The Master Magician (The Paper Magician Series Book 3)

by Charlie N. Holmberg

  The obstruction wouldn’t budge.

  She turned but couldn’t find the door to the room. The furniture had vanished as well, leaving her with only wood and rain. Raindrops grew in size, falling now like long quilting needles, splashing against her skin, dribbling from her uniform into the growing lake churning around her legs. The cold water climbed up her knees, her thighs.

  Ceony’s heart seized. She frantically waded through the dark water, searching for something to stand on, but found nothing. No desk, no bed, no ladder or stool. No doors anywhere. Even the windowsill had vanished beneath the beating storm.

  “Help!” she cried, but her voice couldn’t pierce the racket of the percussing rain. It beat into her harder and harder, prodding her like shards of glass. Water surged over her hips, her navel.

  She couldn’t swim. She tried to float, tried to push her pelvis toward the sky as Emery had instructed her the one time he tried to teach her, but she only sank.

  Her head went below the water. She flailed, kicked off the floor to come back up.

  Breaking through the water’s surface, she heard someone cry, “Ceony!”

  She turned toward the voice, splashing in the water, desperately trying to keep air in her lungs. And there she was. Delilah. Sitting atop a bookshelf floating on its side, reaching her hand out toward Ceony. In her other hand, she clutched the compact mirror she’d given Ceony for her twentieth birthday, its embellished Celtic knot pressed into her palm.

  “Swim!” Delilah shouted.

  “I can’t!” Ceony cried. Water lapped into her mouth and she coughed. Her toes sought the floorboards, but they had vanished. Everything had vanished but the water and the rain. She was drowning in an endless ocean, no land in sight.

  Delilah reached her hand out farther. “Hurry!” she cried.

  Ceony kicked and paddled, reaching once, twice for Delilah’s fingers. On the third attempt, she caught Delilah’s wrist.

  But Delilah frowned. Her brown eyes rolled back into her head, and Ceony stared in horror as Delilah’s arm fragmented from her body in uneven pieces, drizzling blood into the water. Ceony screamed as the rest of her friend disassembled like a broken mannequin, until the only tangible trace of her was a scarlet mess atop a sinking bookshelf—

  Ceony gasped and sat up in bed, her pillow toppling to the floor. She blinked several times, taking in her dry room, listening to the patter of rain against her window. The hail had stopped.

  Dragging the back of her hand across her forehead, Ceony took a deep breath, listening to the thrumming of her pulse in her ears. Her neck pounded with blood.

  Blood.

  She threw back her blankets, searching beneath them for something, anything. She scanned the room, empty save for where Fennel slept on the desk chair.

  Another deep breath, and another, but still her pulse hammered. She stood and paced to the other side of her room and back, running her hands over her messy braid.

  She hadn’t had a nightmare like that for months. She hated it when they felt so . . . real.

  Tears threatened her eyes, so Ceony looked up at the ceiling and blinked rapidly, urging them away.

  She hadn’t made it to Delilah’s funeral, being unconscious in a hospital bed, but Clemson, the Pyre apprentice she’d met at the factory tour, later told her it had rained.

  Light flashed outside her window, followed by thunder almost as loud as the beating of her heart. Ceony stared at the mess of her bed, then at Fennel.

  She swallowed, stood. Waited. Stared.

  She picked up her pillow and padded to her door, cracking it open. Peered down the dark hallway. The dimmest candlelight shone from behind the farthest door on the right. Emery never had invested in magicked lamps.

  Chewing on her bottom lip, Ceony moved toward it. She adjusted her nightgown and knocked, as softly as her trembling fingers could manage. She didn’t want to wake him if he had already—

  “Yes?” his voice said through the door. How late was it, for him to still be awake?

  She cracked the door open. Emery lay in his bed, covers up to his hips, reading, but he reached over and set the book down on his nightstand. His candle only had a half inch of wax left to burn. She had caught him just in time.

  His eyes met hers, and his forehead wrinkled. “Are you all right, Ceony?”

  She flushed, feeling like a child. “I . . . I’m sorry. I just . . . Can I sleep on your floor?”

  His expression didn’t change. He sat up. “Are you ill?” he asked, ready to stand.

  “I just . . . I’m not sleeping well. Again,” she admitted. “I’ll be quiet. I just . . . I don’t want to sleep alone, not tonight. Please?”

  His lips pressed together. He knew about her nightmares. They had been awful after Delilah died. After her . . . murder. Ceony had slept with a light on for three weeks. They came infrequently now, but when they did come, Ceony dreamed with a vengeance.

  He gestured for her to come, and Ceony stepped into the room. “I’m sorry, I—”

  “Ceony,” he said softly, “don’t apologize.”

  He pulled back his covers and scooted over, making room for one more.

  She hesitated—she had never slept in Emery’s bed before—but she yearned for company. Yearned for him. A paper chain she could neither see nor touch pulled her toward him, and the spell to stop it was the only one she didn’t know.

  She plopped her pillow down beside his and crawled onto the mattress. Emery snuffed the candle with his thumb and lay down on his side, looping one arm around Ceony’s waist, holding her against his chest.

  So warm. Ceony relaxed into the embrace, listened to Emery’s familiar heartbeat, his calm breathing. Matched her breaths to his.

  Gradually the images of her nightmare faded from her mind, and Ceony fell into a safe and dreamless sleep.

  CHAPTER 3

  CEONY AWOKE WITH a sore right shoulder and a numb right ear, the right side of her face still burrowed into her pillow. She blinked at the steady sunlight streaming in through the uncovered window opposite the bed. It looked to be around seven thirty, perhaps eight. It took her a moment to identify that the cluttered nightstand and window were not her own. The blankets were definitely Emery’s.

  She sat up, blood running back into her ear, and scanned the bed. Empty, and made up on one side. She rubbed her eyes and pulled the tie from her messy braid, running her fingers through the long, wavy locks.

  Her chest flushed, just a little, more in temperature than in color. She wasn’t as embarrassed as perhaps she should be . . . She had requested the floor, after all. Not that she minded the invitation. Had Ceony been in a better state of mind, she might have taken advantage of it.

  She smiled, picturing what Mg. Aviosky’s face would look like if the Gaffer ever got wind of last night’s arrangement. She’d be furious.

  Mg. Aviosky knew about their special relationship, of course. At least, Ceony felt certain she knew. She’d confessed her feelings for Emery to her once mentor, but nothing more. Still, the way Mg. Aviosky’s eyes narrowed when she saw Ceony and Emery together, that distinct hum she made in her throat, told Ceony the Gaffer assumed more. Hopefully no one else did . . . at least not yet.

  The door opened then, and Emery entered back-first, carrying a small wooden tray in his hands. Fennel scurried in between his feet and barked, sniffing about the bed and wagging his tail. The mattress was too tall for him to leap upon it.

  Emery, already dressed, set the tray on the bed. It held two pieces of buttered toast and a seven-minute egg.

  “Oh, Emery, you didn’t have to do this,” Ceony said.

  Emery shrugged. “I suppose I didn’t,” he replied. He sat on the opposite corner of the bed, the mattress’s edge, so as not to disturb the tray. “Are you feeling all right?”

  “Mm,” she said, mouth full of toast. She swallowed and added, “Thank you.”

  He merely smiled. Fennel, giving up on Ceony’s side of the bed, scampered over to Emery’s
feet and began tugging at his pant leg.

  “Emery,” Ceony said, pausing her breakfast, “what was that telegram about yesterday?”

  “Hm?” he asked, shaking Fennel free. For a moment, Ceony imagined equipping the paper dog with more substantial teeth—plastic, or perhaps steel. The latter would likely weigh his head down. And what did Ceony need a dog with steel teeth for?

  “I suppose it’s well for you to know now,” Emery said, combing back his hair with his fingers. “You see, I won’t be the one testing you for your magicianship.”

  Ceony’s hand hovered over her breakfast tray. She processed the words. “Pardon?”

  “I won’t be the one initiating your test,” he repeated.

  An uneasiness filled her, like a boat tipping back and forth inside her chest. Ceony moved the tray aside and scooted forward on the bed. “But . . . are you joking? The apprentice manual states clearly in the preface that the apprentice’s mentor is the one who gives the test for magicianship.”

  “So it does,” Emery said, his expression a little softer now, but not teasing. He stood from the bed and walked to his closet, grabbing his indigo coat from its hanger and slipping it on. “It’s something that’s been on my mind for months now—surely it’s crossed yours.”

  He paused again at the foot of the bed and looked her over, smiling with his eyes. His lips, however, bore the slightest frown. “I’m worried anyone who suspects our relationship will believe you were tested with a bias.”

  Trying to hide her own frown, Ceony nodded. “I did consider that, once or twice. But I haven’t told—”

  “Sometimes, darling, you don’t have to say it out loud,” Emery interjected. “I’ve made other arrangements for you. You’re a wildly talented Folder, Ceony. Almost as much as myself,” he added with a pompous grin. “I would hate to have anyone cast doubts on your abilities, now or in the future.”

  Ceony felt herself droop a little—she couldn’t help it. Without Emery as her tester, she was faced with yet another unknown in this process. She knew even less of what to expect now than she had this morning. And, if she didn’t pass the test the first time, she’d have to wait another six months. If she failed three times, her name would be crossed out from the books forever, unredeemable. Any subsequent attempt at magic would send her to a jail cell.

  What if she didn’t pass?

  She sucked in a deep breath. “Very well. I trust you in this. May I ask who will be handling my test in your stead?”

  “Ah yes,” Emery said, clapping his hands together. “I got his consent in that telegram. You, Ceony Twill, will test for your magicianship under the scrutiny of Magician Pritwin Bailey. Actually, you’ll be staying with him and his apprentice for a couple weeks prior to testing, as per tradition.”

  Ceony’s lips parted, and a moment later she asked, “A couple weeks?”

  “Two or three.”

  “Magician Bailey?” she asked, twisting a lock of hair around her index finger. The name wasn’t familiar, but—

  She paused, her memory itching at her. Something about it . . .

  For a moment Ceony found herself reeled back into the halls of Granger Academy, the secondary school both she and Emery had attended. The memory was not hers, but his—something she had spied when she traveled through his heart two years ago in an attempt to rescue it from a horrid Excisioner named Lira, who also happened to be Emery’s ex-wife. She recalled Emery and two other boys picking on a gangly, aspiring Folder. A Folder named Prit.

  “Prit?” she asked. “The boy you bullied in school?”

  Emery scratched the back of his head. “‘Bullied’ sounds so juvenile . . .”

  “But it’s him, isn’t it?” Ceony pushed. “Pritwin Bailey? He became a Folder after all?”

  Emery nodded. “We graduated from Praff together, actually. But yes, he’s the same.”

  Ceony relaxed somewhat. “So you two are on good terms, then?”

  The paper magician barked a laugh. “Oh, heavens no. We haven’t spoken to each other since Praff, save for this telegram. He quite loathes me, actually.”

  Ceony’s eyes bugged. “And you’re sending me to test with him?”

  Emery smiled. “Of course, in a few days. What better way to prove you had no bias than to place your career aspirations in the hands of Pritwin Bailey?”

  Ceony stared at him a long moment. “I’ve been shot to hell, haven’t I?”

  “Language, love.”

  She pressed a palm to her forehead. “I have more studying to do than I thought. I’m doomed. I . . . I need to get dressed.”

  She rose from the bed and hurried out into the hallway, palm still pressed to her forehead, Fennel following at her heels.

  “You haven’t touched your egg!”

  But Ceony had far larger concerns on her plate than breakfast.

  Ceony read through another eight chapters in the Folding dissertation Emery had given her, occasionally pinching herself to keep her mind alert and attentive as she read each long-winded, dry-as-toast paragraph about spells she already knew. Regardless, she refused to skim, and she studied the diagrams as though she had never heard of a full-point Fold. At least the artistic style in which the dissertation had been illustrated was new to her.

  She later assigned herself complex animation for practice, picking an animal she had never before created: a turkey. With a few pictures for reference, she carefully Folded tail feathers and crimped paper to form a spherical body. She used three square pages for the neck, another for the head, and carefully cut and morphed a beak and snood. It took her the better part of the day to create and animate the fowl. The next day she Folded a larger turkey using more paper, carefully interlocking each piece to ensure safe mobility. After two days of working on that, she worried her knees would permanently indent with the lines of the floorboards she’d knelt on for hours.

  Knowing the importance of her test, Emery seemed content enough to keep to himself, but he did pop in on occasion to offer advice, persuade Ceony to take a break, or, oh, maybe cook something. Ceony could only smile at the veiled requests.

  By the end of the week, however, Ceony had thoroughly burned herself out on dissertations and animation, so she retreated to her closet to study up on Siping, the magical manipulation of rubber. She crafted the rubber buttons into paw pads, though she had to discard the first two after cutting them wrong, then used affixing spells to adhere the pads to the bottom of Fennel’s feet. This way his paws wouldn’t wear out as often, and if he stepped in a very shallow puddle, his paws wouldn’t crumple into soggy wads. After studying her finished work for a moment, she nodded to herself, satisfied that Fennel’s feet could pass as a mere craft project—nothing that would make a magician look twice.

  Utterly tired of all things magic, Ceony went to bed early that Friday night, only to be woken a few minutes past midnight. Not by a nightmare, thank goodness, but by the faintest click click sound heard through the wall, just loud and familiar enough to pull Ceony from the space between dreams.

  She lifted her head from her pillow, holding her breath to be sure she had heard right. The noise continued: click click click, click, click. The telegraph.

  She sat up in bed, careful not to rouse Fennel, who dozed on her mattress tonight, curled up near her feet. She rubbed her eyes and put her bare feet to the floor. Who would be sending a telegram this late at night? The weather was clear; why not send a paper bird instead? Was Prit as opposed to normal rest as Emery was? Was this a message to cancel their arrangement? Ceony wouldn’t mind if it were.

  She stepped out of her room. The cracks around Emery’s door were dark, so she padded to the library and opened the door.

  The telegraph clicked steadily from its place on the table. It stopped before Ceony took two steps into the dark room, leaving her alone in an eerie silence.

  Ceony reached for the switch for the electric lights and flipped it. The bulbs hanging from the library ceiling flickered on for a moment before thei
r light fizzled out, recasting the library in shadow. Blinking purple spots from her eyes, Ceony flipped the switch back and forth a few times to no avail. Had the power gone out again? Being so far from the main city, Emery’s circuitry had a habit of turning sour.

  She padded across the room, avoiding the loudest floorboards out of habit. She reached the table and tried the lamp, but it too stayed dark. She lit the candle beside it instead and picked up the curling telegram. The brief message seemed scrambled for a minute. She scanned the words, but they didn’t stick in her head. She tried again, slower.

  prendi escaped en route to portsmouth for execution stop thought you should know stop alfred stop

  Her fingers went numb holding that slip of paper. It didn’t tingle beneath her touch as it should. It felt dead, limp. Heavy.

  Alfred. She hadn’t seen Magician Hughes since her ordeal with Grath, which had finally brought her entwinement with Criminal Affairs to an end, or so she had believed.

  Ceony’s eyes fixated on the telegram’s first word. Prendi. Saraj Prendi. Grath’s dog. The Excisioner who had tried to kill her twice, all for the sake of convenience. The man who had threatened the lives of her family and her love.

  And now he was loose.

  CHAPTER 4

  THE ELECTRIC LIGHTS came on, burning spots into Ceony’s vision, temporarily blotting out the name Prendi in her hands.

  The candle flickered. The door hinges creaked.

  “Ceony?” Emery asked, punctuating her name with a yawn. “What are you . . . Telegram?”

  Ceony didn’t answer. Her thoughts danced around her family’s home and down into the river that had swallowed a buggy and its driver whole, almost claiming Emery and Ceony, too. They zoomed east to Dartford, to the paper mill’s newly rebuilt walls.