The Book Of Shade (Shadeborn 1) (2 page)

Room 13

The dorm was bigger than Lily had expected, and the sight of a kitchenette was more than welcome. She rushed to the counter no sooner than Jazzy had unpacked her kettle, filling it instantly to brew up. As the water began to boil, she looked at her measly old suitcase compared to Jazzy’s numerous boxes and bags. They lay scattered over half the floor whilst her roomie was unpacking a purple bedspread and making it up. Lily’s eyes fell upon her own plain blue pillow and duvet set, pre-ordered from the Student Accommodation service to be here when she arrived. Her mum had declined to drive her here, and there was no money to hire a proper van. Lily only had what she could carry and she found herself immensely grateful that Jazzy was willing to share her appliances.

“I’m a tea fiend,” Lily warned as she started to fumble for cups, tea bags and sugar. “How do you take yours?”

“Ooh, sugar but no milk!” Jazzy called with her head stuck in her inside-out duvet.

As the drinks brewed, Lily managed to rescue Jazzy from the depths of the bedclothes. Soon they were sat amongst half-unpacked clothes, toiletries and appliances, sitting opposite one another and sipping tea in the light of the late afternoon.

“Do you miss home yet?” Jazzy asked.

“Not as much as I thought I would,” Lily answered with a smile. “Is that bad?”

“Nah,” Jazzy answered, shaking her head. “It’s your new freedom right? You’re bound to be happy.”

Lily nodded thoughtfully.
Freedom indeed.
Her mother was heinously unhappy about her branching out to Lancashire for university, a full three hundred miles from their Essex home. Lily would have gone even farther if Edinburgh hadn’t turned her down, but Piketon seemed as good a distance as any at the time. With closed eyes, Lily could still see her mother’s crossed arms and resolute face at Colchester Town Station that same morning, and she wondered how long it would take for that image to be forced from her memory.

“What about you?” She asked Jazzy, trying to shake herself from that disapproving face.

“I was a boarder at Rossall from eleven, so I’m used to being without the old folks,” Jazzy explained with a happy shrug. “What I
am
going to enjoy is not having a Housemaster telling you when to put your lights out.”

“Eep,” Lily said, “that sounds worse than my place. So the old folks are where exactly?”

“Mumbai,” Jazzy said as she drained her tea mug. “Daddy’s got a big business there and of course Mummy didn’t want to leave him. I could have gone back there for uni, but…” She set her cup down, picking up a teddy bear with an ‘I Heart Blackpool’ crest on its shirt. “I guess I feel too English to live in India now, you know?”

It was endearing how open and friendly she was, and Lily knew by her smile she was sincere.

“I know Essex is a lot closer than India, but I get what you mean,” she replied. “I felt like a right fish out of water, wanting to go away to a proper uni instead of a party school, you know?”

“Yeah,” Jazzy chuckled, “if someone had told me I’d have to share with an Essex girl, well, I wouldn’t have expected you.”

“I do a bit of nails, a bit of lippy, but none of that Oompa Loompa spray-tan crap,” Lily promised.

“So if I find orange fingerprints on my kettle, it wasn’t you?”

“Right.”

They laughed together as Lily relaxed back onto her new bed, finding the mattress surprisingly thick. It wouldn’t take her long to settle in, or to unpack for that matter, so she made up her mind to help Jazzy with all the kitchen stuff instead.

“Are you not going to that club tonight?” Jazzy asked when they were trying to repair her fallen-apart toaster.

Lily shook her head. “I actually bothered to read my schedule,” she began proudly, “and there’s a welcome meeting for Modern History first thing tomorrow morning. I don’t fancy meeting my new prof with a hangover, especially since it’s probably going to be my favourite part of the course.”

“Good thinking,” Jazzy replied. It was hard to see that she was visibly relieved. “What about the Illustrious Minds? It sounds really cool, all the stuff they do on that flyer.”

Lily scooped up the lime leaflet that Michael had made such a show of handing to her, scanning it for details, but not really taking them in. She could feel Jazzy’s hopefulness a mile off.

“I suppose I could come with you to the first one, just to see.”

“Yeah, just to see Michael.”

Jazzy grinned a dazzling grin, refocusing on the toaster. Lily flipped the flyer over to see if there was more on the back, only to find a scrawled note in black Sharpie. It read
CALL ME
, and there a mobile number etched underneath.

“Cheeky git!” Lily said aloud. Jazzy’s eyes found the number and she nudged her friend with a look of triumph.

“I told you!” she exclaimed. “He was so into you!”

“Yeah,” Lily said with a curled lip, “and I wonder how many other girls got one of these from the bottom of the pile?”

Welcome To Modern History

Lily sat in the very centre of the seminar room, watching the bright morning sun filter in through the half drawn blinds. It was five minutes before the welcome was due to begin, and the room contained less people than Lily had fingers and toes. A few more dragged their feet in slowly as the minutes ticked away, some more enthused than others, but all with a general first-day gloom. A guy with black-as-coal skin edged in uncertainly and seated himself right at the front. Lily watched him tapping his pen against his leg repeatedly, until she realised that someone was speaking to her. A registration form and a welcome letter were being passed around. Lily took her copy and scanned the letter first.

On paper, the professor was everything Lily had hoped she would be. Victoria Havers: MEd, PhD, resident expert on nineteenth century architecture, culture and literature. Her credentials and pursuits gave Lily a tingle of hope as she examined the letter more carefully, until the creak of a door caught her ears. Lily looked up, towards a private door down at the front of the lecture theatre, just in time to see a smartly-dressed woman entering and carrying a huge stack of books.

Professor Havers was a worse-for-wear fortysomething with a curly mass of auburn frizz atop her head. She was petite, even from the distance where her students were seated, and Lily marvelled inwardly at how such a little woman had the strength to carry the twenty-odd textbooks she had deposited on her huge desk. The professor pinched the bridge of her long, thin nose for a moment, then she looked up into the theatre to survey the amount of students collected thus far. Lily watched her release a disappointed little sigh, but then she broke into an enthusiastic grin all the same.

“Thank you for bothering to show up for the welcome and early registration everyone,” she began, her accent suitably clear and posh. “I am Professor Victoria Havers. Call me Vicky, and you won’t be the first student I’ve burned alive.”

Lily and few other people laughed quietly.

“You have a form each to complete so I know what degree path you’re following and such, but don’t bother with it just yet.”

The guy at the very front of the room stopped filling in his, looking up to catch the professor’s wry look in his direction.

“Instead, take a look at this.”

Havers fired up a projector, and the whiteboard came to the life with a picture that slowly grew in focus. The professor scuttled off to shut the blinds, blocking the daylight as the room suddenly fell into silence. A corpse stared at the students from the display. It was a very old sepia photograph of a dead body, propped up on a chair like it was supposed to still be living. It was only the slack expression and the soulless eyes that really gave the scene away. The body was that of a woman, wearing all the finery of her time, but on the side of her neck she had a very dark bruise that was circular in shape.

“Does anyone know what we call this?” Professor Havers asked.

There was no response.
Now’s your chance to shine, Coltrane.
Lily slowly raised her hand. Havers found her and pointed expectantly.

“Memento Mori,” Lily explained with a suddenly dry mouth. “The Victorians took photographs of their dead to have a lasting memory of them before they got buried.”

Other people had started to look away from the projection now that they knew what it was. The boy at the front held his gaze without so much as a hesitation.

“Very good,” Havers said with a little smile. “So here’s a mystery for you. This picture was taken the day after this lovely young lady passed on. Her husband claimed that she was struck by lightning at the side of her neck, where you see this mark.”

Another click of the projector zoomed in on the neck section of the old photo. The dark circle on the woman’s throat was now in far better focus, making it look much more like a burn than a bruise. Lily wondered idly how long it would have taken the lightning to kill her, then tried to force the thought back out, like she was spitting a sour taste from her tongue. It was the last thing she needed to get stuck in her mind with the kind of nightmares she was prone to.

“Her husband was lying,” Havers revealed. “This woman was most definitely electrocuted, but she was murdered by the hand of man.”

The room was caught in silent fascination. Lily leaned forward in her seat, watching the professor give her new subjects an almost regal, satisfied smile.

“Your task, before I see you next, is to tell me how I know that, just from looking at this picture.”

Lily made a scribbling note on the side of her welcome letter.

“When I have your completed forms, I’ll be putting you into smaller study groups,” the professor continued, flicking off the projection screen again, “so check your email for a date and time. We’ll have some little tutorials so I can get to know you better before classes begin. They’re mandatory, just in case you were thinking of asking.”

And so began the process of actually filling in the boring registration forms. A little while later Lily handed hers in, eager to get back to her laptop and take a look at electrocution wounds online. She’d have to remember to pre-warn Jazzy that it was homework before she ran the risk of looking like a psycho on their second day of living together. At the professor’s desk, she was turning to leave when she smashed into an impossibly tall figure.

“I’m so sorry Miss,” said the giant, stumbling back to reveal that he was the boy who’d been sat at the front on his own for the whole session. He smiled apologetically with bright teeth and big hazel eyes that reminded Lily of those of a faithful puppy.

“It’s cool, don’t worry,” Lily said, taken aback by his politeness.

The boy dropped his own form onto the desk and sloped off, with Lily watching him go. He wore old brown sandals at the ends of his jeans and, as he exited the room, Lily was surprised to see that they encased a pair of tattooed feet.

The Illustrious Minds Literary Society

The Newbie Meet had promised a free late lunch, so Lily and Jazzy were happy to see a buffet table as they entered the meeting room for the IMLS, at the top of the Tower Block. A few people were seated at tables, eating and chatting so casually that they couldn’t possibly be new, so Lily guided Jazzy to the food and tried to disguise her awkwardness by filling up a plate with various sandwiches. They sat down in imitation of the other more relaxed people, who Lily now noticed were all girls. Michael was nowhere to be seen.

“Do you think he’s just the bait to trick us into joining?” Lily whispered.

“I think the fact that you like books is supposed to make you join,” Jazzy answered quite sincerely.

Lily gave her a dark look, tucking into a slice of coronation chicken. “At least the food’s good,” she mumbled.

Jazzy nodded her agreement, turning her attention to a girl that had stood up at front of the room. She looked a little older than Lily, with red hair that had probably come out of a bottle, and she cleared her throat several times before she was actually ready to speak.

“Well, um, since the senior members aren’t here yet,” she said with a stammer, “I, um… As Vice President of the society, I welcome you to-”

A noisy group of people suddenly entering the room drowned the poor girl out. Six highly enthused girls and one familiar, shaggy-haired blonde guy piled into the space and headed straight for the buffet. The shy redhead sank down into her seat again amid the din. The new group were loud and animated, all apparently on the same topic.

“That bride thing was freaksville!”

“What about the acrobats? Those guys have, like, no bones at all I swear.”

“I think he must have had his feet tied to that tightrope, you know.”

“Oh you’ve got an answer for everything Bianca!”

“Almost everything. Bet you can’t explain the Monsieur.”

“
Nobody
can explain the Monsieur!”

Lily’s eyes fell on Michael as he loaded up a plateful of food, spinning to focus his pretty gaze on a girl nearby.

“Yo! Yo!” Michael mocked as he sauntered through the tables. “What up Molly G? You have a good summer in da hood?”

The girl he was talking to looked anything but ghetto. She was a tall, slim blonde who seemed like she would favour heading out for a run over cracking the spine of a book, and her track pants and sports vest were new and expensive-looking. She turned her head, a blonde pony-tail flicking over her shoulder, and rolled her eyes at Michael with a little grin.

“I’ll bet it was cooler than yours, Mikey,” she retorted, balancing on the back two legs of her chair. She started pulling wayward tresses back towards her pony-tail, until her blue eyes found Lily watching her. “Oh hi,” she began in a much happier tone, “Are you girls looking to join up?”

Michael followed Molly’s gaze, his eyes lighting up when he caught Lily’s vision flicker to him for a moment.

“Probably,” Jazzy replied. “I’m Jazzy, this is Lily.”

“Molly,” the girl said, patting her chest, “and this idiot is Michael Sampson. Avoid him at all costs.”

“Too late,” Michael replied, sidling through the tables to sit on one just opposite Lily. “We’ve already met.” He grinned at her and offered his plate. “Sausage roll?”

“I’m good thanks.” Lily suppressed the urge to giggle at the way he was trying to make baked goods into a flirting device.

Molly brought her plate over and sat down next to Jazzy with a warm smile.

“What are they all going on about over there?” Jazzy asked her, nodding towards the other girls who were still crowded at the buffet.

“Oh, it’s the monthly theatre trip,” Molly said with a wave of her hand. “It was last night. I didn’t go.”

“Aw you should have Molls,” Michael interjected with a sandwich halfway to his lips. “It was freaking sick. They had these holograms of dead bodies and they were, like, dancing whilst this crazy old gypsy conducted them. The effects were wicked.”

Lily listened with a frown. “How is that literary?” she asked.

Michael gave her another cheeky smile. “We have to use up the budget somehow. If you join you’ll get a free ticket every month. It’s awesome.” He leapt off the table and started fumbling in his jeans pockets, affording Lily a pretty nice view of his taught backside as he turned and searched his jacket. “Here, this is next time’s.”

He handed her a crumpled playbill, and she had barely opened it before she felt Jazzy invading her space. Even as her eyes roved over the venue name’s the others around her were already consumed by conversation.

“The Theatre Imaginique?” Jazzy read over her shoulder.

“One show a month, by invitation only,” Molly said, pointing at the small print on the page. “It sounds like I missed a good one.”

“I reckon this one’ll be better,” Michael added with an eager nod. “I remember the Bladeplay act last year; they nearly cut each other’s heads off.”

He leaned down towards Lily until she could smell spice of the Lynx Africa deodorant seeping out of his shirt. His eyes crashed like ocean waves, glittering at her as he flashed another perfect smile.

“What do you think Lils? Are you in?”

It couldn’t hurt to try it.