The Potioneer (Shadeborn Book 3) (19 page)

“Lily, listen,” Novel said, trying to step into her line of sight. “That wound was a puncture, not a bite. Someone got in here and
bled
Jazmine, but I suppose they must have been interrupted, to leave her in that awful state.”

Lily snapped her head to look at Novel, and a curl of flames came flying from her hair that flashed against his pale face.

“You’re not even considering the possibility that this… thing,” she spat, sparing half a glance at Baptiste again, “could have something to do with a huge pool of blood escaping Jazzy’s neck? What if he was the one who locked you out on the roof in the first place?”

“He broke down the door to get me back in when Dharma called!” Novel retorted.

“Why would I do that, Lily, if I didn’t want to help Jazzy?” Baptiste added.

She shot them both sour looks, crackles of lightning building all across her skin as her rage continued to rise.

“I heard you outside my room just after Jazzy was hurt,” she seethed. “I heard those big black boots of yours, and a gruff, low voice. Name someone else who fits that description!”

Baptiste didn’t have time to, for Lily lost control of the angry magic bubbling in her veins then. She was amazed that she had enough power left to explode with fire and lightning, yet she watched as her hand came up high, and smashed down like a smack in the air. Her powers followed with a loud slap, and she watched Baptiste hiss in pain as a burning line of magic carved its way into his handsome face. He bore the long, thin wound with a bitter, narrow glance, licked his lips again, and seethed as he spoke.

“Whatever it is that hurt Jazzy tonight,
you
brought it to this theatre. Everything was peaceful here before you came.”

The bloodshade strode from the room, slamming every door on his way from the kitchen to the foyer, and beyond into the night. Lily began to calm, her rage turning back to tears and fear of all that had happened in the last hour. Novel’s words began circling her mind again. She had seen the perfectly circular puncture in Jazzy’s neck, that gruesome memory would hang in her mind forever, it seemed. She had also seen the two great rips in Novel’s arm, all that time ago in the tomb-like basement of the Imaginique. The two images didn’t match up, and she knew it.

“I know you don’t like him, because of what he is,” Novel began, daring to step closer to Lily’s trembling form, “but he’s not who he used to be, Lily. People can do despicable things when life leads them in certain directions, but I still believe that most of us can be forgiven for our transgressions.”

Lily felt her own guilt welling again, and Baptiste’s accusations sank deep into a dark, shadowed place in her heart.

“I’m not sure I agree with you,” she answered.

She couldn’t look at Novel’s pained expression. She could only walk away.

March

What Dreams Mayhap

The moment Lily awoke, she knew she was not really awake. She opened her eyes to a hazy, trance-like world, where the skies shifted with brilliant blue hues that travelled the whole spectrum from darkness into light. The world in which she found herself was in constant motion, and she was not wearing the pyjamas she’d put on to go to bed that evening. She watched her feet slide over ground that was grass one moment and cobblestones the next, swishing the hem of a long, white dress that she remembered all too well. It was Jazzy’s dress – the black one that she had borrowed for Edvard’s funeral – which Ugarte’s enchanted arch had transformed into a shimmering, diamond-bright creation.

Lily felt light, and it took no magic at all for her to lift a few inches into the air above the shifting earth, waiting for her dream-addled mind to make a decision on where exactly she was supposed to be. She knew that for the shadeborn, the strange, ethereal world of the Dreamstate held great meaning, and being transported to it in her sleep was something she took very seriously. In the real world things were such a mess, and Lily floated through the shades of blue with a fervent hope that her semi-conscious mind was about to give her the answers she sought.

What she didn’t expect to see was Novel.

He looked shocked when she came upon him, gliding down on a cobalt wave of air. His eyes were pale as the palest shades of the colour that enveloped them both, and they were wide in surprise for mere moments before his eyelids fluttered downward with a guilty sort of gaze. Lily quirked a brow for a moment, looking over the illusionist in his pinstriped suit and long-tailed overcoat, before she realised exactly what he was guilty of.

“We can’t be in the Dreamstate when we’re in the same house together,” Lily surmised.

Novel sucked his cheek in on one side, looking up at her beneath his pale brow.

“Quite right,” he answered slowly.

Lily put her hands to her hips.

“Then, where are you?” she asked.

Novel looked around, as if the dream world might offer him a better answer than the truth. His thoughtful moment was short-lived, and he unleashed a little sigh.

“I’m on an early train to Nelson,” he admitted, “I rather think I must have fallen asleep.”

Lily struggled for a moment with the station’s name, and she felt a whistling rush of air behind her, like she could almost feel the locomotive shooting past her back.

“You’re going to back to Pendle?” Lily asked. “I should be with you! I should wake up now and get the next train-”

“You can’t,” Novel added quickly, “I asked only for my invitation this time.”

Lily almost made to argue with him, but Forrester had told her to keep the open invitation to herself at any cost, so Lily closed her mouth no sooner than it had opened. Novel looked as sheepish and awkward as the first time Lily had ever accidentally met him in her dreams, though now the strength of their magical connection was no secret. She knew she could not touch him in the non-physical world, but she moved closer to him all the same.

“You’re not going to see Pascal again, are you?”

She hardly needed to hear him answer yes, for the condemnation was all over the illusionist’s pale face. He didn’t look happy about admitting to an audience with his uncle, and Lily saw his fingers curling into fists amid the blurry landscape in which they stood.

“This is about the djinnkind, isn’t it?” she asked. “Pascal said something about direct contact with them, and you said it was far too dangerous to consider. And now I find you sneaking off at the crack of dawn to get the skinny on how to do it.”

“Dangerous
for you
, Lily,” Novel corrected sharply, “and that’s why I left before you could follow. I’m not sure that Pascal will even still be in Pendle, but I’m hoping to start the search for him there, at least.”

The blue air around Lily grew brighter, gathering to her form like a starlight aura as she felt a dull stabbing sensation in her chest. The Dreamstate made it easier to feel her emotions, and she knew that every ounce of betrayal she felt was showing on her face.

“How long will you be gone?” she breathed, staring at the man who had promised to protect her.

“As long as it takes to find him,” Novel answered.

There was a bright flash, and for a moment Lily felt the heaviness of her body return, as though she was waking, back in her bed in Piketon. But the Dreamstate remained once the bright light had dissipated, and the blue hue now hung over a scene very different to the blurry nothingness that had been there before. Lily and Novel looked around them, taking in the sights of a dark cave that must have been deep underground. Tiny circular lights emanated from the walls, given off by fireflies that seemed entirely too big to be real.

Lily heard the sound of trickling water, and saw the quiet rumble of a subterranean stream at her feet. The water was full of reflections, and none of them were Lily’s own. In the fast-moving water the images shifted too quickly to be fully taken in, but Lily was certain that she saw a golden eye swirling in their depths. There were others faces too, one smile that could have been Salem’s, and a pair of dark, narrow eyes she thought she knew, but could not place. Then, there was the one reflection she hadn’t banked on seeing. The one with the blood red eyes and the skin that shone like polished glass.

“He’s here,” Lily whispered, feeling the dream shake all around her. “The djinn’s here.”

“He can’t hurt us,” Novel said at once, “we’ve no form here.”

The illusionist leapt to Lily’s side, looking down into the underground spring. Novel furrowed his brow, crouching closer to the water, and when Lily tried to pull him back, she found her hand slipped against his shoulder like it was made of melting butter.

“I don’t see him,” Novel confessed with a frown.

Lily still did, and the creature’s watery red eyes were everywhere at once in the flowing stream. She had never considered that perhaps her way of viewing the Dreamstate could be different to Novel’s and she tried to ignore the presence of the watchful, bloody eyes as she looked up again into the darkness around her.

“You see this cave, though, right?” she asked Novel.

“I do,” he replied. “Do you recognise it?”

Lily shook her head, and the motion of the dream brought a wave of sleepy dizziness to her body.

“I’ve never seen it before,” she mused. “How can it be in my dreams if I don’t know where it is and I’ve never been there?”

Novel’s lip curled as he frowned with thought. He was about to speak when the whole world seemed to rock to the side a little, and Lily heard the whistle of the train again. In the bluish glow of the cave, there was another rush of air, as though she was standing on a platform and feeling the train shoot past her. The air brushed her face, and she felt another heaviness overcome her from the real world her mind had left behind.

“The dream’s breaking up,” Novel said, his voice already fading to an echo.

“You’re waking,” Lily concluded, “I think I am too.”

“Remember this place, Lily,” Novel told her. “Look around. Remember every detail.”

Even as the last words left his lips, Novel’s pale face descended into shadows. He was gone, and though she knew it was little more than a dream, Lily felt fearfully alone in the cave in the darkness. She looked at those strange firefly-bugs on the walls, lighting up the chamber with their spherical bodies, and she saw the winding passages and carved-out hollows in the rock. Everything seemed to suggest that someone had made the cave on purpose, but whoever dwelled within it wasn’t present in the dream.

Unless, they are present,
Lily thought with a shiver.

She looked down into the water again, and the djinn’s shining face was clearer than ever in the ripples. The stream had calmed since Novel vanished, and the creature in the reflection bore a grin so wide that Lily was repulsed by his prideful pleasure. She didn’t know if he was only a part of the dream, or if he was as real as Novel’s consciousness had been, but his smugness riled Lily to the very depths of her soul.

“What is it you want with me anyway?” she challenged, her shout echoing dully into every nook of the dark cavern. “This can’t just be about one stupid old mirror, can it?”

A rumble of laughter met Lily’s ears, and she knew the deep, scratching voice of its owner well. She hadn’t heard it since her fall from the lecture hall ceiling, yet recognition set in mere seconds after it began to speak.

“Wise beyond her years, and bold beyond all realms of sense or dignity,” the djinn remarked. “Your resourcefulness surprises me, daughter of shades. I rather thought you’d be dead by now.”

Lily felt her fears swell like a tumbling ocean wave. The dream was stretching ever-closer to reality, and she could almost feel herself lying in her bed at the theatre, like waking was only a heartbeat away. Yet the sensation of the djinn’s words continued to grip her mind, and her dream-body folded its arm with defiance.

“Sorry to disappoint you, mate,” she jibed.

“Cheeky,” the djinn hissed, still chuckling. “Harming you doesn’t seem to be the right thing to do, and you have a nasty habit of saving the others that I try to bring misfortune upon.”

Lily felt her heart ache at the thought of Jazzy, and the swish of the guillotine hurtling towards Novel raced past the back of her mind.

“I’ll keep saving them,” she insisted. “You’ll never win.”

The Dreamstate was fading, and Lily could no longer see the cave, or the stream. She knew her eyes were closed, and that she was lying in a tangle of black, sweat-soaked sheets on an unusually warm spring morning, yet there was one thing that lingered in her mind whilst the last tendrils of sleep held her thoughts in their grip. The djinn’s voice, and his laughter, still echoed, even when Lily opened her eyes. She sat bolt upright in bed, certain that she could still hear his final sentence in her head.

“Well then, shadedaughter, it’s time I found a new way to break your heart.”