The Book Of Shade (Shadeborn 1) (5 page)

Dinner and a Show

“I’m sorry about this, but my father has invited you both to dinner before I show you around,” Lawrence said as the three young people walked down Old Mill Lane towards the theatre. “He’s kind of the boss of me. I can’t really say no, and he’s so excited that I have new friends…”

“Aww, that’s really sweet,” Jazzy said. Lawrence gave her a bashful grin.

“We don’t mind a free meal,” Lily added, thinking rather selfishly of her dwindling bank balance. “Where’s your place?”

“In the theatre,” Lawrence replied simply.

“What?” Lily began with a frown. “You live here? Inside the theatre?”

“Of course,” he answered. “We all do.”

“That’s amazing,” Jazzy added, following him eagerly as he went up and knocked on the main doors.

Lily realised that it might not be quite so amazing, as she remembered the host of other weird and wonderful performers who would also be living within those walls. It was the weird variety that troubled her more than the wonderful ones, and she was not to be disappointed on that score. The most hideous man she had ever seen in her life opened the door to let them in.
Worst fears confirmed.
He was little and hunched with a wrinkly face and dirty, matted hair. When Lawrence greeted him, he said nothing, snorting loudly and clearly enough that Lily could practically hear the snot shooting back up the canal of his nose. Then, to her horror, he appeared to hock it into his throat and swallow it. Her stomach flipped, just the once, as she hurried down through the foyer after her friends.

“Try to ignore Belnerg,” Lawrence guided once they were out of earshot, “the rest of us do.”

“I can see why,” Lily scoffed.

“Who is he?” Jazzy asked, her own nerves making her squirm as they followed Lawrence down a corridor marked ‘Private: No Entry’.

“The theatre caretaker,” Lawrence answered, “but he also sells the tickets.”

Lily thought it was a wonder that anyone bought them if they had to look at that creepy, crinkled face in order to do so. She was about ready to call the whole thing off when the sound of bright, happy laughter suddenly invaded her ears. The private corridor broke out into a large but cosy kitchen and dining space where a big man with skin as dark as Lawrence’s was tittering like a schoolgirl. A woman in an apron was frying up something that smelled delicious as she too enjoyed the joke, and it was a moment before Lily recognised her as Lady Eva, the Gypsy Madame. She was much softer and wholesome here than on the stage, festooned in her flowery dress and the hairnet that kept control of her dark, wayward locks.

“Hey, Lawrie’s home!” The big man was far too similar to Lawrence to be anyone but Mr Seward. He clapped his son on the shoulder and beamed with bright white teeth at Lily and Jazzy. “And these are your friends huh? You call me Poppa, kids, everyone does.”

Everyone was introduced as Lady Eva gave them a similar welcome. They sat down at a beautiful mahogany table as the inviting aroma of dinner made Lily’s stomach give a grumble. It was only five o’clock, but her hunger had awoken from the sheer prospect of a real home-cooked meal after seven weeks away from home. Lily’s mother may not have done much in terms of conversation at the dinner table, but her cooking had always been worth the tension. Now, it looked as though she would get both good food and a warm atmosphere to eat it in. Poppa Seward took it upon himself to interrogate Jazzy first, gently pushing her to tell him about what she was studying and what she thought of the previous month’s show.

“You have a very talented son, sir,” she said at the end of her interview. Lawrence shot her another shy smile from his place beside his father.

“Oh no,” he added quickly, “it’s all Poppa. The arrangement, the ideas, the music. He does everything.”

Poppa waved his hand at his boy. “It’s all in the body!” he exclaimed, slapping Lawrence hard in his abs. The boy didn’t so much as flinch whilst the impact echoed in the room. “If you don’t keep the vessel primed, then the whole act goes up in smoke.”

Lady Eva made everyone jump as she suddenly rang a big brass bell, which hung by the door from which they had entered.

“Dinner!” she shouted in a shrill tone.

The sound of feet overhead was instant. The Slovakian twins were the first to arrive and pull up a space beside Poppa Seward. They nodded and smiled politely at the new dinner guests, but they were clearly far more occupied with getting their food down their necks than making dinner conversation, and soon got into a squabble about whose dinner knife was bigger. Lily tried not to think about the ferocity she had seen when they’d used much larger blades on the stage.

“Good afternoon,” said an ethereal voice at the door. “It is so very nice to have new company for dinner.”

The voice belonged to the bony dancer who had worn one of the green leotards in the September show. She gave a graceful bow and came to sit beside Lily, her gown of expensive silk and velvet floating around as she settled ready to eat.

“Zita Bosko,” she said, extending one thin, pale hand to Lily, “ballet, dance, contortion.”

Lily introduced herself and Jazzy in return, adding: “You were very good at the last show.”

“Ah, so nice to have fans to talk to,” Zita said with an affected grasp of the beaded necklace at her chest. “You will enjoy Eva’s cooking very much, I think. She is the mistress of good taste.”

It was true. Lady Eva served a braised slab of pork that was both salty and sweet, with spiced potatoes and a gravy that had a different flavour every time you put a lashing to your lips. Rasmus and Erasmus were on their second helping of the meat before Lily had even managed to taste the ginger-boiled carrots that accompanied the veritable feast. As the table settled into the meal, Lily started to feel an awkward silence rising. She wondered if the theatre troupe always ate in the quiet, or if it was the presence of two strangers that was preventing the little tableful from conversing. It felt like they were all waiting for something to happen, for someone to initiate a topic.

A door slammed somewhere nearby, followed closely by the click of large, heavy heels.

“You might have told me sooner, you know!” snapped a feminine voice. It cut the air like a whip-crack as the voice’s owner entered the kitchen, but then became a sudden, soft purr as it added “Oh look, we have guests.”

This was the other dancer, the dark, flirtatious one. To Lily’s mind she was a cross between Nicole Scherzinger and Dita Von Teese, all curves and exotic beauty wrapped up in a weird shiny catsuit that didn’t look very practical for eating your dinner. She stopped in the doorway to flash a catlike smile at Lily and Jazzy, only to be pushed through it by whoever she had been arguing with some moments before.

“It would help, Dharma, if you would be so kind as to consult me about your acts before you arrange them in future.”

Everyone at the table stood up at the sound of the second voice. Jazzy did too, but it took Lily a moment to decide whether she wanted to or not. Dharma stumbled out of the way to reveal the vicious sneer on the face of Monsieur Novel. He went straight to a seat at the very end of the table, right next to Lady Eva and the oven, after which everyone sat down again and resumed their dinner.
Who is he? The King?
Lily had not stood up, and now she was glad she hadn’t.

Novel looked different without his stage make-up, though his high cheekbones and thin face were much the same. He was actually quite young to behold, perhaps in his late twenties, except for the shock of white hair that was still carefully arranged atop his head, save for one unruly curl that was creeping down his brow. Without the coal-black lines to mask them, his lips were a rosy shade and his eyebrows were so fair that they were almost non-existent. He was pale, but not the ghostly white hue that he had been during his turn on the stage. He looked a little softer, a little more human under the yellow glow of the kitchen lights.

But his eyes held that same, piercing glow when they suddenly snapped in Lily’s direction down the table.

“Hey Lemarick,” Poppa said as Lily quickly looked away. “What do you think? My boy’s made these lovely friends already, and he’s only one month in at the school!”

“How fortunate for him,” Novel replied without smiling. “A pleasure to meet you, ladies.”

When Lily looked back, the illusionist’s eyes were firmly fixed on Eva and her oven again.

“It’s nice to have more girls at the table,” Dharma added. “We get a bit outnumbered with all these big strapping boys around.”

The Slovak Twins gave her simultaneous grins of approval, but Dharma’s eyes were still on Novel as she took a place opposite him. Lady Eva gave her a plate of the delicious pork dinner, but when she returned with Novel’s meal, it was not the same. She placed before him a full English breakfast and a large pile of buttered toast.

“Thank you Eva,” he said, his eyes flashing down the table once more at Lily before he began to eat.

“So where’s your MC, Poppa Seward?” Lily asked, putting all her focus on him suddenly. “Monsieur Baptiste isn’t it?”

“He’s asleep.”

The answer had not come from Poppa. Lemarick Novel hadn’t looked up from his breakfast, but he had definitely answered the question. Lily looked at him again, at a relative loss for words.

“It’s a funny time to sleep,” she said as it came into her head, feeling everyone’s eyes on her at once.

“It is, isn’t it?” Novel replied, a piece of bacon hovering at his lips.

“I would have thought you students slept at all kinds of hours?” Zita interjected. Lily mentally thanked her for breaking up the atmosphere. “Is that not so?”

“Not if you actually want to attend classes on time, Zi,” Lawrence replied.

“And my boy does!” Poppa exclaimed. He gave him another slap, this time on the back. “Ho! He’s going to do good up at that school.”

“Well, I hope so,” Lawrence added with another bashful look at Jazzy. She was beaming at him, quite oblivious to the splodge of gravy on her lip.

“So long as it doesn’t interfere with rehearsals!” Dharma chided with a long-nailed fingertip in his direction. “I need to reschedule you all. Lemarick and I must have extra time to perfect the march, given the new circumstances.”

“I am not spending any more hours than necessary in rehearsal just because you’ve changed your costume,” Novel said with a groan. Lily found herself transfixed on his irate face once more.

“
You
have changed my costume, not me!” Dharma said enraged, “Do you know he ripped all the feathers off it and threw them out of my window!”

“Peacock feathers bring bad luck to theatres,” Novel replied simply, as if that were enough to excuse him.

As he said it, his eyes came shooting down the table once again.

The Row Below

Lily had excused herself from the tour of the Theatre Imaginique, traipsing home through the park as the October wind bit at her ankles. When Jazzy returned, more than an hour later, she seemed to have had a fantastic time, but since she and Lawrence were both so painfully shy, neither one of them had made any plans to meet up again soon. They hadn’t even exchanged numbers. When Jazzy tried to quiz her on why she’d left early, Lily kept turning the conversation back to contriving a new meet-up with Lawrence for her, until Jazzy was forced to drop the subject all together.

In truth, Lily didn’t really know why she’d felt the need to leave, because from the moment she’d set foot outside the old theatre, all she’d wanted to do was go back in. Without his make-up Lemarick Novel should have been much less creeptastic, but there was something even stranger about seeing him without the powder mask. Everyone else who performed on the stage had quite lost their mystery once they sat down to a big roast dinner and started chatting like normal people, but Novel brought the room to a standstill with every innocuous thing he said.

And he kept giving me that look.

It wasn’t a look that Lily understood very well. There were obvious looks that guys gave you, the kind that said they wanted to get to know you better or just get you into their beds. There were also looks that told you someone didn’t like you, or was just putting up with you for the sake of politeness. Novel’s eyes said nothing like any of that. He reminded her of those moments when you catch a cat staring at something that you can’t see, and you wonder what they’re really looking at. That creepy feeling that they know something you don’t. She wondered what Novel knew, both hoping and not-hoping that the next show would help her to find out.

The October programme at the theatre was just as daring an endeavour as the previous month’s had been. The Slovak Twins forced the audience to cover their eyes in gut-wrenching horror as they swallowed thin, sharp blades, and played tricks on one another in the process. Then, just when the patrons thought it was safe to look up again, Zita Bosko treated them to a full display of her contortionism act, twisting herself into stomach-churning shapes that should not have been humanly possible. Lady Eva took eager volunteers onto the stage with her to perform a séance in, which she appeared to become possessed by various members of their ancestry. Then, the Seward father and son duo posed as a Voodoo Doctor and his victim, whilst Lawrence performed more incredible acrobatics with his eyes shut.

Novel was billed with Dharma in ‘The March of Feathers and Flame’ which turned out to be a dance act. Lily watched in fascination from the fourth row as Novel bowed in an elegant vintage dress suit, taking Dharma into his arms where they moved in an impossibly perfect syncopation. It seemed that everywhere he led she was able to follow, keeping time perfectly against the twists of the ever-increasing speed in the dance.

She was coated in red and orange feathers that broke off every now and then when she took a sharp turn, and as they did, the crowd oohed and ahhed when the feathers transformed into curling flames that floated to the ground. Step after step saw more flames grow, until Dharma’s costume was reduced to a silky creation no bigger than a negligée. The rowdier members of the audience enjoyed this immensely, but Novel remained a picture of serious focus, as though his partner was merely a puppet to be controlled. By the end of the dance routine the whole stage was ablaze and the couple took their bows amid the fire. Novel’s pale eyes reflected the roaring flames until they faded to mere embers, but his stoic expression never faltered all the while.

By the time Lily was walking back through the park with the other IMLS members, she had decided quite firmly that Novel was just a very weird guy. He hadn’t looked at her once all night during the show, not even when he was directly in front of her on stage, so she put his previous glances down to curiosity, a little disdain and a big heap of her own paranoia. It wasn’t until she realised she’d left her handbag at the theatre that the creepy feeling settled in her stomach again.

“I never do things like this,” she said as she and Jazzy retraced their steps back to Old Mill Lane. “I’m really sorry.”

“Don’t worry,” Jazzy replied with a smile. “It’s nice not to be the one apologising for a change.”

When they returned to the theatre its front door was already locked. Exchanging a grim look with Jazzy, Lily knocked in imitation of how Lawrence had done it. Belnerg’s hideous face greeted them as the door creaked open. The little cretin appraised Lily with a vile sort of amusement on his face. His cheek and lip were smudged with something black that he hadn’t bothered to wash off, and Lily wondered with revulsion how long the stuff had been there.

“Hi, I’m really,
really
sorry, but I think I’ve left my handbag in the theatre. Can I come in and get it?”

She tried to give the grisly caretaker a winning smile, but when he smiled back she wished that she hadn’t. Belnerg gave a little grunt and stepped out of the way of the door. Lily went back into the foyer first, but as Jazzy tried to follow, the grimy little man put his arm out and shook his horrid head.

“It’s your bag,
you
get it.”

When he spoke, his voice sounded like he’d chained a thousand cigarettes. Lily swore she could smell smoke in the words themselves despite keeping her distance from him. She gave Jazzy a helpless glance, then looked over to the red double doors.

“I’ll only be a minute,” she said, a tight knot in her throat.

When Lily entered the empty theatre hall, she found that all the house lights were down. The only illumination that remained was coming from the single spotlight that Baptiste used, and it was trained on the centre of the stage. Sitting in the middle of the spotlight was Lily’s little blue handbag. Feeling the hairs begin to stand on her arms, she tried to back away.

“All lost property is brought to the centre of the stage,” Belnerg hissed from right behind her.

As she leapt away from him in abject horror, he slammed the double doors on her, leaving her alone in the dark, cavernous space. She walked slowly past the nearby rows of empty seats, trying desperately not to look up into the dress circle or the upper rows, in case there was someone, or something, lurking there. Slow steps took her up the left hand stairs that led to the old boards of the stage. Lily could see the scorch marks where the flames from Dharma’s dress had burned the floor, but there was no sign of the outlets where the flamethrowers that made them should have been. Her mouth was suddenly dry as she stepped into the too-bright spotlight, snatching her bag from the stage and slinging it over her shoulder.

“Ah.”

She might well have expected that to be the moment for the voice to speak, but when it did it still made her shout out loud as her hand raced to calm her heart. Lily’s almond eyes widened as she looked down into what should have been the orchestra pit. Aside from a few instruments in cases, there was just a long bench made of a wood so ancient it had turned black. Above it, in the alcove designed to hide the musicians, were the words
THE ROW BELOW
carved in a calligraphic script. Beneath those words, at the centre of the bench, sat Lemarick Novel.

“I was hoping I’d got the right bag.”

Lily stumbled back on the stage as the illusionist got to his feet. He was still made up in his horrific black and white face powder, but his long coat was gone, revealing a waistcoat and a ruffled shirt on which he had rolled up the sleeves. Novel jumped the gap between the pit and the stage with a lift that looked as though he’d set foot on a trampoline. He landed with the inhuman grace of a flighty bird, on the very edge of the stage. It looked as though he had evaded gravity to do it so expertly.

“Do calm yourself,” he said in a low tone. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

She watched his eerie black lips as he said the words, her breath growing heavier with every second that passed.

“Yeah?” she said, hardly breathing, “well, you’re not exactly giving me a fluffy puppy kind of vibe, mate.”

“Ha.”

His lips didn’t bend at all as the laugh escaped him. As Novel stepped into the spotlight, Lily caught sight of his arms, drawn instantly to the marks running down them. Garish red Lichtenbergs, the lightning flowers, lined every space available. His veins were spread out, fried below the skin just as Lawrence had described to the professor, sprawling in a fern-like pattern from various points of impact. He had been struck by lightning,
real
natural lightning. Recently. Repeatedly. And all over.

Novel saw her looking. “I just need to talk to you,” he pressed, holding out one scarred arm.

Lily leapt away, clutching her bag. “My friend’s just outside,” she stammered. “If anything happens to me, she’ll, she’ll-”

“Didn’t you hear me?” he said in a louder, fiercer tone. “Talk. Just talk to me.”

“Why?” Lily demanded, her throat clogged with dry air. “What do you need from me? I… I don’t know anything.”

“I need to know what you are,” he replied.

“
What?
” Lily cried, backing away again.

Novel came after her sharply and blocked off her path down into the aisle. She froze with an open mouth, watching as his stern face contorted into a look of mild confusion.

“You don’t know, do you?”

“Let me go,” she pleaded, now convinced that he was completely insane. “I’ve got my phone you know. I could call the police!”

“I’m surprised it works for you,” he observed, ignoring the threat. “Most machines don’t operate for me.”

Lily was at a terrifying loss, all her avenues of thought meshing into one blinding fit of panic. If she tried any of the exits from the stage, she was certain that Novel would reach them first. If she plunged into the deep orchestra pit, she was sure to break a leg. Her whole body shook as her feet stayed rooted in place. She looked into Novel’s painted face, deep into the pale cobalt eyes shining out of the blackened sockets, unable to read that same look he was casting upon her.

“What do you want me to do?” she asked weakly, terrified of the answer.

“Defend yourself.”

He lunged forward so fast that all Lily could do was throw her hands out in front of her to stop him. As Novel’s chest connected with her hands, she got one glimpse of his face up close. His expression was still one of curiosity, and there was no malice despite the force of his attack. In the second it took her to notice this placid look, he was gone. A gust of wind came from nowhere at all and whipped up around Lily, then it threw Novel down into the empty aisle. Overhead the glass in all the lanterns shattered, with a sickening sound like a million nails on blackboards, showering them both in sharp little shards. Every bone in Lily’s body willed her to race away whilst she had the chance, but something kept her watching as Novel got back to his feet.

Slowly, impossibly, his body flickered with the glow of a flame. Faint orange lights surrounded his frame like the ones he had used with Dharma on the stage, only these licked at his skin and his clothes as he raised a pale finger slowly to his black lips. He was bleeding a little onto his chin.

“I thought so,” he said, calm as ever.

“What did you do?” Lily demanded, denying her eyes the chance to believe that the man she was interrogating was actually on fire as they spoke.

“That explosion wasn’t me,” Novel answered, “that was
you
.”

Now was the moment Lily’s legs decided they could move again. She bolted down the stage stairs and out of the double doors, knocking Belnerg clean over in the foyer where Jazzy was waiting with a terribly worried look. The girls fled the scene, Lily crying with the shock of it all, as they raced back up into the dark park where they were at least in sight of home. When Lily finally stopped rushing, the tears dried on her face in a gentle breeze, but one look at the pine trees told her that the rest of the night was perfectly still.