The Potioneer (Shadeborn Book 3) (12 page)

Desiderium

Novel was very far from all right. As was usual on the night of the Winter Solstice, Lady Eva prepared a late night dinner for all to attend. Novel was visibly shaken at the table all throughout the meal, his cutlery clattering on the silverware every time he tried to slice a carrot or spoon a measure of soup to his lips. When he buttered his bread, his whole side-plate fell to the kitchen floor with a smash, and Lily watched all of this unfold in her own personal form of stupor. She had expected answers from Novel once she’d found him backstage, but all through dinner there had only been more and more questions.

“What do you mean, you don’t know?” Poppa Seward demanded, pointing with his spoon. “You know everything that goes on within this theatre, surely.”

“Well, I don’t know what that light was,” Novel answered, for about the thirtieth time, “I simply can’t tell you where that power originated.”

“Perhaps it was potioneer magic?” Jazzy said hopefully, glancing across the circular table towards Jeronomie.

The lady in question was eating with only her fork, and shook her head as she munched happily on a mouthful of peas.

“Don’t be stupid,” Dharma chided, more at Jeronomie than Jazzy, “the magic of potioneers is nowhere near as precise as that.”

The happiness Jeronomie might have felt from Lady Eva’s delicious cooking faded in that moment, and she chewed all the harder on her food as if she wanted to step in with a heated reply.

“If Novel says he doesn’t know, then that’s that,” Baptiste interjected wearily. “This man has seen all manner of magic from every corner of the globe. This is something new, and that’s all there is to it for now.”

Lily had to wonder if Baptiste was really as trusting as he sounded, or if his statement was really borne from the same worry that she was feeling. Novel was shaken, from his voice to his every action, and she didn’t want the Imaginique’s cast bombarding him any more than they already had.

“Well thank goodness for the light, whatever it was,” Zita Bosko chimed in with her elegant, wispy tone. “It’s the first bit of good fortune we’ve had in a while.”

“Hear, hear,” Baptiste added sharply, and the conversation about the guillotine died with his words.

As the meal went on late into the dark winter night, Lily saw Novel returning more to his normal demeanour. He seemed fully in control of himself again by the time the dessert plates were empty, even forcing a small smile to his lips when she offered him her hand to hold. He clasped her palm tightly, sandwiched in both of his, and planted the smallest of kisses on her fingertips before he faced the table once more. One pale hand reached out to hold up a wine glass, and Novel tapped his dessert fork against it, just the once, to gather the ears of the room.

“It has been brought to my attention that I am in the habit of keeping secrets,” Novel began, his eyes roving over each inhabitant of the table in turn, “which perhaps explains your apparent certainty that I am the omniscient knowledge within these walls. As such, I’d like to take a moment to tell you something very, very important.”

Silence followed, and Novel cleared his throat before he began his speech anew.

“You have been told that Lily is subject to the curse of a djinn, a creature that dwells behind enchanted glass.”

Lily felt her stomach lurch as the troupe’s eyes all turned on her at once.

“What,” Novel continued, “do you suppose must exist also, beyond that glass?”

Jeronomie gave a deep, audible swallow, still holding her fork between her fingers as she leaned on her hands in thought. Beside her, the Slovak twins did very little thinking, reserving their energy instead for watching Novel, and waiting for someone to answer his question. Lily thought that perhaps Salem would have been the one to interject, but once again the melancholy lightsider had been uninvited to dinner. A thoughtful void encased the table full of curious people, until Jazzy slowly raised her hand, like a child in a classroom.

“Well, there must be a world there,” she supposed, “a world that those djinn things live in.”

“Precisely,” Novel answered. “Our ancestors called this place Desiderium. It translates, albeit loosely, as the World of the Wish.”

Several things made sense at once in Lily’s mind. The djinn were connected to wishes, and wishes, so far as she knew, were connected to genies. Memories of Jazzy and the flying carpet shot to the forefront of her mind, and Novel’s frosty reception when she had made those jokes about genies and lamps.

“So, if I understand this right,” Lily began, “there are three worlds. This world, that we’re all in right now, the World of the Wish, and the Dreamstate.”

“Right,” Novel said with a nod, “although the Dreamstate is a non-corporeal world. No physical form takes root there, so no lasting damage can be done.”

“But Desiderium is real?” Jazzy asked.

“Frightfully real,” Novel replied, “and filled with creatures who would like nothing better than to wreak havoc on the shadeborn in particular. We are the djinnkind’s natural enemies. Things have always been this way.”

“Then why don’t they just come through the mirrors and get you?” Lawrence interrupted. “Or, why don’t you go into their world and do the same to them?”

“Just the question I was hoping for,” Novel replied grimly. His features grew taught and he hunched his shoulders, leaning forward at the table as he lowered his voice just a tad. “The barrier between these two worlds used to be solid, but it has weakened over time. It’s our fault I’m afraid, people like myself and Miss Parnell.”

“Beg your pardon?” Jeronomie replied, looking affronted.

Novel raised a palm to silence her. “Humans with magical knowhow began to serve the shadeborn many centuries ago, making portals for them to speed up transport across the vastness of the globe.”

“Like Pratt the windowmaker,” Lily said as realisation dawned. “That’s what you mean, isn’t it? The windows that we can step through to travel to other places?”

Novel nodded again, pinching his fingers before his eyes as he explained. “The windowmakers take the tiniest shred of air from the space between the worlds, and force it into a frame. In order to travel from one place to another, we shades actually pass through Desiderium, though only for a fraction of a second. It seemed harmless when it first became a valid mode of transport, but as the years have gone on, the scholars among us have noticed changes in the stability of our world, and
theirs
.”

Lily watched as the illusionist gave a shiver, looking around as though he half-expected to find one of the fearful creatures watching him give his speech. Lily reached out and rested a hand over his on the table, finding him ice cold to the touch. The Kindred Flame sparkled all around their contact, and the sight of it made Novel straighten up again and look his audience in the eyes.

“The barrier between our world and that of Desiderium is fractured, with so many slices being cut in all sorts of places across the globe. I’m afraid that’s how the djinnkind have been able to force some of their powers across the divide.”

“And now that you’ve hidden Lily from their gaze, those powers are bleeding onto the rest of us instead. Am I right?”

This last interjection came from Dharma, whose sleek arms were crossed over her chest. Lily took in her words, a stab of guilt finding its way to her heart, where it settled like a shard of glass. She wanted Novel’s face to show defiance, but the illusionist did what he had done the whole conversation, and gave another sad nod.

“Tonight’s debacle was more than enough to convince me of that, yes,” Novel answered. “The curse is spreading, and I’ll be looking into further action first thing in the morning.”

“First thing?” Dharma repeated with indignation. “Why not now?”

Novel rose from his seat, and most of the table rose with him in deference to his position. Only Lily, Jazzy and Jeronomie were still seated as they watched him skirt the edge of the crowded room.

“Because, there
are
still some things about my theatre that I know very well,” Novel replied. “For example, I have an innate knowledge of when the premises are being burgled.”

“Burgled!” Zita shrieked, gathering her pale cloak about her.

“Certainly,” Novel answered in a strangely calm, direct tone. “And I must say, I’m very pleased to be presented with a problem I can deal with for a change. Lily, perhaps you and Baptiste would care to address the intruder on the second floor landing? I’ll take the one in Miss Bosko’s dressing room. The rest of you, stay out of the way.”

How he knew where the two trespassers were precisely, Lily didn’t have a chance to ask. Why they were there, however, was a much more interesting question, and it was one she was keen to have answered as she dutifully followed Baptiste from the room.

Depths of Night

“They must be patrons,” Baptiste whispered as he and Lily ascended the stairs in the darkness. “No one else would have access.”

It was nearing five in the morning, but Lily’s senses had been on red alert for hours since the terrible anti-climax of the night’s performance. She focused heavily on the power diverting to her feet, her veins bursting with shadepower as gravity lifted her soles clean off the creaking boards below. Baptiste was sleek and silent as a cat while he stalked up the old wood, stepping to and fro over loud spots that he must have learned by heart after so many years living in the theatre. Despite her reservations about his long and bloody history with Novel, Lily felt safer with him at her side, united against a common enemy.

Who that enemy was, Lily could hazard a guess, and she was already picturing the look on Michael Sampson’s sorry face when she and Baptiste could apprehend him. She glided to the second floor of the Imaginique almost eagerly, her keen eyes glancing to and fro in the dark to spot his familiar mop of wavy hair. What she saw instead was a seemingly ordinary corridor, from which one small slice of yellow light emanated. Salem’s small box room lay directly in her path, its door a little ajar, and the light was billowing from inside it, until a shadow flickered past and blocked it out completely.

For a moment, it was still possible for Lily to believe that Salem was alone in his room, until a weak, shrill voice gave a whimper from within. It could never have been Salem’s with such a high and fearful tremble in it, and Lily exchanged a warning look with Baptiste as the pair sped silently on towards the faint gleam of light in the doorway ahead. Salem’s voice was the next to be heard, also from inside that room, and it carried a hoarse kind of malice that Lily had hoped she’d heard the last of several weeks ago.

“You came here looking for trouble, and now you’ve found it,” Salem growled. “Come on, kiddo. Show me what you can do.”

A crack resounded, the slap of flesh and bone hitting one another, and Lily felt suddenly sick at the sound. It was a punch, and it was followed swiftly by another, with a whimper and a squeal attached. Whoever the intruder was, Salem Cross had found him first, and the former shade seemed to have found a nasty new way to vent his frustrations. If the intruder was indeed Michael Sampson, then Lily felt somewhat inclined to leave him to his beating for being such a nosey parker, but she listened intently outside the door for a moment as the beaten figure gasped to form a reply.

“Please,” the voice whispered, clearly pained, “I was just looking around, I-”

“Baptiste,” Lily breathed, horrified, “that’s my professor. That’s Bradley Binns.”

Before the words had fully left Lily’s mouth, Baptiste was already racing for the heavy wooden door and ripping it open. Salem just had time to pack another punch to Bradley’s bent-double form before the bloodshade kicked him hard in the stomach and sent him reeling over the white chaise and onto his bed. Lily dropped to the ground out of her gravity powers and rushed to Bradley, hoisting him upright with a yank under his arms. His lip was bleeding badly from one corner and the young man clutched his gut as he heaved out another gasping breath.

“I wasn’t going to steal… anything,” Bradley choked. “Lily… I promise, it’s not how it looks.”

“You ain’t fit to be the judge of that,” said a booming voice from the corridor.

Lily jumped, amazed that Jeronomie Parnell had appeared so swiftly without either she or Baptiste noticing. The potioneer charged forwards and took the young professor by his ear, giving it a twist so hard that Bradley gave another yelp. Salem laughed at the sound, rolling back to a sitting position on his mattress. His eyes met Jeronomie’s, those cobalt spheres glistening gleefully at her attitude.

“You must be that potion woman,” Salem surmised.

Jeronomie swallowed hard, narrowing her gaze at him in reply.

“And you must be that cheeky son-of-a-so-and-so who keeps locking his door when I come to offer him assistance,” she retorted.

“Your assistance isn’t wanted,” Salem replied, “I’m doing fine wasting away all on my own.”

Salem got up from his bed, ruffled his shaggy hair, and Lily saw with horror that his words were true. She hadn’t looked in on the former shade in a while, and the sweats he’d been wearing for the last few months suddenly looked far too big for his frame. Where she was used to seeing broad shoulders beneath a strong, lean neck, Salem looked bony and frail as a wire coat-hanger. With everything else that had happened lately at the Imaginique, it seemed that no-one had been keeping watch on whether Salem was eating his three square meals or not. He inspected his bleeding knuckles with a proud, deranged sort of interest, and let out a haughty little chuckle.

“Not bad for a half-dead man,” he surmised, “I clocked the little beggar something good.”

Jeronomie had let go of Bradley’s ear during Salem’s short display of his growing insanity, and that look of profound hurt and desperation had returned to her weather-worn face. She stepped forward, reaching one hand into her pocket, and suddenly threw a handful of golden sand straight into the lightsider’s eyes. Salem didn’t have the speed to cover them, and soon he was dropping back onto the bed at his side, fast asleep as he had been on the day the potioneer had arrived at the theatre.

“What is that stuff?” Lily asked, looking to the woman’s tough waistcoat pocket.

“Sleep, o’course,” Jeronomie proclaimed. “You ain’t never heard of the Sandman, kid? In small doses, it’s just a calming influence that dulls the senses, but this fella looked like he really needed an eyeful.”

“Mmm… Magic!” Bradley proclaimed in a gasping stutter. “Why… that looked exactly like
magic
!”

“
Merd
,” Baptiste cursed, rolling his eyes at Lily before his glare shot to the potioneer. “Now look what you’ve done.”

He indicated towards the injured professor, who was pointing at Salem with a quivering hand. Bradley’s eyes were filled with amazement, and open so wide that he couldn’t have blinked in time to prevent what happened next. Jeronomie reached into her pocket of sand once more, and threw another square dose in the professor’s direction. He slumped to the ground in the corner of the room, snoring and drooling from his bloody lip in an instant.

“There, that better?” Jeronomie asked Baptiste.

The bloodshade glared at her in reply, and Lily found herself biting her lip not to laugh at his obvious frustration.

“And what do I do with him now?” Baptiste asked.

The potioneer shrugged. “Take him home and put him to bed, I guess,” she supposed. “Maybe he’ll wake up thinking it was all a dream. Humans have a funny way of convincing themselves that impossible things just don’t exist, you know.”

Baptiste hoisted the sleeping form of Bradley Binns over his shoulder, and the bloodshade could be heard cursing and speaking in low, angry French all the way down the staircase. Lily remained at Jeronomie’s side, where the two women watched the withered, slumbering body of Salem as he lay twisted on his bed. The potioneer stepped forward and lifted the man’s legs to put him into a proper position, then put her hands to her hips and exhaled a deep sigh.

“I really want to help this fella get better,” she confessed. “I figure I’ll start with feeding him.”

“If he’ll let you,” Lily replied thoughtfully.

Jeronomie patted her pocket, her serious gaze never leaving Salem’s rangy, sleeping face.

“I’ll keep him half-under the influence ‘til a good meal’s gone down,” she said. “Tell your man I’m gonna be busy for a day or two. It sounds like he’s fixing to cut me out of the picture with regard to your problem anyway.”

Lily didn’t know if that was true or not, but she nodded and said that she’d pass along the message. When she made to leave the second floor corridor and seek Novel out, she couldn’t help but glance back towards Jeronomie, now sitting at Salem’s bedside, and wonder what it was that had motivated the potioneer to care for someone who didn’t want her help. She pondered Jeronomie’s dedication with every downward step she took, until she reached the bottom landing, missed the final step, and crashed straight into the wall with a painful thud.

“Stupid curse,” Lily breathed, rubbing her arm hard as she entered the dark downstairs corridor of the theatre. Before her lay the double doors that led into the auditorium, which were open wide and inviting. Lily stepped through, looking up into the rafters and the high ceiling, where a floating, dark shape caught her eye. She started for only a moment before recognition set in, and then she spied a shock of white hair atop the figure who was flying around at the highest level of the cavernous space.

“Did you find him?” Lily called. “Was it Michael?”

Novel flinched in mid-air, but he didn’t lose height for a second. The shade rotated in the dark hollow of air, levitating gently towards the ground as his pale eyes sought out the woman calling him.

“What?” he called.

“Did you find the intruder?” Lily repeated. “The one you said was backstage?”

Novel’s feet came to rest between two rows of seats, and he glanced back up to the theatre’s heights once more as he landed.

“Um… no,” the shade replied. “He got away.”

“Oh,” Lily said, a pang of disappointment hitting her hard in the stomach. “We caught ours.”

“That professor of yours,” Novel said with an absent nod, “Baptiste just went… I saw…”

Lily picked up her feet with a burst of air, slowly gliding towards where Novel stood. He was still looking up at the heights, the upper circle in fact, and Lily followed his gaze towards the shadowy nothingness that lurked there.

“Was there even an intruder at all down here?” she asked him. “Or did you just want to be alone to investigate that light?”

She reached out for his curious face, touching his chin gently to turn his gaze from the rafters. Novel let her lead him until their eyes met, and he leaned in closer to her, their foreheads resting together.

“You’re getting to know me too well,” he mused glibly.

“I hope so,” Lily answered, and she meant it.