Shaking herself, Ceony pushed her body up. The first thing she saw was her own reflection in an antique mirror on the wall beside her. Two large, multipaned windows hovered over her, and the space between them was crowded with more mirrors and tables filled with blown glass, glass beads, and glass shards. Then she saw Delilah’s reflection in a tall mirror made of Gaffer’s glass—the same mirror she had stumbled out of on her return from Belgium.
Ceony scrambled to her feet. Delilah had been tied to a chair with coarse rope, her white handkerchief knotted and stuffed into her mouth. She tried to cry out, but the gag muted her words. Tears spilled from her wide, brown eyes.
Beside her stood—no, hung—Mg. Aviosky, her toes barely touching the ground, her arms stretched up over her head and tied with more rope, which had been slung over a hook in the ceiling, meant to hold a chandelier. Mg. Aviosky’s head lolled to one side, and her glasses sat crooked on her nose, the right lens cracked.
She was unconscious, and her hands had turned a ghostly white, her forearms purple.
“No!” Ceony shouted, running for the magicians, but Grath found her hair and yanked her back, pulling several orange strands from her scalp in the process. Ceony’s back collided with Grath’s wide chest, and he wrapped a thick arm around her neck.
“I’d hoped you would come, Ceony,” he said into her ear, low and snakelike. Delilah squirmed in her chair, screaming futilely against her gag. “I thought you should be the first to know that I figured out our little secret. Chasing you all over Europe gave me time to think about it, as did our chats about Lira.”
“Let them go!” Ceony pleaded. She dug her nails into Grath’s arm, but it didn’t seem to faze him. She kicked her legs, but couldn’t find a good angle to strike him. “Please, do whatever you want with me, but let them go. They’re not part of this!”
“Oh, but they are,” Grath said. He released Ceony and spun her around, then shoved her against the wall. A small, triangular mirror toppled onto the floor, cracking into thirds. Sharp pain radiated in her shoulder blades.
“They’re all part of this,” he continued. “I’ll make them part of this, and I’ll let you watch. Let you know how it feels to be able to do nothing while your loved ones die.”
“She’s not dead!” Ceony protested. “Lira, she’s just frozen—”
“I’ll take care of Lira,” Grath spat. He reached out and dug his knuckle into the bruise on Ceony’s cheek, making her cry out. “I’ll take care of her. I know it all; I just need the power first. But this time, I won’t let you get in the way.”
He pulled her off the wall, one hand under her armpit and the other around her neck, and slammed her into the window. Ceony struggled against the fingers pressing into her windpipe.
With the slightest smirk pulling at the corner of his mouth, Grath said, “Shatter.”
The window shattered, and Ceony choked on a scream as the fragments of glass pushed their way into her skin, past her shirt and chemise, tearing her skirt and stockings. Glass embedded itself up and down her back and into her neck. It flew past her shoulders, slicing open fabric and skin. It stabbed like hundreds of tiny daggers into the back of her legs and knees. Fiery darts of pain pricked her body and dozens of small rivers of blood drizzled over her skin.
She gasped, a fish out of water, and Grath released her, letting her drop like a broken doll onto the floor. Bits of glass small as an infant’s fingernails were embedded in the skin of her hand, and star-shaped crisscrosses adorned her arms. Blood soaked her sleeves, and from what she could see in the mirrors, it soaked her back as well.
The blood may as well have been acid given the way her skin burned around the glass.
She tried to move, tried to push herself up, but the angry shards dug deeper into her skin, searing like hot coals. She wheezed and let herself go limp on the floor, cutting the side of her face on yet more broken gems of glass.
Grath brushed off his hands and grinned. “You see, Ceony,” he said, pacing the room back toward Delilah and Aviosky, “it is about the words, and it is about the material.” He patted Delilah on the cheek; she had gone still in her binds. “I kept thinking of Lira, my dear Lira, and how to cure this obnoxious hex you placed on her. I knew I had to reverse it. And I thought, Reverse. Yes, that makes sense, doesn’t it? Reverse the spell.
“Binding is a spell, too, you know,” he continued, tapping one hand against the other behind his back. “But all spells have counters, a ‘Cease’ command or the like. So why shouldn’t the Binding spell have one, too?”
Ceony held her breath and tried to move, groaning against the sensation of the glass shards shifting in her skin. Her hand slipped in blood, and she collapsed back onto the floorboards.
Grath smirked and paced, this time closer to her. “So I studied, I tested, I practiced like a good apprentice. But I was still missing something. I had to step outside the frame, so to speak, and really analyze what I wanted to achieve. And last night I figured it out while I was staring into the very mirror you left me at that restaurant. Do you want to know what I learned?”
Ceony’s fingers slid across the floor, catching on a bloodied pyramid of glass.
“Me!” Grath announced, lifting his hands in a grand gesture. “The missing piece is me. Clever, isn’t it?”
“Deli . . . lah,” Ceony groaned, trying to slide across the floorboards. She felt hot liquid bubble up from her back and winced.
“Don’t you see?” Grath asked, strolling back toward Delilah and Mg. Aviosky. “I am the key! I must rebond to myself.”
Ceony blinked, his words taking a moment to register. “P-Please . . .”
Grath talked over her. “Let me show you, explain it real slow. First, you must have the raw original, as I like to call it.”
He pulled a small satchel off his belt and dumped its contents onto the table. Fine, tan sand poured over the surface. Blower’s sand, used for forming glass. The raw original . . . The natural elements castable materials were made of?
“Second,” he continued, “is to reverse the process, the words. Do you remember what the words are?”
Hair fell into Ceony’s eyes.
“Come now,” Grath said, sliding a glass dagger from his belt. He held it to Delilah’s collar, and she whimpered beneath her gag as he lightly drew the blade across her skin. “Tell me the words.”
Ceony began to tremble, a motion that felt entirely involuntary.
“M-Material . . . made by man,” Ceony whispered, “I summon you. L-Link t-to me . . .”
“Yes, that’s it,” Grath interrupted, cutting her short. He stuck his right hand into the sand and said, “This is the tricky part. Material made by earth, your handler summons you. Unlink to me as I link through you, unto this very day.”
Warm blood streaked over the side of Ceony’s neck. She could feel her pulse radiating in every single cut and gouge, could hear it drumming Delilah’s name in her ears.
“Next, bond to myself,” Grath continued. He pressed the same hand into his chest and said, “Material made by man, I summon you. Link to me as I link to you, unto this very day.”
He pulled his hand back and crouched, ensuring Ceony could meet his gaze.
“And then,” he said, low and slow, “you bond to the new material. I promised I’d show you, didn’t I?”
He stood and shoved Delilah’s chair against the wall, then wrapped his fingers around her neck.
“No!” Ceony cried, pushing against the floor. Her knees slid in blood, and electric pain soared up her legs and into her shoulder blades, stealing her breath away.
“Are you watching?” Grath asked, his eyes locked on to Delilah. “Material made by man, your creator summons you.
“Do you know how an Excisioner bonds, Ceony?”
“Grath, no!” Ceony cried, pushing herself up. Her arms turned to fire. New rivers of blood burst from the skin on her back, ringing around her ribs and torso.
“Link to me as I link to you through my y
ears, until the day I die—”
Ceony grabbed the antique mirror and pulled herself to her feet.
“And become earth,” Grath finished.
A choking sound emanated from Delilah’s throat. Her eyes widened, and blood began to pour from her nostrils. She stared at Grath, fright emanating from her gaze, until her eyes rolled back into her head.
Grath released her, and she went limp in the chair.
“No!” Ceony screamed, running for her. “Delilah, no! No!”
Grath swung his arm out, colliding with Ceony’s chest. She fell backward, shoving the shards of glass in her back even deeper into her skin. She cried out and sputtered, tasting iron on her lips. Shadows bordered her vision.
“Oh, I’m not done yet,” Grath said, flexing and unflexing his hand. He smiled and turned to Mg. Aviosky.
Ceony’s body pulsed with pain. She struggled to stand as Grath neared Mg. Aviosky, but her limbs went limp. Too much. Never had she been so torn and tattered; never had she hurt like this, inside and out.
She stared at Delilah, who looked little more than a paper doll.
She looked at the shards of glass surrounding her, speckling the floorboards like misshapen diamonds.
Speckling the floorboards.
The wooden floorboards.
Ceony had no paper, but she had this.
Pressing her bloodied palm to the floor, she murmured, barely audible even to her own ears, “Material made by earth, your handler summons you. Unlink to me as I link through you, unto this very day.”
She pressed the same hand to herself and whimpered, “Material made by man, I summon you. Link to me as I link to you, unto this very day.”
She pushed herself up on her elbow, her spirit somewhere distant, far away from the hot, searing pain of her injuries. She reached for a large shard of glass and clutched it in her hands, its edges cutting into her fingers.
Grath stopped before Aviosky and pulled apart her blouse, then used his knife to slice through her camisole, revealing her chest. Her heart.
“Material made by man,” Ceony said, almost more in her head than out loud, “your creator summons you. Link to me as I link to you through my years, until the day I die and become earth.”
The glass tingled in her fingers. Delilah’s glass. It had worked.
Grath pulled back his hand.
Ceony’s eyes darted between the mirrors. She saw her bloodied shoulder in a round one just beside Grath’s head, reflected from the antique mirror against the wall.
She remembered Delilah sitting across from her at the bistro, bubbly and alive, so alive, laughing at the prank she had pulled with the makeup compact. Remembered her explanation of the spell.
Turning to the antique mirror, which she had already touched, Ceony whispered “Reflect” and concentrated on Lira as she had first seen her, a beauty in Emery’s kitchen, black clothes hugging her perfect curves, the twisted ruby smile on her lips. She imagined Lira’s chocolate-colored curls and the way they’d framed her face and spilled over her shoulders. She remembered the dark glint to her eyes, the vials of blood hanging off her belt.
Sure enough, the antique mirror produced a perfect reflection of Lira, and the round mirror picked up the image of her face in turn.
Grath noticed. He hesitated, spying Lira’s reflection in the corner of his eye. He spun, perhaps expecting her to be standing right behind him. Perhaps expecting her to be cured.
Turning his back to Ceony.
Ceony pushed off the ground, growling through the pain. She collided into Grath and dug the shard of glass in her hand into his back, right below his rib cage.
“Shatter!” she cried.
The glass shattered in her hands, breaking into dozens of pieces beneath Grath’s skin.
Grath choked. He grabbed Ceony by the hair and threw her off him; she collided with the floor again and shrieked as spilled glass mangled her already bloodied arm.
Grath stumbled into Mg. Aviosky, grabbing at her for support, but his legs gave out from under him. He collapsed at Delilah’s feet. The glass in his body had cut him too deep, too quickly. He hadn’t prepared a Healing spell beforehand.
The shadows lacing Ceony’s vision expanded, sucking color from the room. Her own blood looked gray, as if melting clouds had smeared over her skin.
She crawled to the nearest mirror, which sat just beside the table covered in sand. Grunting, she touched her fingers to it, leaving prints of red against her reflection.
Help. She needed help . . . Her foggy mind pulled up the memory of the spell Delilah had used on the broken mirror in Ceony’s flat, and with a voice more air than sound, she said, “Reverse.”
Her reflection vanished, replaced by a bright room filled with white furniture and ornate vases. A gray cat sat on a sofa, licking one of its paws. A polished banister marked a staircase in the back. Someone’s sitting room.
The shadows filled Ceony’s vision, and she dropped her hand and head to the floor. She could have sworn she heard Mg. Hughes calling out her name.
CHAPTER 20
Emery
LONDON RUSHED BY EMERY’S window, the blocks and points of city architecture shrinking as the main city dwindled down into its residential branches. Flats gradually morphed into homes, which grew farther and farther apart as the train chugged its way south. Emery watched rolling farms, brush, and sparse trees, pass by in smears of green, stared at waterways so still they looked like Gaffer’s glass. He moved farther from home and closer to his enemy, yet he couldn’t comprehend the rush of colors and the drag of distance around him. In the back of his mind his thoughts pieced together illusions, chains, and careful Folds. In the front, it thought, Ceony.
How long had it been since he’d last kissed a woman? His mind calculated the math sluggishly. Three years? After the separation, before the divorce. Memories he would prefer not to entertain.
Emery leaned his elbow on the window of the train car. Ceony. One month ago he had played with the idea of courting her once she’d earned her magicianship and they’d both settled into their new lives, she as a budding Folder and he with the next sorry lout Patrice forced his way. He had no doubt that Ceony would pass her Folding tests at the end of the minimum two years’ apprenticeship. She had proved herself bright and eager to learn, and her remarkable memory still astounded him.
Yet in recent weeks that amount of time—two years—had begun to seem longer and longer. The squares of his calendar grew bigger, and the hands on clocks moved slower. Revealing so much of himself to one person, even if not by choice, had changed something between them. Created in a matter of days a deep, comfortable bond that often took years to achieve. Her cheer, her dedication, and her beauty made that bond that much harder to ignore, no matter how hard he tried to reason himself out of it.
And her food. Good heavens, everything that woman touched turned to gold in his mouth. She’d make him fatter than Langston before her year mark passed.
A smile touched his lips. He had grown accustomed to living on his own. The two years he’d spent alone in that cottage with just Jonto for company had never bothered him, save in retrospect. Perhaps it was some great fortune or—God forbid—an act of karma that had brought Ceony into his life to light up a house that he hadn’t realized had gone dark. A light he wouldn’t have been able to see if not for her utter stupidity in following an Excisioner clear to the coast for the sake of saving his life. She’d barely known him then. Now she knew everything.
Almost everything.
Emery refocused on the landscape flying by his window. Had he already passed Caterham? Perhaps time had finally decided to catch up to him. He only hoped it wouldn’t move too fast when he needed it most.
A man in a brown suit sat in the far seat across from him. Emery ignored his presence.
Emery had only faced Saraj personally once in his life, shortly after Lira had thrown her soul to the wind and run off with Grath and whoever else the Excisioner—no, Gaffer—had enchanted
at the time. The Saraj was vermin, twisted like taffy and more insane than the world’s worst criminals. A man who would kill countless people for sport, who raped women and boasted about it to his pursuers. A man who stood outside society and fished into it with a jagged spear.
Grath was the only man Emery knew of who could befriend—and possibly control—Saraj, and if Hughes succeeded in capturing him, who knew what Saraj would do next, where he would go. The thought of him taking one more step toward Ceony drove Emery mad, made his fingertips itch and his stomach writhe. And so Emery had agreed to this last hurrah, this careful attempt to capture Saraj before he went wild. Emery wondered how much wilder the Excisioner could become.
He didn’t plan to find out. The train headed toward what he hoped would be Saraj’s last stand. Emery would see the man caged, and Emery would survive. He had to.
He finally had someone worth going home to.
The train arrived in Brighton near noon. Emery hired an automobile to Rottingdean, and then walked from there to Saltdean, on the coast.
Saltdean had once been known for smuggling, thanks to its high, salt-crusted cliffs and the hidden trenches that made unlicensed docking easy and discreet. Emery could taste the salt in the air, but not the sea. To him, it tasted too much like blood.
Off the coast and far into the English Channel, he saw a storm sweeping off France. He wondered if it would reach him today. He would need to be careful about where he laid his spells. Hughes had said the others wouldn’t arrive until the next day.
Suitcase still in hand, Emery took a stroll around Saltdean, examining its cliffs. He headed into the town, eyeing its sparse buildings and scattered homes. He needed to find somewhere large, but uninhabited. Such parameters shouldn’t be hard to come by in a town like this one. He wanted to stay away from the town’s north end, where the common people had begun to turn the land into something profitable.
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