The Potioneer (Shadeborn Book 3) (20 page)

Is This A Dagger

With Novel away on the hunt for his marginally sadistic uncle, Lily found she no longer had to hide the little white book of fairy-tales she had acquired at Forrester and Baines. The djinn’s new warning had stirred up a fire in Lily’s heart, and all the advice she had to go on was Forrester’s words about instinct, the Book Of Shade, and a children’s tome about the djinnkind. On one rainy Tuesday afternoon, Lily came to relieve Lawrence from his constant watch over Jazzy, with a satchel of books slung over one shoulder and a determined, studious attitude that she hadn’t felt since her very first week of university.

“She’s sleeping again,” Lawrence told Lily in a whisper. “It’s like she’s had a transfusion or something. Jeronomie says it’s traumatic for the body to take.”

Lily nodded, and peered beyond him into the converted prop store. Though it made her sad to see Jazzy, unconscious and weak beneath a brand new Avengers duvet set, all Lily could think was that it was better than the alternative. Had she not found the power within her to stem the bleeding, there would be no trace of that button-nosed girl, sleeping somewhat fitfully beneath her covers. Lawrence reached out and held Lily by the shoulder with one huge hand for a moment.

“Don’t thank me again,” she warned him. “Save your puppy dog eyes for the girl that fancies you, right?”

Lawrence glanced back at Jazzy and swallowed at a lump in his throat.

“I don’t think she’s got dating on her mind,” he jibed weakly.

“Don’t you believe it,” Lily answered, giving him her best smile. “There’s nothing more romantic than a bloke sitting vigil at your sickbed. Novel taught me that one this year.”

And, though Lawrence was placated by the joke, Lily felt the stab of her own pathos. It was a terrible shame that there had been so much injury and recovery in these last few months. Nobody should have
had
to sit by anyone’s sickbed, and nobody would have if it hadn’t been for Lily smashing that stupid mirror all that time ago. Six and a half more years of bringing trauma to everyone she loved simply wasn’t an option any more. Lily patted her books and let out a little breath.

“Go on, get to class and catch up on some stuff,” she told Lawrence. “I’ll do my reading here.”

“I’ll keep an eye on Bradley too,” Lawrence replied with a keen nod, “see if I can get into his computer again.”

“Good man,” Lily said with a grin.

The voodoo boy closed the door gently on his way out, and Lily rounded Jazzy’s bed and sat in her empty wheelchair to begin her own little reconnaissance mission. The first volume that she pulled from her satchel was the antique crimson tome of the Book of Shade. Lily splayed the old volume across both her knees, letting it settle on a random blank page as she felt its presence begin to grow before her. She knew now that the booksmiths in places like Pendle imbued each page with tons of their own magic, and Lily poured over the ancient brown leaves as she waited for them to spring to life.

But they didn’t.

“Come on,” she whispered, glancing warily to Jazzy for a second. “You must know things about the djinnkind. Don’t hold out on me now.”

The book vibrated ever so slightly, and turned one or two of its pages over slowly. Lily felt an eager grin creeping onto her face, but it faded to a frown again when only half a page of information unfurled itself in the usual curling, black script. The title caught Lily’s eyes first:

Defensive Procedures For Deflecting Mirrors

“You’re as bad as Novel,” she chided the book, giving its corners a rough shake. “No more defence. I want advice on locating them, and fighting them, and if you think I’m not ready for it, then you’re wrong.” Lily found the unexpected heat of tears brimming beneath her eyes as she whispered to the book. “I
have
to be ready. Don’t you see what’s happening all around me?”

Lily didn’t know to what extent the Book Of Shade could think for itself, but it seemed to be persuaded by her argument. The tension in her heart loosened as the pages began a proper scan, flickering fitfully back and forth until they settled on a new location towards the very back of the book. New script appeared, and this time Lily read it all with her mouth growing dry in the thirst for information.

The djinnkind can only inhabit mirrors and glass crafted by windowmakers, a fact that was unfortunately only discovered by the shadeborn in very recent times. As such, as great many glassware products exist throughout the shade and human world which seem quite ordinary, yet possess the ability to become weapons of the djinnkind. Every pane that breaks reduces the strength of the walls which separate Desiderium, the djinn world, from our own.

If enough of the mirrors are broken, it is believed that a true passage between the worlds may come into existence. This prophecy is named as the Day of Breaking. Some of the shadeborn desire this outcome, believing it would enable them to enter Desiderium and destroy the djinnkind once and for all. Others fear, however, that the djinnkind have their own plans of a similar nature, and that the breaking of the glass would signal the end of shade and human life as we know it.

“So, if we end the curse, we might end the world too?” Jazzy asked.

Lily looked up suddenly, surprised to see her friend peeking out from under her covers.

“You were reading out loud, dopey,” Jazzy added, trying to smile.

“Sorry,” Lily said at once.

“No, it’s interesting,” her friend protested. “Carry on.”

Lily looked back to the book, flipping through a few pages.

“That’s all it’s giving me,” she said with a sigh.

Jazzy wrestled with her covers until her arms were free, and Lily could see her start to push with her palms to get her lifeless legs into a sitting position. She clambered onto one side of the bed to help Jazzy up, propping her on pillows and fluffing them until the petite Indian girl had to physically stop her from fussing. The two friends smiled at each other with a warmth and strength they had not shared in many weeks, and Jazzy reached out to squeeze Lily’s hands tightly.

“Oi, book,” she said over Lily’s shoulder. “What about blood magic? What have you got to say about how Lily saved my life?”

Lily hadn’t so much as thought to ask the Book Of Shade about the strange new power she’d discovered. As far as she was concerned, it seemed very similar to her water casting, though both Gerstein and Novel had said it was something they’d never laid eyes upon before. Lily held out a hand and summoned her powers of gravity, and both girls watched as the old leather-bound volume floated towards them. Its pages were a wild flurry of activity, and it skittered about on the bed for several moments before settling on a brand new page of information.

“Read it out,” Jazzy said, giving Lily a kitten-weak nudge.

Lily knew that Jazzy couldn’t see the barely-forming words, so she leaned over the book closely and cleared her throat to speak.

“Blood casting is an ancient shadeskill…”

She had begun the sentence with enthusiasm, but Lily balked at the words which followed. She and Jazzy shared a glance, and it was clear the other girl was waiting with great impatience for the end of the sentence. Lily didn’t want to give it to her, but she read on all the same.

“… practised by darksiders,” Lily completed. “Last known instruction of the technique ceased in the eleventh century, and no known examples of the practice exist today.”

“Except for what you did,” Jazzy added.

“Did you miss the bit about it being darksider stuff?” Lily urged, a panic rising in her chest.

Jazzy looked her friend over, and reached out for her face. Lily furrowed her brow with confusion and irritation as Jazzy held and pinched her cheeks, pulling her features around whilst she scrutinized her through narrowed eyes.

“Sorry, I just don’t see you going all wrinkly and evil,” Jazzy concluded. “Maybe it was dark casting back in the eleventh century, but what you did saved my life. You couldn’t be more of a goody-goody if you tried.”

It sounded logical, and Lily broke into a small grin as she freed her face from Jazzy’s hands, yet a twinge of painful doubt remained lodged somewhere in the back of her mind. She found herself thinking of Maxime Schoonjans, the man who she’d never really thought of as being her father, and she remembered what Pascal had said about them tearing each other’s eyes out for the sake of settling a score. Maxime had mixed with the dark, macabre House of Novel and, whether she liked to admit it or not, Lily was actually dating their most precious and respected son. The presence of darkness hovered all around her all the time, and her very best magic had always been angry in its nature.

“Will it give you any more words?” Jazzy asked, poking at the Book Of Shade.

It shut itself with a loud thump, as if in reply. When Jazzy began to frown, Lily crawled down the bed to retrieve her satchel instead.

“I have something else,” she confessed. “I wanted to show it to you before, but Novel doesn’t know I have it and it seemed too risky.”

The little white book passed from Lily’s hands to Jazzy’s, and the smaller girl read its cover with interest.

“Who’s the Glassman?” she asked.

“A djinn,” Lily explained. “He’s a character in all these stories, causing trouble and frightening the heck out of people.”

“So basically exactly like the djinn following us around now,” Jazzy mused.

She opened the book to its contents page in true nerdy fashion, pushing one finger down the list as her eyes flew over the titles of the fables.

“I’ve read the Tale of Little Brother,” Lily explained, “and I tried to read the Day of Breaking, but it’s a poem and it makes no sense. I was hoping you’d-”

Jazzy wasn’t listening, and she spoke right over Lily’s explanation as her hand stopped on one title in particular.

“The Blood Caster!” Jazzy exclaimed. “I guess these stories were written in the early medieval times, if blood casting was still a thing for them. Let me see now…”

Lily watched as her friend returned to full research mode, and she couldn’t help her mind from wandering warmly to thoughts of Jazzy’s recovery. It would be wonderful when they could be out on campus together again, watching the spring rain turn to summer sunshine and picnic weather. That was provided, of course, that Lily could put an end to her bad luck before the summer came. Jazzy had turned to the tale of the Blood Caster, and was reading it quickly to herself.

“Hey, I had to read to you,” Lily whined. “Come on, out loud.”

Before her friend could even lift her eyes from the page to reply, Lily and Jazzy heard a wild scream echoing above them. Lily was on her feet at once, and Jazzy gave a hiss as she too jumped despite the soreness of her body. The bedroom door flew open with a wave of Lily’s hand and she was racing out into the corridor with Jazzy shouting something behind her. It was the middle of an ordinary afternoon, yet the scream curdled Lily’s blood like Dharma’s siren cry had, not too long ago.

The difference was that this scream had come from a man’s throat, and Lily thought she knew exactly who that throat belonged to. She was thundering up the stairs in a wave of air, gravity and flames, already racing to the second floor box room as the second cry rang out. This one was full of words, most of them curses, and Lily couldn’t make any sense of what the apparent victim was shouting until she was battering down his massive wooden door.

“Salem! What’s happened?” Lily shouted as the door flew clean off its hinges and smashed against the wall.

Salem was lying flat on his back on his bed, staring up at the air before him as though he could see something that others could not. Lily had, admittedly, been ignoring him a little since he’d finally gotten over the suicide idea, but now the former shade looked as pale and terrified as ever where he lay. His cobalt eyes were wide enough to make Lily shiver, and he pointed with a long, shaking finger into the air, before he sat bolt upright and stared at Lily instead.

“A dagger!” he cried. “Did you see it? Where did it go?”

Salem leapt out of bed, and Lily noticed that he’d stripped down to an undershirt and boxer shorts. His waves of dishevelled salt and pepper hair told her he’d been sleeping, but now the showman was wide awake and rushing all over his room at once. He knocked his suits off their hangers as he opened every door of every cupboard, then scrambled over the bed to lift the chaise off its feet and glance beneath it. He got down on his knees to look underneath his bed too, then popped up with a manic, determined look that Lily recognised, and didn’t like the sight of.

“Where’d it go?” he asked her.

“What are you on about?” Lily replied. “What’s this about a dagger?”

Salem ran his hands through his messy hair, then down over his throat until they came to rest at the top of his chest. He pointed at his heart, then pressed both palms over it protectively.

“I was taking a nap, and I opened my eyes and there was dagger right here, over my chest,” he explained.

“Just a dagger?” Lily asked in disbelief. “No person attached to it?”

Salem shook his head in amazement.

“A floating dagger,” he said, and suddenly he was rushing past Lily to see out into the corridor. “I screamed and panicked, and then it was gone. Did it come out here?”