The Potioneer (Shadeborn Book 3) (11 page)

Madame La Guillotine

“This is a busy, busy night,” Novel said, his voice echoing up into the echelons of the auditorium.

The stage of the Imaginique was set for the December show, and nearly the whole contents of the theatre were collected in the Row Below, a wooden box of seats set low in the orchestra pit. Novel sat cross-legged on the edge of the stage addressing them all, and behind him, Baptiste Du Nord was up on a scaffold making some final adjustments to Dharma’s new moving scenery pieces. Tonight, she would perform the Dance of Icarus, and there were clouds and a massive golden sun to float above her as she pranced and fluttered with her golden wings. The only theatre occupants absent from the row were Jeronomie and Salem. The former was engaged in important work in the attic, and the latter had been banished to confinement in his dark little room until the show was safely completed.

“Tonight marks the Winter Solstice, which ought to be a time of change and great excitement in our world,” Novel explained, “but you know as well as I do, that when catastrophe’s at hand, nights like these can be the catalyst for monumental disaster.”

“Hardly a pep-talk, is it?” Jazzy whispered at Lily’s side.

Lily shook her head, but her eyes remained fixed on Novel’s deadly serious face. She was beginning to forget what he looked like when he smiled, for it had been so long since any mirth had crossed his features. Up there on the stage, he looked dark and distant, painted as he was in his black and white makeup. His usually-fair brows arched in sharp points, with deep shadows beneath his frosty eyes and thin, black lines where his lips ought to be. The look was grave from head to toe, and everything about the man suggested that the last thing he wanted to do was perform. But, when he rose and dusted off his knees, the words that emerged from his lips were all that anyone would have expected.

“The show must go on,” said Novel, “but tonight, be vigilant for signs of danger. We can’t afford even the slightest mishap. I intend to hold you personally responsible if something happens that you could have avoided.”

It was hard to tell who exactly Novel was addressing, for his eyes roved over the whole collection in that teacherly way he sometimes adopted. Lily reasoned that he was probably older than any of the other people seated in the Row Below and, when he got into a speech-making mode, that difference in age really showed. The troupe nodded their agreement amongst themselves, some of them looking particularly distressed that Novel might blame them for the night’s presupposed disasters, then they went about the business of readying themselves for the performance to come. There was palpable tension in the group though, however busy they might have looked, for when Baptiste leapt down from his high scaffolding, the resounding thump of his landing made everyone leap out of their skins.

For her part, Lily played usherette as she had before, but when it came to the start of the show, she took a seat in the audience with the eager crowd. A screech of wheels and the sharp, high-pitched squeak of chair brakes made her ears tingle, and she turned to offer a smile to Jazzy as she wheeled her chair in right beside her. It was Novel’s idea for Lily to be secluded among the crowd whilst he was busy backstage, but Lily had only agreed to the plan when her best friend promised to accompany her. Now, Jazzy’s unwavering excitement for the Imaginique’s show spread an infectious joy into Lily’s quivering heart.

“Did you see who’s front-row-centre?” Jazzy asked, cocking her head so sharply that her glasses came clean off the end of her button nose.

Lily perused the backs of the heads making up the stage-side row, until she spotted a wave of blondish curls seated next to a crop of neat brown hair wearing a hideous purple jumper.

“Michael and Bradley,” she surmised with an eyeroll. “They’re either becoming suspiciously good friends, or Bradley just wants a better view of Baptiste this time around.”

Jazzy quirked a dark brow.

“Is he-?” she began, and Lily nodded.

“Looks that way,” she answered. “I didn’t think he’d come back after the spotlight debacle, but I guess charming men make you do stupid things.”

“You should know,” Jazzy added, giving Lily a playful nudge to the ribs.

The girls were still giggling as the house lights dimmed, but they fell into silence once Baptiste took the stage. Lily noticed the way Bradley’s head suddenly bobbed a little further upwards in his seat, and she watched her professor with interest rather than give her focus to the MC and his usual spiel. First up on the agenda for that evening was Dharma and her Icarus thing, in which Lily supposed Novel’s gravity powers were used to achieve her spectacular flying finish. She was followed swiftly by the Sewards, where Lawrence performed incredible acrobatics over and on top of a bed of deadly sharp nails, all while fast asleep and under the control of his voodoo father. It wasn’t until Zita began her high-wire contortionism act that Lily began to feel a strange, strained presence in the air around her.

The crowd were as engrossed as they had ever been in the antics up on stage, but Lily knew her makeshift theatre family well enough to spot when things were amiss. Lawrence, for example, had landed several of his jumps too heavy and in the wrong places, and now the usually graceful Zita was wobbling on her line like a teenage circus girl trying the wires for the first time. Lily couldn’t be sure if it was merely their nerves that had the theatre cast in jeopardy, or whether Novel had been right about the Solstice causing more harm than good this year.

Novel’s performance was the key, and Lily knew that if anything went wrong in his ten minute set, that would be the final confirmation of a bad night’s luck. She clenched her fists all the way through Lady Eva’s gypsy predictions, and by the time the Slovak Twins took to bending and dislocating their limbs through tennis rackets, she was right on the edge of her seat awaiting the odd Monsieur. Applause for the twins was wild and continuous for several minutes following their sickeningly brilliant feat, and when Baptiste returned to the stage to introduce Novel, he actually had to wait for the eager crowd to fall back into silence.

“Ladies and gentlemen, keep your applause going please, for our final act of the night. The headliner, si-vous-plait, Monsieur Novel et Madame La Guillotine!”

The guillotine was massive, and Lily had no idea where it had even been stored prior to the moment when it levitated onto the stage. The mammoth construction was hewn from thick oak, aged so well that it could have originated in the French Revolution itself. When it landed with a deafening thud that encouraged its very own round of applause, Lily was sure that she felt the shockwave of residual power Novel must have used to lift it in the first place. The shining, deadly blade loomed high, cutting a slice of reflected light that was blinding most of the upper circle. Lily’s stomach churned with worry at the threatening contraption, but there was one other thing even more frightening than Madame La Guillotine herself.

Baptiste Du Nord had not left the stage. Where the elegant gent usually disappeared during each performer’s act, he was now standing vigil right beside the guillotine, looking up at the beast of a machine with as much trepidation as everyone else. Novel entered the stage at the very tail-end of the applause, as he always did, and his eyes were cast into shadowy sockets whilst he bowed his head beneath the bright white spotlights. He spared no-one a glance as he strode in funereal fashion, approaching the guillotine slowly and raising a pale hand to touch the antique wood. His fingers rested where the rope that held the blade was coiled securely, tapping at the knot that, once undone, would set the sharp axe free to gravity’s will.

“Monsieur Du Nord,” Novel said darkly, “a volunteer, if you can find one brave enough.”

The challenge in his tone was dark, and Lily saw no shred of nerves in her boyfriend’s stage persona. As far as she could remember, Novel had never come undone during a performance, and Baptiste was dutifully playing his part by climbing down and inspecting the front row for willing victims. Everything seemed to be playing out like a usual trick, yet Lily still felt that awful, dark fluttering in her stomach with every footfall Baptiste made. When she glanced to her side for confirmation, Jazzy’s gaze was rapt upon the stage, but her sienna hands had turned pale where they gripped the arms of her wheelchair firmly.

“I’ll have a go!” shouted a cocky voice from the front of the theatre. “Oi Du Nord, pick me, why don’t you?”

Lily cringed at the crassness of the outburst, knowing that only Michael Sampson would make such a spectacle of himself during one of Novel’s tricks. Sure enough, the sandy-haired fool was waving his arm around, attracting Baptiste to turn about-face and retrace his steps past the centre of the front row. The bloodshade’s dark eyes glittered over Michael for a long, wicked moment, but when Baptiste reached out to pluck his victim from their seat, it was not Michael’s hand that he snatched.

“Monsieur Novel,” Baptiste proclaimed, “this is the man for you!”

And with that, Bradley Binns was hoisted out of his seat.

The retiring young professor offered no resistance at all, though he looked a little sheepish as he was guided by Baptiste’s lithe arm about his shoulders. Bradley took to the stage with a trip and a shuffle, edging closer to Novel as he eyed the guillotine warily.

“Come now, Sir,” Novel crooned, “short back and sides, not too much off the top.”

About half of the crowd laughed, and there was a distinct undercurrent of nervous chuckling that followed, but not a single sound escaped Lily’s lips. Watching Bradley being directed to stand at Novel’s side, a cold shiver ran up the back of her spine, and she knew, in every vein and artery, that something was about to go wrong. Bradley Binns was about to lose his life, and he was happily climbing onto the bench of the guillotine to do it.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Novel demanded.

Bradley stopped with one leg cocked over the bench, looking back at Novel with a sudden pallor of shock.

“You aren’t the victim, dear boy,” the Monsieur added darkly, “you are the executioner!”

If Lily had thought it would be bad to see Bradley Binns decapitated, then the sight she next beheld was a whole new level of terrifying. Baptiste helped Bradley to put on a mockingly oversized executioner’s mask, and explained to him the process of the guillotine once for show. In this demonstration, they chopped a melon clean in half, and the falling, screeching wrench of the blade brought tears to Lily’s terrified eyes. When she saw Novel sit down on the bench beneath that blade, she wanted to stand up and scream ‘no’ at the top of her lungs, but fear had paralysed her, just as it had so many times before in that first terrible term.

Novel was laid in position, his neck secured firmly under the guillotine’s stock, and he was looking up at the upper circle of the theatre from where his tilted body lay on display. The blade loomed high, casting its blinding gleam in a wide, high arc once more, and Lily’s fingers gripped her seat so hard that she couldn’t feel their tips any more. She tried to speak, but all breath had left her lungs. She wanted to move, but no part of her was able, save for the frantic thumping of her wild, caged heart. She focused all her energy on watching Novel as the moment of truth approached, hoping against hope that her shademagic would kick in via instinct if the ill fate she’d predicted actually did come true.

Two things happened in the same moment, as they had all those weeks ago in the lecture hall, and Lily first found her gaze fixed on Novel. Whilst Bradley was still fumbling with the rope and smiling bashfully at Baptiste, Novel’s pale face suddenly changed expression. Where he had been exuding a dark confidence moments before, in a hair’s breadth of time his visage was a portrait of shock. Novel was gazing high into the upper circle, and his eyes had sharpened, somehow focused on something that caused instant panic and fascination that overtook his calm stage persona. Lily’s own eyes flew upwards in that moment, but she saw nothing out of the ordinary that would have caused him alarm.

It was in the second half of that moment, as her eyes travelled back down towards the illusionist’s stunned face, that the other terrible thing occurred. Lily saw a familiar face inside the bright reflective surface of the guillotine’s blade.

“Trois, deux, un – allez!”

Baptiste gave the cry, and as the blade fell, Lily saw the blue blur of features fall within it, a pair of ghastly red eyes staring down at Novel as Madame La Guillotine swung to deliver his fate. Lily saw the malice in the creature behind the mirrored blade, and her hand leapt up to reach fruitlessly for the love she feared she was about to lose.

It was then that the apparition hurtled from the upper circle. A clear band of incredible white light shot through the auditorium, arcing from the ceiling right down to where the guillotine blade was about to make its contact with Novel’s waiting neck. Whatever he’d intended to happen in the trick, Novel was far from calm as the white light shot straight for him and blasted him out of the stocks with a force that split the ageing wooden frame in two. Madame La Guillotine’s upper half fell backwards, crashing into the farthest reaches of the deep stage, and Novel sprang to attention as the white light swirled around him, and died as it brushed past his face.

Applause exploded from every angle, perhaps as much from relief as anything else amid the audience, but Lily knew by the twitch in her boyfriend’s black lip that everything had gone wrong. Baptiste’s usually elegant expression was a picture of shock, and he almost forgot to show Bradley back to his seat before the crimson curtain began to lower. Lily took off like a shot as the oblivious patrons carried on clapping, fumbling over Jazzy’s wheelchair despite her friend’s cries of protest. She had to know that Novel was definitely all right, before anything else could be explained.