The Potioneer (Shadeborn Book 3) (9 page)

BOOK: The Potioneer (Shadeborn Book 3)
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Maiden’s Choice

 

Lawrence was tasked with picking up Lily’s notes from all their shared lectures. A week went by where Lily felt all right, until she tried to do something strenuous, like climb a single stair, or open a bottle of milk. Whatever residual power had stopped her from getting her face smashed in during the fall was still there, lingering like a safety net in her pulsing veins, but she couldn’t summon either physical or magical power to do much else. It was as though her body remained deliberately weak and uncoordinated in an attempt to stop her returning to normality too soon.

The farthest she could make it down the stairs was to a room at the very end of the second floor corridor, where a great wooden door had been left wide open. Lily had been invited to the dark little room, and as she entered it, she heard a loud creaking right beside her. Her weary body barely reacted, though her mind rattled, eyes racing to the source of the noise. Just within the doorway, Lily came face to face with the great iron maiden that had been used as a prop on the stage last year.

“Don’t mind her,” said a voice from the shadows of the box room, “she’s just a little unstable. It’s a requirement to live in this room.”

Lily observed the great iron casket again, which was firmly closed to conceal the trick spikes that lay within its casing. It seemed an extremely heavy piece of stage gear, and it was propped up by little wooden chocks that were wedged beneath its corners. The chocks themselves were creaking against the floorboards, and the immensely heavy prop wavered every now and then, like it was going to fall flat on its metal-cast face. The whole setup seemed impractical and dangerous, but Lily wasn’t about to criticize the owner of the room for it. He’d had quite enough berating from everyone else in the last few weeks.

“You look how I feel,” Salem remarked, and this time he flicked on a lamp to illuminate the rest of his domain.

Salem’s bedroom was not a place Lily had ever felt the urge to peek at, and it surprised her to see how plain the room was compared to the opulent personality he’d once been. The lightsider had a selection of beautiful suits that he was no longer inclined to wear, and most of them were wrapped up in plastic and hung in one corner of the box room. Only one outfit was fully visible, and Lily took the fine garment in when she closed the door and found the suit hanging on a hook behind it, gathering dust. It was the shiny, cobalt ensemble that Salem had worn to Edvard’s funeral, the one he’d been wearing when Lily first met him.

When Lily turned again and saw Salem flash his too-bright smile, she had a fleeting moment where it felt as though he was that same, overbearing yet charming creature again. He patted the space beside him, which was a seat on a small white chaise that ran along the end of his bed. Heaving a tired breath, Lily made her way to it and sank gratefully into the plush fabric, leaning back on the mattress behind her for support.

“I heard about your accident from Gerstein. What were you even doing climbing a ceiling that high?” Salem asked.

“Looking for a djinn,” Lily answered simply.

One dark brow on Salem’s face quirked.

“And did you find one?”

She told him all that had happened, in greater detail than she had given Novel during her time at bedrest, and Salem nodded silently throughout the whole tale. He was the only person whom Lily confessed the warning to, the part where that voice as sharp as broken glass had told her it would find her. She knew that sane people, like Jazzy and Novel, would have panicked to high heaven if she’d told them what the mirror-voice had said, but Salem was reassuringly blank about everything. He just nodded again, and rubbed at his ever-growing beard with thought.

“Then we were right,” he concluded, “someone’s messing with you from the other side of the glass.”

Lily’s back gave out a sharp pang of pain, and she swallowed hard. ‘Messing’ wasn’t the right word at all, this creature was trying to kill her. She didn’t want to snap at Salem’s bleak diatribe like everyone else did, and she took a breath to gather herself before she gave her reply.

“All right,” she began calmly, “then how do I stop him if he’s behind glass? Smashing it is what got me into this mess in the first place, right?”

“Right,” Salem agreed, “so you need to be where he can’t see you. No mirrors, no glass, no reflective surfaces.”

Lily looked around the barely-lit room, and her eyes were drawn to the side of the iron maiden. She was a long, thin figure distorted in its side, surrounded by the dull white glow of the lamplight. She turned her head, holding her sore neck gingerly, and looked out through the window panes into the black night beyond them. Even as she did, her eyesight refocused, and again she saw her pale, exhausted face staring back at her from the glass.

“There’s no such thing as living without reflection,” Lily sighed.

“Then I guess you’re sunk,” Salem surmised.

Sometimes, Lily wondered if Salem was deliberately trying to make people shout at him. The frustration that was slowly welling within her strained heart pulsed down into her fists, and she pondered whether she might have the strength to give the former shade a good slap around the chops.

“You asked me to come down here,” she exclaimed, “and now you’re saying there’s no hope. If that’s true, then why did you even want to speak to me?”

Salem’s shining eyes were focused on the closed door ahead of him, and he gave a little shrug that riled Lily’s fury even more. He smiled, and there was something far less charming in his grin than there had been before.

“I guess I’m just lonely,” he answered.

If Lily had had the strength to rise in a huff, she might have stamped her feet and bolted swiftly from the little room. Instead, she had to heave herself slowly back to standing from the chaise, with Salem deliberately looking away from her the whole time. This meeting had been pointless, a total waste of time and energy that Lily really didn’t want to spend. She made it as far as the great dark door before her strength gave out again, and when she tugged on the doorknob, the heavy hunk of wood refused to budge.

“Here,” Salem said, and he rose with sudden animation.

The lightsider came to her aid, pulling the door open for her to make her exit. And that was where Lily turned on the spot, standing to face him in the doorway. She looked into his eyes, searching deeply for the truth of what had really happened in their meaningless little conversation. Salem had been so keen to talk to her, and offer her his knowledge of the djinnkind, so why was he mucking her about like this?

“Something wrong?” he asked.

His lip, almost hidden among his rangy beard, gave a twist, and Lily felt a wave of suspicion overcome her tired body. In the attic, near the start of this disastrous month, Salem had looked like a man who was finally starting to recover from his trauma. Now, there were subtle differences to his smiles and his easy posture, where he stood holding the edge of the door. Salem could almost have been waiting for something to happen.

Lily didn’t even have time to ask him what he was waiting for. Another creak came from Lily’s right, and this time it was followed by a huge, groaning echo. One of the wooden chocks beneath the huge iron maiden had given way, just as Lily might have imagined, and the whole casket was on its way down towards her. The world fell into that strange slow motion that happens only when a person is about to be horribly injured, and though Lily saw the crushing mass that was headed straight for her, her weakened form wasn’t quick enough to react.

The only thing she could do was turn away from the sight of the smothering death that had finally found her, and that was the moment that Salem gave her a hard push in the back. Lily flew forwards like a rag-doll from his brutality, and as she was crashing to the ground, she realised exactly what Salem had been waiting for. There was a heavy, crushing weight that he had rigged to fall at any moment, and a girl who brought misfortune with her everywhere she went. All Salem had to do was be there waiting, so that he could take her place under the maiden at the right moment, and he’d finally be granted his morbid wish.

Lily closed her eyes tightly as she hit the floor of the corridor, but the crash, smash and vibration of the iron maiden never assaulted her senses. It took her several seconds to realise that the casket had
not
fallen to the ground. She struggled onto her knees, rotating on the spot to see what had transpired instead.

“Damn you, you bastard!” Salem cried. “Get out of there!”

He was shouting directly into the face of the iron maiden, which was suspended in mid-fall over his body. The former shade had laid himself flat to be crushed to death by the heavy metal, but the maiden’s head was hovering about a foot above his own. He seemed to be shouting his curses directly at the casket, and it took Lily a few fractured moments to figure out why. She crawled slowly back towards the huge structure, and peered into the maiden’s metal face.

“Gerstein? Are you in there?” Lily exclaimed.

“Anything with a face,” Salem growled, “I should have known.”

The simulacra’s presence had twisted the iron maiden’s visage into a contortion of effort. Gerstein had the look of a weightlifter who was determined to beat his own limits, and after a few more moments of struggle, the huge iron casket flung itself backwards. Lily struggled to her feet and re-entered the room as the iron maiden landed with a deafening crash on its back. Dust clouds rose everywhere, and when they cleared, Lily saw that the exhausted face of the maiden was suddenly smiling.

“I decided that if I could move a stone gargoyle, I could move this,” Gerstein said with a triumphant sigh. “I guess one never knows their strength until they’re tested.”

“That’s beautiful,” Salem groused, scrambling to his feet. “You can put it on my tombstone.”

An icy breeze blasted into the room, swirling the dust once again.

“Not bloody likely,” Novel said from the corridor.

 

By Invitation Only

 

“I’ve had it up to here with you, family or not! You’ve always been a disgrace to me, and if you’re planning on being a danger too, then it’s time you have what you deserve!”

Novel raged, a sea of cruel words gushing from his lips. He was thundering down the stairs after Salem, and Lily found herself carried on the chilly breeze of magic behind him. It was a relief not to have to walk, even in such tense circumstances, and she floated in the illusionist’s wake as they both pursued Salem all the way to the grand foyer of the theatre. Salem smashed his full weight against the Imaginique’s double entrance doors, but they wouldn’t budge. The antique chandelier shook as Novel and Lily arrived just a few feet behind Salem, and the room was filled with the sound of clattering glass and the pounding of fists on the doors.

“If you’re so keen to see the back of me, then
let me go
!” Salem cried.

His fists smashed out the rhythm of his pleas until there was no breath left in his lungs. Salem turned to face his son, and their eyes met for mere seconds before the older shade looked away again. His broad chest heaved with sorrow, shaggy face cast to the floor as he opened his arms, palms raised to the ceiling. Salem shook his head as he panted, and Lily felt her heart give a lurch when a strangled little sob escaped his lips. Whatever bravado he had been showing to her during the last few weeks, it was clear now that it had all been a sham.

“I used to be a self-preservationist,” Salem began in a choked voice.

“I think the preferred term is ‘coward’,” Novel snapped coldly.

Salem just nodded, and gave a little sniff to clear his throat.

“First sign of trouble, I’d run for the hills and leave everyone else to fight,” he continued. “I used to have this overwhelming urge to survive and now… it’s just
gone
. I stopped fearing death the moment I realised that there were far worse things in this world.”

The father still could not meet the eyes of his son, but Lily saw the tears falling from beneath his mane of hair. They dripped to the floor, swallowed by the plush red carpet under his feet.

“Please, son,” Salem pleaded, “just let me die.”

Lily watched, still wrapped in the strengthening cocoon of Novel’s powers, and she knew that she would have no control over anything that happened next. Novel clenched his pale fists and stepped forward, towering over the man who’d been a disappointment to him all his life. Lightning crackled in the illusionist’s palms, and his face was etched with tension and rage as he raised one fist, ready to strike.

“No,” Novel said in a sudden, quiet voice.

The rising fist became an open palm, and he offered it to his father with a gentleness that Lily knew he rarely showed in public. For a moment, Lily felt herself smiling with the tenderness of the scene, and she thought how wonderful it would be for Salem if he was finally going to be shown some kindness. It hadn’t occurred to her that Salem might not want kindness, until she saw him slap his son’s hand away.

“If there was anyone I thought I could count on to want me dead, it was you,” Salem growled, “but you’ve let me down again.”


I’ve
let
you
down?” the illusionist railed.

Novel’s rage returned so quickly that Lily felt the supportive powers around her quake and vanish in an instant. She managed to stay on her feet, leaning back against the wall where the old production posters gleamed from their glass frames. She felt smaller and weaker than ever watching the two men before her begin their argument anew, and it reminded her of the fight they’d had in the kitchen some eight months previous, when Salem had had plenty of power to retaliate. If Novel lost his temper now, Salem would be defenceless, and Lily rather thought that was what the lightsider was aiming for.

“I won’t have you die,” Novel insisted, “and I won’t have you meddling in the safety of others either. You put Lily in danger, and you’re filling her head with fairy-tales of the creatures behind the glass. You think I don’t know what you’ve told her? You think I don’t know
everything
that goes on within my walls? There are very few shades who know the truth of the djinnkind, and I refuse to believe that you’re one of them,
father-mine
.”

Novel spat these last words with such a fury that flames flickered briefly at his lips. Where Salem had been cowed and pleading to die some moments before, he now rose and met his son’s eyes with a new emotion burning beyond them. Lily feared the manic gleam in the showman’s cobalt irises, and the grin that accompanied it was one of purest malice.

“You want to play the reputation game with me, son?” he challenged. “It’s not wise. I could tell Lily some stories about you that are
far
from fairy-tales. She’s your lover, but she’s also your apprentice, and we all know how well you keep your temper when you’re teaching.”

Salem’s gaze flickered to meet Lily’s eyes, and he smiled at her with a cruel, knowing look that made her shiver.

“Remember what happened
last time
, Lemarick.”

Lily wished that there hadn’t been any truth in Salem’s teasing, but he was so very right about Novel’s temper. All thoughts of forgiveness seemed to drain from the illusionist’s face as it flushed with anger, and Lily found that even she was too afraid to reach out and try to stop his rage from building. The room pulsed, its very walls shivering to make the gilded picture frames rattle. Fire burst from Novel’s skin, coating his pinstripe suit until he was surrounded by its fierce, red glow.

“Would you die by the hand of your child?” he asked.

And Salem only grinned. Lily stepped forward, away from her brace at the wall, willing her powers to surface and put some sort of barrier between father and son. Novel was burning up with his own fury, his face contorted with the strain of keeping control, and Lily could see him giving in to the power that wanted to explode from his seething blood.

A strange light entered the foyer amid all the madness. It was golden, but a far lighter shade of gold than the archaic old picture frames or the fitments of the chandelier. It filtered through the room like a powder, sprinkling itself upon Novel, Lily and Salem especially. Salem fell to his knees, and seconds later he was sleeping with his face buried in the plush carpet. The flames around Novel died down and his face returned to its usual pallor, though his chest was still thumping as he looked around for the golden light’s source.

As for Lily, she felt as though she’d been encased in a suit of armour. The magic of the golden light was nothing like the powerful support she’d felt from Novel earlier. It was more structured and difficult to adjust to, as though she was still the same weakened shade, simply being propped up by the strange, new power around her. She managed to leave her crutch at the wall and walked a few steps to stand beside Novel. They were both stoic and bemused when the golden light gathered in a bright and blinding flash.

A woman stood before them, as though she had stepped straight out of the light-flash itself. She was clutching a fist at her chest which drew Lily’s eye, and when her hand unclasped the thing that she was holding, Lily beheld a golden locket in the shape of a playing card spade. It was as large as the woman’s ample hand, and it hung on a thick golden chain that travelled up over her ruffled blouse and tawny waistcoat. She had trousers and a cloak to match the ensemble, and atop her head was a dark brown hat with a brim that arced down on one side and rose up on the other.

Between the locket and the shadow-casting hat, there was a face hardened by weather and work. The woman who had appeared in the foyer had eyes that gleamed like the darkest day of autumn, which were narrowed over Novel and Lily in a calculating appraisal. She rubbed at her nose, which was a little oversized, then ran a hand across her chin in the way that a man might have toyed with a stubbly shadow.

“Well, didn’t I just turn up in the right place at the right time?” she asked.

Her accent was rural, thick and American, and Lily felt for a moment as though she might be talking to someone that had stepped straight out of the Wild West. It was Novel who voiced his concern, as Lily stood rapt with fascination.

“I demand to know how you entered this theatre, stranger,” Novel exclaimed. “No-one does so without my expressed permission.”

“And I have it, Sir,” the woman replied.

From the pocket of her waistcoat, the stranger pulled out a piece of paper. It was rolled in a scroll so tiny that it could have been tied to the leg of a bird, but the woman unfurled it again and again until it had expanded into a letter.

“I believe you requested the services of a potioneer?” The woman extended a hand with her enquiry. “The name’s Jeronomie Parnell, and I’ll thank you for your politeness and courtesy from this moment forward, Monsieur.”

Novel did not take the letter from her, for both he and Lily could already see it was his cursive writing on the page. Lily had never heard anyone scold Novel for his manners except for his mother, and the potioneer’s approach seemed to have the very same effect. Novel took Jeronomie’s hand and the pair shook strongly, each as tall and imposing as the other. Then Jeronomie looked down at the sleeping form on the carpet beneath their feet, indicating him with a nudge of her brown leather boot.

“This gentleman appears to be fixing to kill himself,” she mused. “Would you like me to take a look at that issue whilst I’m here?”

Novel sneered in the sleeping man’s direction.

“If you have anything that will make him less of a nuisance, then please do,” the illusionist answered. “Money is no object to return peace and safety to this theatre.”

The potioneer nodded, still looking at the prone figure as he snored away obliviously.

“Might I ask his name?” she enquired.

Novel’s lips were tight, as though he could barely stand any more conversation on the topic. Lily stepped up to join them, completing the triangle around the sleeping figure.

“He’s Salem Cross,” she replied, “Lemarick’s father.”

Jeronomie’s hardened features crumbled like ancient stone. Lily saw the change that overcame her as she continued to gaze upon Salem’s silent form. She looked hurt, and strangely disappointed, as though her heart had suddenly broken.

“It’s sad, isn’t it?” Lily remarked. “He made the lightsider’s choice, and now he doesn’t want to go on without his shadepowers.”

“A lightsider? I see,” Jeronomie answered. She swallowed so hard that the sound echoed in the room, then brushed down her waistcoat with several loud slaps. “Well, I might just have something for that. I presume you’re the lady that the main job is regarding?”

“Yes,” Novel interjected. “It’s a mirror curse, and it needs… diluting, I suppose.”

The intense compassion Jeronomie had felt for Salem’s story was absent from her face now that she appraised Lily. Instead, she looked thoughtful, a thousand clever things seemed to pulse behind her dark gaze, and she nodded a few times to herself, like she was having a marvellous conversation that nobody else could hear.

“To work, then,” she surmised.

She was off like a shot towards the door that led to the private quarters, and Novel followed her a few steps with a bemused sort of stutter.

“Wouldn’t you like to be shown around?” he called after her retreating back.

Jeronomie waved a hand over her shoulder.

“It’s all right, Monsieur,” she replied, “My luggage is installing itself in your attic as we speak.”

Lily and Novel stood and watched the potioneer vanish through the door, the only sound between them the gentle snores of the suicidal maniac on the carpet. Novel ran a hand through his pure white hair, then reached out to hook his arm around Lily’s waist. When he pulled her close, the armour-like magic of the potioneer fell away, and she sank into the comfort of his warm side, leaning all her weight on him.

“It appears we’ve been invaded,” he said, sounding more than a little shocked.

“She’s very no-nonsense,” Lily agreed, “I guess that means she thinks she can really help me.”

Novel held her tighter and gave a brief nod.

“Let’s hope so.”

“What did you mean when you said she couldn’t have got in here without your permission?” Lily asked.

Novel looked down at her, his other hand rising to hold the tip of her chin, as he had so many times before.

“It’s one of the many protections I placed upon the Imaginique when I bought it,” he explained. “That’s why I have to write the theatre tickets by hand. Otherwise, even the audience wouldn’t be able to pass through the entryway.”

There was another question that Lily wanted to ask. Salem’s last words were still reverberating in her mind, filled with all the cruelty and malice of his withering look before he dropped to the floor in Jeronomie’s magic light.
Remember what happened last time, Lemarick.

The discovery of Baptiste and the feedings had already told Lily that the man she loved kept secrets from her, and now there was yet another skeleton lurking in his closet. If the last few months of questioning and investigating had taught Lily anything, it was that Lemarick Novel’s secrets were only revealed when he chose to let them out. She remained silent in his arms and soaked in the warmth of his embrace, resigning herself to the thought that whatever was yet to come in their torrid future, it would have to come when she was recovered, and strong enough to face it.

BOOK: The Potioneer (Shadeborn Book 3)
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