Nicely done. The words echoed in her mind.
“No thanks to you,” she said out loud, not wanting to let him see how rattled she was. Still, she couldn’t help bracing her hands on her thighs and leaning over to take several steadying breaths, then several more.
“I came when you called. If you needed me, you should have called sooner.” She could feel the whisper of his emotions, prickly and intense enough to bleed through their tether. “You can make me do whatever you want, Charlie.”
Ash smoldered at her feet and her fingers still stung from the fire. Charlie reached down and took her knife from the remains. With it, she scraped up some of the dark substance she’d need to present to the Cabal to claim the bounty. “You were slow.”
He only watched her with those terrifying eyes.
Charlie stuck her hands in her pockets and started to pick her way out of the building, toward the white van that she’d been driving. She tried to ignore her sore shoulder and burnt fingers and throbbing head. Ignored that Red hadn’t followed her. Tried to convince herself this had been a success.
She was the Hierophant. She’d gotten rid of a dangerous Blight and come one step closer to working off her debt to the Cabals.
She was three darkened blocks away before Red caught up. His eyes looked more human—no hollows and no smoke. She thought about the body of the man on the third floor, the one whose blood had still been wet, whose skin had still perhaps even been warm.
She wondered if there was any blood left in him now.
2Gritted Teeth
Charlie leaned back in the driver’s seat of the van and felt the sticky wetness on her shirt beneath her coat. Blood, from where the shadow’s claws sank into her back. With the realization she was bleeding, the pain that adrenaline had held back flooded in to replace the cold strangeness from a moment before.
She gritted her teeth and gripped the steering wheel, wishing she was by herself. Wishing that Red wasn’t there to witness her every moment of weakness.
Wishing that she could at least be alone in her own head, without worrying he could sense the edge of her feelings, if not more.
All Charlie’s life, she’d been able to hide. It was a lot easier to seem tough when there was no one watching you lying in bed all day, too depressed to take a shower. To let people believe you were on a bender when you didn’t show up for work instead of having to admit you couldn’t make yourself get up off the couch.
A lot easier to allow yourself to descend into hysterical sobbing when there was no one to witness it, no less a terrifying former Blight. She supposed her own shadow had always been there, though she hadn’t given it much thought. Now her shadow was with Posey and all she could think about was Red.
“Let me see your shoulder,” he said, voice like smoke.
She’d tried hard to pretend to be someone normal, someone nice, for Vince. She’d hidden her worst self from him, and it had worked. Mostly. But there was no hiding anything from Red.
Charlie shouldered off her coat gingerly, then bent forward, resting her forehead on the steering wheel along with her hands. Her muscles, sore from bashing herself against a brick wall, were already locking up.
Red’s fingers were gentle as he pushed up her shirt. “There’s a big wound,” he said, hands warm on her skin. “You probably need stitches.”
There was no way she was going to a hospital and answering questions about a large human bite. “No stitches.” She’d stop at a drugstore on the way home to get antibiotic ointment and Steri-Strips or something instead. It would be fine. “I guess this is as good a time as any for you to—you know.”
“Drink your blood?” came his voice, soft and deep. She was glad her back was to him, so she didn’t have to see his face while they discussed this. “I can wait.”
The procedure of feeding hadn’t been so weird when it had been her own shadow, though it had still been odd. She had felt a little like she was nursing a baby and a little like a witch cradling her satanic familiar to some magical third nipple.
With Red, it was more like letting a tiger lick a paper cut and hoping it didn’t grow to like the taste.
But she knew that feeding a shadow was important for their connection. It wasn’t just blood. It was a stronger binding, a tighter tether. And the more closely they were bound, ironically, the longer his leash.
“Just do it,” she said, turning in the seat, voice brittle. “Unless you’re too full.”
He gave her an unreadable look.
Then she felt his tongue tracing the edge of the cut along her back. It hurt— just a little—and made the hair stand up all along her arms. A crackle of desire hit her like a static charge.
The press of his mouth came next and all her senses spiraled around that point of contact. The world narrowed to his lips on her skin and a tongue that felt like steam. She shuddered and gritted her teeth against the sensation.
She was light-headed by the time he pulled back. Closing her eyes for a long time, she tried to get her thoughts to settle. Before, she’d hoped he would distract her from the pain, but now she found herself concentrating on the pounding in her head to keep from feeling an ache between her thighs.
Car. Drive. Pharmacy. Home.
Fuck.
“If you’re done…. ” Charlie said, clearing her throat. She was shivering and hoped it was from the cold.
“I can only take what you allow,” Red reminded her, voice turning stiff.
He hated being bound to her. He might hate her, full stop. He didn’t remember agreeing to work for the Cabals. He had no reason to believe that she’d only bound herself to him to keep him out of worse trouble. All he remembered was Salt and Remy and blood, then nothing.
To him, Charlie Hall was just a stranger to whom he was tethered. A stranger with the power to make him do unspeakable things. Of course he resented her. She just wasn’t sure what to do about it.
Charlie turned the key, letting the van purr to life. Vince’s van, the one filled with spray bottles and plastic bags for his under-the-table job cleaning up crime scenes. She remembered him pressing her against the driver’s side door, his hands under her skirt, her nose against the hollow of his throat.
Charlie tried to concentrate on anything else as she drove to the nearest Walgreens. Inside, she ignored the alarmed look she got from the floppy-haired teenage boy manning the front register and started filling a basket with medical tape, gauze, antiseptic wipes, peroxide, superglue, and black licorice Twizzlers.
Christmas was only a few weeks away so the shelves were crammed with small tinsel trees, stuffed toy reindeer, and gift boxes of hot sauce, peppermint bubble bath, and cheap perfume, all making a play for last-minute, desperate shoppers. A shelf of televisions reported in chorus on the “Hatfield Cult Massacre” that had dominated the news in the last twenty-four hours. Charlie didn’t like hearing about it. Her mother had gotten married to her second husband at that same church where the bodies were found. Charlie and her sister had stood by a pew in their fancy dresses, wilting bouquets of Queen Anne’s lace in their sweaty hands. Even though none of them had gone down to the basement, where the murders actually happened, it still felt too close. The grisly reportage in the background made the weird, gnomish outdoor Santas even creepier as Charlie made her way through the aisles. The elves on shelves leered. A snowman with a glowing body blocked her way.
Charlie wasn’t ready for another holiday. Thanksgiving had been bad enough. Her mother, of course, had asked about Vince and about—well, everything in the papers. Remy. Salt.
“If he was so rich, you should have charged him rent,” her stepdad, Bob, said over their Stop & Shop turkey dinner—reheated in the oven of her mother’s long-stay hotel room.
Charlie had taken a big gulp of not-so-bad boxed wine to buy herself time. She didn’t want to talk about Vince, not when Red was a shadow at her feet, listening to everything she said.
“We did,” Posey said, interceding, for which Charlie was grateful.
“Well, you should have charged him more.” Bob winked at Charlie. He was being nice and she knew it. They were all being nice, even with their questions. Dancing around what they really wanted to ask.
“And he’s spending the holiday with his family?” Her mother poured Korbel champagne into glasses for the four of them. Mom might believe in astrology and mediums, but she didn’t even consider the idea Vince would give up having Thanksgiving at a table set with real crystal, where they would be eating a dinner prepared by a chef off plates rimmed in real gold. No one would love Charlie enough to choose her over that.
Rich boys, they were different. Her family all knew that, even Bob. You might spend time with one, but you better get what you could when you could, because everything they promised you would evaporate like morning mist once you started to bore them.
Red wasn’t really one of those rich boys. But he wasn’t exactly not one either.
“Yeah, with his family,” Charlie had lied. “Maybe next year he’ll spend it with us.”
It stung, the way her mother had looked at her after she said that. Pityingly. As though Charlie had become the one who didn’t understand how the world worked. Her mother, who had been a fool over men and believed their bullshit since before Charlie was born.
Yeah, Christmas was going to suck.
Charlie passed by some glitter-encrusted angels. She threw a lipstick and a bottle of Gatorade into her basket. Then she headed for the checkout counter.
“You’ve got some ” the clerk said worriedly, making a motion at her face.
Looking up, Charlie caught her distorted reflection in the overhead mirror. A red streak ran over her forehead and down one cheek. Reaching up, she ran her fingers through her hair. It was sticky, like honey crystalizing in a jar, and a place just over her ear stung. Another scrape from the shadow. Not as bad as the claw mark on her back, but head wounds bled more.
“Thanks,” she told the clerk, then sighed. “Give me a scratch-off while you’re ringing that through. My luck can’t stay this bad forever.”
The Hall women were born to hard breaks and bad decisions. They fell in love with the wrong people so consistently it was as though an ancestral curse doomed them to heartbreak, from a grandmother married to a guy so terrible she killed him, to Charlie’s last boyfriend, who shot her. Posey said that a man had to have a hole in his head, his heart, or his pocket for one of the Hall women to go head-over-heels for him—and Posey told people’s futures for a living.
Scratch-off in one hand and bag swinging in the other, Charlie left the drugstore, trying to pretend she didn’t notice that the shadow following her looked nothing like one she ought to have cast.
Even by the standards of Hall women, Charlie was in trouble.
Excerpt from THIEF OF NIGHT by Holly Black. Copyright © 2025 Holly Black. Reprinted by permission of Tor Publishing Group, a division ofMacmillan Publishing Group, LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Thief of Night, by Holly Black will be released on September 23, 2025. To preorder the book, click on the retailer of your choice:
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