Emma barely noticed him. She could not take her eyes off Derren. When she tried to speak, she found that her mouth was too dry, her lips stiff. “How—” she croaked, and she had to stop and swallow. “How did they die?”
“The official MAGE report stated that the dig site had collapsed. Henry and Evelynne were buried alive. That was all I ever heard. The report was classified, and I could not find out more.”
So now she knew. What Uncle Mordo had never been willing to say, what Alex had never known. Her parents had died, crushed under tons of dirt.
Her parents had died.
“I should have been there with them,” Derren said angrily. He still did not look at Emma. “I might have been able to…”
His voice trailed away.
Emma listened to the silence, flipping through her parents’ old tricks to steady her trembling hands. Even the flames seemed to crackle quietly among the logs.
She was waiting for tears to come. Waiting for herself to start crying. Maybe even screaming. Waiting for herself to get angry at Derren for not having saved her parents, at Uncle Mordo for not having told her what he knew, maybe even at Alex for having been right all these years.
But none of those feelings rose up inside her. Maybe she’d killed her grief by refusing to feel it for so long. She reached out a hand, took a teacup from the parrot, and finally woke up her voice to answer Derren.
“It wasn’t your fault,” she said softly. “It was an accident.”
Slowly, Derren turned to look at her. “You are kind, Emma. So much like your mother.” He pushed the teacup away and rose stiffly, walking to the fireplace. “But it was my fault. And it wasn’t an accident.”
Emma took a swallow of tea. It was scalding hot, but it could not touch the chill growing inside her.
Derren shook his head. “I should’ve seen how it all fit together. I created tricks and puzzles and traps, but I couldn’t see the trap we were all living in. It was Agglar! That warped egomaniac, willing to do anything to gain more power.”
“Christopher Agglar?” Emma choked out. “You think he wanted—”
“He wanted the Eye of Dedi.”
“To bring magic back?”
“Oh, Emma.” Derren sighed. “No, not to bring magic back. Exactly the opposite, in fact. He wanted the stone—he still wants the stone—but not to save the Conjurian. He wants to hide it away forever. As the belief in Dedi fades and magic slowly dies, Agglar gathers more and more power to himself.” Derren laid an arm against the mantelpiece and rested his forehead on it.
“So he killed my parents and took the Eye of Dedi?” There, she had said it out loud. Her parents were dead. But not in a car wreck, not in a plane crash, not sick somewhere far from home.
And not by accident, either.
Her parents had been murdered by her uncle’s old friend.
Derren spun around so fast, Emma shot back in her chair, spilling her tea.
“Agglar killed your parents. He used MAGE as a weapon. But he didn’t get the stone, Emma. He didn’t get the Eye of Dedi.”
“He—he didn’t?”
“Henry and Evelynne were too clever for him.” Derren’s eyes gleamed with a savage triumph. “They hid the Eye. By the time he realized what they’d done, your parents were gone. And so was the stone. For some reason, Agglar believes you and your brother have clues to its location. That’s why he came after you, last night, at your uncle’s mansion.”
“But—he didn’t come after us,” Emma protested, remembering the hall of Uncle Mordo’s mansion, the door slamming open, and that horrible figure with the floating skeletons behind him. “It wasn’t Agglar. It was—”
Derren spread his arms theatrically. “Right, it was the infamous Shadow Conjurer.” He hunched his shoulders and made his eyes menacing. “Funny how this Shadow Conjurer suddenly appeared just at the same time the good people of this world began to lose confidence in the Circle. But if everyone is scared stiff that there’s a blue-faced bogeyman behind every door—well, then people need the Circle. They need Christopher Agglar.”
Derren knelt in front of Emma. “I know about tricks, Emma. And the Shadow Conjurer is a trick performed by a master of misdirection. You see, no one needs Agglar’s protection if there is nothing to protect them from.”
“You think…Agglar is the Shadow Conjurer?” Emma’s mind was spinning. “And he—he killed my parents? And Uncle Mordo? But he has Alex! Right now!”
Derren dropped heavily back into his chair and nodded. “He’ll come for you next. If he doesn’t get what he needs from Alex,” he said.
Emma shuddered. She’d been so close to heading for the Tower, putting herself in Agglar’s hands! She’d very nearly made Savachia bring her there. Thank goodness he’d brought her to this theater instead. To Derren. To somewhere safe.
“And that, I’m sorry to say, is why you can’t stay here,” Derren told her.
Emma’s mouth opened, but she had no breath to speak.
“I’m sure Agglar’s goons are already scouring the city for you. And this place will be high on their list. I can’t put all the people here at risk.”
Emma felt as if Derren had punched her in the stomach. She wanted to double over in her chair.
Derren looked away, as if he couldn’t bear watching her.
“Where am I supposed to go?” Emma asked when he said nothing more.
Derren shrugged.
“I’m sorry, Emma. I’m in no position to help. This city gets more dangerous by the day.” He folded his hands on his lap. “Your only chance is to turn yourself in. Go to the Tower. At least then you’ll be with your brother.”
Emma sat very still, letting Derren’s words sink in. Then she pried a photo of her parents from the withered album and stood. “Thanks for all your help.”
She wanted her words to be loud and to sting. They failed on both counts. Wiping tears from her eyes with one hand, she slid the photo into her pocket with the other.
Turning on her heel, she headed for the door.
“More tea, miss?” Geller cawed. She ignored him.
Turn herself in? Hand herself over to the man who’d killed her parents? Who was holding her brother prisoner? Of course not. She wasn’t going to do that.
And she wasn’t going to hide, either.
She was going to do…something.
She had no idea what.
All she knew was that she needed help.
As far as Emma could tell, Derren made no attempt to follow her as she wobbled her way across ancient beams and rusty catwalks to find a ladder that would take her down to the stage. Once she had her feet on firm ground again, she found Savachia’s room behind the stage.
It was an old dressing room, with the boy’s name carved into the door beneath the outline of a faded star. She knocked. Waited, then knocked harder. There was no answer, but the door swung open an inch at the impact of her fist.
“Hello?” Emma pushed the door. “Savachia?”
She checked behind her to be sure that the corridor was empty. It was. Then she nudged the door open wider. The room was not much bigger than the butler’s pantry at Uncle Mordo’s.
She slipped inside. A small cot had been wedged into place along the far wall. Near the end of the bed was a vanity with a cracked mirror. A photo of a woman with long black hair had been tucked into the frame. A few items were scattered on the table, including a deck of cards and a narrow metal box, open on one end with two leather straps attached.
Emma picked it up and turned it end over end, finding no clues as to its purpose. If Alex had been here, he’d have known in seconds what this contraption was supposed to do.
“It’s my take on Devant’s snowstorm. You know—you saw me do it when those Tower guards were about to grab me,” said a voice from the doorway. Emma looked up
to see Savachia leaning on the frame. “For being one of the greatest magicians of all time, kind of sad Devant only used that snowstorm trick to produce penguins on stage. It’s a handy diversion and has so many applications.”
“Good for kidnapping, too,” said Emma, quickly replacing the box.
“That too,” agreed Savachia. Letting the door shut behind him, he reached around Emma and scooped up the snowstorm device.
He opened a compartment on the metal box, revealing tightly packed white pellets that looked a bit like pills. “Each one can create a blizzard. This fan part up here shreds the pellets and shoots out the flakes. Were you planning on swiping it?”
“I’m not a thief.”
“Well, I am. So what do you want? Hurry up. I need to get some sleep before I go to work tonight.”
“What’s on the to-do list? Robbery or kidnapping?” Emma asked.
Savachia swung the door open. “I’m sure you can see yourself out.”
“Wait. Sorry. I didn’t mean to call you a thief. I mean, you’re not a crook, you’re—”
“A thief. Like I said. It’s okay. I know.”
“Why did you kidnap me?” asked Emma.
“You were in the right place at the wrong time,” said Savachia. “Sorry, no special reason. I needed a diversion. You were just the most convenient escape plan.”
Emma glanced out at the hallway. Savachia rolled up his sleeve and strapped his snowstorm device onto his wrist.
“Look, once you’ve been here long enough, you learn that it’s all about survival,” said Savachia. “You do whatever you have to do to get by. Your first and only priority is yourself.”
“You don’t believe that,” said Emma. “I know you don’t. You’re stealing to help all those people out there in the theater.”
Savachia snorted. “You mean paying my rent? Derren lets me stay here as long as I make myself useful. It works, that’s all. Like I said, you do what you have to.”
Emma looked around her at the cramped little room. “This is where you live? All the time? I mean, don’t you have a home to go to? Parents or somebody?”
Savachia rolled his sleeve down. “My dad was a con artist. Bolted when I was five. Mom’s dead. Derren found me hustling the streets in Boston. Brought me here. So now I run some of my dad’s old hustles, plus a few of my own. Doesn’t matter what world I live in, I guess—I’m always going to be a con man.”
“You don’t have to be.”
“Oh yeah?” Savachia smirked. Then he caught Emma’s serious look. The smirk vanished. “What else could I be?”
“Someone who helps me rescue my brother.”
Savachia snatched the deck of cards from the vanity table. He flipped them into the air and caught them with his other hand. “You’re suggesting I should be a kidnapper? Again?”
“Rescuing is not kidnapping,” said Emma.
“It also doesn’t pay well.” Savachia shook his head.
“You promised to get me into the Tower. You can at least be someone who keeps his word.”
“No way, you’re not catching me like that. I said I would bring you to someone who could help you. I did.”
“But Derren’s not going to help me! He says I can’t stay here!” Emma’s voice rose with frustration.
Savachia looked just the tiniest bit sorry for her. Then he shrugged. “Sorry about that. But I did what I promised. I brought you to somebody who could help you. If he doesn’t want to…well, not my problem.”
Emma let out a long, slow breath. This kid was infuriating! But getting angry with him wouldn’t help. She tried a different approach. “Then think of it as helping yourself. I guess Christopher Agglar isn’t your favorite person?”
Savachia scowled. “He’s nobody’s favorite person around here.”
“So, saving my brother would hurt Agglar’s plans,” Emma coaxed.
Savachia tilted his head, a calculating look slipping into his eyes. “Why is your brother so important to Agglar?”
Emma hesitated, shifting nervously from foot to foot, which she was sure Savachia noticed. This kid was a liar, a thief, a crook, a con man. He’d said so himself. She couldn’t trust him, and yet she had to trust somebody. There was no way she could rescue Alex all by herself. She didn’t even know her way to the Tower from here.
“Listen,” she said slowly. “My parents—”
A shout from the corridor outside the room cut off her words. Savachia’s head jerked up, and the cards slipped from his hands to scatter on the floor.
More shouts piled on top of the first. Then the shouts turned into screams.
“Stay here!” Savachia ordered as he bolted from the room.
Emma waited five seconds before taking off after him.
* * *
—
She found Savachia backstage, with his eye to an opening on a dusty black curtain. She crowded up behind him so that she could see as well. He didn’t shake her off.
“Where is she?” a voice boomed.
Above them, on the balcony, Sergeant Miller confronted Derren, pinning the magician with his back against the railing.
Emma could not hear what Derren answered. She stared, appalled, as more guards shoved through the doors and swept down the aisles, yanking aside sheets, kicking down plywood shelters. A few people tried to protest and were met by blows from gloved fists.
“Don’t make me ask again,” Sergeant Miller growled. He grabbed the front of Derren’s shirt and pushed, bending him backward over the railing.
“Is there another way out?” Emma whispered to Savachia.
Savachia snorted. “No, of course not,” he said, turning away from the curtain. “I like getting trapped by the authorities in dilapidated buildings.” In a second he was halfway up a metal ladder.
“Wait for me!” Emma scrambled up after him. The ladder sagged under her weight, not designed to hold two people at once. But it held as they scrambled onto a catwalk above.
Savachia did not glance back at Emma once. He ran easily along the narrow metal walkway, stopped under a hatch in the ceiling, leaped, grabbed a support beam, popped the hatch open, and climbed out.
“Hey!” shouted Emma. “Don’t leave me here!” She was under the hatch when she felt the walkway tremble beneath her feet. Two guards were clambering up the ladder.
She looked at the hatch above her. It was higher than she could reach. Savachia had swarmed up a metal support beam nearby, but Emma could not see how he’d done it. The thing had no handholds or footholds. And if she slipped, she’d fall to the stage below.
Surely it was better to be arrested than dead?
The first of the guards crawled onto the catwalk. The second was close behind him. The catwalk lurched under his weight, and Emma could not hold back a cry.
“Just stay there!” the first guard ordered her. He got awkwardly to his feet and began to walk toward her.
The second guard, grunting with the effort, clambered onto the catwalk too. And it sagged.
Emma heard a cable groan under the additional weight.
Then she heard it snap.
The catwalk under Emma’s feet tilted suddenly to one side, like the deck of a ship in a storm. The two guards scrambled back toward the ladder, and Emma fell to her hands and knees. She snatched at a railing, praying that she would not slide off.
There were screams from below. People crowded off the stage. Emma heard a chilling twang as another cable snapped.
Savachia’s head popped down through the hatch. He stretched out his arm toward her. “Are you coming or not? Jump!”
“What if I fall?”
“You’ll probably scream and make a gross splattering sound. Behind you!”
Emma looked over her shoulder and gasped. One guard had made it to the safety of the ladder, but th
e other had apparently decided he was not going down without Emma. He was inching toward her along the lopsided catwalk, gripping the railing with one hand, reaching for her with the other.
Emma staggered to her feet and jumped as high as she possibly could as the last of the catwalk collapsed behind her.
Savachia’s hand closed like a vise around her left wrist. Then his other arm came down to snag her right wrist as well. “Got you!” With a grunt of effort, he hoisted her onto the roof.
Emma lay facedown on the tiles. “So I guess you’re helping me?” she gasped.
“I’ll have my assistant clear my schedule,” Savachia answered. “This way. We need to get out of sight, fast.”
Skidding and sliding down the slope of the roof, Emma and Savachia made it to a rusted iron fire escape that clung to the side of the theater. From there they dropped down into a narrow alley. Savachia pulled Emma along a few feet and then took hold of the brick wall of a building that was opposite the theater. To Emma’s astonishment, he yanked at the bricks and they moved.
A cloth had been painted to match the brick wall, she realized. Behind it was a metal grate covering the entrance to a passageway so narrow and dark Emma could only describe it as a tunnel.
Savachia yanked the grate open. “In you go!” He shoved Emma in before she could protest and followed, swinging the grate shut behind him. The curtain fell over them, and everything was dark.
“Careful not to step on the rats,” Savachia said.
Emma told herself firmly that he was only kidding. Of course he was only kidding. There were no rats.
Definitely no rats!
“I can’t see anything,” she said. She could smell too much, though. The stench reminded her of a sandwich Alex had hidden under his bed and forgotten about for six weeks.
“Keep going,” Savachia told her. “There’s only one way to go, you can’t get lost, and—”
The curtain was yanked away, and light flooded in. The grate swung open. An arm in a gray sleeve seized hold of Savachia, yanking him out of the tunnel and flinging him away.
Rise of the Shadow Page 9
