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

by Charlie N. Holmberg

  “I need you to fold up, Fennel,” Ceony said. Fennel whined and she added, “I don’t want you to get hurt again, and it’s wet outside. Just for a little while.”

  “Will it be?” Emery asked, once more scanning the expanse. “Just a little while?”

  Ceony gave him a soft smile before commanding Fennel, “Cease.”

  Fennel stilled in her arms, and she folded him softly in her freckled hands. “Your doubtful side isn’t very strong,” she remarked. “You must be sure about a great many things.”

  Emery didn’t answer.

  Tucking Fennel far down into her bag, she said, “I think mine would look much different. More cliffs and surging rivers, or lots of roads with unexpected turns. Maybe even some lions. I’ve been doubtful about a lot of things in life.” Including you.

  “But no cracks,” Emery commented.

  Ceony glanced over her shoulder to the chasm rupturing the land, wondering for a moment how much more sand had fallen into it since her hurried paper lessons. “Plenty of cracks, but no canyons. Not yet,” she affirmed. I guess it all depends on how this goes.

  She stood, brushed off her skirt—for what good it did her—tested the shield chain for the third time, and checked the stitches of her bag’s strap. She had memorized the location and number of all the spells within the bag already, should she need to retrieve them quickly.

  “Good luck,” Emery said.

  “Thank you,” she replied. “But how will you—”

  Ceony turned to him, but met only the stretch of empty, predawn space beyond the canyon. The paper magician—at least this version of him—had disappeared.

  She barely had time to recognize Emery’s absence before the ground began to quake. Ceony reached out for something to steady herself with, but of course she found nothing amidst her barren surroundings.

  The land shook in broader and broader patterns, bucking back and forth like a rodeo bull. Ceony took two steps away from the chasm before she stumbled to one knee and skinned her palm on the hard earth, which had begun to fade, revealing deep red flesh beneath it.

  The vision slowly collapsed. The sky broke like shards of glass. The heart’s PUM-Pom-poom drummed so loudly Ceony felt it in her lungs. The pulse accelerated and the last of the vision faltered.

  The walls of Emery’s heart throbbed and rippled. The beat grew uneven, and Ceony’s breath quickened. It didn’t sound right; it didn’t feel right. If Emery’s heart destroyed itself trying to free her . . .

  Her hands turned cold. A world without Emery Thane. Her entire world up until a month ago had existed without him, but to go back to it now . . . The thought made Ceony sick. It crushed her.

  The rivers of blood lining the perimeter of the chamber engorged and rose. The air grew thicker and hotter, as if she hung over a pot of boiling water, ready for cooking. The heart wrenched one way, then another, and Ceony felt herself fall.

  She landed on her side, her left cheek pressed to wet, rough rock. Damp, cool air encircled her, clinging to her clothes and skin. Tasting of salt. She heard the sounds of swishing and spurting nearby—waves crashing against rocks.

  Pale sunlight filtered through the mouth of the black cave. The sharp cry of a gull startled her to alertness.

  She was free.

  “You did it,” Ceony whispered, pushing herself to her feet and spinning to the rocky shelf that still held Emery’s beating heart in its pool of enchanted blood. Still beating, but even weaker than before. She could still save him, if she hurried.

  She hoped.

  Her eyes shot back to the cave’s mouth. Morning. Early morning. But had it been one night, or two? Exhaustion pinched the center of Ceony’s muscles and the edges of her brain, but it could not tell her how many hours had accumulated.

  Ceony swallowed, realizing for the first time just how thirsty she was.

  She approached the heart like a priestess to an altar. Would it need its pool of gold-rimmed blood to survive the trip back to London? It had beat in Lira’s hand after she had pulled it from Emery’s chest without a spell—at least, without any Ceony could see. Then again, she knew little of the working of magicians’ hearts, and almost nothing of Excision.

  She needed something safe to carry the heart in, but as she considered her options the salty air began to burn her nose, and the blond hairs on her arms stood on end. Licking her lips, Ceony turned around to face Lira, whose dark hair fell in perfect, lush waves over her narrow shoulders, whose dark eyes narrowed to lightless almonds, and whose red lips curled into a sneer.

  Setting her jaw, Ceony stepped away from the heart. She would allow no spell of Lira’s to miss her and strike it. She would keep Emery’s heart safe, especially from the woman who had treated it so very poorly.

  If the Excisioner was surprised to see Ceony, she didn’t show it. Her pale skin flushed almost prettily with anger, or perhaps hate. Ceony couldn’t be sure—such loathing had never been directed at her before. Not to this magnitude.

  Ceony took the first words for herself.

  “Stand down, Lira,” she said, straightening as tall as her five-foot-three frame could straighten. “You want to escape? Then go while you have the chance.”

  Lira smiled, looking distinctly like a cat gone half-feral. “Not when I have two hearts to take with me. Grath will find them such a handsome prize, even if I only let him keep yours.”

  She lifted a bloody hand—her blood or another’s, Ceony couldn’t be sure—and with it rose from the ground three pairs of severed, undead hands that Ceony had failed to spot, as the uneven rock of the cave floor had concealed them.

  Ceony’s windpipe constricted, reminding her of the bruises dotting her neck such hands had given her before. For a split second she felt herself paralyzed, but the whispered beating of Emery’s heart regrounded her. Forced her to move.

  Her hands shot to her bag as Lira’s shot forward, sprinkling droplets of cold blood throughout the cave. The undead hands—fingers pudgy and swollen—rose like birds into the air and shot toward her on invisible wings.

  Wings.

  Birds.

  Ceony grasped her paper birds in her fingers and yanked their Folded bodies from her bag. “Breathe!” she gasped as the hands charged her. “Attack them!”

  Two birds fell crumpled to the cavern floor, crushed from where Ceony had landed on her bag after escaping the heart. She stiffened, but seven square-bodied cranes heeded her command and sprung to life in front of her—orange, yellow, maroon, white, white, white, and gray. Their quick flapping hummed through the cavern. Their long necks stretched forward as they sailed for Lira’s bodiless army, and Ceony could almost hear them caw a selfless battle cry just before striking their targets.

  One bird collided with each hand, save for two who struck a half-rotten hand at the same time, one at the thumb, the other at the ring finger. The hands closed around the birds not four paces from Ceony and, as in the prison, fell to the ground.

  Ceony’s mind spun. Adrenaline coursed up her neck and down into her legs, making her skittish. She had to get out of the cave—Emery’s heart rested too close to the battle. Lira blocked the entrance, conjuring her next spell.

  Ceony already had hers set.

  “Focus on your target,” Emery’s voice spoke in her memory as he had during his quick lesson in the new spell. “Feel it in your mind like your story illusions. If you do, the stars will hit their mark.”

  Reaching into her bag, Ceony pulled free five tightly Folded, four-cornered paper stars, just like the ones Emery had worn going into that awful warehouse. She and Emery had Folded them so tightly they hadn’t been affected by the crushed bag. She locked her eyes on Lira’s muttering lips and bloodied hands, threw the stars, and ran for the cave mouth.

  The stars spun through the air like pinwheels caught in a summer storm. Ceony didn’t watch to see them meet the
ir target. Lira’s frustrated scream told her enough.

  The morning sunlight, white behind thready clouds, burned her dry eyes and sizzled against the ocean that stirred about the black-rock coast below her. So deep, so hungry.

  The water sprayed cool mist over Ceony as she darted over the uneven shore. A whip of amber kelp looped around her foot and fell away again, perhaps sensing Ceony’s urgency and deciding not to take part in it.

  She didn’t get far before a crackling ribbon of gore circled around her. The shield chain encompassing her torso stiffened. The bubbling blood warped away from her body and crashed into the wet rocks, staining them in patterns like spiderwebs. The spell’s residue left a metallic taste in the back of Ceony’s throat.

  Lira scowled and pulled a small vial of blood from the tight waistband of her slacks. It looked like her supply was getting low. “A parlor trick,” she said with a grin that was almost a grimace. “Do you really think a little paper sash can stop me?”

  She advanced one step, uncorking the vial with a long thumbnail and dumping it into her hands. The blood coursed over her palm and dripped into the small, swirling streams of saltwater between jagged rocks under her feet.

  “It has three times already,” Ceony countered, taking one step back for Lira’s every step forward. “So I’ll say yes.”

  Lira smiled sweetly, and for a moment Ceony could see why Emery had been drawn to her, so many years ago. But the expression soured as Lira’s brows drew together, her forehead creased, and her nostrils flared. She said something in a bizarre tongue and waved her bloody hand as if she were throwing a cricket ball.

  Ceony’s hand thrust into her bag. She braced herself for Lira’s attack.

  It struck from behind.

  The red-veined waves crashed into her like a blizzard wind, cold and blinding, nearly knocking her to the uneven ground. A jolt of alarm—as if she had been burned—shot from navel to crown. She ran from the wave so as not to be pulled into the ocean, but it had already done its damage, soaking her to her skin.

  She felt the power drain from her shield chain. Two links between her shoulder blades gave out, and the chain flopped down to her ankles, nothing more than soggy pulp.

  Ceony felt as though her own blood had been drained away with the wave. She searched her bag with white, shivering fingers, pulling out spell after ruined spell. Her paper fish, the elaborate confusion sphere Emery had Folded himself while she had made the stars. It had been meant as a distraction for . . .

  Her hand touched the symmetrical rhombus beside Fennel. Dry, protected by the bodies of the crushed spells, as were Fennel and her binding chain. They all buzzed softly beneath her touch. The thin stack of unused papers had protected them, thank God.

  Lira closed the gap between them, a cat stalking a grasshopper, as Ceony dropped wet spells at her feet. Ceony stumbled backward, trying to keep the Excisioner and her bloody hands at bay. Her heart hammered holes into her chest. Her skin itched. She swallowed against a dry throat.

  She’d rather face Emery’s shadows again than be here, so unarmed. But she couldn’t run, not from this. Not back to Emery, cold and heartless.

  “You’re weak, just like him,” Lira said with a sneer. “Worthless. All Folders are. Emery never had any real power, and neither do you.”

  Ceony stopped retreating. She would not be a mouse, nor would she be a grasshopper. She dug her heels into the black rock. She had no confusion sphere, but she had other ways of distracting Lira.

  “He signed the divorce papers the night he hid you,” she said, letting her face relax into the sort of smugness she couldn’t stand in other people. The sort of smugness Lira would have worn, had her anger not boiled so close to the surface of her skin. “You weren’t as in control of the situation as you think.”

  Lira’s countenance didn’t alter, save for the slightest quirk of her left eyebrow, but Ceony noticed. Lira continued to advance. Ceony held her ground, trying to ignore the cold sweat beading down her spine.

  “You weren’t in his heart, either,” she added. “Not how you are now. Not outside of a prison cell, at least. Or didn’t you notice?”

  Lira paused eight or nine paces from Ceony, her eyes narrowed to slits. She looked like a snake—a coiled viper ready to spring. Ceony had insulted the flesh magician’s vanity . . . or perhaps, deep inside the dark, hollow chambers of her heart, Lira still cared for Emery.

  No. Not cared for. One didn’t rip out the heart of a man because she cared for him. No, to Lira, Emery’s heart was a souvenir, a trophy. Something to be owned. A sick sort of revenge for hunting Lira and her kind down. Emery may have been Lira’s lover once, but he had become her bane. Her nemesis. Her scourge.

  And she hated it.

  Swift as a falcon Lira drew her long dagger from her belt, her enthusiasm knocking its sheath askew. She held the knife out to her side like a broken wing and rushed Ceony. A distraction—Lira didn’t attack with the dagger, but with her crimson-stained hand.

  “You must understand, Patrice, that Excisioners are a tricky matter,” Mg. Hughes had said. “They are wildly dangerous, and if they touch you, they can pull magic through your body. It is a killing magic.”

  Ceony dashed to the side. Her right foot caught between two rocks, causing her to pitch forward. Lira’s outstretched hand swiped the air where Ceony’s head had been. Struggling, Ceony jerked her foot free, leaving her shoe wedged in its place. Jagged rock bit into her sole through her soaked and soiled stocking, but Lira didn’t allow her any time to dwell on it.

  Lira spun, dagger windmilling through the air. Ceony leapt back, barely avoiding the tip of the blade as it whistled past her breast. Darting into a few inches of water between teethlike stones, Ceony yanked a paper glider from her bag.

  The Folds fell apart in her hands. Too much water damage.

  Lira charged. Ceony shrieked and scrambled to higher ground, dodging the hand that sought to enchant her own skin. Ceony rifled through the bag until she found a spell she could use.

  “Breathe!” she commanded the paper bat, who took to the air with a two-sheet wingspan. It needed no more instruction than that, perhaps sensing its surroundings the same way Fennel did. The bat flew straight for Lira’s nose.

  Ceony’s fingers grasped the binding chain, a chain woven with tight double rows of V-shaped links. The second spell Emery Thane had taught her in the chamber of doubt.

  Ceony whirled around, hair fanning around her neck.

  Lira snatched the bat from the air and crumpled its right wing.

  “Bind!” Ceony ordered the chain.

  Like a shark in deep waters, the chain darted from her hands toward Lira—

  —who cut it into two uneven fragments with a broad sweep of her dagger. The binding chain’s pieces flopped to the rocks like fish out of water.

  “As I said,” Lira spoke, only somewhat breathless, “no power at all.” Advancing, she took the last vial of blood from her waist and threw it at her feet. A cyclone of scarlet smoke enveloped her—the same spell she had used to escape the dining room after stealing Emery’s heart.

  Only instead of fleeing, Lira reappeared a foot in front of Ceony.

  Ceony’s exhaling breath dug claws into the soft flesh of her throat. Her hand shot into her bag for the rhombus, her last spell—

  Lira grabbed her elbow—skin on skin—and held the dagger’s edge just below Ceony’s chin.

  Lira grinned.

  Ignoring the blade, Ceony shoved Lira away with all the strength her fatigued arms could muster and yanked the simple diamond-Folded paper from her sack.

  “Do you know what happens when paper vibrates very, very fast?”

  Lira growled and rammed into Ceony, shunting her into an eroded rock shelf opposite the ocean. Lira’s hand clutched Ceony’s neck. The point of the dagger pressed into her ribs. Lira smelled like blood and o
ld, rusted coins.

  Lira began to chant, and Ceony felt warm. Eerily warm. Too warm. Lira’s ancient spell seemed to coax Ceony’s very spirit from her bones.

  She couldn’t get away. She clutched Emery’s spell in her hand, but she couldn’t get away.

  She had to use it. Here. Now.

  “Burst,” Ceony whispered, releasing the paper.

  The rhombus began to quiver, faster and faster, buzzing like a hornet as it slowly, leisurely fell toward the ground. The buzz grew louder, higher, louder, higher . . .

  The diamond-Folded paper exploded in a burst of fireworks and flame, blasting outward like a pistol with a blocked barrel.

  The explosion flung Ceony sideways against the cliff. The ragged rocks cut through the fibers of her blouse and into her skin. She fell onto her elbow and hip, the taste of ash filling her mouth.

  For several heartbeats everything looked white and bright, like the morning sun itself. As color, shape, and shadow gradually returned to her eyes, a high-pitched note rang in her ears, a tuning fork struck and never stilled.

  She pushed herself up, arm aching, hip stiff. The rocky beach swished back and forth. Her temples throbbed with her pulse: PUM-Pom-poom.

  Emery.

  Across the rocks, nearly to where the ocean lapped at the shore, Lira sputtered and weakly tried to push herself onto all fours. Ebony drapes of damp hair hung over her cheeks.

  Ceony forced herself up, clinging to the rock shelf. The morning spun and tilted. That constant note—perhaps a high B-flat—continued to ring inside her skull.

  She had to act. Lira had touched her—all it would take was a quick recovery to recast whatever heinous spell the burst had interrupted.

  Bits of half-soaked papers lay scattered over the ground, fallen from Ceony’s bag. Lira’s dagger lay on its side halfway between them, its hilt resting in a patch of lichen. Several gulls cried as they flew over the ocean, abandoning the site of the explosion.

  Though the ocean still swayed in her vision, Ceony ran for the blade. Lira, peering up through her hair, staggered to her feet and sprinted for it as well.