The Glass Magician

by Charlie N. Holmberg

  Ceony recognized him.

  “I . . . Langston!”

  The man looked surprised. “Have we met?”

  They hadn’t, not really, but Ceony knew Langston—Emery’s first apprentice—from the first chamber of Emery’s heart. Langston had helped Emery build Jonto.

  And though he had more girth than muscle, he was about twice Grath’s size.

  “My name is Ceony,” she rushed. “I’m Magician Thane’s apprentice and I’m incredibly lost. Please, please, can you help me get home?”

  Langston blinked several times, clearly confused by this turn of events, but nodded. “Of course—I have an auto parked just a few streets down. It won’t be a problem; my meeting was cancelled anyway.”

  Langston offered his arm, which Ceony gratefully—and desperately—accepted.

  As they walked she dared to spy over her shoulder, but she saw no sign of Grath Cobalt behind her.

  CHAPTER 5

  EMERY WAS KNEELING OUTSIDE “gardening” when Ceony and Langston stepped through the illusion that masked the paper magician’s house. He had positioned himself outside the curving garden of meticulously crafted paper flowers, and seemed to be replacing all the red, tulip-shaped flower heads with blue, lily-shaped ones. Fennel chewed on the discarded spells as Emery worked, crumpling them in his paper mouth and then spitting the balls into an overturned trash receptacle. The paper dog yipped at the sight of Ceony.

  “Langston?” Emery asked as he stood and brushed off his slacks. “I didn’t expect your company today.”

  Before the younger Folder could answer¸ however, Ceony blurted, “Grath Cobalt is in the city, and I think I’ve blown up my wallet.”

  Emery’s expression turned to stone. Even his eyes darkened, reminding Ceony all too well of the third chamber of his heart, where she’d seen his failures and heartbreaks. His darkness. “Are you sure?” he asked, but it didn’t sound like a question. In fact, the words sounded . . . threatening.

  Ceony nodded. “I know him, from . . . from before,” she said, eyes dropping to Emery’s chest for just a moment. “He spoke to me at the bistro.”

  Emery’s skin grayed. “Both of you come inside,” he said, turning from the garden and crushing a blue lily under his foot, “and let’s talk.”

  Langston headed for the crowded sitting room and sunk into the middle cushion of the sofa to make himself comfortable, but Ceony marched down the hallway to the kitchen. It was where she often went to think over difficult things. Needing something to busy her hands, she stoked the stove and filled the teakettle with water, then sifted through the cupboards until she found dried peppermint leaves. She divided them into three ceramic cups, despite not wanting tea herself. She doubted Emery would want any, either; in fact, he came into the kitchen before the water had a chance to boil. She took the kettle off the stove anyway.

  He stood behind her while she poured the hot water into the teacups. “Tell me what happened.”

  “No one got hurt, I don’t think,” she said. No one but Grath, she supposed. She had made the spell small enough to avoid hurting any of the other patrons, but it must have scared half the life out of them.

  Emery pulled the kettle from her hands and set it on the counter, then grasped her shoulders and turned her toward him. “Ceony,” he said, enunciating each syllable, despite a hush in his voice. He stooped until his vivid green eyes peered straight into hers. “Tell me what happened.”

  Ceony related her lunch date with Delilah, Grath’s poor disguise, and the Excisioner’s demands regarding Lira. Emery’s lips thinned more and more with every sentence, but they parted when Ceony mentioned the man’s threats.

  Perhaps she shouldn’t have repeated the conversation verbatim.

  Saying Grath’s words with her own lips somehow gave them more weight. She turned to the dining room wall where Lira had pinned Emery without hands and stolen his heart. She thought of the corpses trapped in the back room of the meatpacking warehouse, perhaps the most horrifying image Ceony had beheld inside Emery’s heart. She thought of the uneasy warmth that had flowed through her skin when Lira had grabbed her and started to chant.

  She shivered.

  “I would have used the Mimic spell to tell you, but it was in my purse. I only ran into Langston afterward. I didn’t want to involve him, but I’m afraid it’s too late for that.”

  “I doubt he’ll become a target,” Emery said, solemn. “But let’s hope Grath didn’t see him, or doesn’t care. He tends to choose very specific quarries.”

  He took Ceony’s hand, which calmed her nerves and excited a different set of them, and led her to the living room. He released her before they reached Langston’s line of sight.

  Emery asked for his former apprentice’s story, but Langston didn’t have much to add, having only seen Ceony after her confrontation with Grath.

  “If I could bother you with a favor, Langston,” Emery said when the younger Folder finished, “I’d like you to file a police report for me.”

  Langston pulled a sheet of paper from his breast pocket and plucked a pen from a narrow canister on the end table, enchanting it so that it would transcribe everything Ceony said as she related her tale for a second time. Langston looked ghostly when Ceony recounted Grath’s threats, but he said nothing, either out of politeness or because he didn’t want to ruin the Transcription spell.

  The story told, Langston folded the transcription into eighths and slipped it into the pocket of his vest.

  “I’ll see that it’s done,” he promised, smoothing the sides of his mousy-brown hair. The sofa creaked as he rose. “I’m glad I ran into you when I did, Ceony. I’d hate to think . . . but take care.” To Emery, he said, “You know where to reach me.”

  Emery nodded and saw Langston to the door. He then woke Jonto and sent him outside to clean up the deadheaded flowers.

  “Grath was our neighbor when we lived in Berkshire,” Emery said as he shut the front door. “He went by the name Gregory then. Worked as a rug salesman, of all things. I used to have some of his merchandise in this room”—he gestured weakly around him—“but I discarded them some time ago.”

  Ceony only nodded. She didn’t blame him, of course. Emery had many reasons to hate Grath Cobalt. While Ceony had never found solid proof for it in his heart, she suspected Lira had begun . . . associating . . . with Grath long before Emery filed any divorce papers. It shocked Ceony that Emery’s heart hadn’t been in pieces long before Lira wrenched it from his chest.

  She rubbed her forehead. Berkshire. Ceony supposed the old house from Emery’s memories had been located there.

  “Do you think he’s responsible for what happened at the paper mill?” she asked. Her heart twisted at the thought. Could the explosion at the paper mill—and all the resulting deaths—be her fault?

  Leaning against the wall, Emery folded his arms and answered, “Possibly. But Grath doesn’t like to bring attention to himself; he’s too smart for that. Explosions aren’t his style. If I were to link the two cases together, I’d pin the mill on Saraj.” He frowned. “I wonder if they’re still working together . . .”

  Ceony swallowed her anxiety. “Saraj?”

  She had seen two people heading toward Foulness Island in that boat before she left with Emery’s heart.

  Emery waved a dismissive hand. “Another Excisioner who has some camaraderie with Grath when the mood strikes . . . but it doesn’t matter.” He ran his fingers back through his hair. “This is getting complicated.”

  Ceony wanted to ask more, but the way Emery drooped made her want to lock the subject in a cellar and bury the key. Instead, she placed a hand on his folded forearms. “It will work out, one way or another. It always does.”

  Emery chuckled. “I find it odd that you’re trying to reassure me when you’re the one in trouble, my dear.” The mirth faded from his voice. “But let us hope Grath is the only Excisioner in town. I really wanted to be done with the lot of them.”

  As Emery often
did when stressed, he went to work. He pulled a thick, yard-long roll of paper out of his office and dragged it into the front yard, then instructed Ceony to get so many 8½" by 11" and 6" by 6" sheets of paper from the rolls behind his desk. He worked without his board and with a pair of scissors that had materialized from somewhere within his indigo coat. It didn’t take long for Ceony to realize he was changing the wards about the house. Not wanting to interrupt, she sat on the porch with Fennel. When Emery did need a hand, he had Jonto assist him.

  He moved with remarkable swiftness, and his work was so intricate and complicated that Ceony wondered if she really could earn her magicianship in the minimum two years, for she obviously had much left to learn. Emery tore here, snipped there, and Folded long fan Folds and quad Folds back and forth in seemingly random places.

  When he had finished, he finally addressed Ceony. “Would you go outside the gate and tell me what you see?”

  Ceony followed the narrow pathway from the porch to the gate and stepped out onto the lane, passing the perimeter of Emery’s paper illusions. Looking back at the cottage, she didn’t see a dark, haunted mansion, but a barren landscape, complete with tumbleweed and cracked, sandy earth. Emery had made the house completely invisible.

  After a moment, Emery passed through the spell and stood out with her, his coat tossed over his shoulder from the heat. He tapped two fingers on his chin and frowned, more in his eyes than in his mouth, which worried Ceony. He said nothing, but it was clear he wasn’t satisfied.

  Ceony made his second-favorite meal, shepherd’s pie, for dinner—his first favorite required halibut, of which they had none—and even prepared a gooseberry cobbler for dessert. Emery thanked her, and his words were sincere, but she could tell his mind lingered elsewhere. Wherever the paper magician went on days like this, Ceony knew she couldn’t follow.

  His thoughts still drifted the following day, so Ceony let him be and worked on her studies, reading The Art of Eastern Origami and working on her paper doll. It wasn’t until evening that Emery’s mind stopped its wandering, and he announced, just as Ceony pulled a salad bowl for dinner from the cupboard, that they were leaving the cottage.

  “Leaving?” Ceony asked, nearly dropping the bowl. “Why?”

  “Isn’t it obvious?” Emery asked. But it wasn’t. His tone concealed his thoughts and his gaze was once again impenetrable. “Grath is here, and if you’re his target—which seems to be the case—he’s not leaving anytime soon. I spent years hunting this man, Ceony. Even when he knew we were closing in on him, he never took the easy way out. He always . . . finished his business first.”

  His voice drooped at the end of the sentence.

  Ceony clasped her hands to her chest and whispered, “Was he at the warehouse?”

  She thought of the rotting bodies harvested for their blood and organs. Had Grath’s hands torn those people apart?

  Her mind tried to bring up the crisp images of the bodies left rotting there, but Ceony squeezed her eyes shut and pushed them away. She returned the bowl to its cupboard, having lost her appetite.

  “Him, among others,” Emery said, perhaps more solemn than she had ever heard him. It made her heart break in two. She took a step toward him, but stopped herself. Perhaps, in this instance, it would be better not to overstep the bounds of an apprentice.

  “It’s safer this way,” Emery said, meeting her eyes. “I’m easy to find, even with the wards. Unfortunately, the Cabinet requires open knowledge of all magician residences, which makes it incredibly hard for a man to be a recluse when he wants to be, and I don’t trust the Cabinet’s internal security. We’ll head for the city. Easy to get lost there.”

  “But you hate the city.”

  Emery sighed. “But I hate the city. I’ll telegram for a buggy. You should pack. Lightly. I don’t know how long we’ll be gone, but we should stay mobile.”

  “I’m sorry about all of this—”

  “We should invest in one of those telephones,” Emery said over her, flipping on his selective listening like a light switch. He hummed to himself and left the room.

  Upstairs, Ceony pulled her suitcase out from under her bed, but determined it was too large to carry with her should she need to leave anywhere in a hurry. Instead she opened it and pulled out the cloth bag she had taken with her when she fell into Emery’s heart. It had required a great deal of scrubbing and mending, and two patches, but she couldn’t bring herself to replace it. It felt too sentimental to toss away.

  She folded one change of clothes—she could wash what she was wearing if need be—and set them in the base of the bag, followed by her makeup kit and hygiene products, and her book on origami, spare paper protected under its back cover. Fennel began sniffing about the bag, which he seemed to recognize from their adventure. Ceony picked him up and hugged him as tightly as one could hug a dog made of paper.

  “If you want to come with me, I’ll need you to fold up like before, boy. Just for a little while.”

  Fennel wagged his tail and huffed.

  “Fold up.”

  Fennel licked her with his dry paper tongue, then stuck his head down and his back legs forward so Ceony could fold him into a somewhat flat, lopsided pentagon. She slid him carefully into the bag, making sure to secure him, and lifted the strap onto her shoulder.

  She took one last view of her room, frowned, and headed downstairs.

  Whatever happened, at least Emery would be with her.

  When the buggy arrived at a quarter to nine, the last tendrils of the fading summer sun highlighted the clouds to the west. Emery had haphazardly packed a laundry bag half full, which he threw onto the far seat in the back of the buggy’s cab. The seats must have been recently upholstered, for they smelled like new leather. Emery offered Ceony a hand into the buggy, and then climbed up after her.

  “To Burleigh Road, if you would,” Emery called to the driver. To Ceony, he said, “Stayed in a hotel there once. Decent place.”

  Ceony managed a smile. The buggy turned on its lights and circled around, plodding down the long road into London. Cooling summer air swept through the glassless windows and teased Emery’s wavy hair. Shadowy trees whisked past them, thankfully shielding the river from view.

  “I am sorry, Emery,” Ceony said, resting her hands on her bag.

  “It’s hardly your fault,” he said, and he lifted his left arm up and around her shoulders. Ceony’s heart raced against its weight, and she dared not move for fear of scaring the gesture away. “If anything,” he continued, “it’s mine. If not for me, you wouldn’t be involved in this business at all.” He paused. “Actually, no. It’s Patrice Aviosky’s fault, for assigning you to me. Yes, let’s blame her.”

  Ceony laughed and stifled a yawn. “I’m glad she did, though.”

  “You are certainly the most amusing apprentice I’ve had,” Emery said in a strange sort of agreement. “Langston was the dullest.”

  “He’s not much younger than you.”

  “No, he’s not,” Emery said. His thumb absently traced the edge of Ceony’s braid, and Ceony thanked the darkness for hiding the reddening of her cheeks. “I was only twenty-four when I took him on, just two years out of my own apprenticeship. But the number of Folders had declined so rapidly that Praff was assigning to just about anyone. It was either me or sail across the ocean to New Orleans. Langston stayed in England to pursue a girl.”

  Clearing her throat and trying not to focus on Emery’s closeness, Ceony asked, “Is he married now?”

  Emery chuckled. “Goodness no. She wrote him quite the scathing letter two weeks into his apprenticeship. He was a bucket of sap for a month after that, but his focus improved in the end. Daniel, however, was a different story. He’s the reason I moved to the cottage and started warding the gate.”

  Ceony let herself relax in her seat. Emery’s arm remained around her shoulders. “Was he a troublemaker?”

  “A flirt. An awful one at that, but somehow he attracted women who fell for his q
uestionable charms,” Emery said, thoughtful. “I had a new one on my doorstep every week, or so it seemed. That boy would have taken six years to earn his magicianship at the rate he was going. But another reason our time was cut short was the timing . . . and, well, you already know enough about that.”

  Ceony nodded, swallowing another yawn. She had only learned a snippet about Emery’s second apprentice from her journey through Emery’s heart; all she knew was that he had to be transferred because of issues with Lira.

  Emery chuckled. “One girl who came by couldn’t have been a day out of secondary. Tall as Langston. Daniel was a rather short fellow and seemed put out by her visit, but I invited her in, thinking maybe it would dissuade him from handing out my address like Halloween candy—”

  A jolt in the road startled Ceony awake; she hadn’t realized she’d dozed off, and perhaps Emery hadn’t, either, for he was still chatting away beside her. Her head rested against his shoulder, and she straightened quickly, a new flush burning her skin.

  “And it was shrimp,” he said, shaking his head. “Who puts shrimp and sweet cream in the same dish? Certainly you’ve never heard of such a thing.”

  “It . . .” Ceony blinked sleep from her eyes. “It sounds like a soup I’ve seen in Devonshire,” she said. “I don’t think—”

  She squinted through the windshield of the vehicle. Was that a person on the road, just beyond the glow of the buggy’s lights?

  The light fanned over him, and time stopped.

  The man jerked his arm upward. The windshield didn’t shatter and Ceony heard no pistol fire, but the driver’s head jerked backward, spurting black blood over his seat and the windshield.

  The driver slumped in his seat, falling against the steering wheel. The buggy’s headlamps pulled away from the road, illuminating plants, earth, and finally—to Ceony’s horror—the dark, churning water of the river. Emery gripped her shoulder, pressing his other hand against the ceiling to brace himself.