The Paper Magician (The Paper Magician Series, Book 1)

by Charlie N. Holmberg

  Ceony shifted her attention from Thane and his skeletal project to the man entering the library. He carried two giant cardboard totes of paper that looked heavy enough that Ceony doubted she could even lift one without pulling a muscle.

  Yet the totes seemed almost tiny in this man’s arms, a man whose boyish face put him only a few years Ceony’s senior. He had to be six and a half feet tall and looked wide enough that Ceony felt sure she could fit inside him at least three times. Everything about the man was simply . . . big. Big shoulders, big stomach, big hands. Each of his calves looked like a feast day ham.

  “Excellent, Langston,” Thane said, glancing up from his work for only half a second. Ceony couldn’t tell what he was working on—it looked almost like a bent-up crescent roll roughly the length of his hand. Fortunately, Thane’s next words answered the unspoken question: “I want to try integrating thick and thin together for this one—thick at the jaw’s joints and at the chin, thin in between. Maybe that will work.”

  “Maybe,” Langston replied with a slowness and drawl that had Ceony suspecting he hadn’t grown up in England. “I’m sure you’ll figure it out soon, Magician Thane. My ma always said the word damn came from beavers who gave up on their houses one stick short.”

  “Your mother says many things,” Thane replied offhandedly. “See if you can’t duplicate that hip, hm?”

  Ceony marveled as Langston pulled out a chair nearly too small for him and took a seat across the table from Thane. He hardly had space to set down his giant elbows.

  “Is this your apprentice?” Ceony asked, not expecting an answer. Judging by Thane’s age, Langston had to be the first . . . though he could have been the “half.” Ceony could understand firing an apprentice like Langston. Those monstrous hands could never form the minute and intricate Folds required by intermediate and advanced Folding.

  Yet Ceony found her own jaw dropping as Langston picked up Jonto’s right hip with a fairylike touch and turned it over in his hands, examining its components. Setting it down, he picked up a square parchment of medium thickness and, with his tongue pinched in the corner of his mouth, began carefully Folding it to reflect the hip’s smallest part.

  “Astonishing,” Ceony commented as the two worked. “I wouldn’t mind having a fellow his size with me right now.”

  Rubbing a chill from her arms, she murmured, “I wouldn’t mind either fellow with me right now.”

  Fennel pawed at her leg. Ceony absently reached down to pet his head.

  Surely Langston had been certified as a Folder by now. She wondered how long his apprenticeship had taken. She wondered if he had been happy to arrive at Mg. Thane’s abode. If he had been polite upon meeting his teacher. If he had been grateful, as she should have been.

  “We need to go,” she said to Fennel, tearing herself from her ruminations. She gave a last fleeting look to Jonto—and to Thane—and hurried for the library’s unpainted door. She had to throw her shoulder into it to nudge past a half-rusted lock—

  Ceony found herself stumbling over lush beige carpeting. The sun had vanished, replaced by the lights of hundreds of electric bulbs centered between violet-painted alcoves studded with thick gold tiles, enchanted by Gaffers—glass magicians—to spread light outward in nearly prismatic rays. Soft music from multiple instruments touched her ears, alongside the clinking of wine glasses and unintelligible murmurs of too many people idly chatting.

  Ceony paused, taking in her new surroundings. Fennel ran a few yards more before skidding to a halt.

  Ceony knew this place—she had catered multiple dinners here with her old employer. This was Drapers’ Hall on Throgmorton Avenue, the finest hall in London, if not in all of England. At least, the finest Ceony had ever visited.

  She stood on the balcony between wide gold-leafed pillars, their chapiters carved in tiers. Beyond them a great mural of wingless angels surrounded by flora painted the ceiling. She ran a hand over the balcony’s gold-leaf railing. Though this was only a vision, little more than a dream, this one felt as though it were real.

  She peered to the floor below. Round, white-clothed tables filled it in neat rows, while men and women in black carried silver trays and glass pitchers to and from the kitchen tucked away in the northeast corner. A string quartet played soft melodies in the southwest corner. Ceony recognized all of it, though her memory had a more up-front view. She had donned that same black dress and frilly apron before.

  No . . . she had catered this event.

  Pulling away from the railing, she looked about the balcony. Small tables, none large enough to fit more than four people, lined either edge of the mezzanine where it followed the curve of the wall. About a quarter of the tables were unoccupied, but Ceony walked briskly and searched them first, for if the heart had spit her out here, she knew Thane couldn’t be far.

  And she was right. She spied Thane looking no different than she knew him now—save for the lack of that indigo coat—sitting at a small, square table with a balding man Ceony had never before met.

  Thane leaned his chin into his palm, much the same way he had at his titling ceremony when he became a magician, looking every bit the part of bored. His companion must not have noticed, for the balding man prattled without the slightest hitch or hesitation, gesturing every now and then with a flick of his butter knife or a tip of his head.

  “. . . and she insisted that all proper ladies needed satin scarves, and said that Mary Belle had three satin scarves all in shades of blue, so of course I had to allot her the money,” the stranger said, pausing only to take a sip of his drink—mulberry wine, and from a very expensive year, if Ceony remembered correctly. Yes, she remembered the wine served at this event very well. “With her coming-out party in May, I certainly can’t have her go without a satin scarf. I try very hard to keep in tune with women’s fashion, what with her mother away to Crafton and all.”

  Mg. Thane tapped the nail of his middle finger against the edge of his plate, his food only half-eaten. He’d already drained his wine glass, and with most of the servers on the main floor, no one had come by to refill it. His eyes looked glazed—not from alcohol, but from tedium. Couldn’t this bald man see that?

  “What do you think, Emery?”

  Thane blinked, and Ceony caught the brief reigniting of his irises. “Oh yes. The neck, of course, is crucial for a proper coming out. The irony in covering it, of course, clashes with the event, but you can’t have your youngest colder than the other girls at the party.”

  Ceony smiled at that, though the balding man only nodded and said, “Exactly. She’ll stand apart in all the wrong ways.”

  Ceony laughed. Were Thane and this man even having the same conversation?

  Thane’s gaze drifted back to the ballroom floor. Stepping beside him, Ceony tried to follow his line of sight, knowing it wasn’t worth trying to get his attention. She guessed he peered at the grandfather clock against the north wall, likely hoping for an escape of some sort.

  Escape . . .

  Stepping around her teacher, Ceony leaned over the balcony in search of Lira—if she could find the Excisioner first, perhaps she could form some sort of upper hand—but instead spied a familiar braid of orange hair waiting tables below. That was her!

  She remembered this event, though she didn’t recall Mg. Thane being at it. She would have remembered his face. Then again, at this event—a fund-raiser for some school board—she had only served on the floor, not in the balconies. The date was July 29, 1901. Just a week before the school year began at Tagis Praff.

  It also happened to be her last day of work.

  She squinted, watching herself fill wine glasses. She looked awful in that dress. It accentuated all the wrong places. Thank goodness she hadn’t known Thane then. Her ears burned at the thought.

  Ceony recognized one man in particular at the table her younger self served. Though he was a few years sh
ort of middle-aged, he had gray hair with a receding hairline and a long gray mustache that framed the sides of his mouth. He boasted broad shoulders and a well-tailored suit—perhaps the best-tailored in the entire ballroom, with three real-gold buttons and a red-pleated cummerbund. Oh yes, she remembered him. Him and his foul talk about the Mill Squats where she had grown up, blathering nonsense about its education and a nonexistent prostitute program just because the district was a poor one. Ceony remembered this night distinctly. She had hated that man, and she had done a good job of keeping her temper controlled, until—

  She held her breath and watched, waiting for that moment. Waiting . . .

  There it was. Ceony—younger Ceony—reached over to fill the man’s wine glass, and his ungloved hand swooped right under her skirt. She still remembered his clammy fingers against her thigh.

  Younger Ceony jumped back, scowled, and dumped the rest of that expensive mulberry wine right onto the man’s lap. The man yelped and leapt up so quickly his chair fell backward and clamored against the marble floor. The sound—both the chair and the man’s curse—echoed through the entire ballroom.

  Beside her, Thane burst into laughter.

  It startled Ceony. She glanced to Thane, ogling him, then realized he had been watching as well. He had seen Ceony dump half a pitcher of vintage wine onto the best-dressed man in the establishment, embarrassing the both of them in front of England’s finest.

  And Thane laughed.

  “What’s gotten into you?” the balding man across from Thane asked, oblivious.

  “One of the waitresses just dumped a pitcher onto Sinad Mueller’s lap,” he chortled, picking up a sage-green cloth napkin to dab at his eyes.

  Ceony paled. Had he said . . . Sinad Mueller?

  Time seemed to freeze as that name processed in Ceony’s mind. Sinad Mueller. The Mueller Academic scholarship. The scholarship Ceony should have been first pick for, but had lost last minute, crushing her dreams of pursuing magic. The scholarship that—once lost—resigned her to a life of housework just to earn enough for school to become a half-decent chef. It all made sense now.

  Ceony stared as she watched her younger self storm back into the kitchen—where she would promptly be fired—as Sinad Mueller continued shouting expletives. Two of his colleagues darted from their chairs with napkins ready to make a futile attempt at cleaning the man up.

  She released the rail and took a step back. All her muscles went lax.

  That was why Ceony had lost the scholarship. She had dumped a pitcher of wine onto the very man who would have awarded it to her.

  “He deserved it.”

  Ceony turned to see a second Mg. Thane standing over the one sitting down. This one wore a long indigo coat and his arms folded across his chest.

  Ceony’s eyes darted between the two Thanes, nearly identical, and gasped. “Thane?”

  But the second Thane didn’t look at her, only at the scene unfolding below. He appeared almost as unaware as his counterpart. And yet, when he spoke, it seemed as if he spoke to her.

  “Sinad Mueller is a vile man behind closed doors,” he said. “You can hear it in his voice, the way he talks, the way he looks at women—even young men. He hoards his money and doles it out publicly to only the best specimens, and he makes sure half the country knows of his ‘generosity.’ He plays the school board like a fiddle, and I for one believe he cheated on his exit exams. He enchants rubber about as well as a tire salesman.”

  Ceony clutched the strap of her bag and felt Fennel circle her legs. “He knew who I was.”

  “I found out who you were,” Thane said, and Ceony wasn’t sure if it was in response to her statement or merely the next line of his monologue. “He revoked your scholarship, so I stepped in.” He chuckled to himself and rubbed his chin with his thumb. “I wanted to see the look on his face when that ‘petulant, fiery girl,’ as he put it, waltzed into Tagis Praff and stuffed his manner and his foul money right back into his coat pocket.”

  Ceony glimpsed the ballroom floor, but Sinad Mueller had already left the room. “You gave it to me to spite him?” she asked. “Fifteen thousand pounds just to spite someone you didn’t like . . . not that I’m ungrateful. You have no idea how much it means to me—”

  She turned back only to see the second Thane vanish. She darted from the railing, searching for him, but he had disappeared as easily as the moon on a cloudy night. If only she could put into words how much that scholarship meant to her, regardless of why she received it. The thank-you letter in Mg. Thane’s office couldn’t even come close to covering it. One more reason she couldn’t let him die.

  Ceony’s gaze dropped to the ballroom and locked onto Lira, who appeared to be searching for her as well, near the string quartet. She held a small pool of blood in her palm and shook it slightly. A divining spell?

  Ceony backed away from Lira’s view, slipping her hand into her bag and counting her thin arsenal. She had something, at least, but what real good would paper animals do against a practiced Excisioner? Folding had never been meant for combat! “I have to get out of here,” she whispered, picking Fennel up beneath his front legs. “I have to get out. Thane, where are you?”

  But he didn’t answer. Whatever method he had used to speak to her earlier had been lost.

  Swallowing and clutching Fennel to her chest, Ceony hurried across the balcony. Where could she hide? What sort of damage could she do with a mere stack of paper? There was a reason she never wanted to be a Folder!

  I need to get out! her mind screamed.

  She slowed at the end of the balcony, then stopped altogether. Before her stood a door that she knew wasn’t part of the ballroom—a white door rimmed with scarlet, without knob or handle. Glancing behind her, she saw Lira’s head crowning the top of the stairs that led to the balcony.

  Ceony pushed her way through the door and staggered through a puddle of blood.

  She gasped and bit her lip to stifle a scream as the door behind her vanished. She had reentered the fleshy chamber of Thane’s heart and stepped right into a river of blood that flowed steadily past her ankles. The loud pulsing of Thane’s heartbeat reverberated through the chamber’s walls: PUM-Pom-poom.

  Trying to steady her breathing, Ceony followed the river’s current, her knuckles straining with the closed fists at her sides. The blood flowed higher and higher up her leg until she waded with it above her knees. Almost too deep. She gritted her teeth and tried not to think of being pulled beneath its surface.

  She saw another door, but this one made of flesh and veins, pulsing in rhythm with the rest of the room. One with no windows or knobs, no locks or hinges. Just flesh pressed tightly against flesh, like a long, swollen cut that wasn’t meant to heal.

  Somehow, Ceony knew she needed to get through it.

  Lira’s voice sounded softly above her, no doubt carried on the particles of a spell, for the woman lingered nowhere in sight. Caught up in a vision, somewhere, Ceony hoped. “Not that I’m discontented to leave you trapped in here, dearie,” the voice said, “but I don’t want you stinking up the place. Let’s get this over with, shall we? Swift and quick. I’ll even leave your body in one piece. Maybe two.”

  Despite the wet heat of the chamber, gooseflesh pimpled Ceony’s arms. She clutched the strap of her bag and forced air into her lungs, though a flutter broke her breath here and there. She couldn’t fight Lira, not yet. Her best option was to keep going—find the end of Thane’s heart and, hopefully, its exit.

  “I need you to fold up, Fennel,” she told the dog, her words nearly inaudible. “Fold yourself up and get into my bag, where it’s safe. Just for a little while.”

  The dog quirked its head to one side.

  “Go on,” she said, and the dog tucked its head down and its legs in. Ceony pressed against Fennel’s sides gently with her hands until he formed a thick, lopsided pentagon. She carefully
wedged the creature into her bag, between sheets of paper.

  Taking a deep breath and holding it in her throat, Ceony pushed herself between the fleshy walls of Emery Thane’s heart into the second chamber.

  CHAPTER 9

  THE WALLS OF THANE’S heart pressed against her on all sides, pulsing with their loud PUM-Pom-poom and drowning out the unnatural light. They squeezed against her, tight and tighter, as if she were being run over by an empty buggy with more and more passengers climbing inside it, making its wheels crush her. It felt like drowning.

  Her own muscles tightened as adrenaline surged through her body. She couldn’t breathe. Heat from the walls seeped past her clothes and into her skin, making her too warm, too hot. One would think a heart disconnected from its person as long as this one had been would feel cold, but not Emery Thane’s heart. Emery Thane’s heart defied the physics of everything Ceony had come to know over her nearly two decades of life. Though unless she found a way out, she wouldn’t see her twentieth year!

  A tear squeezed through clenched eyelids. She clawed at the walls, trying to shove past them, gasping for air but finding none. She tasted blood on her lips—blood that wasn’t hers. She inched forward, pushing back against the flesh that pushed against her and tugged at her bag. Her head began to pound, her vision blurred—

  A surge of blood from the river at her feet pushed against her rump, shoving her through the valve. Her hand touched open air. Digging her heel into flesh, Ceony pulled herself into the second chamber of Thane’s heart, gasping and choking, spitting and wheezing.

  She bit down hard on her own teeth, sucking in mouthfuls of hot air, trying to calm her own trembling. Trying to prevent a sob. It’s over, it’s over, she told herself, and it helped somewhat. I chose to do this. I can do this.

  I have to do this.

  She had barely caught her breath when she heard a suctioning sound from the valve behind her.

  Ceony looked over her shoulder. The river that had pushed her out of the valve—and into a chamber almost identical to the first—continued to flow after her, filling the gutters around the edges of the heart and beyond. Flooding them . . .