She lowered the pad and wrote some more, then read, “Ceony wondered where she was.”
The image of a map of Europe floated before her, with a question mark hovering above it and a thumbtack wavering between England and France.
“Belgique,” the first man said. He hesitated, glancing at the man who Ceony assumed was his brother. In a poor English accent, he said, “Belgium.”
“Belgium?” Ceony repeated, and the story illusion dripped away like wet paint. And I smelled the ocean . . . That must have been the English Channel. I crossed it through the mirror.
How on earth would she get back?
“Gaffer?” she asked, drawing a stick figure below her words and sketching a hand mirror in its hands. “Do you have a Gaffer here?” She lowered the pad and stepped over to the window, tapping on the glass.
The first man turned to his brother and said, “Je pense qu’elle est celle qu’il veut. Elle est rousse. Elle enchante papier.”
“Papier,” Ceony repeated, nodding. At least she knew that word. “Oui, papier.”
The brother nodded, and the first man gestured for Ceony to follow him farther into the house. He held out his hands, and she reluctantly handed over the pad. Perhaps the generosity of these men would extend to offering her a quick meal, too. Her stomach growled. She hoped the man heard it.
If he did, he didn’t show it.
Ceony followed him through a small but immaculate kitchen, then down a steep set of stairs that required her guide to hunch over to keep his head from hitting the ceiling. In the basement she passed a closed door; then the man led her into an empty, rectangular room with a few crates stacked in the corner. Near the crates, an old mirror with a broken frame leaned against the wall.
Ceony froze just inside the door. Behind the mirror, arms folded across his broad chest, stood Grath Cobalt.
“Est-ce que c’est la fille? On a le douxieme parti?” the man asked, barring the door with his arm when Ceony tried to back away.
“Bien sûr, vous avez bien fait,” Grath answered in a flawless French accent, his gray eyes focusing on Ceony, whose heart had begun to beat so high in her throat she could almost taste it. “S’il vous plaît, donnez-moi un instant.”
The man nodded and stepped out of the room, shutting the door behind him.
Ceony reached for the handle.
“Nuh-uh,” Grath said, unfolding his arms. “I’m used to wild goose chases, love, but I’m much better when I play the goose.” He took a step forward. “For us, this ends now.”
Ceony trembled. “P-Please, I don’t have what you want,” she murmured. “Just let me go.”
“And risk more scars?” he asked, rubbing his side where Delilah had shot him. His shirt still bore a hole from the bullet, but the skin underneath looked unscathed. Had Grath visited Saraj before tracking her down? Did that mean the Excisioner still lurked in the city, or did Grath just know how to find him using the mirrors?
Ceony seized the door handle, only to find it locked. She hadn’t even heard the metal click.
Her stomach sank, no longer hungry. Tears sprang to her eyes. “I’ll d-do whatever you want,” she whispered. “Her blood spilled on my paper. It was an Illusion spell, but I wrote the words in her blood, and it took. That’s all I did. Please don’t hurt my family.”
Grath took another step forward, and another, his face a mask that her words didn’t alter. Ceony focused so intently on him—on the vein throbbing in his forehead and the shadows dancing in his eyes—that she didn’t notice the swirling mirror behind him. One moment, Grath was sauntering toward her, and the next a familiar voice called out to him from behind, freezing him in his tracks.
“We really should stop meeting like this.”
A surge of relief rushed through Ceony with such force she nearly lost her balance. Grath scowled and turned, one shoulder still pointed toward Ceony.
There, on the right side of the mirror, stood Emery without his indigo coat. His features looked sharper, darker. His voice lacked its usual mirth. On the left side of the mirror stood Mg. Hughes, who looked rather calm given the situation.
The mirror still swirled, but Ceony didn’t need to see through it to know who had enchanted it, who had found her. Magician Aviosky. Thank God.
Mg. Hughes said, “Sorry for the delay, Miss Twill, but bad glass is incredibly hard to pass through, once it’s found.”
Two tears traced the curve of Ceony’s cheeks. “Thank you,” she breathed.
Emery’s eyes focused on Grath. He held his left hand in his pocket, perhaps holding a spell there. Mg. Hughes conspicuously kneaded three small rubber balls in his right hand.
Grath straightened, his confidence boosted. “Such annoying timing, Thane,” he said. “I was almost done here.”
Mg. Hughes lifted his hand, drawing Grath’s attention. The man tensed, ready for a spell, but instead Emery’s hand whipped out of his slacks and tossed blue confetti into the air, so many tiny shreds of paper that, for a moment, it concealed him completely.
And then he vanished.
A moment later, Ceony felt a hand on her waist as Emery pushed her behind him. He too tried the door, but of course found it locked.
“We need another mirror, Patrice!” Emery shouted.
Grath laughed, taking two steps back so he could see both magicians clearly. He even clapped his hands twice. “What a show, what a show,” he laughed. “Three against one, and yet for some reason I still feel I have the upper hand.”
“Grath—” Ceony began, but Emery shushed her.
“We don’t negotiate with criminals, Miss Twill,” Mg. Hughes said, still kneading those balls. “I’ll hang you by the rubber in your shoes, Cobalt.”
“Hmm,” Grath said, rubbing his chin. “But what do you want, old man? Me, or the girl? I don’t see how you’ll get out of here with both, plus your life.”
From the swirling mirror, Aviosky’s disjointed voice said, “There’s a decent-sized mirror in a lavatory upstairs.”
Grath frowned. “It just takes one touch, Alfred.”
Mg. Hughes laughed. “We know what you are. Don’t play us for fools.”
Grath scowled, and Ceony knew that the expression was meant for her.
After a moment, Grath did turn, slowly, to face Emery. He pulled one of his glass knives from his belt and thumbed the blade, looking the paper magician up and down. “You won’t win, in the end,” Grath said, one of his long canines popping over his lip as he smirked. “You never do. Not with me, not with Saraj. Not with Lira. She was my finest acquisition.”
Emery said nothing.
Grath’s eyes slid over Emery’s shoulder for a second, and he leered at Ceony. “So protective. I should have had my way with her, too.”
Emery tensed. “I’ll see they cut your tongue out before you get the noose, Grath.”
Grath lifted his blade, but Mg. Hughes moved faster.
He threw the rubber balls, which bounced off the floor and soared in three different directions at an alarming speed, catapulting off walls and ceiling, blurring into bullets of black. They orbited around Mg. Hughes, Emery, and Ceony, but not Grath. One skinned his shoulder, leaving a wide streak of red in its wake. They forced Grath to dance and dodge to avoid being shot through.
Ceony didn’t have a chance to witness Grath’s counterattack. Emery pulled her away from the door and slammed his foot into the wood, just beside the knob. The weak lock gave and the door flew open, slamming into the wall beside it. With an almost painful grip on Ceony’s forearm, Emery yanked her from the room and up the stairs, into the kitchen. The man who had answered the door started from near the sink. Emery elbowed him out of the way and ran through the kitchen and into the hallway. He opened one door to a bedroom, then another to the lavatory, where a mirror about three feet by two rested lopsided on a white cabinet with chipped paint. Its silvery face swirled with a Transport spell.
After releasing Ceony, Emery wrenched the mirror from the wall and set it
on the floor, then grabbed her by the shoulders and pushed her into it. Ceony’s stomach lurched as a cold weightlessness overtook her, but she didn’t reemerge in the Parliament building. She didn’t pass through the mirror at all.
She stood inside of it, surrounded by swirling silver walls that warped in shape between concave and convex. Before her hovered a floating silver rock, darker than the walls, and to her right a few stalagmites jutted up from the silvery ground like teeth. A solid-looking cloud hovered a ways ahead, and Ceony realized it was the physical form of a scratch on the mirror.
Delilah had warned her about passing through bad mirrors. This must have been what she meant.
Emery appeared beside her a moment later. He cursed softly, then once more took Ceony’s arm. “Stay close,” he said.
He led her along the stalagmites toward the hovering boulder—a chip, perhaps, or a tarnish. They ducked under it, careful not to lift their heads until they’d passed it completely. When they reached the vertical cloud, which resembled a spiderweb of glass, menacing and sharp, Emery pulled Ceony to the right. They sidestepped until they had circled the farthest stretches of its web.
Another wall faced them, swirling and bright. Emery nudged Ceony forward, and she passed through its cold embrace.
CHAPTER 16
IT TOOK CEONY A moment to absorb her surroundings; then she realized she was in the small rectangular mirror room on the third floor of Mg. Aviosky’s house. Muted sunlight poured through the large, multipaned windows to her left, reflecting off dozens of mirrors made of pure Gaffer’s glass, all set along the walls in a carefully chosen order. The mirrors were in all different frames and sizes, and one even had notes written along its top corners in Delilah’s handwriting. An old book titled The Shaping of Enchanted Vases for Intermediate Blowing rested spine-up on the floor, one-third read.
A pair of hands seized Ceony’s shoulders, and Delilah’s voice snatched her from her daze.
“Oh, Ceony!” she cried, hauling her up with surprising strength. Tears rimmed Delilah’s eyes and her usually perfect hair looked a fright. The Gaffer apprentice embraced Ceony tightly. “I thought you were dead! I was so scared!”
“We all were,” Mg. Aviosky said from beside her, albeit with considerably less jubilation. Her hand remained affixed to a tall, upright mirror, which swirled beneath her touch.
Ceony turned in Delilah’s embrace. “Emery,” she whispered, but just as she spoke his name the paper magician emerged from the glimmering whirlpool, his hands clasped to one of Mg. Hughes’s forearms. The Siper looked dazed, but Ceony saw no injuries.
Mg. Hughes stumbled over the mirror frame and leaned on Emery to steady himself.
As soon as they were both across, Mg. Aviosky’s hand flew from the mirror, returning its surface to normal. She braced Mg. Hughes on the other side.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
Mg. Hughes nodded. “Just fine, but he used a Flash spell on me, and I’m still seeing spots.”
Delilah whispered to Ceony, “That’s when you increase the amount of light reflected off a glass surface. It works especially well with mirrors, and with enough light it can be blinding.”
Mg. Aviosky overheard and frowned. “But not in this case,” she said, guiding Mg. Hughes to a chair in the back corner of the room. “It will wear off.”
“I’ve been on the receiving end of spells far worse than this one, Patrice.” Mg. Hughes laughed. “I’ll be fine after some good blinking.”
“A-And Grath?” Ceony asked. She glanced at Emery, but such fire burned in his green eyes that she quickly redirected her gaze to Mg. Hughes.
He rubbed his eyes. “He got away, unfortunately. But I couldn’t have expected otherwise. We have men headed to that barn outside London, but I haven’t heard from them, good or ill.”
Ceony’s stomach dropped.
Clearly sensing her change in mood, Delilah cried, “I had to tell them, Ceony! Please don’t be angry.”
“And it’s a good thing!” Mg. Aviosky added, somehow managing to purse her thin lips and scold at the same time. “Good heavens, Miss Twill. It took us all night and most of the day to find you. I’d hate to think what would have happened had luck not been on my side!”
“Indeed,” Emery said, almost coldly. He picked up his indigo coat from where it hung over another mirror and draped it over his arm.
“I’m sorry,” Ceony whispered, wishing she had a shell like a hermit crab that she could crawl into. She pulled the mirror shard from her waistband and handed it to Mg. Aviosky. “This is from the mirror I came through, in the shed where Grath is keeping Lira.”
Mg. Aviosky took the shard. “Perhaps it will be of some use.”
“Sounds like it to me,” Mg. Hughes said, leaning forward in his chair. He blinked a few more times. “You should join Criminal Affairs, Ceony. You went on a fool’s errand and sent us on a wild goose chase, but we got some excellent information from all of your meddling—”
Ceony’s eyes widened, and if not for Delilah’s arms, she would have staggered. “My family!” she cried. She pulled away from her friend’s grasp and turned her gaze to Emery. “Grath said he would target my family, that Saraj would! He knew all their names, Emery!”
Emery’s countenance fell. He looked at Mg. Hughes.
The Siper stood from his chair and straightened his vest. “I worried such a threat would arise. It always does, with these types.” He rubbed his half beard in thought. “We’ll have to see that arrangements are made for the Twills.”
“Please, and quickly,” Ceony pleaded. “Thank you so much for coming after me, but it’s them I’m worried about. Marshall and Margo, they’re just kids, and my parents don’t have anywhere to go—”
Mg. Hughes, addressing Mg. Aviosky, said, “I’ll use your telegraph if I may.”
The Gaffer nodded.
Emery stepped away from the others and took Ceony firmly by the upper arm. “Come,” he said, hushed.
But before he could pull her from the room, Mg. Aviosky said, “I’d like to speak with both Miss Twill and Delilah before you take her anywhere, Magician Thane. There is a severe matter of—”
“My apologies, Patrice,” Emery said, quiet but sharp, “but Ceony is my apprentice, and I will deal with her side of the situation.”
With that he tugged Ceony from the mirror room and down the stairs to the second floor, where he opened the lavatory door and pulled her inside, only then releasing her.
She backed up to the footed tub, heart hammering. Emery turned on the electric light and shut the door.
Wiping tears from her eyes, Ceony said, “Emery, I’m—”
“Sorry?” he asked, the word snapping from his mouth. “You’re sorry? Damn it, Ceony, you could have been killed!”
“You don’t think I know that?” she asked.
“No, I don’t think you know that,” he countered, “or you wouldn’t have undertaken such an idiotic endeavor! This is Grath Cobalt! Not some pickpocket off the street!”
Ceony started. Other than in the third chamber of his heart, Emery had never shouted at her before.
“What if Saraj had been there?” he asked, his green eyes blazing. “You would be on a meat hook right now, while the rest of us would still be wondering where the hell you disappeared to!”
“Delilah was—”
“And how dare you bring Delilah into this!” he interrupted. “Do you realize how mirror transportation works? He could have killed you, then her!”
“I know how it works, I’m not stupid!” Ceony shouted back. “I didn’t go into this blind! This is my responsibility—they’re after me—and yet I’m not even allowed to sit in on the meetings discussing it! I thought I should take care of it on my own.”
“You thought wrong,” Emery said. He ran a hand back through his hair, looking ready to tug it from his scalp. “You have a great deal of good fortune in your blood, Ceony, but you cannot continue to take these kinds of risks. You’re not i
mmortal. Do you have any idea what it does to me when you put yourself in danger? And so willingly, no less!”
“If I didn’t take risks like this, you’d be dead!” she shot back. She swung her hand out, nearly knocking a seashell from the sink beside her. “I can’t sit idly by while the rest of the world goes on without me!”
“You do not hold up the world,” Emery replied, closer to his normal volume. “You are not God, and it’s time you stopped acting like you were.”
“You don’t even believe in God,” Ceony quipped, folding her arms. A sore lump formed in her throat, and tears threatened her eyes. She stared at a spot on the floor, trying to bury the sensations.
“It doesn’t matter what I believe, or what you believe, or what anyone in this damn country believes,” Emery said. He let out a long breath. “I don’t understand you, Ceony. I don’t understand why you would do something like this without even telling me. Do you not trust me?”
She lifted her eyes. Beneath the anger in his face, she saw genuine hurt in his eyes.
Her shoulders slumped. “I trust you. You know I trust you. But I don’t want to see you hurt, not again. Grath threatened you, too.”
“Threats are only threats,” Emery said. “If I had a pound for every threat someone has thrown my way, empty or not, I could retire.”
He reached up and touched Ceony’s cheek. She winced. The spot where Grath had struck her still felt swollen and tender.
“This is not a threat,” Emery said, much quieter now. “I know Grath far better than you do, and I know he keeps his promises. You saved my life; now you have to let me save yours. I couldn’t fight Lira, but I can fight Grath and Saraj. You have to understand that they’re nothing like Lira. She was a novice. You’re comparing a house pup to wolves.”
The tears finally broke through Ceony’s resolve and traced uneven lines down her face, wetting Emery’s thumb. “It’s my fault,” she whispered. “Because of me my family is in danger. Oh God, he’ll kill them . . .”
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