The Bloodshade Encounters & The Songspinner (Shadeborn Book 2)
Page 18
“We’re not alone up here, are we?” Novel asked, one pale brow quirking as he looked at the now-animated books.
All of Lily’s textbooks were slowly behind shunted one way or the other, as an enormous tome with a cracked leather cover forced itself to the top of the heap. This crimson volume, with its ancient brown pages, belonged both to Novel and Lily now. It was their shared knowledge of all the magic that people of their supernatural nature could learn to conjure. It was the Book Of Shade.
“It hasn’t bothered me all night, until you came up here,” Lily mused with interest.
The Book Of Shade opened its own cover with a thump, as it was wont to do whenever something magically relevant was occurring. Lily and Novel watched with rapt curiosity as its ancient pages turned, flapping wildly like an impatient bird, until it had found what it was looking for. Curling black script appeared on the open pages, detailing an air-powered spell that required diagrams to illustrate. Novel frowned at the book, reading the title of the spell aloud.
“Cushioning spell,” he said. “Why on earth is it showing us how to produce a massive air cushion?”
Before Lily could even suppose an answer, the door to the attic room burst open with a creak and a bang. Novel was on his feet in seconds, and was already approaching the new intruder before Lily could swing her half-dead legs into action. Even as she turned, she felt a cold shiver that made the tiny hairs on her neck stand to attention, and she was not surprised by the figure that she beheld when she finally made the rotation on the piano stool.
Baptiste Du Nord made a terrible habit of bursting into rooms without knocking. It was as though he felt he had permission to trespass anywhere in Novel’s theatre, even when the illusionist and Lily were alone together. Where some months ago, Lily might have dismissed this behaviour as impetuousness, now she knew the truth of Monsieur Baptiste. The theatre’s elegant Master of Ceremonies was a bloodshade, a creature who relied on Novel’s blood to sustain his own survival. From the moment Baptiste had first supped a drop of the magically-enhanced blood of a shade, he and Novel had been bonded together.
It was a bond that Lily resented, because she didn’t understand the way that the two men reacted to one another. No words had passed in the few seconds that Baptiste had been in the room, but already Novel was racing for the door, as though the very atmosphere surrounding the elegant MC had told him all he needed to know about the situation. Lily could only stumble after the men as they stormed from the attic, trying – and failing – to quash the tingle of jealousy that was rising in her chest.
“What is it?” she asked as she followed them down the labyrinthine corridors of the theatre’s top level. “What’s happened?”
“It’s Salem,” Baptiste answered, without daring to look back and meet Lily’s eye.
“He’s on the roof,” Novel said, looking up at the ceiling as though he could see right through it.
Suddenly, the Book Of Shade’s instructions on creating a colossal air cushion made sense, and Lily didn’t need to hear the end of Novel’s words to know what Salem Cross was doing on the theatre’s roof.
“He’s going to jump.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
K. C. Finn was born and raised in Cardiff, South Wales, where her love for storytelling grew at a precociously young age. After developing the medical condition M.E. / C.F.S., Kim turned to writing to escape the pressures of disabled living, only to become hooked on the incredible world of publishing.
As an author for Clean Teen Publishing and Crushing Hearts and Black Butterfly Press, Kim spends most of her time locked in the writing cave with an obscenely large mug of tea. When not writing, she can be found studying for her MA in Linguistics, watching classic British comedy, or concocting evil schemes in the secret laboratory in her attic.