The Potioneer (Shadeborn Book 3) Read online

  “Ahem.”

  The first little cough was quiet, and Lily could almost pretend that she hadn’t heard it. When it was followed by two much louder noises and an irritated sigh, however, she knew that her moment of feeling right had been sorely interrupted. She didn’t want to open her eyes, because she already knew who the intruder was, the only one that would have the audacity to walk straight into Novel’s bedroom and stand impatiently on the other side of the four-poster’s curtains.

  “What is it, Baptiste?” Novel asked.

  Lily was taken aback, and her eyes did open at her boyfriend’s tone. He didn’t know why Baptiste was there – they weren’t having one of their shared instinct moments – and Novel sounded genuinely annoyed that his time with Lily was being interrupted. It made Lily think that finally, things were back in balance again. Novel was with her, and it had only taken a thirty-foot drop to regain his attention.

  Her relief was short-lived, for when Baptiste spoke, it was with a weakness that even Lily’s heart ached to hear.

  “Um… We’re overdue, I think… I…”

  The MC coughed, and this time it was violent. Lily’s eyes shot to the curtains and they parted aside in a gust of air. She wasn’t sure if it was she or Novel that had performed the act, but she found herself sitting upright in bed to see the state of the usually-elegant man before her.

  “Ah,” Novel said grimly, “it would appear so.”

  Baptiste was almost yellow to look at. His normally dark eyes had taken on a reddish shine around the irises, and he looked physically thinner, like his high cheekbones were trying to make a break for freedom by bursting right out of his skin. Novel rose from the bed, and Baptiste even seemed smaller beside the illusionist, as though he was losing the strength in his back to stand upright. Lily felt a pang deep in her gut, and though there was still a part of her resenting Baptiste for interrupting her sweet little moment, she had to admit his need for Novel looked far greater than hers.

  “With all the accidents and your travels with the letters, I…”

  Novel paused, glancing back to Lily with a forlorn crease in his pale brow.

  “Go on,” Lily said with a nod. “Stop talking and go fix him.”

  For once, Baptiste had no sharp reply. He bowed his head silently, and walked from the room without meeting Lily’s eyes again. Novel followed him, and Lily lay back and listened until their footsteps were only echoes in her memory. Baptiste had run himself ragged to find a potioneer, for Lily’s sake as much as by Novel’s request, and she thought she oughtn’t to be bitter that he needed Novel’s aid. And, so long as she didn’t think too hard about the exact nature of that aid, she could will herself back to sleep with the lull of healing starlight all around her.

  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.