The Bloodshade Encounters & The Songspinner (Shadeborn Book 2) (5 page)

The Inventor

Edvard had been working in the Populaire opera house at Montmartre for several months, though Lemarick had only been able to escape the rigours of his training a handful of times to visit him there. Over the last century, Montmartre had transformed from a mining facility into a cosmopolitan marketplace: the prime location for dreamers, artists and rebels to congregate. Lemarick couldn’t claim to be any of those things, so when Ed’s new automobile rolled up to the opera house entrance, he felt more than a little uncomfortable with the crowd that it attracted.

“Is there a performance on?” Lemarick asked. “There seems to be an awful lot of people here for this time in the morning.”

Edvard stopped the roar of his engine, leaning back over his seat with his most self-indulgent smile.

“No, no,” he said with unabashed false modesty, “They’re just here to see me.”

He alighted into the sea of suits and frocks that were clamouring to admire his vehicle. Ugarte just rolled her eyes and followed him, making Lemarick the last to depart. The bright sunlight and the rickety journey had made his thoughts a little hazy and the young shade passed through the hollering horde without really taking them in. He heard only snatches of the praise they were delivering to his friend as the voices cried out from all angles.

“You have saved me a spot at the front, haven’t you Eddie?”

“I don’t know how you’ve done it, Monsieur, but I can scarcely wait to see it!”

“Mark this name, ladies and gentlemen: Schoonjans. The next great inventor!”

“Edison, eat your heart out!”

It was a slow process by which Lemarick realised that the crowd was not talking about the automobile. Edvard led the throng of people into the splendid golden foyer of the Populaire, where a circular display was guarded by a thick crimson curtain. Standing beside the veiled structure were a gaggle of dancing girls, whose costumes consisted of more beads than they did fabric. Each one had a golden veil draped across their cheekbones, leaving only their eyes visible between the veil and the shimmering headdresses that crowned their slicked back hair.

“Do you know any old tricks to get Ed off an obsession?” Ugarte asked Lemarick as they reached the line-up of girls. “I don’t like where this fancy for harem girls is taking him.”

Lemarick did not answer, for something about the women had taken his attention away. Ugarte gave a huff, muttering something about all men being the same, but Lemarick’s pale blue eyes had locked on one young woman in the group, one who was deliberately avoiding his gaze. Some ringlets of her dark hair had escaped the lacquer and the headdress, ebony locks drifting across an impossibly pale brow as she tilted her head down towards the floor. Her dark eyes and long lashes sparked a rush of panic in Lemarick’s chest. He raced to Edvard’s side and threw a hand to his shoulder.

“That girl in the centre of your troupe,” he began, trying not to lose sight of her in the mass. “Do I know her?”

Ed laughed, batting his friend’s hand away and keeping his smile turned on the crowd.

“I don’t know, do you?” he chuckled. “They all look the same to me.”

Lemarick Novel had been walking the earth for over a century. He had seen many faces as the years went by, yet this girl’s was one he felt he knew. He was just starting to consider exactly how improper it would seem to ask the young woman to remove her veil, when Edvard clapped his hands together loudly, drawing silence from the eager crowd. The shade was resplendent in his yellow tailored suit as he flashed his charming grin at the patrons, one hand resting on the crimson curtain that covered the stage behind him.

“Madames and Monsieurs, it is my delight to present, for your viewing pleasure, my latest creation: L’orchestre Mecanique!”

His attention torn away from the mysterious dancer at last, Lemarick watched as the heavy curtains were swept aside to reveal a raised stage full of musical instruments. An entire orchestra’s worth of instruments sat on the stage, but there were no seats or spaces provided for musicians to take them up. Instead there was only Ed, who turned his back on his waiting audience and stood before the stage in the style of a conductor. He raised his empty hands, fingers extended like those of a seasoned pianist.

“One, two, three, four, one, two, three
and
-”

The instruments had barely been playing themselves before the crowd broke into rapturous applause. Edvard turned to receive yet more praise but met first with Lemarick’s suspicious, questioning look. He gave his friend a smug smile in reply, his bright eyes screaming ‘I’ll tell you later’. Ed reached for Ugarte’s slender hand and guided her out in front of the stage, starting to dance to the melody that his contraptions were now unfolding. Lemarick could feel the shademagic humming from the band as other patrons formed couples and took to the floor, but he knew it would be quite some time before he’d have the opportunity to question Ed about his curious new creations.

“Would you care to dance, Monsieur?”

The question shocked Lemarick almost as much as the sight of the girl who’d asked it. Once all the established couples had taken to the floor, there were a lot of bachelors left over, and Lemarick now understood that the dancing girls of the opera house were present to make up the numbers. The girl who had asked him to dance still kept her eyes to the ground, her pale brow creased in worry as she awaited his response. They must have known each other, for Lemarick knew he was not the type that girls were inclined to dance with.

“I have never danced before,” he replied in earnest. “Is it easy?”

The familiar girl gave a nervous chuckle, shuffling so that her beaded costume gave a jingle.

“You shan’t know if you’ll take to it, unless you try it,” she said.

If he was going to keep the girl present until he could fathom where he knew her from, then Lemarick had no choice but to try something new. He offered a gloved hand to the dark-haired ingénue and let her lead him towards the sound of violins.

Something New

The girl told Lemarick that she was not allowed to give him her name and, save for explaining the steps of the waltz to him, she said very little else for the duration of the dance. When the music came to a halt, the dancing girls raced away and out of the foyer entirely, making it impossible for Lemarick to pursue more information as to where he might have met the girl before. All he knew was that she was pale, young and French, which didn’t narrow the pool of his acquaintances down an awful lot.

What Lemarick had learned, however, was that he had a natural grace for dance. The itch to replay the music and practise the steps to perfection plagued the young shade, even after the rest of Ed’s doting fans had left the foyer. When they were gone, Ugarte sealed the entrance doors to give the shade trio some privacy, unleashing a sigh of relief that could have blown the doors off a cathedral.

“No more spectacles for a while, Ed,” she said, half-pleading, half-chiding. “You’re getting a fat head from all the applause.”

Lemarick had never been prone to jealousy, but even he found himself in awe of the recognition that Ed had received for his invention. Training his own skills with Mother only ever brought Lemarick praise from his house and his own kind. Out in the wider world, he was little more than a conspicuously pale gentleman who hardly ever smiled. He was starting to wonder if there wasn’t something more to life than science and the shadeborn, and he had thought about it more and more when the music and rhythm of the dance beat in time to his elevated heart.

“Come and see how it works, Lemarick,” Ed offered with an eager wave.

Ugarte looked fit to burst with exhausted frustration, but when Ed swept her along in his arms, the young woman’s resolve began to soften again. The inventor pulled back the casing of a nearby viola to reveal its secrets. Ed had called the orchestra ‘Mecanique’ for the adoring crowd, but now Lemarick looked into the hollow of the instrument with a puzzled frown.

“Are those… crystals?” he asked.

“Rose quartz,” Ed replied proudly. “I imbued them with my gravity powers and the instruments did the rest, once I set them to begin. They pull their own strings using my stored energy, and a little musical knowhow, of course.”

Lemarick crouched in front of the display and opened the casings of a few violins, running his fingertips over the prism-shaped crystals attached to their insides. He could feel the hum of Ed’s power within them, a new excitement rising in his heart and mind as his curiosity grew. The concept was immense: science and magic and music as one.

“This is amazing,” he breathed.

“I know,” Edvard beamed.

“Don’t you start, Lemarick,” Ugarte beamed. “He’s had enough hubris for one day.”

Lemarick could hardly think straight with the rush of possibilities that struck his mind all at once. There were so many new avenues of magic for him to explore, yet so many things he needed to master and understand before he could explore them. He needed to experience music, rhythm, movement, pitch, tone and so much more. The chiming of a clock broke Lemarick from his vivid aspirations. As he checked his silver pocketwatch, however, the giddy mirth in his stomach was quickly replaced by what felt like a lump of lead.

“I ought to head back,” he sighed. “I promised Mother I’d return after lunch for my training.”

Ed made a loud scoffing sound.

“Would it really be so awful if you got on her bad side for once?” he asked.

Lemarick gave him a look that silenced all doubt, leaving the trio mute in the quiet, vast foyer for several awkward moments. No-one would be so bold as to broach the subject of Mother Novel in full. Her wrath was known throughout entire generations of the shadeborn, and Lemarick himself was a walking miracle to have lived with her for so many years and still be in her favour. Lemarick knew that his friends wanted him to walk away from Mother and devise his own path. After what he’d seen that afternoon, he was starting to wish it were possible to do just that. Ugarte fumbled with the folds of her dress, clearing her throat to break the tension.

“Well, are you free any of the evenings this week?” she suggested.

Lemarick nodded gingerly.

“Tomorrow, I think,” he answered.

“Aha!” Ed said, delving into his jacket and producing a slip of fine green vellum. “Then come to the opera and see my instruments play! Tomorrow is opening night!”

In all other circumstances before that moment, Lemarick Novel would have politely declined such a frivolous invitation. The pursuit of power had always been so important that the pursuit of art had never before entered his thinking. Now, he took the emerald ticket and drank in its details with a vigour he had never known.

“I do believe I shall,” he replied with the ghost of a grin.

The Reunion

The Populaire was well-named, for on opening night its seats were packed with hundreds of Paris’s most esteemed clientele. Lemarick’s ticket directed him to a private box where he found Ugarte waiting, along with some wealthy-looking gentlemen who were casting her frequent leering glances. The Spanish beauty was evidently grateful to seat Lemarick between herself and the gathered businessmen, affording him a spectacular view of the stage and the pit that contained the musician-less orchestra below. The top of Ed’s sandy hair was visible where he stood waiting for the opera to begin.

The performance was Carmen, a tale set in Seville and, at the first sign of the traditional Spaniard music, Ugarte began to ease at Lemarick’s side. Lemarick, on the other hand, was growing more inspired by the moment. He had never experienced music to this degree: the lights, colours and motions of the theatre awoke in him a new zest for artistry that he never would have guessed that he possessed. He felt as though he wanted to be involved in the goings-on of the stage, imagining himself as the director, the performers and as the conductor in Edvard’s place.

That was until the ballet began. It was traditional, Ugarte informed him, for an opera to have a ballet, but the arrival of this sudden change in pace brought with it the harem of dancing girls that he had seen the day before. Nearest to his side of the stage, Lemarick spotted the mysterious girl he had danced with, her unmistakeable dark locks setting her apart from the fairer-haired girls in the troupe. He craned his neck hard to see her face, but the height of the theatre box prevented him from more than the sight of the top of her head as she spun and pranced in time to Edvard’s notes.

*

The opera was lengthy, but Lemarick savoured every moment. After the performance, the entire contents of his theatre box were invited backstage to take drinks with the conductor, so Lemarick followed the trail of now-half-drunk businessmen down through the stairwells that led to the non-public parts of the Populaire. The post-opera atmosphere behind the scenes was one of pure elation, and everywhere Lemarick looked there were happy performers congratulating one another on a show well-performed. Once more the desire to be part of their world consumed him as he gazed around, so much so that he lost sight of the group he was supposed to be following. He thought he saw the last flicker of Ugarte’s crimson gown disappearing down a corridor ahead, so Lemarick picked up his pace to trail her and hopefully find the room he was seeking.

If it was Ugarte, then she had vanished without a trace. The corridor that the young shade had entered was totally barren, in stark contrast to the busy scenes of mirth Lemarick had just left behind. He might have turned back and explored another avenue at once, save for the sight at the end of the corridor, the sight that froze him in his tracks.

“Entrez, Monsieur.”

The dancing girl was there, in the farthest doorway, for just a moment. Her dark eyes fixed on Lemarick as her rouged lips spoke the welcoming words. And then she was gone, in a flurry of pale skin and jet-black curls. Lemarick stepped forward, determined to know who the temptress was and what she was after. He felt the hum of his powers rising in his veins as he strode down the corridor and turned sharply into what he soon discovered was a dressing room.

“Do you remember me yet, magic man?” the girl asked with a chuckle.

She was seated on a chaise longue beside her make-up mirror, dressed in a sheer red gown that was even more revealing than the beaded creation she had worn the day before. She was no longer the coy, retiring beauty full of excuses. Now she lounged brazenly, closed-lipped and smiling at Lemarick with a knowing look that was far beyond her years. As a shade, Lemarick knew the sight of an old soul in a young body all too well, yet he could not place her, even now that he had seen the delicate beauty of her face as a whole.

He took one step farther into the room before the door slammed shut behind him. Reeling on his heel, Lemarick found himself face to face with an even more disturbing sight.

“My dear girl, I fear your face is not quite so memorable as
mine
.”

The gentleman blocking Lemarick’s only path of escape was covered in horrendous burns. Where his skin lay undamaged it was a pale brown shade, his lips cracked and dry when he offered Lemarick a smile. His teeth were razor-sharp like those of a beast and, from a century-old place in his memory, Lemarick began to speak the name that raced to the forefront of his mind.

“Yannick Ferve,” he said with a twisted grimace.

The vampire lord revelled in Lemarick’s look of disgust, laughing in a dark tone as he took one limping step towards the young shade.

“It is not every day that the Lord of Paris gets to reunite with the man who gave him his signature look,” he mused with a grin. “It pleases me that shades live for so long. It gives one plenty of time to prepare for revenge.”

Lemarick glanced to his right, where the sultry girl in red was sidling up to him. A pang of sadness mixed with his growing adrenaline.

“Time has been kind to you, Elise,” he said.

“And to you, you handsome thing,” she replied with a wicked giggle.

Before Lemarick could utter another word, something huge and heavy connected with the back of his head. He went crashing to the ground, the sight of the dressing room turning blacker by the moment as his consciousness slipped away. The limping stance of Yannick was visible in the doorway as Elise’s delicate ballet slippers passed him by.

“Come, sweet one,” Yannick purred, “We have a theatre to destroy.”