The Glass Magician

Emery grabbed her arms, yanking them away from the driver’s seat, and hooked them around his neck.

“Take a deep breath!” he shouted. “Hold on to me. Don’t breathe again until we’re out!”

The water climbed to her stomach, her breasts, her collar.

She started convulsing.

Emery cursed, inhaled deeply, and sealed his lips shut just as the water flooded above their chins, foreheads, crowns.

Ceony squeezed her eyes shut and dug her nails into Emery’s neck, clinging to the fabric of his collar. She moved forward, jerked, and felt the top of the buggy window scrape against her back and thighs.

The next thing she knew, darkness engulfed her. Everything was cold save for Emery’s neck and the burning in her lungs. She felt him kicking beside her, but the water . . . it didn’t end. It didn’t end!

And suddenly Ceony was seven years old again, falling into the Hendersons’ fishpond, thrashing for the surface but only finding handfuls of mud and silt. She couldn’t breathe!

And then the wetness broke and warm summer air touched her skin. Ceony sputtered and sucked in a hot breath, which scorched her throat like fire. She cleaved to Emery in the weightlessness of the water, like she was falling—

“Shhh, shhh,” Emery urged her. One arm was wrapped tightly around her torso, pressing her to him, while the other swam back and forth, treading water. Then he stopped moving, and they began to sink. Ceony cried out, but the hand gripping her waist shot up and covered her mouth.

Emery kicked and they floated once more, only this time Emery held a small plastic case in his hand. He used his teeth to open it. Inside rested a Folded piece of paper.

He pinched it in his mouth, dropped the plastic case, and grabbed the paper with his wading arm. The water started to pull them under, but Emery whispered “Conceal” and threw the paper into the air. Ceony watched it unfurl in the starlight, expanding until it hovered over them like an umbrella a few feet above the water.

Emery continued to tread, inching toward the shore, the Conceal spell following them as they went. Conscious thoughts trickled back to Ceony bit by bit through the remnants of her panic. The buggy, the water. How had she gotten to the surface? Emery?

She squinted toward the road in the starlight, just barely able to see a silhouette there, at the edge of the bank. The man in the lights. She had seen a man.

Her feet hit muddy ground, and Emery stopped moving, his eyes glued to the figure he too had noticed.

A light appeared farther down the road—another buggy. For a brief moment it highlighted the tall, lanky form of the man standing there, his curly hair and dark skin. Ceony squinted, thinking she recognized him, but he vanished in a cloud of smoke before she could place him. The buggy lights slowed their approach, the driver perhaps perceiving the signs of the accident.

Both of Emery’s arms embraced Ceony as the water surrounded them. “I’m sorry,” he whispered into her wet hair. “I’m so sorry. It’s all right now. You’re all right.”

He kissed her forehead.

Ceony came fully back to herself. She realized she was still crying, her tears scorching compared to the cold river water. Her teeth chattered.

Ceony buried her face in Emery’s wet clothes, shivering, and stayed that way until a second set of buggy lights appeared on the road. Someone beamed a Gaffer light out onto the water.

“They’re looking for us,” Emery whispered. “Reveal,” he said, and the spell hiding them folded itself back up and dropped into the water. Emery let the current carry it away. Then he helped Ceony up and guided her to the steep shore. She clung to him, not even loosening her grip when he waved one arm to the searchers, asking for help. One of them returned to his car, perhaps for rope, or another light.

“That wasn’t Grath,” Ceony murmured.

“No, it wasn’t,” Emery agreed.

Ceony detected familiarity in those words.

Whoever their attacker had been, Emery knew him.





CHAPTER 6



CEONY SAT IN A chair in the corner of the South London police station, thumbing the wet remnants of Fennel, who had been in her bag when the buggy hit the river. Emery had assured her that the dog could be repaired. At the moment, though, the paper magician was speaking to a local detective and Mg. Juliet Cantrell of Criminal Affairs behind a locked door, and Ceony sat alone in the empty police station, cradling the soggy remnants of her dog in her lap.

She stifled a yawn, and a hiccup, thanks to the small dose of cognac Mg. Cantrell had given her to calm her nerves. The cherrywood cuckoo clock on the back wall struck thirty minutes past midnight.