The Book Of Shade (Shadeborn 1)

by Finn, K. C.

  “Son of mine,” she called, “be a dear and find some guests to join me.”

  In a flash of lightning, Novel was standing behind his mother on the stage, one hand on her thin shoulder as he surveyed the crowd. His eyes flickered over Lily before expanding their gaze to the whole stalls-worth of nervous faces. Being asked to grace the stage of the Theatre Imaginique was not something the patrons seemed keen on that night. As Novel stepped down onto the left-stage stairs to stalk the aisles for willing victims, the two kinds of people in the audience were slowly revealed. More than half the patrons hid their faces or avoided Novel’s skeletally-powdered visage, leaving just those brave – or, more likely, foolish – few who dared to meet his eye.

  “You, boy,” Novel said, stepping quickly towards Lily but stopping short to descend on Michael. “You’re the one who whistles in my theatre. It’s terribly bad luck to do that, you know.”

  Michael gave him a grin. “Bad luck for who?”

  “Take a seat for tea,” Novel growled.

  Lily found it a struggle to tell what was stage presence and what was genuine annoyance in his tone, but before she could give him so much as a curious look, the illusionist was off hunting for another victim. Michael, still grinning, sauntered to the table where Mother Novel was already pouring him a cup. She extended a bony hand for him to acknowledge and he did so very awkwardly, earning him a small laugh from the audience. He seemed pleased with himself for that as he sat down right beside the sinister looking woman.

  When two other volunteers, both young men, had joined Michael at the table, Novel stepped back to the shadowed edge of the stage and left his mother to her work. She greeted them cordially and gave their names to the audience, before entreating them to hold onto the table’s edge in a séance-like fashion. Lily watched the eagerness on Michael’s face, like he couldn’t believe his luck that he’d been chosen to be part of events, but her stomach churned into an uncomfortable knot as she regarded the tiny black-lace figure amongst the boys again. They were at the mercy of a shade, a very senior shade, more powerful than Novel, who could blow up the stage with giant lightning spheres and set fire to anything he fancied at will. Mother Novel’s powers were not only greater, but vastly and worryingly unknown.

  “Are you ready boys?” Mother Novel chuckled. They all nodded with nervous smiles. “Then let’s away to tea.”

  The table slowly lifted from the ground, earning the first gasp from the remaining patrons, who were clearly relieved they had not been chosen for the display. Michael’s chair was the first to move, pushing him away from the table that he clung to and jerking him bucking-bronco-style, like something had possessed it. It shook and shuddered until he was thrown forward, his torso crushed against the circular edge of the table once more.

  “My, my, aren’t you an active one?” Mother Novel shrieked with joy. The crowd laughed along, but something about the way Michael’s chest was heaving sparked Lily’s concern.

  The table began to rotate, taking its four seated guests with it as it rose even higher above the stage, spinning the men until they were nothing but blurred outlines. Yet, amongst the hurricane of furniture and frightened volunteers, Mother Novel appeared to remain perfectly still. Her ghostly black outline floated away from its chair within the maelstrom, hovering as the speed of the objects and victims around her increased with every moment. She laughed with such a shrillness to her tone that you’d have to call it a cackle. Cackles, Lily had always thought, were supposed to be cheesy and funny. This one was not.

  Novel, however, seemed to be enjoying himself. Though Lily had learned that his painted lips were probably never ever going to break into a smile, the way he sucked his cheeks and watched with eager eyes told her that Mother’s horrific display had impressed him. He rocked on his feet as he watched in transfixion. The crowd applauded loudly at the superb spectacle, marvelling at what they would later describe to their friends as superb 3D effects.

  The table slowly stopped spinning, and Michael became less of a blur. When he and the other volunteers came back to the stage they were all seated in different positions, staring around wildly as though they had no idea what had just happened to them. With a sudden impulse to escape, Michael leapt out of his chair. Mother’s veiled head snapped towards him like that of a cobra preparing to strike.

  “Are you off dear?” she asked. The audience laughed as Michael staggered unsurely. “Then you simply must come and give me a kiss goodbye.”

  Mother rose from her seat, straightening her skirts as the audience carried on bellowing. The other two men had now also felt the urge to get up and walk around, staggering like zombies as they tried to figure out where they were. Lily clutched the tight knot in her stomach, willing the act to end, wanting Michael back in the seat beside her. But Mother was closing in on him, putting her vile bony hand on his shoulder and doing that whispery chuckle that sent a shiver up Lily’s back.

  “Come here sweet boy,” she breathed. “A kiss for Mother.”

  Side-on to the audience, Mother pulled Michael in towards her veiled visage and lifted it, on the side that only he would be able to see. His eyes expanded beyond all natural proportions as he stepped back, aghast. He let out a huge unmanly shriek and actually ran down the stairs of the stage to climb back into his seat. It seemed the sight of Mother’s face had shaken him back to his senses. Mother repeated the process with the other volunteers, breaking their trances and sending them running for their lives, all with the audience on her side, laughing and pointing at the grown men, apparently acting like babies in front of such a tiny, helpless woman.

  Once Michael was safely beside her, Lily’s fear turned to anger. She clenched her fists whilst Mother was taking her bows, desperately trying to hold back the tingle she could feel in her veins. This would not be a good time for a fireball to appear, but the more she held the power back, the greater the burning in her blood became. Eventually she looked away from Mother Novel, grimacing down at the theatre floor.

  “Whoa!” Jazzy cried as a flash and a bang alerted them all.

  Mother’s tea table was on fire. Lily’s eyes flew to Novel, who was already looking daggers at her with his blackened brows furrowed. Mother seemed unconcerned by the spontaneous explosion a few feet from her, she simply went on bowing as the curtains closed upon her. As the houselights came up, Lily found herself covered in goose-bumps from the explosion of power that had leapt out of her veins. When she helped Michael back to his feet, he jittered and looked around with those wild eyes again, afraid of his own shadow the whole way home.

  The Solstice Dinner

  It was hard to contrive an excuse to go to a dinner at 4a.m., but Lily thought she’d managed it rather well. Though it was terribly out of character for her to go out on a weeknight, she had persuaded Jazzy that some girls from her Source Analysis project had invited her to a study-sleepover thing. She dressed in a smart skirt and a thin jumper, that weren’t all that believable for a girl who was supposed to be going to study history and eat copious amounts of ice-cream, but when she set out at 8p.m., Jazzy waved her off and said ‘Have a nice time’ all the same.

  Lily sat reading a textbook in Bean’s Coffee Place until it closed at ten, then gave up all pretence and headed straight for the theatre. There was no point in pretending that she had anywhere else to go for the next six hours and, when Belnerg showed her in at the Imaginique, nobody seemed particularly surprised that she was so early. Lady Eva was a flurry of activity as she began preparing the meal in the kitchen, so Lawrence led Lily away to a little sitting room where he and his father were watching TV. Novel and his mother were yet to be seen, and the normality of watching telly put Lily back at ease for a little while. Until Poppa Seward began to speak.

  “So Lily, you have your powers under control yet?” he questioned with a big white grin. She noticed for the first time that the buttons on his smart shirt were actually made of carved bone.

  “Novel’s told you all about me?” she a
sked, looking between him and Lawrence as they nodded.

  “It’s amazing,” Lawrence added. “Nothing supernatural has ever come to Piketon. Until you.”

  “We live here because it’s peaceful,” Poppa explained. “Now, if you go to a place like London, there’s plenty of unusual people sneaking about under the surface. Non-humans and the like, you know?” Lily nodded slowly. “Big cities attract them,” Poppa continued, “but here we are undisturbed, and even making a little money from our peculiarities.”

  Lily thought it was rather more than a peculiarity to take voodoo possession of your son’s body and make him perform like a puppet, but Poppa was a nice man and she didn’t see the need to be rude to him. What she was really waiting for was her proper introduction to Mother. She had reasoned with herself that Novel had a certain wicked presence on the stage that was not usually part of his everyday behaviour, so it was perfectly possible that Mother Novel was not a cackling hellion every moment of the day. But what she had done on that stage was cruel, however you sliced it, making Lily want to see her real attitude offstage all the more.

  Michael hadn’t quite been the same since his time at the tea table. When anyone who had been there asked him about going up, he was full of animated explanations about how the spinning rig (for it had to be a rig or something similar) had spun him into a hypnotic kind of state that made him zombie-out all over the stage, causing people to laugh at him. When asked about Mother, however, he became less enthused to discuss the matter. He said things like ‘Well, it was just a really scary mask’ or ‘I wasn’t expecting what I saw, that’s all’. Lily shuddered to think that the mask Michael had been so terrified of was most likely to be Mother’s real face. If it was going to be on display at dinner, Lily wondered if she would actually be able to manage her food.

  When the time for dinner actually came, Lily had been asleep on the sitting room sofa for a few hours. She fluffed up her hair and took a quick assessment of herself in the reflection of the TV, deciding she still looked smart enough to impress the senior shade, even if there were a few yawns still escaping her. Lawrence took her back out to the dining table, which had been done up all in white. Lily was rather disturbed to see the same bone china tea set laid out, that had been up on the stage with Michael. When she approached the table, Zita and the Slovak Twins stood up for her.

  “You really don’t have to do that,” she muttered awkwardly, sitting down.

  They sat down after her and Lawrence and Poppa took up two more places. Zita waved a thin hand elegantly.

  “We respect the hierarchy Lily,” she explained. “Shades are our betters and we show our deference to them.”

  “There’s a hierarchy?” Lily asked. They all nodded. “Who’s at the bottom?”

  “Vampires,” said Rasmus and Erasmus as one.

  “The least said about them, the better,” Dharma added angrily as she sidled into the room.

  Lily quietly agreed, and forced her mind to stay calm. The revelation that real vampires roamed the streets of big cities was not something she could get through her head at the same time as surviving the dinner ahead.

  She had begun to notice that the other performers were leaving the two seats to her left empty, and she sent up a silent wish that Novel would sit beside her rather than leave her to the mercy of his Mother. It was mere moments before everyone was on their feet again and this time Lily stood with them in her first attempt to show respect to the senior shade. The pair emerged from a stairwell opposite the door, and Mother entered first with her sharply pointed shoes. Her gown was a deep red that Lily desperately tried not to think of as ‘blood’ red, and mercifully the small, skeletal lady was still wearing her black veil to obscure her face.

  “Shades do not stand for other shades,” Mother said in that same shrill whisper she had used onstage. “Sit down girl.”

  It was impossible to see if Mother Novel was looking at her, but Lily knew she was by the creepy feeling that crawled like a spider across the back of her neck as she sank back into her chair. So far, so good Coltrane. The rest of the table watched in respectful silence as Mother and her crimson gown slid around them, towards Lily and the two empty seats. Lily transferred her gaze to the sight of Novel, who was following quickly down the staircase. He swept through the room and passed his mother by, holding out the seat next-but-one to Lily in anticipation of her arrival.

  “Thank you, son of mine,” she croaked as she took the chair gladly.

  Lily took in Novel’s pale grey suit as he pushed in the chair. His long legs looked longer still in the straight slacks that hung between a pair of polished black shoes and a waistcoat patterned with silver swirls. A ruffled white shirt and a suit jacket completed his ensemble. When he too had taken his seat, there was much scraping of furniture as everyone else sat down again. Eva, who had been busily working the stoves, also came and took her place at the very end of the table.

  “Good evening everyone,” Novel said in his deep tone. “I trust everything is ready?”

  “It is, Monsieur,” Eva answered with a proud nod.

  Novel’s hand rose a few inches from the table before his mother stopped him, placing fingers so bony over his that Lily felt her skin twitch.

  “No, no dear,” she cooed. “Allow me.”

  Mother Novel waved both her bony hands into the air, sending the contents of the kitchen up into orbit above them. Slowly, plates and dishes came to rest beside each diner and tureens and platters for the feast gathered at the table’s centre. It was like some gothed-out version of Beauty and the Beast, except without a trace of merriment or singing. The guests at the table were silent as the grave whilst dinner was served by their sinister guest of honour. Lily was gradually becoming more and more convinced that Mother’s persona in her act was no piece of fiction.

  Lily busied herself by copying Novel and filling up a bowl of soup. It was a deep purple colour and tasted rather sugary but, like all of Eva’s creations, it melted away wonderfully on the taste buds. As the room relaxed into its delicious meal, Lily noted that even the Slovak Twins were trying to mind their manners, fumbling pettishly with knives and forks that they were clearly upset about having to use. The table had a gentle bend where the three shades were seated, which meant that only three quarters of Lily’s left-field of vision was taken up by Novel, the rest was free to see Mother’s cutlery disappearing now and then beneath her long veil.

  “So this is the potential apprentice,” Mother said as she poured herself some wine without touching the bottle. “She’s a bit old, Lemarick.”

  Lily frowned, then immediately tried to hide it.

  “There are circumstances, Mother,” Novel explained, “in Lily’s blood.” He spared her a look that was kind of pitying, which made her grip her soup spoon tighter.

  “Oh yes?” Mother added with sharp, clipped words. “Out with it then, girl, what’s your blood?”

  Lily swallowed the lump of bread in her mouth so that she could make her answer quickly. It travelled down her throat so slowly that it felt like it was choking her.

  “Your son thinks my father must have been a shade,” Lily stammered.

  “But your mother?” the dark lady pressed. “Your mother is…”

  “Human,” Novel completed, and for the first time he did look directly at his mother when he said it.

  “How disgraceful,” Mother whined. “Our shademen mixing with human girls.” Her veil wafted a few times like she was shaking her head beneath it. “Well we’d know if she belonged to your father, Lemarick. I think we can rule him out.”

  “I already have, Mother,” Novel sighed in reply.

  Lily felt a crawling sensation in her gut that she might have actually been related to these people. She felt like defective goods in the presence of a disparaging quality manager, with Novel playing the part of the toadying foreman and not standing up for his product. Her very existence, Mother had said, was disgraceful. Perhaps Novel agreed with her, since he hadn’t said
anything to oppose it.

  The conversation went from bad to worse as Lily was quizzed about her current abilities. Mother Novel made it quite plain that most shadechildren toyed with fireballs in their prams and that what she thought was a great stride was no more than a baby step. The dinner dragged on and Novel said less and less, allowing his Mother to rule the whole table’s discussions. Eva’s food was tasteless, apparently, and the senior shade claimed the Slovak Twins had clearly been raised by wolves (which didn’t make them as annoyed as it should have, since it transpired that they actually had been). Zita, allegedly, had a good deal of false grace for a woman cast into a dustbin when she was born and, according to Mother, even the practice of voodoo was not appropriate for the modern Haitian man, despite Poppa’s feeble protests that the very island of Haiti was where the skill had originated.

  “I am so glad that beast Baptiste isn’t here,” Mother added when the dinner had reached the dessert point. “I do so hate his false elegance. I don’t know why you ever got mixed up with him, Lemarick. You should have shaken him off years ago, instead of letting him fester on in this dusty old place.”

  Novel said nothing once again. This time, however, he was swallowing hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he tried to get the food he had just put into his mouth to go down past it. Lily stabbed her fork into her pastry without the slightest intention of eating it. Delicious as Eva’s creations were, every time Mother spoke the food went sour on Lily’s tongue. Baptiste was the final straw, for he had been nothing but kind to Lily since their very first meeting. He had also warned her about Novel, and now that she had seen the parent from which he had sprung, Lily was more concerned than ever about getting too involved with him.

  What was that thing about the apple and the tree?

  “Novel, can I speak to you in private please?” she asked under the din of Mother clearing the dishes away.