The Glass Magician

Emery’s eyes focused on Grath. He held his left hand in his pocket, perhaps holding a spell there. Mg. Hughes conspicuously kneaded three small rubber balls in his right hand.

Grath straightened, his confidence boosted. “Such annoying timing, Thane,” he said. “I was almost done here.”

Mg. Hughes lifted his hand, drawing Grath’s attention. The man tensed, ready for a spell, but instead Emery’s hand whipped out of his slacks and tossed blue confetti into the air, so many tiny shreds of paper that, for a moment, it concealed him completely.

And then he vanished.

A moment later, Ceony felt a hand on her waist as Emery pushed her behind him. He too tried the door, but of course found it locked.

“We need another mirror, Patrice!” Emery shouted.

Grath laughed, taking two steps back so he could see both magicians clearly. He even clapped his hands twice. “What a show, what a show,” he laughed. “Three against one, and yet for some reason I still feel I have the upper hand.”

“Grath—” Ceony began, but Emery shushed her.

“We don’t negotiate with criminals, Miss Twill,” Mg. Hughes said, still kneading those balls. “I’ll hang you by the rubber in your shoes, Cobalt.”

“Hmm,” Grath said, rubbing his chin. “But what do you want, old man? Me, or the girl? I don’t see how you’ll get out of here with both, plus your life.”

From the swirling mirror, Aviosky’s disjointed voice said, “There’s a decent-sized mirror in a lavatory upstairs.”

Grath frowned. “It just takes one touch, Alfred.”

Mg. Hughes laughed. “We know what you are. Don’t play us for fools.”

Grath scowled, and Ceony knew that the expression was meant for her.

After a moment, Grath did turn, slowly, to face Emery. He pulled one of his glass knives from his belt and thumbed the blade, looking the paper magician up and down. “You won’t win, in the end,” Grath said, one of his long canines popping over his lip as he smirked. “You never do. Not with me, not with Saraj. Not with Lira. She was my finest acquisition.”

Emery said nothing.

Grath’s eyes slid over Emery’s shoulder for a second, and he leered at Ceony. “So protective. I should have had my way with her, too.”

Emery tensed. “I’ll see they cut your tongue out before you get the noose, Grath.”

Grath lifted his blade, but Mg. Hughes moved faster.

He threw the rubber balls, which bounced off the floor and soared in three different directions at an alarming speed, catapulting off walls and ceiling, blurring into bullets of black. They orbited around Mg. Hughes, Emery, and Ceony, but not Grath. One skinned his shoulder, leaving a wide streak of red in its wake. They forced Grath to dance and dodge to avoid being shot through.

Ceony didn’t have a chance to witness Grath’s counterattack. Emery pulled her away from the door and slammed his foot into the wood, just beside the knob. The weak lock gave and the door flew open, slamming into the wall beside it. With an almost painful grip on Ceony’s forearm, Emery yanked her from the room and up the stairs, into the kitchen. The man who had answered the door started from near the sink. Emery elbowed him out of the way and ran through the kitchen and into the hallway. He opened one door to a bedroom, then another to the lavatory, where a mirror about three feet by two rested lopsided on a white cabinet with chipped paint. Its silvery face swirled with a Transport spell.

After releasing Ceony, Emery wrenched the mirror from the wall and set it on the floor, then grabbed her by the shoulders and pushed her into it. Ceony’s stomach lurched as a cold weightlessness overtook her, but she didn’t reemerge in the Parliament building. She didn’t pass through the mirror at all.

She stood inside of it, surrounded by swirling silver walls that warped in shape between concave and convex. Before her hovered a floating silver rock, darker than the walls, and to her right a few stalagmites jutted up from the silvery ground like teeth. A solid-looking cloud hovered a ways ahead, and Ceony realized it was the physical form of a scratch on the mirror.

Delilah had warned her about passing through bad mirrors. This must have been what she meant.

Emery appeared beside her a moment later. He cursed softly, then once more took Ceony’s arm. “Stay close,” he said.

He led her along the stalagmites toward the hovering boulder—a chip, perhaps, or a tarnish. They ducked under it, careful not to lift their heads until they’d passed it completely. When they reached the vertical cloud, which resembled a spiderweb of glass, menacing and sharp, Emery pulled Ceony to the right. They sidestepped until they had circled the farthest stretches of its web.

Another wall faced them, swirling and bright. Emery nudged Ceony forward, and she passed through its cold embrace.





CHAPTER 16