The Adventure of the Missing Shadows

by Morgan De Guerre

Synopsis

On this side of the Unbroken Barrier, everyone has magic. Except me.

But even the magically blind can see the effects of the supernatural on the real world. My family of powerful mages taught me to spot the clues. Now I notice what everyone else misses.

In my world, everyone relies on magic to go through life, and they can overlook the strangest things. I can't see what they see. I have to look for what's really there. And there are mysteries at every street corner. The trouble is... I can't help sticking my nose when I run into something I can't explain.

My brother and my best friend used to help me untangle the magic behind my discoveries. And to get me out of trouble when necessary. For the first time, this week I'm on my own. I'm getting ready for the biggest opportunity of my life: an audition at the Bakirville National Opera. Not the best time to run around looking for the warlock who casts shady spells on the children in my neighborhood.

I'm no superhero. I don't even own a cape. But when the children's shadows start behaving strangely, I'm the only one who can face the shadowy danger.

Welcome to Talinia
On this side of the Unbroken Barrier, humans live alongside vampires, werecreatures, wizards and witches, prophets and hellhounds. In our world, souls, youth and power are commodities to be bought and sold.

"The Adventure of the Missing Shadows" is a prequel to "The Vampire of the Opera".

Release date: March 31, 2021

Print pages: 98

Sample

 

Chapter 1

The Flyer's Visit

Monday, March 9

 

 

I shed the seventh veil, remaining naked on the stage in front of a thousand people. A thousand and one. The one who counted above all others. My musical idol. The best tenor my country ever produced and whom we vigilantly concealed from the rest of the world.

Marcus Orlov's eyes on my uncovered body affected me deeper than any random public nakedness nightmare. The vampire did more than look at me. He touched me. I could feel the blistering heat of his fingers on my skin.

The touch of death affected humans differently. We all shrank from it in biologically programmed terror, but the sensation didn't have to be the same. It could be like fire, like ice, or any other thousands of flavors of pain.

Thunder rattled the windows, startling me awake. Lightning must have struck somewhere close if it overpowered the dramatic aria that rolled out of the sound system in passionate waves.

The last tendril of the dream seared like a branding iron into my conscious mind.

My skin burned as if I'd been running a fever. The vampire's touch hadn't been real. Other issues probably lurked behind my reaction. I pressed the backs of my hands against my cheeks.

And that's why you don't go to sleep listening to Salome, genius!

Through the sound system, Orlov's voice poured such pathos in Herod's words, it made me feel like he was close, like I was still on that stage with him. I hated it when these impossible dreams bled into reality. I'd never be an opera singer. I made my choice last year when I came to law school instead of going to the conservatory.

How many years ago had the old vampire sung this? The Bakirville National Opera hadn’t staged Salome in all the years I attended. I closed my eyes and tried to imagine Orlov on stage as the shaken man who pleads with his bewitching and utterly insane stepdaughter, trying to negotiate the price he had agreed upon, blinded by incestuous lust.

Not a good idea, I realized, when my core heat rose dangerously. I fumbled under the pillow for my phone. It was 3:27 a.m. Of course. Even an ordinary mortal like me would be affected during the witching hour.

I stubbed at the screen with sleepy fingers until I found the app that controlled the sound system. When the music was off, I dragged myself out of bed and walked over to the window, smooshing my nose against it as I looked out into the storm. The cold glass cooled my heated forehead. The magic of opera was one thing, but that dream was too vivid. Someone, somewhere close, was probably playing with magic without precautions, and I got blasted in my dream.

Who could blame them, though? Not me, for sure. If I had any magical skills, I'd take advantage of such a storm to up my game. From this perspective, the world was a safer place with me, the youngest of the Onyris bloodline, being the nonmagical sheep of the family.

My purely human eyes saw only what was there in this mundane plane of existence. My best friend, who was sound asleep in the next room, would probably see the energy of the spells. Lyra might see colors and hear sounds that were concealed from someone like me. An absolute zero.

Take a deep breath and get over it, Kalliope. Magic envy isn't very becoming.

So what if I had scored zero on the Test all those years ago? If anything, that made me more special. The percentage of people around the Welcoming Sea who scored zero was the lowest by a long shot. Around here, more people had some degree of magic than none at all.

 From my poky room in the girls' dorm, I could see a decent slice of our charming college town, from the marble building of the main Hyperion library to the northern corner of the park. Westbridge was a charming small town that hid its old roots well. During the day, I hardly ever got the vibe of magic, which must permeate the air like smog for most people.

The best thing about this room was that Lyra had practiced her magic skills to soundproof it. Over the course of our first year in Westbridge, she had patiently enchanted the walls, the floor, and the ceiling to allow me to listen to my music without bothering her or our neighbors.

Marcus Orlov was a real person, someone I had admired from afar for many years. His guest starring role in this latest dream in the series, and the unusually vivid sensory details convinced me that they were more than regular dreams. Not talking about sex was one thing. Not talking to anyone about potentially invasive magic was quite another. I had to talk to Lyra about my dreams.

 

o

 

Early next morning, while pacing as I waited for Lyra to put the final touches to her makeup, I opened the subject.

"This is going to sound ridiculous, but I'm starting to think there's something to those old peasant traditions."

"There usually is. Which one are you referring to?"

"The Flyer," I said and blushed.

This was so stupid. I remembered how ridiculous it seemed when we studied those old poems in high school. It was so hard to stop from rolling my eyes each time Mrs. Hoffman, our literature teacher, spoke of the myth of the Flyer when it was clear as day that the peasants had made up a xenological explanation because they didn't know enough biology. Hoff was just doing her job, but keeping my mouth shut had never been my forte.

Lyra glanced at me in the mirror into which she pouted to apply her lip gloss.

"Didn't you argue with Hoff that the poets described random firings of neurons across the newly formed synapses of girls becoming women?" she asked, quoting me verbatim thanks to her impressive memory.

"I might have politely postulated that hormonal changes were a better explanation for those sensations than what the poets prattled on about in their folklore-inspired works."

"You might have phrased that a little less politely than you thought."

"She was so touchy," I said, still seething over the lousy grade that conversation earned me. "It wasn't an outrageous suggestion that the poets were using metaphors for the physical and emotional developments girls went through in becoming women."

"I always thought you made a good point," Lyra reminded me. "The only poets recording these ‘apparitions’ were exclusively male. And we know how men are when it comes to female biology."

"Right? There was no other confirmation of a species that visits young women in the night in the shape of a fair youth with a narrow waist and haunting eyes."

It wasn't so easy to maintain that conviction after the dreams I'd been having since this new school year started. For one thing, I was twenty. My body had gone through those changes several years before, and no fair youth had shown up in my dreams to kiss the living daylights out of me.

Maybe the Flyer had been delayed by some epic battle with dragons and missed his appointments with me. Was he catching up on unvisited maidens?

"Then why are we talking about it now?" she asked.

I took another sip of the mostly-cold coffee, thinking we should swing by that new coffee place and get a hot one to go.

"We have time to take a detour by Norwegian Blue, right?" I asked, throwing away the paper cup in the first bin we came across.

She nodded. "Sure. We have time to talk about Talinian folklore on the way."

 If I couldn't tell Lyra, who could I tell?

"I've been having these dreams."

Before I could add anything else, we turned the corner onto the main street and merged with the flow of people walking at various speeds and levels of enthusiasm toward their classes.

"Later?" Lyra asked, understanding that I wouldn’t go into details in earshot of so many people.

"Yeah," I said and took out my phone to check the time. "My parents should be at the hotel by now."

"Call them. I'll go in to get your coffee while you talk to them."

I really, really wanted to hear they were okay, but calling them would set a dangerous precedent. My mother's international charity work had taken her abroad before. On the other hand, my father hadn't left Talinia since before I was born. I worried about them out there, in the big weird world outside the Unbroken Barrier.

"Better not," I said, deciding to power through the unfamiliar sensation of concern. "If I check on them, they're going to take it as permission to check on me whenever they feel like it."

Lyra arched her eyebrow as if to say my parents didn't need my permission to do so. They didn't, but I wasn't going to encourage them to do it.

The door to Norwegian Blue opened in front of us as happy customers poured out holding their precious beverages. Delicious scents wafted out in a rainbow that ranged from caramelized to nutty, passing through flowery, smoky, herby, and milky.

The place was packed, and we fell in line without a word. Both Lyra and I had lectures in a quarter of an hour, but we didn't worry. This wasn't the leisurely dawdling of tired students who wasted countless minutes deciding the minutiae of their order. No one was here now looking for a comfortable place to spend a couple of hours. This was the morning rush, and the line moved briskly.

Lyra started chatting with some guy she knew. Stefan nodded slightly in my direction when Lyra introduced us. I did the same and then dismissed him from my attention. If Lyra found someone interesting, chances were I'd be bored out of my mind with the conversation. It never ceased to amaze me that someone as smart and exciting as her could be fascinated by the most insanely boring things.

I tuned them out and tried to spin my head all the way around like an owl, hoping to spot some of my classmates. Not much chance of that. Our dorms were on the other side of the campus, closer to our department building. I had made a special request to get a room in the same building as Lyra.

Out of sheer desperation, I returned my attention to what she and Stefan were discussing.

"… in the fifteenth century…"

I was going to need more than coffee and sugar to stay awake if I listened any more. I glanced at Lyra, wondering for the millionth time if she really found this interesting or she was faking it for some unfathomable reason.

But it was odd. Her replies were monosyllabic and faint. She was much better at feigning interest if she wanted to.

I tried to catch her gaze, but she wasn't looking away from Stefan.

"Lyra?" I said, putting my hand on her arm.

"Later," she said, looking at me briefly with a slightly glazed expression.

 Right. Later. The word echoed from our interrupted conversation. We were going to talk later about my thing, but something wasn’t right here and now. I tried to listen to what Stefan was saying, but his words seemed to be drowned out by the background hum of the crowd. That wasn’t physically possible. But it was magically possible if he was only speaking for her.

There were many magical things I didn't understand, and most of them were benign. There had to be magical ways to communicate with only one person, even when surrounded by people. It might be useful to lovers or spies. But folks like me, with little or no magic, were taught to protect ourselves from magic. After many generations of ordinary people being enslaved and terrorized by wielders of magic, the Codex Veneficorum had instituted the presumption of guilt.

The first tenet of self-protection was that unidentified magical intervention was presumed malicious. This had become so ingrained in our culture that the weak were rarely attacked by magic. Instead, the magic folk were using these tactics between themselves.

Lyra was a first-class raw talent with enough power to level the highest mountain in Talinia to the ground. She was too modest and too tactful to tell me her score on the Test, but my brother, Sebastian, who told me more uncomfortable truths than anyone else in my life, made sure I knew that crucial information. Sebastian was one of the strongest mages in the Onyris bloodline and had devised many ways in which someone of no power like me could resist and even fight back against magic.

Maybe someone as powerful as Lyra didn't think anyone would dare to attack her by magic. Well, she was wrong. This Stefan guy was weaving some kind of subjugation spell on her. I didn't need talent to see traces of magic. I had eyes, and I saw the effects.

I went through my limited options. Sudden pain might snap her out of the trance. I looked around for something sharp I could stab her with. The cutlery around this place was, unsurprisingly, made of plastic. The forks on the counter were in reaching distance, but they wouldn't do. Their teeth were too blunt and too fragile. They wouldn't break the skin, and most likely, the fork would snap.

While the wheels were spinning in my head, we got our coffees and left the building. Soon, I'd have to part ways with them to go to my class. Someone needed to do something, and, as always, that someone was going to be me.

Could I tackle Stefan? No, that would be too outrageous. Maybe this was just a game for them. Maybe Lyra and Stefan had an understanding that they could try to ambush each other like this. I'd look like a fool, and I'd embarrass Lyra. I didn't mind the first part, but if I wanted to avoid the second, I had to break the guy's concentration and make it look like an accident. I could pretend to trip. Would merely bumping into him be enough?

Of course, there was something else I could do. I sighed deeply, took a long sip of my coffee, used my thumbnail to pop open the plastic lid so the coffee would spill, and engaged the “clumsy routine.” My foot caught in the imaginary edge of a flagstone, and I cannoned straight into Stefan, aiming for his crotch. My hot coffee hit dead center, and the contents poured down his right trouser leg.

He yelped and jumped back.

"Oh, I'm so sorry." I went into phase two of the clumsy routine. "I don't know what happened. I tripped and…. I'm so sorry. It was an accident."

I reached out with my Norwegian Blue napkin to dab at the stains. Stefan snatched it out of my hand and did it himself while I went on apologizing profusely. I had plenty of practice apologizing for stuff I did intentionally. Depending on the circumstances, phase two could be casual or emotional. This time I went with emotional to give Lyra time to recover.

"It's fine," he said, controlling his emotions. "It could've happened to anyone."

The undertone of anger in his voice was a confirmation that something nefarious had been going on. He didn't have to worry about staining his clothes. That was what domestic spells were for. Even if he couldn't perform one himself and didn't have a friend who would do it for him, he could pay someone to do it. This was Westbridge. Even I knew places that could make small magical alterations to your clothes on the spot and for the price of a cup of coffee.

"See you in class," he told Lyra, then turned to me. "It was interesting meeting you, Kalliope."

"Same here," I said as he walked away from us.

 Lyra and I parted ways to go to our classes. I knew she'd be fine. If anything, I might have to worry about her not being too heavy-handed with the payback if his actions were on the very naughty side. If. While we were apart, I wondered if I was right in my assessment of the Stefan situation. What if they were magically flirting somehow? That Stefan guy was handsome in a chiseled cheekbones and perfect blond hair sort of way. Not everyone lived in Westbridge as if they were in a convent, like me. What if Lyra hadn’t needed rescuing? What if the magic was something sweet and sexy and absolutely obvious for anyone with a smidgeon of magic?

The possibility that my magic blindness had prompted me to misread the situation tortured me. I had to find out. Not knowing was killing me.

Whenever our schedules allowed, which was often, we had lunch together. I bolted out of the classroom as soon as the lecture was over, and ten minutes later, I was getting my breath back outside the cafeteria at Lyra’s college. Her grandmother had insisted she enroll in St. Andrew’s College while I went to Kantemir, like my father and his father before him. That meant we were supposed to live in different buildings, but we begged Lyra’s grandmother to intervene, and when Lilith Sandoval got involved, things got done.

I waited for Lyra, bouncing on the balls of my feet and staring at the wood panels covering the lower half of the walls to distract myself from the ghastly scarlet sort of red someone at St. Andrew’s had decided was a good shade in which to paint the upper half. Kantemir College favored lighter colors. Maybe the people who made these decisions for my college got bored with the dark colors in the first couple of centuries. For all its history, Kantemir College had one of the most modern-looking infrastructures.

By the time Lyra showed up, the cafeteria was packed. “Takeout?” I asked.

She nodded, and we joined the line to get our soup in cardboard cups, and whatever was the day’s special wrapped in paper bags. We weren’t going to be the only ones eating in the fresh air, but we wouldn’t have to share our table with a bunch of people we barely knew.

"Thank you for the rescue this morning," she said as we set the table in the small park closest to St. Andrew’s. "Sorry about your coffee."

I sighed. "Me, too. But I was right, right?"

"When are you ever not right?" she asked.

Her answer lifted a monumental weight off my shoulders. With that, I veered straight into curios mode.

"What was it all about? You don't seem freaked out by an attempted subjugation. Is that some game you play with him?"

She tilted her head to the left, then to the right a few times. "You could say that. I was interested in how he creates the spell."

"So you let him do that to you. That doesn't sound like I was right."

"You were absolutely right to intervene. He was enthralling me, and he was being so subtle, no one would've noticed. Even I only noticed it after you talked to me, but I chose not to fight it out of curiosity. By the way, I enjoyed your technique. He believes you're a total klutz."

"I'm glad I didn't go with my first plan, then."

"Which was?"

"Stab you with a fork."

She let out a crystalline giggle. "That would've worked, too."

"My third option would've been to step really hard on your foot. Would that have worked?"

"In as much as it would've broken my heart if you ruined my shoes, yes."

Lyra loved shoes, and they were all eye-wateringly expensive.

"Let's hope I'll never have to do that."

"I can't help noticing we're not talking about your dreams."

The flush creeping across my cheeks had to be visible from space. But if I could talk to anyone about my vividly sensual dreams, it was always going to be Lyra. Of course, it didn't make it any less uncomfortable. I struggled to tell her about my latest one, which was the least explicit and yet one of the most vivid.

"Why do you think there was anything more to this dream?" she asked after I finished. "It's not like you haven't been talking about the amazing Marcus Orlov since we were kids."

"I talked about his voice. This was… this was very different."

"How much do you think you'd enjoy his voice if he didn't also happen to be gorgeous?"

She had to be kidding me. She had to know I was in love with the music, not the weird old vampire, no matter how good-looking he was.

"A lot," I said, outraged. "Just so you know, I usually listen to him with my eyes closed."

"I know," she said with a small smile. "I was just teasing you."

"Not extremely helpful."

Her mouth and nose twitched in a way that made me think of a cartoon vixen. She had some helpful insight, which she was holding back. That usually meant whatever she had to say would be uncomfortable for one of us. Probably me.

"Out with it," I said. "I can take it."

"Well, you haven't had a boyfriend in a while. Maybe your body is trying to tell you something."

Yes, there it was. Uncomfortable.

"Your social life is just as bad as mine, and I don't hear you complaining about such visits," I said. "How long has it been since you smooched anyone?"

"A lady never tells."

The way she said that made me doubt my certainty about her lack of a social life. Surely I would've noticed if my best friend had been carrying on with someone. We were inseparable.

Except for her witchcraft apprenticeship.