The Book Of Shade (Shadeborn 1)

by Finn, K. C.

  When the clock began to tick, Lily opened her question sheet and breathed a sigh of relief. The question was on the lasting impact of Darwinism, a topic she had done to death back at college for a huge project in her final year. Though there were areas where her lack of development might show, she had plenty to scoop out of her brain and slap on the page to secure that pass for the year. She wrote furiously, burning her hand against the page as the words dashed forward in her brain to be used. The time sped by as her sentences amassed and she was wrapping up her concluding thoughts when the croaky half-whisper of the invigilator echoed into the room.

  “Five minutes remaining.”

  Even as she spoke, there was a disturbance, which sounded like a creaking somewhere above the collection of students. Lily looked up to the skylight just in time to see the huge black bat that lived at the Imaginique swooping down into the room. Several girls shrieked and leapt out of their seats as boys crouched down, ready to shove their heads under the tables in case it came near them. The bat was screeching out a horrific chorus of jangled notes, flying in circles overhead until its huge murky wings flapped in a new pattern. It swooped down straight at Lily, flying so close that she had to duck before it skimmed the top of her head. Wild panic spread at the sight of another student being attacked by the oversized creature, and the once-calm crowd piled out of the exam room at a pace, taking the invigilator with them against her will as she became trapped in the moving swarm.

  The bat came down for another swoop, but with the room now empty, Lily gave a wave of her hand and it smacked into her thin gravity shield. It hovered angrily above her, its tiny eyes glinting at her. She put her hands on her hips.

  “All right,” she said slowly. “I’m willing to bet you’re not an ordinary bat, seeing as you chose the Imaginique as your favourite hangout. What is it? What do you want with me?”

  The bat, as if in perfect understanding, hovered its way to the window, banging itself against the glass. Lily followed it carefully, trying to keep her distance from its creepy spindly wings. She looked down into the sunny day below to see the usual scene of students, most of whom were relaxing on the grass as their academic year came to a peaceful end. It took Lily a moment to find what the bat could possibly have been leading her to, but once she spotted the sight of the mass of hooded figures on the green, she couldn’t tear her eyes away.

  There was twice the number of shadehunters than there had been before, unmistakeable in their dirty brown cloaks and mud-caked boots. Their gargantuan leader was still not amongst them, and Lily reasoned that perhaps Maxime was waiting for nightfall, when the stars would give him his full shadepowers. The pack paraded through the crowds of students like some rip-off Lord of the Rings society, and went largely unnoticed until they started talking to people. They were forceful and rude as they invaded small groups and pulled people out, looking them up and down and speaking words that Lily was too far away to hear. She began to shake as she realised this was their form of interrogation. She had been right when they’d arrived at Guttersnipes: they knew there was a student shade somewhere in town, and now they had come to find her.

  “Trouble?”

  Lily spun with a terrified twirl as the bat took off with a screech. She watched it hurry out of the skylight before her eyes fell back to the intruder, and then she breathed a tiny sigh in relief.

  “Oh Professor, it’s just you.”

  Victoria Havers stood with one hand on her hip, her petite frame unusually relaxed.

  “How did your exam go?” she asked as she too approached the window.

  “Good, yeah,” Lily answered. “You know, apart from the abrupt ending.”

  There was a strange tension in the way Havers approached her, as if something had changed in the way she took her steps. The older woman gazed out of the window, batting her flyaway hair aside as her eyes too came to focus on the shadehunters.

  “You’re a clever girl Lily,” the professor said quietly. “I expect you to make the right decisions.”

  “Are you all right Professor?” Lily stammered, trying to take a step away from the weird vibes all around Havers.

  “Don’t call me that, dear girl.”

  Havers answered, but her voice was slowly changing, becoming more high pitched and raspy. Lily staggered back as the thin form of the Professor became engulfed in petals, just like those that had fallen from Edvard’s funeral arch, only these were of a deep black hue. When she emerged from the shower of darkness, the weather-worn face of the professor was suddenly covered by a thick, black veil. Lily’s mouth fell open as she tried to take in the billowing black lace dress that had formed from nothingness, the bony white hands and the noble, sinister stance of the shade now before her.

  “I do so prefer to be called Mother.”

  “But,” Lily began with a quivering lip, “Professor Havers… is she-?”

  “She doesn’t exist,” Mother Novel replied, “at least, not outside of paperwork. I have a vested interest in this town, you see, and it pays to have a good pretence to fall back on.” She made a steeple of her bony fingers and looked out of the window again. “I don’t like them coming out here in the day. It’s very conspicuous.”

  “I don’t suppose the hunters care about blowing our cover,” Lily ventured with nervous hitch in her tone.

  Mother Novel’s veiled head snapped back to her and, for a moment, an invisible breeze fluttered the veil enough for Lily to catch sight of her impossibly thin, scraggy neck. Every vein was visible beneath it, and they spindled like great inky spider-webs over Mother Novel’s skin. Lily gulped dryly.

  “What do you know of the ways of the hunter?” Mother accused in her pitchy tone. “You’re nothing but a girl, tainted with humanity.” She took a step forward, gliding as though she was hardly touching the ground. “You are attracting trouble for my son, and putting him in very real danger. I don’t appreciate that.”

  Lily opened and closed her mouth a few times, her fists balling in anger before she knew what to say.

  “I was just learning!” she cried. “You think I wanted any of this? I don’t want to see him hurt any more than you do!”

  “But he will be,” Mother Novel insisted, “if he stays with you.” Once again the future-vision of Novel’s body flashed into Lily’s mind, and she tried in vain to push it away. “I will not allow it.”

  Lily’s hands burst into flame and she felt the breeze rising all around her.

  “We’re kindred,” she said. “You can’t change that.”

  Mother Novel took the breeze for her own, swirling the air into a hurricane that swept her up and forced Lily backwards. Mother enshrouded herself in a dark cyclone wind, where she remained motionless at its centre, as she had in her display at the theatre all those months ago. Slowly, the thin, veiled figure began to fade away, but not without an echo of words that sent a shiver through Lily that pieced right into her heart.

  “We shall see.”

  JULY

  Light and Shade

  Lily let the Book of Shade guide her to the pages she wasn’t willing to admit she wanted to see. It opened slowly and quietly where she sat in her dorm, leafing its way gently to a chapter near the back. Curling black words appeared upon the browning pages. Lily looked up at Jazzy, who was tucked up in bed, watching her intently with her nose poking out of the duvet.

  “The Lightsider and The Darksider,” Lily read, “are the terms given to shades who extend their abilities beyond the reasonable bounds of endeavour. Those shades who sacrifice their powers in acts for the good of others become irrevocably aligned with the light, obtaining additional abilities to enable them to further their aid of their fellow kin. These include, but are not limited to, powers such as telepathy and soothsaying, but in return the lightsider shade gives up a great deal of their elemental power to obtain such gifts.”

  “So that’s the girl you met at the funeral?” Jazzy asked.

  Lily nodded. “Ugarte and Edvard both told me to look
after Novel, and it sounds like they both know what’s coming in our future.”

  “So what does it say about… the other kind?” Jazzy pressed with a grimace.

  “Those shades who devote their powers to the oppression, control and destruction of other beings are known as darksiders,” Lily continued, her lips growing dry. “These shades become inescapably aligned with darkness and obtain painful but powerful abilities such as shapeshifting and apparition. Their great cost is the loss of their soul, which increases with every exercise of selfish power. After some time, this can render many darksiders unpleasing to the eye.”

  “Hence the veil,” Jazzy added with a shiver. “But she’s not telepathic. So that doesn’t explain how she knew that you and Novel were getting it on.”

  Lily caught a laugh in her throat.

  “We are not ‘getting it on’,” she corrected. Jazzy raised a dark brow at her curiously. “Well, not yet anyway.”

  The prospect of more explosive embraces with her mentor was a thought Lily couldn’t afford to entertain, at least not at the same time as worrying about Mother Novel. She gave a loud sigh and put the book aside, lying back on her bed and looking up at the still-scorched ceiling, lit by the dim moonlight creeping in through the window.

  “Have you told Novel about that vision in the mirror?” Jazzy questioned.

  “I’m not sure I should have even told you,” Lily replied, shaking her head. “I’ve probably got it wrong anyway. He said the future isn’t always fixed, so I’m trying not to worry. I don’t really understand these things yet.”

  Lily buried her face under her covers to stop Jazzy seeing the truth in her expression, the one that would reveal how terrified she still was that what she had seen would come true.

  “As if you didn’t have enough problems with the hunters,” Jazzy mused. “Now the mother in law from Hell is on your tail.”

  Lily shut her eyes tightly. “At least I still have a roof over my head, thanks to you,” she said.

  “Thanks to Daddy really,” Jazzy chuckled, “these dorms are supposed to go to the summer school kids, but we’ve got it right through ‘til next year now.”

  “It’s just as well,” Lily mumbled. “I’m not sure I even have a home to go back to any more.”

  “I bet I can think of someone who’d be willing to take you in,” Jazzy said with a giggle.

  Lily reached out to her bedside table and took the chunk of lepidolite stone into her bed, clutching it over her heart as it soothed her nerves. She replaced it moments later with the sudden urge to sleep, letting out a wide, contented yawn.

  “I’m glad I met you Jaz,” Lily said with a smile.

  “Don’t be such a soppy git,” her friend replied.

  Confrontations

  Novel didn’t seem surprised that his mother had been posing as a professor at the university for several years. He confessed that he had always suspected she could change her physical form, though he’d never witnessed proof of it himself. Lily was pleased to find that he wasn’t disturbed by Mother Novel’s disapproval of their relationship either, and he was all the more insistent on them training hard together in the event that she should show up in an effort to cause trouble.

  With no further interruptions from university, Lily was able to sleep more during the day and stay at the Imaginique to train late into the night, honing her water skills to form attacks like the waterwhip she had tried to conjure many months ago. Now, she had command of it as though it were a hefty python, snaking from her arm and snapping at Novel’s gravity shield until she broke straight through it, and sent him flying across the stage. When he landed with a thump, Lily raced to his side and put her hand out to help him up.

  He took it, ignition lighting them up at the touch, but then as he gazed at the orange flames licking around their fingers, he pulled Lily down in a wrench that took her by surprise. She landed softly on top of him as his elemental powers cushioned her fall, looking down at his smooth lips and serious expression. His eyes were burning beneath their aqua hue, waves of emotion surging like a sea set ablaze.

  “I thought you said we weren’t allowed to do this,” she whispered, feeling his strong, warm stomach shift as he took in heavy breaths beneath her. “I’ve been on my best behaviour.”

  “I know,” Novel answered, his hands coming up to envelop her. “You’ve been very good. It’s most disappointing.”

  His face softened as Lily smiled at him. She kissed him deeply and a rush of warm air swept around them where they lay on the old boards of the stage. He clung to her body like she was the only thing left on earth that he cared for, and the orange flames glittered all over his face and hands.

  “I thought I was the womanizing layabout in this family?”

  Novel started and Lily leapt off him as Salem’s voice cut through their fiery moment. The older shade was walking down the left hand aisle of the theatre, with Baptiste and Poppa Seward in tow. Novel got to his feet gracefully and brushed his waistcoat down without meeting his father’s eye. Lily’s eyes fell to Baptiste, whose gaze was cast with defence to the floor, yet there was a glint of his over-sharp teeth as the MC bit hard on his own lip.

  “What news have you?” Novel asked abruptly.

  “We finished the protective casts on the theatre walls,” Poppa explained, his dark face looking grim.

  “That’s four different kinds of enchantments now,” Baptiste added with a little bow of his head. The elegant man still barely looked up as he spoke. “I doubt even a ghost could get in uninvited.”

  “Thank you,” Novel replied, mimicking the same bow.

  “How’s the training going?” Salem asked with a wide grin that suggested he wasn’t really talking about magic.

  Lily cracked the waterwhip from her arm so suddenly that Salem had to leap aside, before it stretched across four rows of seats to attack him.

  “We’re making progress,” she replied with a grin.

  “I like this girl, Lemarick,” Salem said, pushing his tongue into his cheek. “Keep a hold of her.”

  “I intend to,” Novel answered, forcing a faint blush into Lily’s cheeks.

  The three men bid their goodnights to Lily and Novel, and left the auditorium in huddled conversation. Or at least, Poppa and Salem were conversing. Baptiste Du Nord seemed to drag his heels behind them, as though there was something on his mind that he had not voice. Novel turned to Lily and took hold of her hands again, taking a deep drink of her loving gaze as she turned and smiled at him.

  “Are you worried about anything?” he asked softly.

  “Apart from the obvious, no,” Lily answered. “I’m not letting it get to me, but it’s mostly thanks to that stone you gave me.”

  Novel nodded. “A calm heart’s essential to the best casting,” he said, “but I think there’s something else in your eyes. Something you’ve not told me.”

  The mirror vision had become Lily’s newest nightmare, no longer concerned with being buried alive or choked by the elements. Her greatest fear now was that Novel would not survive the fight that was coming. No matter how she tried to bolster the strength, or how comfortable Novel made her feel, she still hadn’t found the courage to speak of it, and this moment was no exception. The sight of the illusionist’s pale, lifeless face lit by bright sunshine haunted her with unshakeable force.

  “You don’t come out in the daylight much, do you?” she asked.

  Novel’s little grimace told her he was unhappy with the change of topic, but he entertained her question nonetheless.

  “Seldom if ever,” he answered. “That jaunt to Colchester with you was the first time I’ve seen proper sunlight in years. It was ghastly.”

  As she watched Novel pull his mouth in a twist of revulsion, it seemed so unlikely that Lily’s sunlit vision could come true. She put her hand up to stroke his high cheekbone, tracing down his jaw before giving him another tender kiss.

  “Jazzy wants me to go out Saturday and do the human thing for an aft
ernoon.”

  “You may as well,” Novel replied, holding her close. “You’ve trained plenty these last few weeks. I’m not sure there’s much more I can do with you.”

  Lily raised an eyebrow at him and kissed him again quickly. Novel started with a quivering lip.

  “I meant magically,” he stammered, “without rising to the next level of power and alerting the hunters to our location.”

  “Of course you did,” Lily replied with a grin.

  When Saturday came, Lily did spend the first half hour out in the sun wishing that she was still training at the theatre, not to mention stealing kisses from Novel when he let down his guard. But, as the day wore on, she managed to relax back into girl chat with Jazzy and enjoy the warmth of the rare summer sun. To alleviate her fears, the girls had settled in Memorial Park, and the highest spire of the Imaginique was securely in view as Lily reclined. They were sitting on a patch of bright green grass eating ice-cream, when Lily dropped a blob of rum and raisin flavour onto her scarlet top.

  “Oh great,” she mumbled, trying to rub the errant stain away. “I was going to keep this on for training tonight.”

  “You’re magic mad,” Jazzy replied quietly, careful to look around before she said the ‘m’ word in a public place. “Or is it the Monsieur that’s got you hooked?”

  “Can’t it be both?” Lily said with a grin.

  She paused for a moment as a strange feeling overcame her, staring down at the stain on her top. When she raised her head again she found Jazzy watching her with concern, and gave a little laugh.

  “Déjà vu,” she explained. “Weird feeling, isn’t it?”

  “Totally,” Jazzy replied, but suddenly her eyes widened as she looked out across the park. “Oh God. Look who’s coming!”

  Lily panicked for a moment, her stomach sinking when she saw Michael marching towards them across the grass. She hadn’t seen or spoken to him since their argument at Guttersnipes, save for a few times when she’d hidden from him in the cafeteria, and he had long since stopped attending the Theatre Imaginique’s performances. But now he was traipsing across picnics and people playing Frisbee to reach her, a determined look on his sour young face.