Holly Black follows up adult debut 'Book of Night' with a sequel hitting shelves on Sept. 23. Read an exclusive excerpt from Holly Black sequel Thief of Night

Holly Black follows up adult debut 'Book of Night' with a sequel hitting shelves on Sept. 23.

Read an exclusive excerpt from Holly Black sequel Thief of Night

Holly Black follows up adult debut 'Book of Night' with a sequel hitting shelves on Sept. 23.

By Maureen Lee Lenker

Maureen Lee Lenker

Maureen Lee Lenker is a senior writer at ** with over nine years of experience. An award-winning journalist, she's written for Turner Classic Movies, *Ms. Magazine*, *The Hollywood Reporter*, and more.

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September 19, 2025 12:00 p.m. ET

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Author Holly Black; 'Thief of Night' cover. Credit:

Sharona Jacobs; Tor/Macmillan

Holly Black and Charlie Hall are back.

Black, bestselling author of *The Spiderwick Chronicles*, is returning on Sept. 23 with a follow-up to her adult debut, 2022's *Book of Night. *Her latest, *Thief of Night, *picks up where we left off with Charlie Hall, who might have finally met her match.

Hall is a walking disaster, crooked in every way imaginable and always willing to double down on any bad decision she makes. Charlie thought she'd finally won, defeating Salt and stealing back her lover, the powerful shadow Vince, from the Cabal leaders. So what if it required her to agree to become the Hierophant and risk her life hunting down dangerous rogue shadows? That seemed a small price to pay to be tethered to Vince.

But Vince isn't the man she loved anymore. Thanks to the tethering process, his memories of the last year have been wiped, leaving only a man known as Red, a ruthless shadow and former contract killer for a cruel, mercurial billionaire. Red doesn't remember Charlie, and he doesn't like her either.

That leaves Charlie vulnerable, in addition to being alone, heartbroken, and outmatched. When she's ordered to track down the Blight responsible for a massacre at a local church, she's faced with a terrible question — not merely how to survive but how to protect herself from the one thing she can't escape? Her own shadow.

* *has an exclusive excerpt of Chapter 6 from *Thief of Night *below.

'Thief of Night' by Holly Black.

Chapter 6: Holiday Party

The alarm on Charlie's phone woke her in the late afternoon. The clock beside her mattress was blinking uselessly since she'd failed to reset it after the last power outage. Fumbling, she found her beeping cell in the pocket of her coat, screen spiderwebbed with cracks after last night's bout with the Blight. There were two missed calls from Adeline and a bunch of texts that no amount of tapping on the message icon would let her see.

At least one would be from the manager of Rapture Bar & Lounge, re-minding her that she had a shift tonight.

Charlie moved stiffly into the bathroom, feeling her movements tug at the wound she'd glued closed. Part of her wanted to call out sick, but it was a Thursday night and would probably be slow. She might hurt even more tomorrow. Pain was like that. It wore on you.

Charlie got into the shower, letting the hot water sluice off the rest of the blood on her back and whatever had dried in her hair. Being naked when Red was always nearby was embarrassing, but nothing next to all the other ways she felt stripped bare. God, it was humiliating to be watched while living her life. *Do not look at me while I'm peeing! *she'd yelled that whole first week after they'd been bound. But that had also meant: Don't look at me while I'm crying. Look away when I drool in my sleep. Don't notice all the ways humans are disgusting. Don't notice all the ways I am human.

Charlie put on her softest sports bra, hoping it wouldn't drag on the wound too badly, and then one of the new Rapture shirts, featuring two whips criss-crossing on the front. Then after tugging on stretchy jeans, warm socks, and stompy boots, she went to the mirror to put on some concealer and eyeliner. Finally, she smudged cherry-red lipstick into her cheeks to bring a little color back into her face. By the time she was done, she looked less tired and sore, even if she wasn't.

Posey seemed to have finished the leftover pizza, so Charlie ate black Twizzlers for breakfast, along with an enormous coffee made quick and dirty from instant espresso. After that start to her day, she headed over to Rapture Bar & Lounge.

Odette's new personal assistant, Rachel, stood on a ladder near the entrance, hanging white tinsel around nails on the painted black wall, along with glass ornaments of liquor bottles, tiny Krampuses, and striped candy canes. During the winter holidays, Odette went in for big, vampy, campy decor. A small pile of red wreaths festooned with fetishy versions of Santa and his elves were waiting to go up next, their legs in fishnets and high heels. "First holiday party tonight," Rachel called down to her, by way of explanation. She was a curvy, relentlessly organized woman in her early twenties who wore thick glasses and fifties-style pinup dresses. Even Don liked her in that puzzled way a handsome man likes a girl he thinks ought to be all over him, but who barely remembers his name. And if she had slightly too much interest in Balthazar's shadow parlor in the basement of the building, well, hopefully she also had the good sense to avoid it.

"'Tis the season," Charlie said as her dreams for a restful night went up in smoke.

Holiday parties were good for business, but not great for the staff. People never tipped well when they didn't have to pay for their drinks, especially now that most people didn't have cash on hand. Plus people went *hard *at holiday parties—drinking a lot, awash with their pent-up office resentments, and taking out those bad feelings on anyone unlucky enough to be in their way. Charlie hated holiday party season.

Odette, the retired dominatrix who owned Rapture, looked up from where she was sitting with two friends as Charlie crossed the floor. Odette's silvery hair was pulled severely back from her face into a bun and she wore a caftan of what looked like liquid silver. Around her neck, a rope of heavy onyx beads provided practical ornamentation. Ever since a gloamist used his shadow to trash Rapture, Odette had been a lot more careful about protection.

"Darling," she called to Charlie. "Once you're settled, will you make us all a round of pink squirrels before things get too busy?"

"On it," Charlie assured her.

Don was already behind the bar, wiping down glasses. They'd known each other through the local restaurant scene, but they'd never worked together before. He'd spent years at Top Hat, a bigger and more mainstream bar, and hadn't exactly taken to the spirit of Rapture. He felt that dry ice in drinks was playing too fast and loose, and hated that he was supposed to set actual fire to sugar when someone ordered absinthe. Despite that, he clearly believed it was only a matter of time before he was put in charge of all the important decisions and would be able to change whatever he didn't like.

Which was probably why he made a sour face as Charlie put her bag in the cubby behind the bar, along with her coat. Some stuffing gaped out of the rips on the back. She pretended not to notice.

"Odette could have asked me for the drinks," Don said, as though Charlie taking the order was somehow a dig at him.

Charlie Hall, fired from all of the decent bars around town and most of the less decent ones, probably didn't seem like someone who ought to have seniority at Rapture, or be well-liked by their boss.

"You know who is hosting this party?" Charlie asked, attempting to change the subject.

"The Ford dealership over on Main." He gave her an impatient look, like she should have known. That one was probably on her.

A guy from the ramen place down the street, Daikaiju, started bringing in aluminum trays of karaage chicken and setting them up with Sternos on the folding table set up against one wall. The scents of soy, garlic, and mirin made Charlie's stomach growl.

Trying to put that out of her head, she started mixing the crème de cacao and Crème de Noyaux for Odette's drinks. As she poured the pink liquid into coupe glasses, a young guy with spiky hair and a silver puffer vest entered, carrying DJ equipment.

"You want to batch some stuff?" she asked Don, but he only shrugged and started cutting up limes. At Top Hat, people didn't order cocktails the way they did at Rapture, since Top Hat was known for their extensive beer menu with two dozen IPAs on tap, all flavored with banana or aged in whiskey barrels under a full moon. He didn't know what he was in for.

Charlie carefully carried the pink squirrels over to Odette and her friends, then placed them on the café table, along with a stack of cocktail napkins. A drag performer in a Barbiecore jumpsuit with giant pink spider earrings and a wig to match saluted Charlie as she took her Pepto-Bismol-colored drink.

The DJ system sprang to life in a sudden crash of sound, playing the Pogues' "Fairytale of New York" loudly enough to make everyone jump.

"Is there a special menu for tonight?" Charlie asked Odette.

"Entirely open bar," Odette said, obviously pleased by the dealership's budget and commitment to partying. "But if you want to make up a few specials, go ahead. I may have over-ordered Canton."

"I've got some ideas." Charlie went over to the chalkboard hanging on the wall beside the hallway—the one that led to the backstage greenroom, as well as Odette's office and occasional dungeon—and started half-assing some cocktails. She was fairly sure they had a lot of cranberry juice and all-spice dram that no one had so much as opened.

When she looked up, she found Don glaring at her from behind the bar. "You can't do that," he said.

"Do what?" Charlie glanced back at the board. Three specials, based on popular orders—a seasonally appropriate cranberry margarita, a ginger corpse reviver with the Canton, and a spiced negroni that she was going to make with allspice dram.

"Just make up stuff without running it by anyone."

She glanced toward Odette, who was in deep and oblivious conversation with her friends. Don had no idea what Charlie had said to her, and even less whether Odette approved of her specials menu. The person he was complaining about Charlie not running it by was him.

"You want to add something?"

"I'm just saying," he muttered and got back to work. Maybe he'd expected her to lose her temper, but she was too tired and sore for that.

Soon the car dealers and their office staff started arriving, and the DJ adjusted his volume to compensate for the rising level of conversation. The holiday partiers were decked out in everything from cocktail dresses to suits to t-shirts and jeans, accessorized with the occasional snowflake earrings or Christmas-tree pin. Most of their shadows were unaltered and, from what Charlie could tell, all were unquickened. One of the younger salesmen had a shadow that loomed larger and was more square-shouldered than the man himself, but it was subtle enough that it took a second look to notice.

A short, squat, unsmiling older woman in a red sweater with blinking lights on it sat at the bar immediately and asked for a double-pour of a nice rye with ice on the side. She placed a twenty on the wood countertop. "For you. Keep 'em coming."

Charlie admired her style.

A man with large, blindingly white teeth rapped loudly on the bar. "I need a half-dozen cranberry margaritas and you need to make them right away. This is my party, make me happy."

"Sure," Charlie told him, glancing over at Don to see if he was going to be any help. He was busy giving a lecture about local breweries to an older blonde in a green sequin dress.

Since Charlie had batched ahead, the margaritas weren't too time-consuming. Just a lot of salting rims and shaking. But after the guy left, looking grudgingly pleased, the bar got crowded. She got lost in the momentum of making endless cocktails, and disappearing the few tips that came her way into her apron. The bar grew warmer from the heat of humans in a too-close space, and Charlie could feel the sweat collect under her arms and at her collarbone. More drinks were ordered. Vodka seltzers. Martinis, extra dirty. Coronas with lime.

Her pattern was disrupted by Balthazar Blades settling himself at one end of the bar, smiling with all his disreputable charm. "Make me an amaretto sour and put it on their tab." His curls were pulled back in a ponytail and he yawned as though he'd only woken up in the last hour. Maybe he had. The shadow parlor he ran speakeasy-style below Rapture was a largely nocturnal affair.

Charlie rolled her eyes. "I don't think so."

"Oh come on," Balthazar said. "It's not like they're going to notice."

The head of the dealership was on the dance floor, cranberry margarita in hand, pumping his fists to the Vandals' "Oi to the World." She decided to just make Balthazar the drink.

"By the by," he said after taking a sip, "Vicereine says she wants to see you as soon as possible. What's wrong with your phone?"

Had she been one of the texts that Charlie hadn't been able to see? The last thing she needed was trouble with the Cabals.

"I cracked the screen." She didn't bother telling him details. "Anyway, she doesn't need to check up on me. I did her job."

Balthazar swirled the liquid still in his glass. "Tell her yourself. I'm not your messenger boy."

"Hey there, doll," interrupted one of the sales guys, a balding man with a face flushed from drink and the heat of wearing a blazer indoors.

"Hey there, time traveler," Charlie said.

The sales guy looked confused. And overserved. "Your friend there won't give me a drink."

Charlie glanced at Don, who was steadfastly ignoring the situation. Balthazar finished his amaretto sour and got up, shooting her a pitying look as he abandoned her.

"And you think I look like a soft touch?" she asked.

"A soft touch? I don't know  but I'd like to find out." He leaned closer, damp fingers closing on her wrist. She pulled back, really wishing she'd used another phrase.

He hung on, his smile turning less friendly. "Let go," she told him.

He squeezed her wrist, hard. "You're going to get me a drink, right?"

"*Let GO,*" Charlie shouted. F--- Christmas and Santa and all of his elves.

F--- the social contract. And f--- this guy.

Abruptly, her wrist was free and the man was on the ground. Red stood over him. If he'd appeared as though he came out of nowhere, that was because he more or less had.

The shadow leaned down and gripped the man's face. "Don't touch her," he growled. "Not ever again."

Charlie stared, surprised into silence.

A moment later, two men were grabbing Red by the arms, tying to pry him off their coworker. Charlie felt the hot slap of the Blight's anger bleeding through their tether. He could kill this man. He could kill this man and never think about it again.

Charlie hopped onto the bar and slid over it, knocking some napkins onto the floor.

A few people had pulled out their cell phones and were filming.

"Stop," Charlie told Red, pressing her hand against the solid expanse of his back.

"How did he get in here?" a woman in a green sequin dress and a deer-horn headband demanded. The same woman Don had been lecturing about beer. "I'm the CFO of Hampshire Ford. This is supposed to be an event *exclusively *for our company."

Abruptly, Red let go of the man's throat, turning the full force of his attention on the woman, a surprising authority coming into his voice. "So if I wasn't here, you'd let him do whatever he wanted? I can see why you'd like me to leave."

Something in the woman's expression changed, as though she was no longer certain she wanted to be in this conversation. "Put your phones away!" she snapped at the crowd.

The bald man staggered to his feet, hand on his throat. "Fred," the CFO said. "You all right? Let's go sit down."

"I want to press charges," he sputtered, furious, then turned toward Charlie. "Someone is going to hear about this. Where's your manager? Elaine, contact our legal department."

Odette was moving in their direction, liquid silver caftan flowing around her. She was not going to be happy.

Red's expression grew grim. The sales guy seemed to deflate as he looked up into the shadow's face, into eyes that seemed to be burning away into darkness, sparking with embers as they went.

"His eyes," the man whispered.

"*Vince,*" Charlie hissed, then realized with a spark of horror that he might not react to the name. "*Red*."

The shadow turned to her, then closed his eyes for a long moment, perhaps trying to get himself under control. Why was he defending her now, after abandoning her in the mill building? It wasn't like the sales guy was even that much of a threat.

"You have to get out of here," she told him.

At the other end of the bar, Don was smirking as though looking forward to the lecture Odette was going to give Charlie.

At least the CFO was leading the bald guy—Fred—away. He was headed over to a table of concerned-looking car dealers. And when Red opened his eyes, they weren't black holes. They were his human eyes, pale gray, shining with reflected light.

Then Fred turned. Maybe the idea of his colleagues thinking he'd lost a fight got to him. Or maybe he was too drunk to be properly scared. Whatever the reason, he took a deep breath, fisted a hand, and ran at Red, swinging.

The punch went through Red. And then the man stepped through him too, momentum carrying him forward.

Right into Charlie, who he hit square in the face.

**Excerpt from THIEF OF NIGHT by Holly Black. Copyright © 2025 Holly Black. Reprinted by permission of Tor Publishing Group, a division of Macmillan Publishing Group, LLC. All Rights Reserved. ****

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