The Potioneer (Shadeborn Book 3)

by K. C. Finn

  When Pascal looked back to Lily, the joviality had drained from his voice entirely.

  “And,” he continued, “I believe we have you to thank for my sister’s death.”

  Mother Novel had been a darksider of extreme proportions. She had trapped Novel in the Dreamstate – the world where your mind left your real-world body – and tried to choke the life from Lily by filling her lungs with unstoppable torrents of water. And yet, when Lily looked into the one good eye of Pascal Novel, she saw real grief there. Whatever Evangeline Novel had become in her many years on Earth, she had once been someone’s sister, someone’s aunt, and someone’s mother.

  “Salem made a choice,” Lily said plainly. “I had no part in it.”

  “But it was because of you,” Océane snapped.

  Pascal tapped her hand chidingly, and she was silent, looking upset again.

  “You’re a highly outspoken young woman, Miss Coltrane,” the senior shade surmised. “It’s unsurprising to me that my sister deemed you unsuitable to join this family. We always thought Lemarick would marry Aurélie eventually, you see, but when she disappeared, well…”

  Lily didn’t want to ask. She had sometimes considered that Novel couldn’t possibly have lived the last two-hundred and seventy years of his life alone, but the prospect of discussing his former lovers wasn’t one that she relished. She fancied that Pascal knew just that, for the cruel amusement was back in his good eye as he continued to speak.

  “Aurélie was quiet and obedient,” he explained pointedly. “She knew her place, and didn’t fancy herself better than those around her.”

  Lily felt every jibe as it hit her, every barb that Pascal threw bouncing off her ever-thickening skin. With cheers rising in the background and the house chanting Lemarick’s name, Lily felt a swell of pride rush to her chest, and she did her best to look glib as she answered:

  “She sounds like a terrible bore, if you ask me.”

  It surprised her when Pascal laughed. If he had been baiting her to get her measure, then the older shade had succeeded in finding it. He reclined in his throne-like chair, rubbing his chin as he grinned. Lily felt a shiver, as though the mass of gold in one eye was slithering all over her.

  “Still,” Pascal began in a low rumble, “I can see exactly why he likes you.”

  Océane looked livid. Her pale face turned pink at her father’s complimentary words, and Lily might have shot her a gloating look too, if that hadn’t been the moment Novel chose to throw Remy straight at his father. Lily had looked away from the fight’s grand conclusion, but she saw, when the young man landed at her feet, that he’d been shocked so many times his dark hair was standing on end. Remy panted, giving his father an apologetic look before he threw his head back on the platform and passed out.

  Pascal rose from his chair, stepping over his son as he made a sucking sound with his teeth.

  “Never send a boy to do a man’s job,” the senior shade concluded.

  When Pascal entered the circle, Lily looked back to Novel, whose expression was suddenly fearful again.

  “You said one challenge!” he called to Pascal, and there was genuine fright in his voice as he shouted.

  Pascal merely shrugged, and answered:

  “Well, I lied.”

  Spectrophobia

  It would have been a horrendous lie to say that she liked Pascal, but up until moments ago, Lily had thought they were starting to get along. But when the senior shade erupted into the challenge circle in a ball of crackling, forked lightning, Lily felt the burn of the presence of an enemy all over again. Novel was panting lightly from his bout with Remy, and he looked more alert than ever as he flew around the blinding ball of energy that was his uncle. Outside the sphere of flashing, snapping light, it was impossible to see what Pascal was casting next, and Novel’s anticipatory advantage was gone in a snap.

  Lily reasoned that that had to be why Novel was lowering himself to the ground. He stood opposite Pascal, hands cupped together at the wrists, like a fielder ready to receive a stray ball on a cricket pitch. He was paler than ever by the light Pascal had cast, and when the lightning was at its most intense, the ball exploded with a flash that blinded everyone in the room. Lily heard a violent force like a rush of air, but it took several seconds before her vision returned enough to see what had happened.

  Novel was on the ground, casting a shield of fire around himself as he tried to get to his feet. Pascal stood over him with a masterful sort of glee, pressing down with a bolt of lightning so thick and heavy that he could hold it like a sword. Lily had never imagined that such control over the elements was possible, and she saw the precise tip of the lightning bolt as it hovered in the flames over Novel’s heart. She wanted to intervene at once, to send some wild flash of energy that would smack Pascal in the face and give Novel time to get up again.

  “Don’t you dare,” said Océane’s whispery voice beside her. “The men of Novel are proud. Lemarick would never forgive himself if someone had to step in on his behalf.”

  Lily realised that Océane had spotted her hands, already raised instinctively for a cast, and she lowered them carefully. Aside from the bitter truth in what the pale girl had just said, if Lily were to attack Pascal now, it was entirely possible that the whole House of Novel would turn on her in that instant. The dark figures crowded around the fight gleefully, cheering and jeering respectively as Pascal forced his bolt against the fire shield, which was starting to fail. They looked like animals, hungry for the bloodletting that was to come.

  And, to Lily’s horror, so did Novel.

  He was grinning where he lay trapped on the floor. His hair was astray in wild, sweat-soaked tendrils, and he held up his shield with visible strain in the veins of his forearms. Yet, Novel was enjoying the test, and perhaps the violence too. When Pascal made another stab with his lightning bolt, Novel let his shield down entirely and rolled in that moment, so that Pascal’s magic hit the ground and sent a reverb through his own body in a shockwave. It did not deter the senior shade for long, who spun into the air with as much grace as his nephew, and wiped a fleck of spittle from his chin.

  “That’s my boy!” Pascal cried cheerfully. “I knew you were still in there somewhere, Lemarick.”

  Lily hated everything that she was hearing, but the fire in her own heart still urged Novel to win. As much as he looked terrifying in his joyful display of airborne violence, Lily knew that the wildness within him was just what he needed to win the fight. Unfortunately, that same wild streak ran through Pascal, and the older man had powers to equal his nephew’s. Blow after blow of air and lightning raged, until the two men were caught up in the centre of a hurricane that spun on and on in the centre of the hall. The other members of the house were complaining that they couldn’t see the fight going on within, and all Lily could hope was that, when the storm cleared, Novel would be on top of matters at last.

  He wasn’t. The cyclone came crashing to the ground in a burst of sudden fire, and many furnishings caught light to illuminate the men in their landing position. Pascal was on top of Novel again, one hand securely fastened around the other man’s neck. If there was any magic at all involved in the fight now, then both sides were balancing one another out. All that remained was Novel’s slim, pale throat, being crushed beneath Pascal’s reddening grip.

  “Do you yield, nephew?” Pascal asked. His voice was strained and quiet, but the contents of the house were silent enough for all to hear him speak. “Yield, and live.”

  Novel wasn’t yielding, and Lily couldn’t stand the way his eyes were fluttering, like he was losing air within his body that he couldn’t recover. Though she tried to be thankful that she had been returned from the very brink of death, seeing Novel’s life choked away by another senior of his family sent her head reeling with memories and furies. Her blood boiled with the need to retaliate, and she feared that any moment her instincts would take over, and Pascal might be battered by some unknown force that Lily could only cast a
t the height of her rage.

  In the very moment before Lily would have raised her hands again to cast, a wall of water shot straight through the space between Novel and Pascal. Though it did absolutely nothing to stop Pascal’s hand from gripping Novel’s throat, the senior shade found himself looking at a perfectly clear panel, which reflected his own rage-consumed features straight at him. And, to Lily’s surprise, Pascal shrieked fearfully at his reflection, and leapt away from Novel at once.

  It was all the time the illusionist needed to recover. His chest expanded in a surge of magical air, and Novel’s breathing was visibly laboured as he squared up a punch on the other side of the waterwall. Pascal was still in shock when the smack of air hit him like a fist to the gut, and the patriarch of the House of Novel went flying head over heels. He tumbled out of the double doors and into the foyer, where he crashed with the cry of an injured child.

  “Father!” Océane screamed, and she was off like a shot to tend to the injured party.

  Lily took that as her cue to rush to Novel, who had got to his feet and begun readjusting the sleeves of his fine shirt. As she sped on the air towards him, Novel’s greatcoat and jacket came flying into Lily’s grip, swatting the heads of the stunned onlookers in its path. Lily caught it with a flourish and she and Novel rose into the breeze whipping up around them. He took her hand, inhaling deeply when they touched, and Lily thought she felt a twinge of her wild energy passing into his body. When they flew into the foyer, Pascal was still gasping on the ground, and Novel lowered himself to call out.

  “Outside, now,” he demanded, “I want my questions answered.”

  When the pair touched down in the stark daylight of the hidden town, Lily felt a wave of relief overcome her. She hugged Novel close and he squeezed her for a moment, before she helped him back into his formal clothes as they stood waiting for Pascal to re-emerge.

  “What happened with that waterwall?” Lily asked. “Why did he freak out like that?”

  Novel leaned close with a heady grin.

  “Pascal has spectrophobia,” Novel explained. “It’s a fear of mirrors and reflections.”

  Lily couldn’t help an ironic little giggle.

  “Getting a bit of that myself,” she mused.

  “Not like him,” Novel assured her. “I was lying there choking, and I thought of you, and that waterwall you made when we argued, the last time I nearly got myself killed.”

  “Russian Roulette,” Lily said, beaming.

  Novel took her hands in his, and kissed her fingertips.

  “Thank you for the loan of the technique,” he said with a chuckle.

  What might have been a tender moment was smashed by the arrival of Pascal. Despite the beating he had taken, the senior shade was powerful as ever, carried on a fierce breeze that pushed Novel and Lily apart when he landed between them.

  “You learned water casting and didn’t tell me,” Pascal spat bitterly. “Low move, nephew-mine. Dirty fighting becomes you too well.”

  Novel did not rise to his uncle’s bait, but simply cleared his throat and asked his question.

  “How do I lift the curse of a djinn?”

  Lily was starting to learn just how changeable Pascal Novel could be, for his seething rage slipped back to amusement so swiftly that you would never have known he was angry a moment before. Pascal grinned, looking over the pair of them again until his one eye settled on Lily. That frozen orb glittered as brightly as the gold in the other socket.

  “There’s only one way I know of,” Pascal crooned darkly. “Confront the djinn, and make negotiations.”

  “You mean a bargain,” Novel retorted, “a deal with devils?”

  “It’s what your mother would have done,” Pascal reasoned, still grinning.

  “Well I won’t,” the illusionist replied. He grabbed for Lily’s hand again. “It’s far too dangerous.”

  Pascal made a little scoffing sound.

  “It’s a long time since I’ve heard you say that,” the senior shade mused.

  “I’ve changed,” Novel answered, and there was pride in his words.

  “So I’ve noticed,” Pascal observed, his eye flickering to Lily once more, as if she were to blame for everything wrong with the world. “I don’t like it.”

  Relative Normality

  After such a fraught New Year’s Day, Lily might have imagined that the month of January was to be a horrid one, but this was not the case. The weeks passed in their usual speedy winter way, with mornings and evenings that were as dark as night, and lectures where the cold seeped into the hall and put every student into comatose slumber. Bradley Binns seemed to have fallen for Jeronomie’s ploy, and believed his excursion to the Imaginique’s private quarters to be a very vivid dream. He behaved irritatingly normally at every class and mock exam Lily took in the first few weeks of the spring term, and for this reason she never got a chance to question exactly what he was looking for when he’d intruded at the theatre in the first place.

  There were plenty of theories, put about by Lily, Jazzy and Lawrence at the Imaginique’s breakfast table each morning. It was a Monday towards the end of the month when Lily was making herself some cereal, and pontificating over a new idea as to why the Nosey Professor, as they had taken to calling Bradley, might have been poking around. When she heard the familiar plod of Lawrence’s bare feet on the cold kitchen tiles, Lily began to speak without even turning around.

  “I thought that maybe Nosey’s a magic freak?” she suggested, pouring milk into her cereal bowl. “You know, he might have been looking for Novel’s props to try and see how they’re done. People get really obsessed about that sort of stuff.”

  When Lawrence didn’t answer, Lily turned towards the table. The poor boy was struck by sadness, his brown eyes wide and hopeless as he seemed to gaze straight past Lily, into the depths of his own desperation. Lily rushed to him, looking up at his face and snapping her fingers before his eyes.

  “Lawrence? What’s going on?” she demanded.

  The boy swallowed hard before he was able to answer.

  “Jazzy’s sick again,” he revealed. “Like she was on Christmas Day. It’s come on overnight like it did before. She looks… I wish I knew how to stop it.”

  Lily rubbed his arm comfortingly, steeling her own emotions.

  “Perhaps it’ll go away again sharpish, like it did last time,” she offered hopefully.

  Lawrence nodded, looking back over his shoulder to the corridor, and the direction of Jazzy’s room.

  “Look,” Lily said, “how about I go and fetch Jeronomie from upstairs? She was good help last time.”

  Another nod, but this time the voodoo boy seemed slightly brighter.

  “She was,” he agreed.

  Lily flew up the stairs, centering her powers and practising her focus as she went. In the month of January, Jeronomie had only ever been found in one of two places, so Lily checked the nearest one first. On the second floor, the door to Salem’s little box bedroom was ajar, and the sound of a hearty chuckle emanated deep within. The dull slap of a corduroy-clad thigh followed, and Lily knew exactly where her target was hiding.

  “And you really just left that woman there, alone?” Jeronomie said, apparently bemused in her own disbelief.

  Lily neared the door, pushing it open just as Salem replied.

  “Hey, if it was her or me, then it was me getting out of there alive,” he reasoned, “Every man for himself, ain’t that the saying?”

  Jeronomie shook her head, sucking at her cheeks.

  “I guess every girl’s gotta learn to defend herself sometime,” she mused.

  Lily’s interruption brought their conversation to a standstill, but she found herself unable to speak as she beheld Salem Cross. He had been made to sit up in bed, but he was dressed in shiny navy pyjamas instead of the stale old sweats Lily had grown accustomed to. The former shade had not yet gotten rid of his beard, but it was trimmed neatly into a style that really suited his proud, square jaw
, and there was a new burst of humour in his cobalt eyes when they turned to view his new visitor.

  “Lily, sweetheart,” Salem crooned, “I don’t know what this woman puts in her soup, but you gotta have some. I feel like a new man.”

  “You look like one too,” Lily remarked with great pleasure, “and that’s just as well, actually.” She turned to face Jeronomie, who narrowed her eyes with interest. “Jazzy’s come down with that awful pallor and weakness again. Could you-?”

  “Say no more,” the potioneer replied, raising a hand. “She in her room?”

  When Lily nodded, Jeronomie got up and left the little box room without another word. Salem looked disappointed that his nursemaid had been taken away, and gave Lily a glum little smile when she took the potioneer’s place on a chair by his bed.

  “You look so much better, Salem, you really do,” Lily said.

  Salem cocked his head to and fro, but then he nodded.

  “The dark thoughts come and go,” he admitted, “but I guess I’m more frustrated now about having to wait to get my powers back.”

  “That’s got to be progress,” Lily concluded, “well done you.”

  “No, no,” Salem answered, “it’s all her.” He pointed at the empty doorway, as if hoping that Jeronomie might reappear again. “That woman is relentless. When she’s got a mission in mind, she’ll stop at nothing to get what she wants from you. It’s actually a little scary.”

  Lily nodded and continued to smile, but that tiny jealous feeling was back in her gut. What Salem said next didn’t help the sensation of Saint Jeronomie to dissipate either.

  “It’s real good fortune that she came along to pick up the pieces, after all the trouble you caused last year.”

  Salem didn’t seem to have made the remark in a harsh way, but it hit Lily hard all the same. She didn’t even have a moment to deal with the guilty truth of Salem’s words before he was speaking again, turning and smiling at her like the chatty showman he used to be.

  “She’s really nosey though,” he revealed. “You wouldn’t believe the kind of questions she keeps asking me about my life. She wanted to know about the witch trials, my daughters, everything. You’d think she was going to write a biography or something.”