The Potioneer (Shadeborn Book 3) (4 page)

Sensing that Jazzy and Lawrence were both about to recede from the conversation, turtle-in-shell style, Lily swallowed again, and found enough strength in her throat to change the subject.

“What about you?” she interjected hoarsely. “Are you still hanging with the Illustrious Minds?”

Molly’s confident expression fell away quicker than a heartbeat. Her voice was quieter when she next spoke, and it was laced with a trepidation that unnerved Lily and set her shaking all over again. Molly leaned closer to them over the table, resting her chin on the top of her bottle.

“You don’t know?” Molly asked, her eyes flashing between them all with sudden urgency. “You haven’t heard what they’re
doing
now?”

Those Pesky Kids

The Illustrious Minds Literary Society were still meeting on the top floor of the Tower Block, and they were holding a meeting shortly after lunch on that first day of university, but that was as much information as Molly would give away. Lily could not persuade her to come with her to see what the meeting was about, and the block’s lift was out of order, which meant that Jazzy couldn’t get to the top floor either. She and Lawrence were bound for their afternoon lectures, but Lily couldn’t resist the urge to satisfy the curiosity that Molly’s fearful look had sparked.

She was outside the door of the room when she realised that the meeting was already in progress, though there were far fewer people in attendance than she remembered from last year. The society girls Bianca and Chelsea had graduated in the summer, and Lily could spy, through the crack in the door, that the new figure who led the little group was one she recognised. His broad shoulders and deeply tanned skin were as unmistakable as the sun-kissed locks that were smoothed back in a wave on his head. The only thing different about Michael Sampson this year was that his easy-going grin was gone.

“Vigilance,” he said, his mouth pulled into a serious sneer. “We know now that Victoria Havers was one of them, and that means they can penetrate our campus undetected.”

Michael was speaking in a low tone with his shoulders hunched, and those assembled before him craned in the same twisted position, eager to hear his advice. Lily felt her fists clenching, and a familiar tickle of flames toyed with her fingertips. After all the bad things that had happened to her on her first day back in her normal human life, discovering a small society of fascist idiots was by the far the least terrifying. In fact, it was just plain annoying.

“And then, of course, there’s the Imaginique, and its…
contents
,” Michael added with clear disdain.

Lily bit her lip. Her veins pulsed with energy and an anger that she hadn’t felt in weeks. It was always anger that spurred her shademagic far more than any other emotion, and now her irritation was rising with every moment she spent eavesdropping at that classroom door, listening to Michael’s voice twist every mention of her people into something foul and distasteful.

“But surely,” a small, female voice uttered, “not everyone at the theatre is…?”

“I don’t know,” Michael answered, “but we can’t take any chances. You’ve all got your books, and I suggest you read them carefully. We need to be prepared for the next disaster that these freaks bring to our town.”

The word ‘freaks’ was the point where Lily lost her temper. A gust of air smashed open the door, and as the very tips of the wind died down, there was a flicker of flames within the gust. Lily thought that, considering the day she’d been having so far, the Illustrious Minds were lucky that she hadn’t gone full flamethrower on them as she burst into their meeting. Michael Sampson leapt off the table he was sitting on, standing behind it as he beheld Lily with a look that smacked of both fear and hatred. It was hard for Lily to recall that he had been her boyfriend not that long ago, when she had still longed for normality in her life.

“I wouldn’t advise taking on the theatre, Mikey,” Lily told him coldly. “We’ve a few more tricks up our sleeve than you’re prepared for.”

As she spoke, her eyes roved over the assembled crowd, who barely reached a dozen people, and each of them clasped a home-bound book in their quivering hands. The title was printed in a ghastly, mock-gothic font, and it read:
Defence Against Demons, by M. Sampson
. It was quite a thick volume, and it occurred to Lily bitterly that Michael had finally put his English studies to some use. She found herself fairly amused by the title. Even as she began to laugh, a girl jumped up from her chair, producing an object from within her sleeve as her defence guide clattered to the floor.

“Back, demon!” she cried, and Lily recognised her curly red hair in that moment.

She had been the vice chair of the IMLS last year, the one that Bianca and Chelsea had walked all over, and Lily had never yet learned her name. The girl was holding up a cross, minus its Jesus figurine, but instead inscribed with a poorly-drawn rune, that had no effect whatsoever on Lily when she looked upon it, aside from a another sniff of derision. With a flick of Lily’s wrist, the cross went flying out of the girl’s hands and shot across the room, embedding itself in a whiteboard as Lily’s heavy-handed gravity powers gave it just a little too much of a shove.

“This isn’t Scooby Doo, you idiots,” Lily told them all, her grin receding to mark the seriousness of the situation. “This is big, and it’s
real.
You’re going to get yourselves hurt if you get mixed up in things you don’t understand.”

“Don’t pretend that you care about our safety,” Michael spat. “You’re a thing, not a person, and you don’t care about any of us.”

Lily’s irritation faltered then, because she saw something that looked like pain in Michael’s eyes. For all the beastly things he’d said about her being a freak, she knew that she’d lied to him, and betrayed him, even if he was only a casual boyfriend. She was pulled back for a moment to that day in the park, when he’d asked her what their relationship meant, and how he’d looked so downtrodden when she’d made out that it wasn’t that serious. Perhaps, months ago, it had been serious to him, and Lily couldn’t quash the fact that she felt some sort of apology was in order for the way she’d treated him.

“You can believe that, if it makes you feel better,” she told him in a lower tone, “but it doesn’t change the fact that the smart move is to stay out of my way.”

To demonstrate this, Lily laid one hand out flat, and the defence guide that the vice chair girl had dropped came floating up from the floor. The Illustrious Minds watched in fascinated silence as the book landed with a dull thud on Lily’s palm. She felt its lack of quality at once: the fresh, modern printer paper was so different to the ancient tome that she referred to for her own magical studies. It was a small, frail thing in her powerful hands, and she had a brief urge to set it aflame before them.

But she didn’t. Instead, she simply asked the would-be demon hunters a question.

“Mind if I borrow this?”

No one opposed her.

A Whole New World

“‘Beware of strangers wearing ceremonial robes,’” Jazzy read, then blurted, “oh, this is just ridiculous!”

Lily had read
Defence Against Demons
from cover to cover in the days that followed her encounter with the Illustrious Minds, and after that she had passed the book to Jazzy for inspection. What had started as a bad day at Piketon had continued into a bad week, and was nearly a bad month by the time the two girls came to be sitting together in the Theatre Imaginique’s grand auditorium. Lily had had to wait for Jazzy to do all her preliminary reading for her literature class before she would even consider reading a book for fun, and indeed Michael’s descriptions of his demonic experiences thus far were a merry read.

“And get this,” Jazzy added, flipping a page in the book. “‘The demons are capable of beguiling even the sharpest of minds, convincing poor unsuspecting humans that they are in love with them.’”

Lily rolled her eyes at that.

“Do we have a suspicion that Michael’s working his issues out on the page here?” she asked.

Her friend chuckled. “Indeed we do.”

Jazzy was sitting cross-legged on an ornate rug, with the defence guide open in her lap. Lily had her hands outstretched, concentrating all of her power into her fingertips as she stared at the very edges of the rug. She took a breath, forcing herself to stay balanced and grounded, as Novel always told her she ought to be when she cast with her powers. Slowly, the edges of the rug that Jazzy sat on lifted up to cradle her a little, and the short Indian girl gave a gasp as the rug lifted cleanly into the air.

“I’m Princess Jazmine!” Jazzy exclaimed.

She had to use her hands to keep her tender back in the right position, and Lily eased a little gravity into the space behind her friend to give her some support. It was precise work, but Lily had always found that practising with Jazzy present was a good and calming influence. Her friend looked down as the magic carpet ascended to about three feet from the stage, where Lily let it hover for a moment as she practised sustaining her skills. Jazzy put a flattened hand to her brow in a searching motion.

“But where’s my Prince Ali?” she asked with a pout.

“I think he’s rehearsing his limbo routine in the attic with Poppa,” Lily said with a wry grin.

Jazzy shot her a wicked look, but it quickly turned to wistful sadness in her eyes.

“Oh, don’t,” she sighed. “It’s never going to happen with Lawrence.”

Lily looked up at her with a dissatisfied huff.

“And why not?” she demanded.

It was as if Jazzy became a different person in that moment, for her whole posture shifted as it grew tense. All her merriment at reading Michael's defence guide evaporated, and she set the book down on the floating carpet’s edge. Slowly, she picked up one of her small feet, enveloped in its faded red Converse sneaker, and dropped it again. The foot fell limply, devoid of life, and when Jazzy next looked at Lily, her eyes were brimming with the gleam of prospective tears.

“Well,” she said quietly, “he’s not going to want to go out with a… I can’t even dance with him.”

Lily felt as though a cold hand had ripped her heart away and shoved a stone in its place. Jazzy had lost the use of her legs defending Lily, and no matter how much she tried to tell herself that that was out of her control, Lily still carried the guilt deep within her. If she had practised harder, or known better how to battle Mother Novel, then perhaps Jazzy would have been standing on that carpet and riding it like a surfboard right now, instead of sitting motionless with her head hung low.

Both girls made to speak in the same moment, but a noise disturbed them. It was a voice that cut through the echoing abyss of the empty auditorium, and Lily was careful to maintain Jazzy’s levitation, despite the shock of the sound.

“What on earth are you doing?” Novel asked.

Lily heard his footsteps as he reached the stage, and when he was in her view, she noticed he was carrying an old gramophone in his arms. It must have been his time to rehearse on the stage, and she shot him an apologetic look before turning her gaze back to Jazzy. To her surprise, her best friend had cleared all trace of sadness from her expression, putting that brave face back on in the illusionist’s presence. Jazzy put her hands together as if in meditation, and looked down at the carpet with a half-grin.

“What do you think Novel, a new act for your show?” she suggested.

Lily gave her a supportive giggle, and then her look snapped back to Novel with a quizzical brow raised high.

“Yeah, you never do genie stuff,” she remarked. “I bet there’s a whole series of acts in that. Emerging from a lamp, smoke and mirrors, flying carpets…”

She trailed off, watching as Novel’s face took on that stony quality, the way it had that night that Gerstein had spoken of luck. It had happened far too many times in the month for Lily to brush it off any more, because she knew now that there was something Novel wasn’t telling her.

“What?” she challenged. “Do you have something against genies now?”

There was a coldness in the illusionist’s pale blue eyes that stung Lily deep in her chest. Novel turned on the heel of his polished shoe and retreated, not bothering to look back as he gave her a clipped reply.

“I’ll come back when you’re done with this foolishness.”

When he was gone, Jazzy found herself slowly floating to the ground as Lily relinquished her levitation powers.

“Ouch,” she remarked, adjusting her glasses in a fumbling, nervy way. “I guess it’s not any easier when you’ve snagged the boyfriend, is it?”

Lily did her best to hold most of her sadness in, but Jazzy’s words rung out with a truth that she could hardly stand to face. They may have been kindred souls, and they may have fought and nearly died for one another in the face of danger, but in the face of a peaceful life, Lily wasn’t sure that she even had that much in common with Novel. She didn’t understand half of what went on behind those frosted eyes, and he so rarely let her in on what he was feeling that it was as though a wall had risen up between them in the last few weeks.

“I still haven’t told Novel about the blue face in the lecture hall,” Lily admitted with a shrug. “I’m… I’m afraid he’s going to think it’s stupid.”

Jazzy gave no reply, and Lily’s words fell flat, as if they’d been unheard. It hurt her for a moment to think that Jazzy wasn’t listening, but Lily soon realised that her friend was not merely staring into space with ignorance. Jazzy was looking at something high up in the gods of the theatre, where the domed ceiling began. Lily followed her friend’s eye-line, but saw nothing, and she concluded, with one of those eerie shivers, that Jazzy was watching a person that only she could see.

“Something’s going on with this place,” she murmured. “Something sad. Something bad.”

That was all Jazzy could say on the matter, and Lily realised, with a knot in her stomach, that no matter how awkward and secretive things had become with Novel, she always needed him when things turned bad. She only hoped he’d still be there, if Jazzy’s words of warning came true.