The Potioneer (Shadeborn Book 3)

by K. C. Finn

  “Think you’re so clever,” he rambled as he walked, “I’ll show you. I’ll find a way.”

  When he was gone, Lily felt Novel’s hands come to rest on her shoulders. He pushed at her muscles with soothing thumbs, and she realised she was hunching with the tension in them.

  “He still loves you,” Novel surmised. “You realise that’s what all this is?”

  “That’s no excuse for you two to go all Mortal Kombat on each other,” Lily shot back. “You’re far more powerful than him. You should know better.”

  Novel kissed her cheek quickly, as though he thought she might not have let him linger.

  “Well, I don’t,” he admitted. “I lose my judgement around you. And, if you ask me, foolish children who taunt an enemy far greater than them deserve to get their comeuppance.”

  Lily shivered, the memory of her own teasing words to the mirrored glass in the lecture hall returning to her mind. She spun to face Novel, looking up into his pale blue eyes with sudden fright.

  “Tell me you don’t really believe that,” she urged.

  Novel held her shoulders, rubbing up and down her biceps.

  “You’re no child, Lily,” he soothed, “you’re growing into a more powerful woman every day. Don’t think I haven’t noticed the control and precision in your gravity work of late.”

  Though she smiled at that, Lily still let a sigh escape her.

  “Flying away from trouble seems to be all I do,” she said flatly.

  “Some people would be grateful not to have to fight,” the illusionist surmised.

  Lily didn’t have an answer for that, and it was in the silence that followed that another new sound emerged in the night. Through all the fracas of the fireworks and Michael’s drunken tirade, she hadn’t noticed the tiny voice behind her. Now, those high-pitched whispers carried on the barest breeze in the midnight air, making Lily’s neck-hairs stand on end before she’d even begun to realise she was hearing words spoken. Novel noticed them too, and he still held her protectively, turning his head to and fro like a bird keen to listen for the rustle of its prey.

  “You keep letting them in, you fools,” the faint voice said.

  “Where’s that coming from?” Novel whispered.

  They were standing on the street, on the theatre side of Old Mill Lane, and Lily had a feeling that the high whisper was indeed behind her. When she turned in Novel’s arms, she saw an open window on the ground floor of the Imaginique, and padded towards it at once. The closer she got, the more words she could make out from within the room.

  “Your enemy is hidden in plain sight,” the voice warned.

  “This is Jazzy’s room,” Lily said, gulping hard.

  Novel had joined her at the window to the converted prop store, and the pair peered in to see what they could make out by the vague light of the stars. Jazzy was sitting bolt upright in her bed, which faced the small window, and the starlight lit her face to show that she was sound asleep. Lily jumped, a shiver running up her spine, as the sleeping girl’s cocoa-coloured lips began to move, and the shrill, whispering voice escaped them again.

  “You have welcomed the enemy to your bosom,” the voice proclaimed, “it has walked within these walls, yet you refuse to see it. The greatest danger is the one you cannot see.”

  Jazzy flopped back into her bed suddenly, and her expression grew to form the slackness of genuine sleep. Lily finally felt the chill of the February night hit her full-force, and she shivered violently as Novel wrapped his arms around her again. When she looked to his face, waiting for words of reassurance, he was a picture of the very same shock. In fact, if it were possible, he looked even more terrified than Lily was.

  “That wasn’t Jazzy’s voice,” Lily told him, her lips trembling.

  “No,” Novel breathed, “it certainly wasn’t.”

  Lily knew that the whispering voice could be nothing to do with the djinn, for his warning had been deep and sharp, the very opposite of this one. She felt Novel’s chest shudder against her back as they both peered into the room, where the petite Indian girl was now back to her usual fidgety slumber.

  “If she’s possessed by something, or someone,” Lily began unsurely, “could that be what keeps bringing that sudden illness on?”

  “She’s not possessed,” Novel insisted. “Her abilities with Second Sight connect her to a plane of existence other than our own. The spirit used her to speak to us, but it’s gone now, that’s clear to see.”

  “But if it’s hurting her,” Lily protested.

  Novel held her closer, and shook his head.

  “You heard the voice,” he soothed, his voice soft and low. “It was warning us about an enemy that walks within our walls. It… it was trying to help us.”

  “Like the white light,” Lily added quickly. “This could be the same spirit that saved you at the show?”

  Novel stared straight ahead, his face blank with the nothingness of being lost in one’s own world of thoughts.

  “I think it is,” he breathed.

  “So there’s another enemy,” Lily surmised, “one we’re overlooking.”

  She shivered again, sparing tender looks between her sleeping friend, and her boyfriend, lost to secret, fearful thoughts.

  “Well, that’s just my bloody luck, isn’t it?” she added with a sigh.

  Surveillance

  “So the Romanian family were prosecuted for desecration of the grave,” Bradley Binns explained, “but the local community of the village didn’t persecute them for digging up their grandfather. In fact, they repeated the incident as a whole village several days later, and drove a stake through the old man’s heart to be sure he wasn’t going to rise again.”

  The young lecturer gave a chuckle, and clicked his projector remote to show the next slide. It was an image of the open grave he was discussing, with the prone figure of a corpse laying in it, and the aforementioned stake sticking out of his back. Lily put her hand over her mouth, leaning close to Lawrence so as not to be heard when she whispered.

  “I swear, if I have to see another dead body on PowerPoint…” she murmured. “This guy is obsessed with them.”

  Lawrence gave a small, almost imperceptible nod.

  “I didn’t think a crime and punishment module would be so morbid,” he concurred, “I thought we’d do more about the legal side, Victorian courts of law, you know?”

  “I know,” Lily replied. “All year it’s been witch hunts, bogeymen and folklore.”

  The voodoo boy frowned just at the moment when Bradley’s eyes travelled in his and Lily’s direction. Lily did her best to perk up and look interested, since she had chosen to sit in the front row for a change and try to feed off of Lawrence’s discipline and concentration. Even the usually-studious boy seemed disinterested in that particular topic, though, and he let his frustration show even when Bradley quirked a brow in his direction.

  “Something wrong, Mr Seward?” the professor asked.

  “I’d like to know why the Romanian police were wasting their time patrolling graveyards in 1890, arresting grief-stricken families,” Lawrence said. “Why weren’t they doing something useful, like catching serial killers, instead of hunting these imaginary vampires?”

  Bradley sucked at his cheeks, puffing out his chest – which was covered in a hideous Argyle wool creation to combat the chilly weather – and put his hands on his hips in an attempt at authority.

  “Some cultures take the supernatural much more literally and seriously than we do here in England, Mr Seward,” he chided. “Try not to be so cynical. I think it’s fascinating to believe that curses, witchcraft and the like are real, tangible things for these people.”

  “Oh, do you?” Lawrence snapped back. “Well, bully for you, Sir.”

  And with that, the lanky boy was up on his tattooed feet. Lily wasn't the only one in the lecture hall to be shocked by Lawrence’s behaviour, for he was usually thoughtful, quiet and polite to everyone who knew him. But Lily did think sh
e had a good idea of what had turned his mood so sour. Since that awful, terrifying morning on Christmas Day, Jazzy had had five attacks of her sudden, weakening sickness. Though they had all vanished within twenty-four hours of emerging, they were definitely worsening every time, and Lawrence was feeling the horror of them more than anyone else.

  “I’m sorry,” Lily stammered in Lawrence’s wake, “I’ll see if I can get him back.”

  Bradley just nodded, looking down with an expression that smacked of both shame and irritation.

  There were only twenty minutes left of the Modern History lecture, and by the time Lily found Lawrence, she was pretty sure it would all be over. His long legs had taken him all the way to the Tower Block, where Jazzy would have been studying if she hadn’t been feeling too weak to attend her classes that day. Lily found the boy standing on a mound of frosty grass, looking straight across at the block, into the window where Jazzy should have been sitting, looking back at him.

  “I love her,” Lawrence said, still staring straight ahead. “I know you know that already. But I love her, Lily, and she’s suffering at home right now, and I’m here and I can’t do anything about her pain, even when I’m right beside her.”

  Lawrence clenched his dark fists, and Lily rushed to prize his fingers apart before he dug his nails through to break the skin of his palms.

  “It helps when you’re beside her,” she told him, “even if you can’t cure her, I know Jazzy feels better when you’re there.”

  Lawrence nodded, and he let Lily force his fingers apart. He splayed his huge hands and ran them up through his short, black hair, closing his eyes to the stark winter day on campus. Lily heard the familiar shudder of breathing, like he was on the verge of an explosion of angry tears, and she tugged at his sleeve sharply.

  “Let’s go home and see her,” Lily urged, “and sod the rest of classes for today. We’ll go back and get your stuff from Binns’s lecture hall, and you can buy Jazz a KitKat from the café.”

  Lawrence broke into a smile, his eyes a little watery as he opened them again.

  “No,” he groaned softly, “because she’ll do that horrible thing where she uses it as a straw and melts it in her cup of tea.”

  “And you’ll complain about it,” Lily assured him, “and she’ll laugh at you, and we’ll all be all right again.”

  After a moment of deep breathing to suck up his feelings, the voodoo boy agreed. He seemed relieved when he and Lily reached the lecture hall and found it empty, perhaps a little embarrassed by his outburst at Bradley earlier. The professor had left the still-broken door of the hall ajar, and Lily spotted Lawrence’s bag and books piled neatly on the front desk, ready for collection. As Lawrence moved to clear his things away, Lily realised that Bradley mustn’t have stepped out for long. His winter overcoat was slung over a chair beside the desk, and his laptop was still connected to the projector. It was also open, unlocked, and ready for use.

  “Wait,” Lily said. Lawrence paused where he’d been about to turn for the exit. “Watch the door a minute,” Lily asked him, “I want to see something.”

  She had never gotten to ask those questions about Bradley’s ancestor, the one that Jazzy was certain she’d seen wandering the Imaginique at night. With Novel’s certainty that there was a protective ghost somewhere in the old theatre, Lily’s curiosity was piqued anew, and the open laptop was too much of a temptation to resist. Lily rounded the desk, and began to tap away at the touchpad and keys.

  “What are you doing?” Lawrence whispered. “That’s private.”

  “I just want to see if I can find that picture of the girl he used on our assignment,” Lily shot back. “It’ll just take a sec.”

  She skimmed through various files in Bradley’s documents folder, looking everywhere from Assignments to Resources, but finding nothing of interest. A brief search of his pictures folder only told her that Bradley hadn’t saved any personal snaps to the machine, and she was almost ready to give up when she spotted one file that had been separated to the desktop. It was entitled Research, which seemed innocent enough, yet Lily felt a twinge in her stomach that compelled her to stare at that simple little word. Forrester had told her to follow her instincts, and now was as good a time as any to take that advice.

  One double-click later, Lily found herself staring at a folder within the folder, and this one tied her stomach in a knot when she read its title:

  Lemarick Novel

  “Come and see this,” Lily insisted.

  There was such seriousness in her tone that Lawrence didn’t even protest. His dark brows shot up his face when he too beheld Novel’s name on the folder, and when Lily gave the touchpad a tap to open it up, they both gasped. There were hundreds of documents within the folder, each dated at various times throughout history. The earliest was labelled Sighting – 1788, and Lily could see by the properties that many of the files had been written by different authors at different times. As she scrolled down, the authorship often changed, until the author’s name started to read B. Binns consistently. Bradley’s documents were all labelled the same way, and all dated for the current academic year.

  “Open that one,” Lawrence said, pointing, “that’s when he came to the show on the solstice.”

  Lily obeyed, and she and Lawrence scanned the words of the report with interest.

  “‘The subject seemed visibly shaken by the presence of the white spirit in the theatre,’” Lily read, her brow furrowed in confusion.

  “Subject,” Lawrence repeated slowly, his eyes speeding on down the page. “He’s studying Monsieur Novel, but what for?”

  “Look at this,” Lily said, pointing sharply. “This bit here says ‘The subject shows irrevocable signs of his guilt’.”

  “Guilt?” Lawrence asked. “What does Novel have to be guilty about?”

  Bradley’s written words were cold and formal as he condemned Novel, and Lily felt as though she was reading the writings of a man very different from the nervy knitwear fan who had introduced himself as her new professor some months ago. He wrote, with no small hint of irony, about crime and punishment, and it was clear from his report that he knew everything there was to know about Novel’s supernatural abilities. Bradley Binns had been pretending to be ignorant for months, but as soon as Lily read the word shadeborn in his files, she knew exactly where the true guilt lay.

  “He’s a shadehunter!” she exclaimed hoarsely. “Don’t you see? He’s a hunter, and he’s after Novel for some perceived crime.”

  This, Lily felt certain, was what Jazzy’s sleep possession was all about. The voice had come to warn Lily and Novel that there was a traitor in their midst, someone who appeared to be a friend, and someone they had totally overlooked as a possible enemy. Lily closed all the files quickly, and she and Lawrence rushed from the lecture hall to get home and report what they had found, but not before Lawrence could vent his hesitance at the cafeteria vending machines.

  “Are we being too hasty here?” he asked in a low tone. “We could be jumping to conclusions left, right and centre. Maybe Bradley really is just an obsessive nut about supernatural people?”

  “Then why study Novel, and not the rest of us?” Lily challenged. She shook her head resolutely. “No, this is Victoria Havers all over again. We’ve ratted out a spy posing as an ordinary human, and we’re going to be ready when he strikes. I don’t want to see Novel put out of action again. I’m going to be the one to save him this time.”

  Blood and Footfalls

  It was the dead of night when Lily awoke to the sound of footsteps. She had an early lecture with the new enemy, Bradley Binns, and wanted to be alert for it, but her watch told her that she’d barely been asleep for an hour when the noise woke her. She sat up in the four poster bed, arms wrapped around her body against the evening chill, and listened. Novel was not beside her, but she knew her boyfriend’s catlike steps were impossible to hear at night. Whoever was walking around now had a serious clomp to their gait.

 
Swiftly and silently, Lily lifted herself from her bed on a fluttering wave of air and gravity, hovering past the bed’s curtains and out towards the closed wooden door. The footsteps sounded as though they were coming up the stairs right beside the bedroom, thumping haughtily as they passed it by. Lily pressed her ear hard against the cold old timber of the door, and she distinctly heard a low, gruff huff of breath from the person on the other side. The footfalls carried on upwards, either into the attic space or onto the roof, and Lily eased the door open gently when they’d passed by.

  “Lily! Come quick!”

  With all the talk of ghosts, intruders and footsteps, Lily jumped out of her skin at the voice from nowhere. She was coming to recognise Gerstein’s low tone and thick accent though, and by the time her heart had stopped hammering, she had found the simulacra in the wall. He was inhabiting a portrait of a Russian ballerina, which belonged to Zita Bosko, and the stick-thin lady in the tutu was waving frantically at Lily from inside the frame.

  “Come on! Come on! No time to lose!” Gerstein urged wildly.

  “What is it?” Lily asked, already half-floating, half-running down the first set of stairs.

  Gerstein followed her through posters and paintings, and Lily only saw flashes of his face as he appeared and disappeared between them. His voice, though, was clear as day, and unchanging in its panic when he exclaimed.

  “It’s Jazzy. I think she may be dying.”

  Lily felt the crushing weight of ill fortune as it gripped her mind and soul. Her body rushed on, lips unable to speak when other residents of the theatre came to ask why she was running, and all she could do was focus her mind into a desperate loop of defiant prayers.