The Book Of Shade (Shadeborn 1) by K.C. Finn Page B

start work on his lips, when he caught sight of Lily watching him in the large oval mirror.
    “Come and stand where I can see you,” he ordered sternly. “It’s bad luck to haunt other people’s mirrors.”
    Lily entered the room properly and leant on the wall beside the ornately framed looking glass. She admired the bronze patterns all around it, tracing a bolt of engraved lightning with her fingertips.
    “I’d kill for a make-up mirror like this,” she sighed.
    “It was a present from my mother,” Novel informed her. “How did you get on without me?”
    “Worse if anything,” Lily admitted, hanging her head. She felt her cheeks flush pink as Novel let out a grumble.
    “I thought it might have been me putting you off,” he reasoned. “We’ll have to try something else.”
    Lily looked back up to find his lips encased in their perfect black shell. The artist had moved on to crafting the wicked arches in his eyebrows, and once they were in place, he began to assume that truly frightening expression that amazed the patrons every time he stepped on stage. Novel glanced at Lily in a moment’s pause, his lip quivering.
    “Don’t worry, I have an idea already that might help,” he added.
    His voice had that youth in it again that was so out of place with his painted frown and dark brows. Lily nodded and made her way back to the door, stopping to glance back one last time at Novel’s antiquated frame.
    “Can I just ask,” she began. “What’s in the covered box out there? The one that’s making those awful noises?”
    Novel shrugged. “Just a werewolf,” he remarked.
    “A real one?” Lily asked with a start.
    “Of course,” Novel answered indignantly, delving into his powder box for a blackened sponge. “Almost everything you see within these walls is real. Eva really is clairvoyant, you know.”
    “And I suppose Poppa Seward’s a genuine voodoo master?” Lily added with a scoff.
    Novel just turned and gave her a nod.
    “Oh,” she replied, quite involuntarily.
    The revelation still reeled in Lily’s head when she got back to her chair. Michael was pleased that she and Jazzy had got in early and saved him a space right in the centre of the front row, but now that Lily knew a real live werewolf would soon be let loose on stage, she wasn’t so sure about Jazzy’s choice of seat. She also found herself wishing that Michael hadn’t decided on a Peperami for his snack tonight, the tantalising scent of spicy meat was the last thing any of them needed gathering in a cloud above them. But there was no way to warn her oblivious friends, so she sat back as the lights went down and hoped for the best.
    “Hey,” whispered Michael. “Which bits of this place are you restoring anyway? My seat’s still rusted as hell.”
    “I’ll get to it next time,” Lily answered with an eyeroll.
    “You got a rota or something?” he pressed.
    She shook her head. “It’s kind of ‘as and when’. Now shush, Baptiste’s coming on.”
    The MC’s smooth tone and patient smile brought comfort to Lily as the show began. She was impressed but unconcerned by Zita contorting her bony body into various glass canisters and boxes, since she was sure she could have seen those kinds of things at any human circus. Had Mum ever bothered to take me to one, that is. Similarly, the Slovak Twins and their back-breaking feats of limbo beneath a fire-coated pole were quite likely to be feats of genuine human endeavour, though she did have to wonder if Novel’s fingertips had given them the spark to start off the flames.
    The Monsieur himself was third on the bill, giving Lily the chance to see beyond his otherworldly powers into what he called ‘his art’: real human magic. He had a box full of life-size mirrors set at different angles which, he walked through and spun on rotating pivots to assure his spectators that no-one was hiding behind them. When his signature music began – the familiar sound of violins – Novel