Free The Bloodshade Encounters & The Songspinner (Shadeborn Book 2) by K.C. Finn Page B

side, holding one of Novel’s arms down against the side of the seat, his face pressed closed against the exposed, pale flesh of his forearm. Lily took in the sight for mere seconds before the men spotted her arrival. Novel raced to snatch his arm back from the MC and in the same moment Baptiste turned to look at Lily, his face a mixture of shock and guilt.
    “Lily, please,” Novel stammered, “I can explain all this.”
    Baptiste’s blood-soaked teeth gave Lily all the explanation she needed.

PIKETON, 1927
     
    Theatre For Sale
     
    “Even Mother approves of it,” Novel said, staring up at the grand gothic façade of the building before him.
    “Are we sure that’s a good thing?” Ugarte asked.
    Edvard shielded his eyes as he surveyed the Theatre Imaginique from top to bottom. The shining eyes of the theatre’s many gargoyles kept watch over the trio with their mischievous grins.
    “I love it,” Ed proclaimed with a proud smile.
    Novel put his hands to his hips and gave a satisfied nod, though his lips remained unsmiling.
    “It was a music hall up until a few months ago,” he explained, “but recently a much larger hall was constructed in Manchester and it put this poor old place out of business.”
    “And you intend to revive it for music?” Ugarte asked. The slight frown in her lip told Novel she didn’t much like his chances.
    “For variety,” he corrected. “The Imaginique will house only the most unusual performers the British public has ever seen.”
    Novel stepped forward and pushed on the heavy double doors at the theatre entrance, letting them swing open as a cloud of dust exploded over the grand foyer. He could already picture the resplendence of the great early-Victorian theatre, even though everything around him had fallen into disrepair. There would be a great golden chandelier – in the true French style – to welcome guests, with a crimson carpet and gilded frames portraying shows that the theatre had triumphed in performing.
    “Aha,” Novel said brightly, stepping into the dark foyer and racing to the back of the corridor-like space. “And precisely here, the Master of Ceremonies will stand to welcome guests.”
    He didn’t miss the look that Ed and Ugarte gave to one another as they too entered the dank and musty space. Unlike Novel’s own upbringing, his friends’ lives had always been filled with opulence and the finest things. He was unsurprised by their obvious disdain for the Imaginique in its current state, but shocked that they did not possess the imagination to see the place as he could picture it.
    “It’s a sleepy little town, old friend,” Ed said.
    “And far too close to Pendle, in my opinion,” Ugarte added.
    Novel turned away from them, biting the inside of his mouth to stop himself from replying. Pendle had been Mother’s new base of operations in England for a few years now. A strong community of shades and other supernaturals were known to frequent the district, but most of them were darksiders, or aligned in that direction. It was technically true that Mother Novel had pointed out the Theatre Imaginique to her son, a few weeks ago when he paid her a visit, but Novel didn’t want to think about her reasons for needing him so close-by. To him, it was the very first time she had taken an interest in his artistic side, the one that he’d been cultivating for over thirty years, so he wasn’t about to question his good fortune in her finding him a theatre for sale.
    “You’ll see,” he promised his friends, “You’ll come to love visiting me here someday.”
    He pressed on through the entrance hall, eager to see the auditorium itself and the sizeable stage. Ed and Ugarte followed a few steps behind, craning their heads up to see the grand height to which the theatre rose. Novel pressed his heels hard into the dusty, carpeted floor and then launched into the air, his gravity powers carrying him up into the very centre of the space above the stage. He