The Potioneer (Shadeborn Book 3) (30 page)

The Overlooked

“You’re leaving?” Jeronomie asked with a look of sore disappointment.

“Any time now,” Lily confirmed with a nod. “Novel’s uncle will be arriving with a portal to take us five back to England. I don’t know if Novel owed you any money, still, but-”

The potioneer stood up, dusting down her travelling clothes with wide, rough hands. She looked around the vast expanse of the sunny field that they were sitting in, and Lily followed her gaze to where Jeronomie’s narrow eyes focused on Salem. He was standing some way off with his face in the sun, looking up at the clouds with the same variety of hapless depression he’d had when he first lost his powers. Lily found herself looking back at Jeronomie with peculiar suspicion and, for the very first time since knowing her, the potioneer sent a shiver up Lily’s spine.

“Is something-?”

Lily didn’t get to finish her sentence before a shower of golden light hit her square in the face. She wasn’t prepared for the attack, which came from a pouch of powder at Jeronomie’s belt, but she recognised the powder as the same one the potioneer had used to put Salem to sleep the very first time she appeared in the Imaginique’s foyer. Lily fought against the urge to fall into the golden light’s power fully, but her limbs grew heavy and cumbersome as she struggled, and failed, to get to her feet. Lily couldn’t speak, she could only be shocked by the sudden and unexpected attack, and watch dumbfounded as Jeronomie marched in her huge brown boots towards Salem, who still had his back turned.

Those boots stirred something in Lily’s distant memory. It was the sound of boots hammering along the floorboards on the night that Jazzy’s blood had almost been drained entirely from her body. As Lily struggled again, managing to crawl along the ground among the reeds and long grass, she saw Jeronomie reach for her spade-shaped locket at her neck. Within seconds, the potioneer had disappeared from view in the field, and again Lily’s memory surged with sudden thoughts. The dagger that had tried to stab Salem when Novel was away came to her mind – the way it had floated in mid-air according to Gerstein. It could have been held by someone who was able to turn invisible.

Lily gasped and shuddered with extreme exhaustion, so struck by Jeronomie’s sneak attack that she couldn’t muster the strength to even call a warning to Salem across the field. More memories came and went, the words of several warnings flooding Lily’s mind. Aurélie had told her there was an enemy within her midst that she had completely overlooked. Even the Glassman had told her that Jazzy’s sickness was down to a cause that she had chosen to ignore. Now, as Jeronomie reappeared again right behind Salem’s back, Lily saw the potioneer raise a dagger high into the sky, and she understood everything at once.

“Oh no you don’t!” cried a voice that shook the silent field into life.

It was Lawrence who had called out, which made Salem turn just in time to see Jeronomie’s dagger making its way towards the space between his shoulder blades. The former shade jumped out of her way and ducked, just as Lawrence himself leapt out of a patch of pondweed not three feet from where Salem was dodging the deadly blow. The dagger came down on the voodoo boy instead, planted deep in the centre of his stomach.

“Lawrence, no!” called another voice, and this time it was Jazzy who crept out of the bushes.

Even as Lawrence stumbled back, clutching the dagger in his belly, Jazzy raced towards Jeronomie with the full strength of her new legs. She gave the potioneer a hard kick in the gut, and Salem came to Jazzy’s side, ready to hold Jeronomie off if she tried to retaliate. But the potioneer was too smart for any of that, and if Lily had been able to shout to the others, she would have warned them that the wily woman was already reaching for her locket again. Salem made a lunge for Jeronomie, but it was too late. She vanished again and, a second later, the dagger was ripped from Lawrence’s innards.

The voodoo boy gave a wince, but within seconds he was running back towards Lily, and dragging Jazzy the same way by her wrist. When they arrived at Lily’s side, Lawrence knelt on the ground and quickly pulled a vial of some liquid from his pocket. Jazzy turned Lily onto her back, and they poured the vial straight down her throat without warning. Lily spluttered and gasped, her eyes trained on the garish sight of Lawrence’s stab wound, which for some bizarre reason did not appear to be bleeding.

“She’s still loose with the knife!” Jazzy shouted like a general giving orders. “Salem, the song!”

“Right,” Salem answered.

Lily began to feel her motion coming back to her, and the world was less hazy, less heavy as the seconds progressed. She saw Salem stand and look around him, taking in a deep breath like he was going to let his songspinner magic loose. But, even as he started to utter a sound, his face contorted like his mouth had been gagged by a large, invisible hand. Lily stumbled to her feet with Lawrence’s help, just in time to see the dagger floating up towards Salem’s throat.

“No sudden moves,” Jeronomie warned, coming back into view where she held Salem hostage, “and no damn singing, or I’ll slit your throat even faster than planned.”

When she let go of Salem’s mouth, the potioneer clamped the shade’s arms behind his back with a hard wrench. The former shade looked pleadingly at Jazzy, frozen in silence by the blade that threatened his throat.

“I’ve been waiting to kill you for a long, long time, Salem Cross,” the potioneer seethed against his ear, “and I’ve finally got your precious, all-powerful son out of the picture so I can do it. You’re not getting back to England alive. It’s now or never,
Dad
.”

Realisation dawned on Salem’s face at the same time as dread turned him pale.

“You know,” he said wryly, “I always thought one of my kids might be the end of me. Whose are you, honey? Diana’s? Pearl’s?”

“Charlotte’s!” Jeronomie screamed, shaking Salem so hard that the blade nicked a little dent in his throat. “From right here in old Salem Town, where all your troubles began, old man.”

Lily, Jazzy and Lawrence stood watching the scene unfold with helpless fascination. It was daylight, and there was no chance whatsoever that Baptiste the bloodshade could risk the power of the morning sun to come to their rescue from the depths of the blacked out car. Lily knew that any explosion of power on her part would result in Salem getting his throat cut, and she was trying to conceive a way to sneak an attack upon Jeronomie that could wrestle the dagger away from the showman’s jugular. The potioneer looked so desperate in her grief and pain that she might just decide to kill Salem at any moment, but she turned her narrow, dark eyes on Jazzy during her tirade of fury.

“How’d you figure me out, little girl?” Jeronomie asked bitterly. “You and your boyfriend there were all ready to put me out of action a second ago.”

“You lied about the revival potion,” Lawrence said.

Lily realised than that the liquid he’d poured down her throat had come from a bottle which was bright blue. He held up the empty vial to show the potioneer, and once again Lily marvelled that the deep stab wound he had suffered was causing him no pain whatsoever.

“So we figured if you lied about trying to revive me,” Jazzy continued, “then you wanted me to die. The next question was ‘why’. I poked around in your stuff whilst you were asleep last night, and I found the answer.”

Jazzy retrieved a large vial of deep, red liquid from one of her own pockets. Lily didn’t have to be told that it was blood, that much was clear from the way it oozed as Jazzy turned the vial back and forth between her fingers.

“The blood of humans with Second Sight is very, very rare and expensive,” Jazzy explained, “and whatever plans you had to kill Salem, you delayed them a while to drain me for your supplies.”

“That’s why you were getting so ill at random times,” Lily added, and Jazzy gave her a nod in reply. “And you would have bled to death weeks ago, if I hadn’t found out I could cast with blood.”

“And Jeronomie cooled off on draining Jazzy after that,” Lawrence cut in with clear disgust in his tone. “Except that you just got all the blood vials taken from you at the airport. So you thought, hey, why not take
all
of Jazzy’s blood and let her die, whilst no-one’s looking?”

Jeronomie gritted her teeth, her dagger pressing ever-harder against Salem’s throat. The former shade squirmed in her grip, with cobalt eyes that pleaded for the three young students not to make the crazy woman with the dagger any angrier than she already was. Lily saw his plea, and she changed her tone as she met the potioneer’s eyes again.

“Jeronomie, what happened to Charlotte?” she asked. “What happened to your mother?”

The potioneer’s grip on the dagger relaxed ever-so-slightly, her vengeful look turning to pure grief.

“I was born in the time of the witch trials,” she said bitterly. “Can you imagine that? A child with magic born to a human woman? I didn’t know my own powers back then, and I was only little when someone saw me levitate a rock by a brook. They hung my mother from a gallows right in front of me, and they would’ve done the same to me if I hadn’t escaped.”

Lily felt her heart sink in her chest.

“So… you’re a shade too?” Lily asked, but then she supposed Jeronomie must have been, for her to still be alive all these years later. “Why didn’t any of us recognise you for what you are?”

A proud anger overcame the potioneer’s features.

“Because that golden powder doesn’t just set you all relaxed,” she explained. “It’s my own special masking brew, to stop the only three shades at the theatre from recognising any others.”

It was true that the first thing Jeronomie had ever done was to douse them all in that powder that produced the brilliant golden light, and Lily now understood why none of them had sensed that Bradley Binns was more than human too. When Lily thought of him in that moment, and the grief he’d shown at losing his foster parents, she felt a desperate sympathy for the daughter and father before her, caught in such a violent tableau.

“You could’ve killed Salem when he wanted to die,” Lily said, her voice softer still, “but you didn’t. You healed him, Jeronomie. You helped him come back to life.”

Again, Jeronomie’s grip loosened a little on the dagger, and Salem appeared to be able to breathe normally against the blade without slicing his own throat. Every moment of the conversation Lily was leading seemed to be breaking Jeronomie’s hard resolve, and when the potioneer next spoke, her tone was cracked and weakened.

“I’ve been bent on finding this bastard and getting my revenge all my life,” she explained. “I turned away from my shadepowers because they got my mother killed, and those powers were
his
fault. My potioneer craft has helped me to be strong all on my own, no thanks to him, and I was finally ready to track him down and get my revenge. And then… he was so broken… When I saw how badly he wanted his life to be over, I thought I’d got him all wrong.”

Salem smiled, and Lily thought it was a little premature to do so, because she noticed the way Jeronomie’s grip was tightening on the dagger’s hilt again.

“But when he
did
get better,” the potioneer continued bitterly, “I realised he was the same heartless ass who abandoned my mother and left us both to die in the witch hunt!”

Jeronomie’s voice rose in volume, and Lily, Jazzy and Lawrence all leapt forward out of instinct. Salem gave a yelp and the potioneer pulled him backwards with her brute strength, sizing up the dagger and his jugular again for good measure.

“You deserve it!” she hollered against his ear. “I’m sure you do!”

Jeronomie was filled with rage and confusion. Lily knew that she had been biding her time for months on end to get this moment, but even as she stood there ready to deliver death to the man who’d ruined her life before she was even born, the potioneer didn’t look as sure as she sounded.

One more moment,
Lily thought with desperation.
One more moment and she’ll change her mind.

It might have been true, except that the moment when Jeronomie Parnell struggled with her demons was her last moment in this life. A loud snap resounded from her body that made Salem squirm, and a second later the dagger fell out of the potioneer’s grip. Salem ran away as fast as he could, clutching his throat for dear life, and as Jeronomie’s lifeless body crumpled, Lily saw a figure standing behind her.

He was tall and thin, dressed all in black, and his hair shone almost white by the bright sunlight. His slender, pale hand was outstretched, his fingers twitching with the magic he had used to snap Jeronomie’s neck in two. To Lily’s abject horror, he was looking down at her body, and smiling.

“You’re lucky I got here when I did,” crooned Pascal Novel. “Looks like you were in a spot of bother there.”

Famous Last Words

There was little point in persuading a man like Pascal that there was no need to murder Jeronomie Parnell. Salem wasn’t grateful for his rescue, and his sorrow at losing two children in the same week was visible in every downcast glance of his doleful cobalt eyes. When the five remaining travellers were delivered home through the window Pascal had brought for them, not one of them thanked him for his help. The senior shade didn’t seem disturbed by this in the least, and it fell to Lily to have to explain to him why the others were so cold and astonished by his neck-snapping deed.

“She could have been redeemed,” Lily tried to explain. “If we’d got her away from Salem and restrained her, Jeronomie might have seen sense.”

“And she might have just found a new way to kill you all instead,” Pascal answered with a little shrug. “That’s life, I’m afraid. It’s unpredictable, and I for one don’t like to leave surprises lying around where I could have prevented them.”

The patriarch and Lily were talking in the foyer of the Imaginique, which felt smaller and somehow lifeless without the return of its owner. Pascal could not be made to see sense, and Lily shuddered at his glibness and the lack of attachment he felt to the horrible deed he’d committed without a second thought. He was unpredictable, and he was a surprise that Lily didn’t want to leave lying around.

“I don’t think I can do this,” she told him, “I can’t work with you, not now the others know what you are, and what you can do without remorse.”

Pascal’s glibness fell away then, and he looked more serious than he ever had as his one good eye widened in surprise.

“You need me,” he pressed, “you said so.”

Lily swallowed hard, and let her head fall to look at the carpet. It was, she realised with a sickening shudder, the colour of blood. She felt like its crimson strands were already creeping up into her own veins, mixing all her good intentions with the terrible mistakes she had made in the last year. Her guilt was overwhelming already, and she felt that her heavy heart couldn’t afford to make yet another mistake now.

“Get out, Pascal,” she said sharply.

“For now,” the patriarch replied.

Pascal took Lily roughly by her chin, pushing her face up so she found herself looking into the awful depths of that golden eye of his. She pushed him hard in his thin chest and he took a step back as he let her go, his teeth gritted with that irritated temper she’d seen him flare so often.

“I’m at your beck and call, you know,” he reminded her, “because you and I have a world to destroy.”

The double doors of the Imaginique flew open, and Pascal stalked out into the harsh light of a bright summer’s day in Piketon. Lily had forgotten that the world even had seasons, for it seemed to her that the globe had stopped turning since Novel was taken from her. She was stuck in an eternal web of guilt, unsure that the path ahead of her was even the right one, but she knew of no other way to proceed. She didn’t want to think about the imprisonment and torment that Novel might be facing in Desiderium at that very moment, and her one consolation that she might see her love again was the murderer who had just stormed out of her doors.

It was all so wrong, and it seemed like the horrors she’d faced were never going to be over.

“Lily!” called a voice. “Something bad is happening to Jazzy again.”

Lily was shocked into action, but so much had gone wrong that she couldn’t really say she was surprised any more. She looked for the source of the voice, finding that it belonged to a face in a poster on the wall. Lily recognised the black and white makeup of the man in the old programme, with his painted lips and arching brows, and those frosty eyes that had become so warm in the time he spent with Lily. The title
Lightning and Levitation with Monsieur Novel
surrounded the man in the poster, but when he spoke, it was Gerstein’s voice that emanated from his lips.

“She’s in the prop store, come quick!”

Lily raced on a blast of gravity, her stomach trembling with the grief of seeing Novel so animated by the simulacra’s powers. She tried to focus on the danger at hand, pushing the thickness of her grief away like a swamp that she was wading through. Jazzy was having a bad turn yet again, and Lily soon saw its nature when she entered the girl’s room. Lawrence was cradling her in his arms, and in her hands Jazzy held the spirit stone which had once recalled Aurélie’s ghost to the auditorium.

“I’m sorry,” Lawrence said, frowning at Lily, “Jazzy wanted to make amends with her.”

Lily didn’t need to ask who ‘her’ was, for a moment later a ghostly form began to emerge in the pale sunlight streaking through Jazzy’s window. Even as a spirit, Jeronomie Parnell wore her hat at a tilted angle, and her narrow eyes looked wider and softer than they had in life. Lily found herself glad that only she and Lawrence were there to witness the potioneer’s temporary return to their world, for it might have broken Salem to see his daughter floating in the air of the old prop room.

“I don’t want to hear no sympathies,” Jeronomie said, holding up a ghostly hand. “It’s actually kinda peaceful out here, without all that vengeance swirling in my head. I only came back to make an apology, and to offer you one piece of advice that might help you on your way.”

Jazzy was lost to the trance of the spirit stone, her energy helping Jeronomie to exist, but Lily and Lawrence came to stand before the potioneer’s spirit with eager looks.

“You’re forgiven,” Lily told her, “go ahead and pass your message.”

“I came back here to tell you about the darksiders, like the one Salem banished to save your life,” the potioneer explained. “They
ain’t here
in the hereafter, where I am. They’re
there.
”

“There?” Lawrence asked. “What you mean? Where’s ‘there’?”

Lily thought she had an idea already, and her worst fears were confirmed when Jeronomie’s ghost explained.

“In the World of the Wish,” the potioneer said plainly. “Every darksider shade who was ever obliterated is in that world. If you break down the walls between the djinnkind’s worlds and yours, then they’ll be free again. I thought you ought to know that.”

“Much obliged,” Lily said, her lip quivering as she spoke.

Jeronomie tipped her hat, and then her spirit faded away for good. Jazzy woke seconds later and Lawrence began to fuss over her, but now the petite girl was able to leap up with her newfound strength and wrestle him away. Lily stood in shock at the information she’d just received, watching almost blindly as Jazzy steered Lawrence forcibly to her door and pushed him through it.

“If you want to be useful, then get me some water,” Jazzy told him in her usual bossy style. “Go on, off you pop.”

Lawrence went without further protest, and Jazzy quickly shut the door to her room. She raced back to Lily, shaking her from her reverie with hands firmly planted on her shoulders, and Lily realised that this was the first time they’d truly stood face to face in the last twelve months. She reached forward and pulled her friend into a fierce hug, her resolve shattering as tears rattled her chest in their bid to break free from her eyes.

“Did you hear what she said?” Lily asked.

“I heard,” Jazzy said, squeezing her hard, “but it doesn’t matter. It’s all the more reason to break through and get Novel out of that place.”

Lily nodded and sucked back her tears as Jazzy let her go. The two girls looked at each other, and Lily fumbled for something to say that wasn’t another question about the djinnkind, Novel or Desiderium. What she found circling the very back of her mind was a very surprising question.

“How did you rig Lawrence being stabbed like that?” Lily asked. “I mean, it looked so real.”

Jazzy bit her lip, eyes wide and white for a tense moment.

“I didn’t,” she admitted. “He really
did
get stabbed, and he didn’t bleed, and he didn’t die.”

Lily furrowed her brow.

“That’s not possible,” she said plainly.

“I know,” Jazzy replied, “but you heard what the Gifter said about him. She called him ‘unmade’. I intend to find out exactly what that means, believe me.”

“Let me know when you do,” Lily answered, “because a boy who’s un-killable could be really useful to us from now on.”

“You’ve got a plan then?” Jazzy asked. “You’ve got an idea of where we go from here?”

Lily swallowed hard, and nodded.

“I have,” she replied. “It’s going to be tough, and confusing, and horrible.”

“But not lonely,” Jazzy added, her hand returning to her friend’s shoulder again. “You’ve got us, Lily. You’ve got all of us to help you bring Novel home.”

Jazzy’s warmth and confidence grounded Lily, shaking away her shock and filling her with hope for the brand new mission ahead. But, even as Lily thought of all the characters that made up the grand Theatre Imaginique, with all their incredible skills and talents, she knew they weren’t enough. There were other things she needed in order to win the fight she’d been thrown into, things that she couldn’t tell anyone else about. It was Lily’s turn to be the leader of the Imaginique, and with it, she would be the secret-keeper that she’d always chastised Novel for.

Secrets were necessary to keep her loved ones safe, and secrets were essential in the time of war.