The Book Of Shade (Shadeborn 1)

by Finn, K. C.

  “I don’t even like coffee,” she moaned, annoyed at him for forgetting again. “It’s tea I like, remember?”

  “Yeah, yeah,” he said, “answer me though. You look like the Reaper’s following you and only you can see him.”

  Since Salem’s warning, Lily had thought of nothing all night but the potential pack of shadehunters that might be on their way to kill her at any moment. It hadn’t improved her confidence to discover that even the creepy doorman Belnerg had packed his bags and run away the moment he’d heard that hunters might be headed for the Imaginique. Despite the nice, bright sunshine in Memorial Park, Lily couldn’t help but wish she’d cancelled the day out with Michael and hid away in her dorm. Or better yet, at the Imaginique.

  Michael pulled her to sit down on an empty bench and put his arm around her, kissing the top of her head.

  “Whatever’s bugging you, let me know sometime,” he pleaded. “I can help you fix it.”

  “No you can’t,” she said, half laughing at him. He’d surely run a mile if he knew anything like the truth of the matter.

  She felt him stiffen and his arm fell away slowly.

  “If that’s how you feel,” he muttered.

  “I just mean,” Lily began, annoyed and guilty in the same moment. “You shouldn’t have to deal with my problems. That’s not what this is.”

  Michael’s handsome, tanned face fell a little. “What is this then?” he asked.

  “You know,” Lily mumbled, chewing on her lip. “Fun, laughs, hooking up like students do?”

  “Right,” he said with a stiff nod. “Sure. I know you said that before, I mean, that’s why you didn’t want to do Valentine’s stuff, right?”

  “Right,” Lily answered, finally feeling like she was back in charge of the moment.

  “Except that somebody bought you that,” Michael said bitterly.

  He was pointing to her neck, and Lily looked down at the cord and the rose quartz pendant glittering in the sunlight.

  “That popped up just before Valentine’s Day and you haven’t taken it off since,” he accused. “And maybe you think guys are dumb and we don’t notice that stuff, but I did.”

  “It’s not a Valentine present,” Lily protested, rolling her eyes at him.

  She almost smiled at the prospect of how horrified Novel would be to overhear this conversation, but she held the mirth in for Michael’s sake.

  “What is it then?” he pushed, “because it’s certainly not your usual style. You like those swanky rings with expensive stones, not a chunk of cheap gem on a surfer cord.”

  Lily stammered too long before a suitable lie would come to her lips and Michael waved his hand in an ‘I thought so’ gesture.

  “Whatever,” he said roughly. “You’re right. This is supposed to be fun. And today it isn’t, so maybe we just give it up and try again some other day?”

  He had given her the get-out she wanted, no matter how guilty she felt about taking it.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, the excuse arriving at last. “My head’s not right today. I’ve got a re-do on a paper for Havers that’s been bugging me.”

  Michael’s face softened a little and he gave her a peck on the cheek. “Perfect student’s not so perfect eh? That’s a comfort to me. Go. Do it. I’ll text you.”

  Lily left the park, walking back towards Wellesley Dorm with a sigh of relief. It was actually true that she had failed her last assignment with Professor Havers for not having enough background reading on the topic. The professor had generously given her a fortnight to shove a load more books into the bibliography and sort it out, before it would have to go down as an official black mark on the record. Lily reasoned that she would be able to work on some of that back at the dorm, but more than that, she was eager to see how else the Book of Shade could help her improve her skills with gravity. Flying away from shadehunters was a more valuable skill than fighting them right now.

  She was therefore disappointed to find Professor Havers’s petite form waiting at the door to Room 13 when she got back to the block.

  “My Lily, you are an unlucky one,” the professor mused, her eyes trained on the number.

  “Only always,” Lily groaned, rueing the fact that her day was to be interrupted by yet more humans, when there were matters supernatural to attend to.

  “Can I come in just a moment?” Havers asked. “Only I wanted to make sure you were all right.”

  Jazzy was out at her usual Thursday seminar, so Lily offered the professor the computer chair to sit on whilst she perched on the end of her bed. She gave a little shrug.

  “Sure, I’m fine,” she said. “See here? No empty booze bottles, no drugs, no strange men hidden under the bed, not last time I checked anyway. If this is about that paper, I just fell behind on the reading. I’m getting back on track now.”

  “I know it’s not my business,” Havers said with a little smile, “but I do notice over the months when my students change. University life impacts on young people in various ways, and I just wanted to make sure you weren’t struggling with something under the surface.”

  Ha. If only you knew.

  “I’m fine, really,” Lily promised with the best lying smile she could muster. “You’ll see when you get the re-do back. I’ve just been swamped with friends and… things.”

  “What about family?” Havers asked. “Have you been home for a visit?”

  “Oh, no,” Lily added with a wave, a sad smile forming on her lips. “Me and Mum, we text now and then. We’re not that close.”

  “That’s a shame,” the professor said quietly.

  “That’s how it is,” Lily added, silently agreeing.

  Havers got up and tried to straighten out her frizzball hair.

  “Well if you ever need any advice outside of the pre-nineteen-hundreds, drop me a line,” she said, offering another smile. “I’m a mother too. So if you need to bend someone’s ear, well…”

  “Thanks,” Lily said awkwardly. “That’s good to know.”

  When she had let the professor out, she locked her door and exhaled a huge sigh. It was nearing 2p.m. and Jazzy would not be let out of her seminar until 5. Lily had time now to wrestle with her references and fix her failed paper, or perhaps to remove the Book of Shade from its hiding place under her bed and bone up on levitation a little more. For a moment she lay back on her pillow, exhausted by the worries that had haunted her all day, coupled with a late night of training with Novel. Slowly, she gave in to temptation and wriggled out of most of her clothes, curling up under the covers to take a nap instead.

  The Dreamstate

  It wasn’t often that Lily had a vivid dream that wasn’t a nightmare, but she found herself back on the roof of the Theatre Imaginique. It was daytime, perhaps a sunrise or sunset judging by the pink streaks racing across the half-dark sky and she was dressed in the shimmering silver-white gown she had worn to Edvard’s funeral. She sat on the very edge of the roof and hung her feet over it, admiring her bright white boots.

  “Well, this is rather awkward.”

  She turned and saw Novel had appeared on the roof. Where the rest of the dream seemed blurry and occasionally went out of her focus, he was sharply real amongst it all. He stepped up to her and gave her shoulder a poke that she only half felt.

  “Are you really here?” he asked.

  “No stupid, I’m dreaming,” she giggled, slapping his hand away.

  “So am I,” he answered, “but that doesn’t mean you’re not really here.”

  He touched her again, his hand slipping against her skin like they were both made of butter. Lily realised then that her thoughts were much clearer than they usually were in her sleep. She regarded Novel carefully in his blue pinstriped suit.

  “This is a shade thing, isn’t it? Are you saying we’re having a real conversation?” she asked. “Am I going to remember this when I get up?”

  “This is the Dreamstate,” Novel said, pointing to the fiery sky. “It’s possible for tw
o shades to meet here when they sleep, somewhere between waking and truly dreaming. But it usually requires them to think very hard about one another to achieve the connection. Meeting here by accident is much less common.”

  “There seem to be a lot of uncommon things happening around me,” Lily mused, looking again at her bright, sparkling dress. “What’s a diamondchild, by the way? I never did ask.”

  “Who called you that?” Novel countered.

  “Salem,” she answered. “He looked at my dress, and he called me a diamondchild.”

  “Tell me,” Novel said, coming to sit on the edge of the roof beside her, “is it your birthday next month?”

  “It is,” Lily answered, waiting in a patient, peaceful state. “You’d know that if you ever listened to me when we’re training.”

  “Then you’re a Daughter of Diamond,” he explained, ignoring her last words. “The stone of our birth month is very important to shades. It dictates a great deal of our powers and motivations.”

  “So the clothes at the funeral?”

  Novel craned his head up to the sky. “The arch showed us for what we truly are. Twelve months. Twelve birthstones. Twelve colours.”

  “But there was no-one else in white,” Lily replied.

  “The diamondchild are the most precious of the shadeborn,” he answered. “It’s a rare thing to see a shooting star in an April sky. Hardly any shades are born then.”

  “Is that why I like diamonds in jewellery?” Lily asked, a little smile growing.

  “I expect so,” Novel replied. “My father, for example, carries that cane with him everywhere. The stone in the top is Zircon.”

  “What month is that?”

  “December,” Novel added. “It’s all in your book, if you’d bothered to look it up.”

  Lily narrowed her eyes. “What stone are you?”

  Novel shifted uncomfortably. “I’m not going to sit here telling you them all, look it up if you remember to.”

  “For someone who’s half asleep you’ve got a temper on you,” Lily groused, looking down at the drop beneath her feet as it blurred in and out of sight.

  “And you ask far too many questions,” Novel snapped back. “I’m not going to feel rested at all after this.”

  “Do you always sleep during the day?” Lily asked.

  Novel rolled his eyes. “More questions? Really?” He gave a low grumble before the urge to answer back sank in. “Yes. I always sleep from about six in the morning until four or five in the afternoon. Shades work better at night as you know. What about you?”

  “I’m napping,” she answered quickly. “I had a hard night.”

  “Oh did you?” Novel scoffed. “You didn’t have another five hours of Salem to put up with. The man’s the limit. Everything in the worst possible taste.”

  “Ooh,” Lily said gently. “Can I have just one more question?”

  “It’s two if you count that one, but go on,” he sighed.

  “What’s the thing in his mouth that flashes sometimes when he talks?”

  “It’s called a glamour,” Novel explained. “All shades get one. It’s a marker that proves that they’ve achieved the height of their powers, though heavens know how Salem managed it. You noticed Ugarte’s eyes, did you not?”

  “They changed colour,” Lily said with a nod.

  “And my hair.”

  “Ah,” she added, slapping her leg with satisfaction, “and here’s me thinking it was some genetic premature ageing thing.”

  Novel ignored her expertly. “My father has a silver tongue.”

  “Wow,” Lily mused, blinking the idea through a few times.

  “Suits him to a tee, don’t you think?” Novel spat viciously.

  “So what does your hair say about you then?” Lily mused. “Old before your time?”

  “Don’t,” Novel said suddenly.

  “Don’t what?” Lily asked, a brow raised.

  “Don’t be so astute. It’s disturbing.”

  A silence fell that told Lily a change of subject was in order. “Isn’t that a bit sad though?” she added brightly. “To know that you’ve done as much as you can ever do? Reached all your potential?”

  Novel shook his head and it blurred a little against the backdrop of the dream.

  “The glamour only marks the height of the power, not the variety of skill,” he explained. “I may know exactly how strong I am, but I’m still discovering all the ways in which I can use that strength.”

  Lily bit her lip a little. “I wonder what glamour I’ll get,” she mused.

  “I wouldn’t like to hazard a guess,” Novel replied dryly.

  Lily turned to watch his pensive face, sharp against the blurred pink sky behind him. She narrowed her eyes carefully to trace the tiny lines on his skin.

  “Just once I’d love to get inside your head and see what you really think of me,” she said with a laugh.

  Novel turned with all the seriousness in the world.

  “Fortunately for both of us, you can’t.”

  Houdini Reborn

  “You’ve never had to stay after the show before,” Michael whined as he lined up with his theatre ticket. “Me and Jazzy said we’d take you to Guttersnipes for a drink, to celebrate you passing your re-do paper.”

  “Well you should have checked with me,” Lily said, giving Jazzy in particular a ‘what are you playing at’ look. “Novel needs me here tonight to help clean up after the guest act.”

  Michael gave a little frown. “I’ve never heard of this Salem guy before. Is he any good?”

  “I think you’d have to be, to dare to compare yourself to Houdini,” Jazzy cut in.

  In truth, Lily was staying to hear Salem’s account of his fight with the shadehunters that had led him to Piketon. Novel had heard it once already, but he wanted Lily there to hear for herself the kind of struggle they were now training for. Despite being in a rotten mood from the moment his father had turned up at the theatre, Novel was more focused than ever on improving Lily’s shadeskills as rapidly as possible. She had tried not to think about the fierce (and possibly homicidal) attitude Novel had shown towards protecting her when he thought she couldn’t hear him, but the words and the fury had been doing laps around her mind ever since he’d let them loose.

  When Baptiste greeted her at the theatre doors he was sporting what looked like the edge of a lightning flower creeping up his neck. The source of the shock must have been lower down, but his caramel coloured skin was flushed pink where the fern-like veins had been fried. Further evidence of Novel’s bad mood? The elegant man had definitely caught her looking at the wound. He turned that side of his neck away as he took her ticket, whispering to her:

  “Don’t get between father and son when they’re having an argument, trust me.”

  His words set Lily off on a strange train of thought as she took her seat in the theatre. Baptiste had warned her of Novel’s temper. Novel had warned her to stay away from both Baptiste and Salem now. Ugarte had warned her to steer clear of Novel’s family, but told her that the man himself was all right. Mother Novel had clearly wanted her son to keep away from Lily and Professor Havers had told her explicitly never to get mixed up with the Theatre Imaginique in the first place. Amidst the hundred voices telling her what to do, there was the truth, somewhere, and Lily knew she was going to have a tough time finding it.

  As the lights went down in the theatre, Michael slipped his arm around Lily as he usually did, nestling his mouth against her ear to whisper to her.

  “I know how the swanky Monsieur does his flying trick, you know,” he said with a laugh.

  Lily rolled her eyes, even though it was too dark for him to see her.

  “No you don’t,” she answered.

  “I do,” he insisted. “I googled it all. Want me to tell you how it’s done?”

  “Not really.” She could feel him pouting against her neck. “I like the mystery,” she added quickly. “Now shush, Baptiste’s on.”


  “Do you know him?” Michael asked, his voice a little louder. “Personally, like?”

  Baptiste was watching Michael chatter away; his eyes flashing with clear annoyance that someone dared to speak when he was gracing the stage. Lily shot him an apologetic look and pushed Michael away from her neck. He took his arm back and sat with both arms folded, like a rejected and petulant child, as the show began.

  Salem Cross was a stunning performer. Where Novel’s usual magic slot lay in the programme, Salem had completely overtaken it, transforming it into a far more glamorous affair than it had ever been. Though he wore the same sharp suits in old-fashioned cuts as his son, the senior shade was swathed in bright colours and explained every aspect of his trick with a flourish of perfect elocution and truly American showmanship. Dharma was all too happy to assist him, still dressed in her skimpy Alice costume from her own pointless little act some moments before. She kowtowed to Salem like he was God’s Gift, which in all fairness he probably was a good contender for. Lily could feel Michael’s eyes on her instead of Salem the whole way through the act, making her shift with irritation every now and then to keep him out of her periphery.

  ‘Houdini Reborn’ was a mimic of the great illusionist’s famous water escape, but Salem spent a far longer time submerged in the tank than was humanly possible. Lily marvelled at how the audience hadn’t realised that he should have drowned a full two minutes ago, as she watched him breaking his straight jacket bonds to the sound of applause. If she felt very carefully and blocked out the noise, she was sure she could sense the way the water moved within the tank, as though Salem had created some kind of barrier to keep it from entering his nose. Novel had not mentioned to her that his father was one of the very few shades that could conjure with water, but if it was true, then the prospect of someone new to learn from was an inviting one.

  Salem escaped the tank in a flourish, his beautiful suit soaking wet and his dark hair slicked back on his head like a swimsuit model, taking his bows and clearly revelling in the glory of performance as the curtains closed on him. As the crowd began to dissipate, Lily was headed for the private corridor at the back of the foyer, but by the time she was level with the stage stairs, she heard a low voice calling her by name.