“Yes, yes! Uh, oui,” Ceony said, grasping the pad. The familiar tingle of the paper beneath her fingers gave her some comfort. She quickly scribbled a sentence on the first page, receiving strange looks from both men. When she had finished, she read, with strong inflection, “After losing her way through mirror transportation, Ceony found herself in an unfamiliar place and unsure of how to get home.”
She pictured what images would best illustrate her point, and they danced before her in the air—ghostly, translucent pictures of what happened to get her to this house. The two men jumped a little when the images first appeared, but then they watched in fascination.
She lowered the pad and wrote some more, then read, “Ceony wondered where she was.”
The image of a map of Europe floated before her, with a question mark hovering above it and a thumbtack wavering between England and France.
“Belgique,” the first man said. He hesitated, glancing at the man who Ceony assumed was his brother. In a poor English accent, he said, “Belgium.”
“Belgium?” Ceony repeated, and the story illusion dripped away like wet paint. And I smelled the ocean . . . That must have been the English Channel. I crossed it through the mirror.
How on earth would she get back?
“Gaffer?” she asked, drawing a stick figure below her words and sketching a hand mirror in its hands. “Do you have a Gaffer here?” She lowered the pad and stepped over to the window, tapping on the glass.
The first man turned to his brother and said, “Je pense qu’elle est celle qu’il veut. Elle est rousse. Elle enchante papier.”
“Papier,” Ceony repeated, nodding. At least she knew that word. “Oui, papier.”
The brother nodded, and the first man gestured for Ceony to follow him farther into the house. He held out his hands, and she reluctantly handed over the pad. Perhaps the generosity of these men would extend to offering her a quick meal, too. Her stomach growled. She hoped the man heard it.
If he did, he didn’t show it.
Ceony followed him through a small but immaculate kitchen, then down a steep set of stairs that required her guide to hunch over to keep his head from hitting the ceiling. In the basement she passed a closed door; then the man led her into an empty, rectangular room with a few crates stacked in the corner. Near the crates, an old mirror with a broken frame leaned against the wall.
Ceony froze just inside the door. Behind the mirror, arms folded across his broad chest, stood Grath Cobalt.
“Est-ce que c’est la fille? On a le douxieme parti?” the man asked, barring the door with his arm when Ceony tried to back away.
“Bien s?r, vous avez bien fait,” Grath answered in a flawless French accent, his gray eyes focusing on Ceony, whose heart had begun to beat so high in her throat she could almost taste it. “S’il vous pla?t, donnez-moi un instant.”
The man nodded and stepped out of the room, shutting the door behind him.
Ceony reached for the handle.
“Nuh-uh,” Grath said, unfolding his arms. “I’m used to wild goose chases, love, but I’m much better when I play the goose.” He took a step forward. “For us, this ends now.”
Ceony trembled. “P-Please, I don’t have what you want,” she murmured. “Just let me go.”
“And risk more scars?” he asked, rubbing his side where Delilah had shot him. His shirt still bore a hole from the bullet, but the skin underneath looked unscathed. Had Grath visited Saraj before tracking her down? Did that mean the Excisioner still lurked in the city, or did Grath just know how to find him using the mirrors?
Ceony seized the door handle, only to find it locked. She hadn’t even heard the metal click.
Her stomach sank, no longer hungry. Tears sprang to her eyes. “I’ll d-do whatever you want,” she whispered. “Her blood spilled on my paper. It was an Illusion spell, but I wrote the words in her blood, and it took. That’s all I did. Please don’t hurt my family.”
Grath took another step forward, and another, his face a mask that her words didn’t alter. Ceony focused so intently on him—on the vein throbbing in his forehead and the shadows dancing in his eyes—that she didn’t notice the swirling mirror behind him. One moment, Grath was sauntering toward her, and the next a familiar voice called out to him from behind, freezing him in his tracks.
“We really should stop meeting like this.”
A surge of relief rushed through Ceony with such force she nearly lost her balance. Grath scowled and turned, one shoulder still pointed toward Ceony.
There, on the right side of the mirror, stood Emery without his indigo coat. His features looked sharper, darker. His voice lacked its usual mirth. On the left side of the mirror stood Mg. Hughes, who looked rather calm given the situation.
The mirror still swirled, but Ceony didn’t need to see through it to know who had enchanted it, who had found her. Magician Aviosky. Thank God.
Mg. Hughes said, “Sorry for the delay, Miss Twill, but bad glass is incredibly hard to pass through, once it’s found.”
Two tears traced the curve of Ceony’s cheeks. “Thank you,” she breathed.
The Glass Magician
Charlie N. Holmberg's books
- Alanna The First Adventure
- Alone The Girl in the Box
- Asgoleth the Warrior
- Awakening the Fire
- Between the Lives
- Black Feathers
- Bless The Beauty
- By the Sword
- In the Arms of Stone Angels
- Knights The Eye of Divinity
- Knights The Hand of Tharnin
- Knights The Heart of Shadows
- Mind the Gap
- Omega The Girl in the Box
- On the Edge of Humanity
- The Alchemist in the Shadows
- Possessing the Grimstone
- The Steel Remains
- The 13th Horseman
- The Age Atomic
- The Alchemaster's Apprentice
- The Alchemy of Stone
- The Ambassador's Mission
- The Anvil of the World
- The Apothecary
- The Art of Seducing a Naked Werewolf
- The Bible Repairman and Other Stories
- The Black Lung Captain
- The Black Prism
- The Blue Door
- The Bone House
- The Book of Doom
- The Breaking
- The Cadet of Tildor
- The Cavalier
- The Circle (Hammer)
- The Claws of Evil
- The Concrete Grove
- The Conduit The Gryphon Series
- The Cry of the Icemark
- The Dark
- The Dark Rider
- The Dark Thorn
- The Dead of Winter
- The Devil's Kiss
- The Devil's Looking-Glass
- The Devil's Pay (Dogs of War)
- The Door to Lost Pages
- The Dress
- The Emperor of All Things
- The Emperors Knife
- The End of the World
- The Eternal War
- The Executioness
- The Exiled Blade (The Assassini)
- The Fate of the Dwarves
- The Fate of the Muse
- The Frozen Moon
- The Garden of Stones
- The Gate Thief
- The Gates
- The Ghoul Next Door
- The Gilded Age
- The Godling Chronicles The Shadow of God
- The Guest & The Change
- The Guidance
- The High-Wizard's Hunt
- The Holders
- The Honey Witch
- The House of Yeel
- The Lies of Locke Lamora
- The Living Curse
- The Living End
- The Magic Shop
- The Magicians of Night
- The Magnolia League
- The Marenon Chronicles Collection
- The Marquis (The 13th Floor)
- The Mermaid's Mirror
- The Merman and the Moon Forgotten
- The Original Sin
- The Pearl of the Soul of the World
- The People's Will
- The Prophecy (The Guardians)
- The Reaping
- The Rebel Prince
- The Reunited
- The Rithmatist
- The_River_Kings_Road
- The Rush (The Siren Series)
- The Savage Blue
- The Scar-Crow Men
- The Science of Discworld IV Judgement Da
- The Scourge (A.G. Henley)
- The Sentinel Mage
- The Serpent in the Stone
- The Serpent Sea
- The Shadow Cats
- The Slither Sisters
- The Song of Andiene