The Potioneer (Shadeborn Book 3) Read online

  Dharma was standing against a painted black wall where a double window had been opened wide, and beneath it there lay the now-crumpled form of Salem Cross. It seemed that the gargoyle on the Imaginique's outer walls had found an easy-to-reach spot to dump the suicidal shade back inside the building, but Lily saw no sign of his massive stone hands beyond the window. Dharma shifted to close the frames and the curtains, her shapely legs carefully stepping over the complaining lump on the floor. She pulled her dark locks back behind her ears with slow, sensuous hands, glancing down.

  "Not again, Salem," Dharma purred in her low tone. "How many times are you going to try this? Isn't it clear that Fate doesn't want to you to die just yet?"

  "Screw Fate," Salem answered, his weary face still half-buried in the plush red carpet.

  Novel and Baptiste were already present at the scene, and the men moved to hoist Salem to his feet and get him out of the siren's way. Dharma was dressed in one of her usual slinky numbers - a black baby-doll nightgown, with little red bows - and Lily now saw that the colour combination suited her room to a tee. She had always imagined that the siren lived in luxury, and now she saw the plush, silken proof of it in every furnishing the lavish room could offer. It made Novel's bedroom look more like a library than a boudoir.

  "You're going to have to lock him in his room again," Novel told Baptiste, whose lithe limbs were now holding the much-larger Salem steady.

  The bloodshade gave a curt nod, and Lily did not miss the rough manner in which he yanked and heaved the dead-weight shade from the room. She wanted to tell him to treat Salem better, but the stony looks of both Novel and Dharma told her that she'd be laughed at if she did. They seemed to have lost their sympathy for Salem’s great sacrifice somewhere in the last few weeks, and Novel now stood brushing off his dark suit, and preparing his face with a look of apology. It was one that Lily suspected was not entirely sincere.

  "Sorry about the shock, Dharma," Novel told her. "This was the nearest open window, you see."

  The siren settled herself on the edge of her bed, one long-nailed finger toying with the soft crimson sheets.

  "It's all right," she answered with a shrug. "It's been a while since a man's hurled himself through my window. In some ways, it's just like old times."

  Her dark gaze glittered with a joke that Novel didn't seem to get, but Lily gave her a knowing grin in return. Lily thought that she and Novel ought to have left Dharma to go back to sleep, but the illusionist was crossing the plush carpet as he moved farther from the door. Dharma had a great black dresser that took up the entire wall opposite her window, consumed by massive wardrobes, a long, oval mirror, and a set of drawers that separated the two. On top of the drawers, there hung a portrait on the wall, which depicted a handsome soldier in a uniform that Lily recognised from her college studies.

  "Boer War," she said, crossing to join Novel at the portrait. "Love the feather in the hat."

  To her surprise, the man in the portrait suddenly blinked, and looked up at the feather with interest. Within the ornate frame, he reached up with one painted hand and toyed with the plume.

  "Do you think it suits me?" he asked her.

  Lily felt that comforting hand resting across her shoulders, and she could see the small smile creeping into Novel's lip, just in the corner of her vision. Try as she might, she could not look away from the animated figure in the picture frame.

  "Lily, this is Gerstein," Novel informed her.

  Her brow furrowed instantly, one absent hand pointing back over her shoulder.

  "But he's the gargoyle," she breathed.

  The smiling young soldier in the portrait tipped his hat, the long feather drooping in front of his nose.

  "Not quite, dear lady," Gerstein replied. "I am a man of many faces in this theatre."

  Novel leaned on the chest of drawers, looking from the portrait to Lily's face, which she quickly realised was still slack with fascination. She blinked her surprise away, awaiting the illusionist’s explanation.

  "Gerstein is a simulacra," Novel began, "which is to say, he exists as a spirit without physical form. He can use any object which resembles a face and possess it, which is why I have him patrol the roof at night, inside the gargoyles around the walls."

  The portrait soldier nodded along with every word, adding: "If it's attached to this building, I can take control of it. Anything with a face."

  Lily found her mind racing to the many faces of the theatre, inside the old posters of productions gone by, and the cherubs that adorned the upper and dress circles of the auditorium. She wondered how many other portraits and photographs there were that she had never noticed, where Gerstein's watchful eyes could inhabit them at any moment. And, though the fellow in Boer War uniform seemed pleasant enough, Lily wondered if there were pictures in her bedroom that he might have been able to get into, should he choose to do so.

  "It is ever so nice to have someone to watch over you," Dharma said from her bed, which the portrait overlooked.

  "Right," Lily answered, an unsure smile forming with a twitch upon her lips. "Well, I guess it's nice to meet you, Gerstein."

  "And you, my dear," Gerstein replied, with another tip of his hat. His painted eyes shifted their focus as he went on. "It's a good thing that I was inside the big griffon when your father fell, Novel. I'd only just come from the wolf's head on the west corner. Dashed fine luck, eh?"

  Novel, who had been smiling right up until that last remark, suddenly turned his face to stone. Something grave and frightful overtook him, and his pale eyes darted to Lily's face for a moment, which sent her into a panic that equalled his own. He looked like he was on red alert once more, but the urgency passed before Lily even had the time to ask him what was wrong. When the illusionist looked back to the man in portrait, it was with a withering, discerning pull in his lips.

  "I do not believe in luck," he answered in a low, almost threatening tone, "as you well know."

  He was gone from the room with a speed that could only have been enhanced by his magic, leaving Lily and Dharma to exchange baffled looks, before Gerstein broke their silent wonder.

  "Was it something I said?”

  Second Sight

  When Lily had accepted Novel’s invitation to live at Theatre Imaginique, she had brought her best friend, Jazmine Dama, with her. The girls had both agreed that any other alternative was unthinkable, not least because most of those other options saw Jazzy returning to Mumbai to live with her parents, where she would be surrounded by constant care due to her new condition. She had been in her wheelchair for about three weeks now and, whilst it wasn’t ideally shaped for the pokey corridors and narrow doorways of the old Victorian theatre, Jazzy was frequently surrounded by warm, smiling faces and the ever-helpful hands of the Imaginique’s performers.

  One such pair of hands was of a deep, chocolate hue, and covered in endless black lines of tattooed ink. Those hands were wrapped around the handles of Jazzy’s hot-pink-and-chrome chair as Lawrence Seward wheeled her into the kitchen of the theatre. Lily was already seated at the long, dark table when she saw her friends and fellow students approaching with their broad smiles. Lawrence was deft and gentle as he motioned Jazzy’s chair, tucking her in right beside Lily before he took up a place opposite them at the table. A shy look fluttered in the voodoo boy’s dark lashes as he focused downward, twiddling his tattooed fingers while Jazzy coughed to dislodge a non-existent blockage from her throat.

  “Sorry,” she said through her dry, false splutter, “we were playing chess, and we lost track of time.”

  Lily rolled her eyes, and it was not because she didn’t believe her friend, but because she wished that there really had been something more than chess going on. For almost a year now, it had been clear as crystal that Lawrence and Jazzy were into each other, but they were both painfully shy people, and there had been so many other things to get in the way of their romance that it had simply never quite blossomed. Lily’s own drama in the previous year
was one such obstruction, and Jazzy’s unfortunate spine-snapping encounter with Mother Novel was another.

  It was like a looping video, the way Lily’s mind kept returning to that gruesome memory. The way Jazzy’s head had been bent right back to touch her heels, as she floated in mid-air under the evil darksider’s gravity grip. Lily shook herself, looking to her friend, whose sienna cheeks had turned rosy while she awaited Lily’s reply. It required another deep breath before Jazzy got any answer from Lily, for she needed that final moment to remind herself that her best friend in the world was sitting right there, alive and well, if a little less mobile than before.

  “Don’t worry. Everyone else is late too,” Lily said with a frown. “I thought Eva started dinner like, five hours before, or something. I guess she must be busy.”

  “Dinner’s already prepared,” said a voice from somewhere nearby. “I think she’s keeping it all in the big oven to reheat.”

  Lily knew the masculine voice, and she looked around the room to see where it was coming from. It was Lawrence who spotted its source first, pointing to a tea-towel that Lady Eva had pinned to the wall just above the freezer. Upon it, there were a pair of Spanish flamenco dancers, dressed in all the traditional garb. The man, with his oversized black hat and ruffled sleeves, had his face turned away in the dancer’s pose, but the woman was looking right at them from the image in the fabric.

  “Something going on, Gerstein?”

  It was Jazzy who asked this question, and Lily suddenly felt a little put out that her friend had been told about the simulacra’s existence before her, though she tried her best to hide it with a smile. Lawrence gave the flamenco woman’s form a nod, and the three of them watched as she disentangled herself from the Spanish man, who remained perfectly in position. It was strange to hear Gerstein’s low, rumbling voice coming from the delicate fabric lips of the embroidered woman, but Lily watched as he leaned forward to speak again in a conspiratorial tone.

  “They’re ambushing you, Miss Dama,” Gerstein warned. “Beware.”

  Jazzy cast Lily a confused look, which passed swiftly around to Lawrence before it travelled back to Jazzy again. The three of them had agreed to meet at the dinner table, a little before supper time, in order to plan their first day back at Piketon University. Lily knew of no plot to ambush Jazzy, and she was therefore surprised when she turned her head and saw Lady Eva, the gypsy madame, standing in the kitchen doorway. She was a stout, older lady with dark hair tucked under a bright red shawl, and she looked every inch the traditional Spanish woman, save for the deck of tarot cards clutched in her small hands.

  “I’m sorry my dear,” the woman said, giving Jazzy an apologetic look. “I have consulted the gitanos, and I cannot keep your secret any longer. It is time this household knew everything.”

  The household in question were behind her, all of them, and they flooded the kitchen no sooner than Eva had moved herself out of their way. Novel and Baptiste came first, and Lawrence rose to his feet out of deference to the shade, not the vampyric creation beside him. Lily remained seated as she watched Novel round the table to place himself on her other side, and the other cohorts of the theatre then began to take spaces in the room.

  There was Zita Bosko, the skeletal-yet-beautiful dancer and contortionist, who as ever was escorted by the acrobatic Slovak Twins, Rasmus and Erasmus. She was like a fine white swan flanked by two great black bears, yet Zita showed them nothing but grace and respect as they scrabbled to produce a chair for her. Dharma and Poppa Seward - Lawrence’s father - made up the final pair of the group, and Lily guessed that Salem was still confined to his room. Either that, or he was not considered important enough to be bestowed with the secret that Eva had promised to reveal at this surprise meeting.

  “Don’t worry, Jazmine dear,” the gypsy madame said. She had rounded the table and come to place a hand on the young Indian girl’s slim shoulder. “They will understand. They must understand.”

  As much as Lily hated the look of worry on her best friend’s face, she was relieved that this moment of revelation had finally come. She’d had glances of it over the past year, when Jazzy had been horrified by the sight of the real ghosts that Eva could conjure in her gypsy trance, and when, at the hospital, Jazzy had admitted that she had knowledge she had never shared with Lily, even after Lily had discovered her own supernatural skills. Now, the Imaginique’s troupe were assembled with eager faces, all glancing between Jazzy and Lady Eva as they shuffled in their impatience. Beneath the table, Lily felt Novel’s hand slip onto the end of her knee, and she covered it with her own palm as she too anticipated the news they’d all been waiting for.

  “I…” Jazzy began, then she looked to Eva, biting her lip a little. “Should I tell them, or do you-”

  Eva shook her head, and Jazzy looked back to the sea of expectant faces with even more nerves than before. She had always been clumsy and nervy, but now Jazzy’s own hands were rooted where they gripped the edge of the table, too shaky even to rise and play with her black, curly hair, as she usually would when faced with the horrors of public speaking.

  “Since I was little,” Jazzy said, forcing her eyes to land on the centre of the polished table, instead of anyone’s face, “I thought I could see people who weren’t there. They were like shadows, walking around in between the normal people, and if I stared hard enough at them, I could see more details. Back in India, Mum and Dad took me to doctors and shrinks, so I had to stop saying that I could see them, else they’d have thrown me in some loony bin and I’d have never gotten away to uni. But I’ve always seen them, it’s never stopped…”

  “Do you mean like… ghosts?”

  It was Lawrence who asked the question. Lily might have expected him to feel betrayed that Jazzy, who he had been caring for so sweetly, had this massive secret, but Lawrence’s dark features were filled with encouragement. He was gentle with the question, reaching out across the table and offering Jazzy the palm of his hand in support. It was a wrench for her to let go of the table’s edge, but when she did, her hand flew into his grip. Their dark fingers glowed pale with the force at which they gripped each other, and Jazzy gave a little shake of her head.

  “Not quite,” she answered, “it’s… hard to explain.”

  “The girl has a gift,” Lady Eva interjected. Lily could tell by the gypsy’s pained look that she was going back on her own advice, perhaps due to Jazzy’s obvious nerves. “I have to call on my magical ancestors, the gitanos, to raise spirits from the grave, but Jazmine needs no aid from the other worlds to use her skills. She sees the people of the past, and the people of the future, moving as one in the same time and place.”

  Lily jumped as Novel’s hand broke out of her grip, their fists bumping the underside of the table in shock. The illusionist rose beside her, looking down at Jazzy with his pale lips open in a shocked ‘o’ shape that Lily had never seen him make before.

  “You mean,” Novel said, almost in a whisper, “that she has the Second Sight?”

  Some understanding had dawned across the table, as everyone except Lily seemed to gasp the same gasp of surprise. Lily reached out for Novel’s sleeve, giving him a gentle tug to shake the shock from his face. When he looked at her, he seemed to realise her confusion, and he resumed his seat, now turned to face her alone.

  “Jazzy can see all that is, ever was, and ever shall be,” Novel told her. “The figures she sees aren’t the spirits of those people, but a kind of memory of where they have been, or where they’re going to.”

  “The boy I saw on Eva’s stage last year,” Jazzy interjected with a trembling voice. “I’d seen him walking around on our campus, and then Eva had summoned him as a ghost and… I looked him up in student records. He died fifteen years ago, when he was studying here, and I’d been seeing his past, where he used to walk to class and meet his friends.”

  Lily couldn’t take the whole thing in at once, but she tried to process carefully what Jazzy had told her. Her meek little fri
end, who was always so sunny and cheerful, had her vision filled with people who were out of time with the present moment. It was little wonder, Lily thought, that Jazzy was always so nervous, for every place she went must have been filled with hundreds more people than Lily or anyone else ever saw there.

  “You were wise to hide your gift, Miss Jazmine,” Baptiste said, his head bowed as if in thought. “There are many people who would seek to misuse a person with your talents.”

  Lily hated the trepidation in his dark voice when he spoke, especially since it had the effect of finally bringing Jazzy to the tears that she’d clearly been fighting back. Lily reached out and took her friend’s other hand in hers, snapping her gaze back to Baptiste with a wary look.

  “What do you mean ‘misuse’?” she demanded.

  Novel gave a sigh beside her, and his head lowered at the same moment that Baptiste’s rose.

  “How do you imagine that Lemarick’s two-way mirror was made?” Baptiste asked.

  Lily knew the two-way mirror well. It was a small silver compact that now sat in the top drawer of Novel’s chest upstairs. They had used one side of it to look into her past and find Maxime Schoonjans, her late father, and Lily had also accidentally peered into the other mirror, into the future, and given herself a nightmare of a vision. Now she realised that Novel’s head was hanging in shame, and the words of Gideon Pratt, who had made them the mirror in the first place, returned to her memory.

  “Pratt said that parts were hard to come by,” she uttered, glancing between her terrified best friend and the man she loved. “Novel, what did he mean by that?”

  Lemarick Novel sucked in his cheeks for a moment, looking more angular than ever, then let out a deep breath before he met Lily’s eyes again.

  “The glass for those mirrors is forged in the blood of humans with Second Sight,” he informed her gravely.

  Lily’s first instinct was a rise of hot rage in her chest, and a half-second later, Jazzy let go of her hand with a gasp. Lily looked to her fingers to see her shademagic sparking. Little lightning bolts were zapping into the air as she clenched her fists.