The Glass Magician

Help. She needed help . . . Her foggy mind pulled up the memory of the spell Delilah had used on the broken mirror in Ceony’s flat, and with a voice more air than sound, she said, “Reverse.”


Her reflection vanished, replaced by a bright room filled with white furniture and ornate vases. A gray cat sat on a sofa, licking one of its paws. A polished banister marked a staircase in the back. Someone’s sitting room.

The shadows filled Ceony’s vision, and she dropped her hand and head to the floor. She could have sworn she heard Mg. Hughes calling out her name.





CHAPTER 20



Emery

LONDON RUSHED BY EMERY’S window, the blocks and points of city architecture shrinking as the main city dwindled down into its residential branches. Flats gradually morphed into homes, which grew farther and farther apart as the train chugged its way south. Emery watched rolling farms, brush, and sparse trees, pass by in smears of green, stared at waterways so still they looked like Gaffer’s glass. He moved farther from home and closer to his enemy, yet he couldn’t comprehend the rush of colors and the drag of distance around him. In the back of his mind his thoughts pieced together illusions, chains, and careful Folds. In the front, it thought, Ceony.

How long had it been since he’d last kissed a woman? His mind calculated the math sluggishly. Three years? After the separation, before the divorce. Memories he would prefer not to entertain.

Emery leaned his elbow on the window of the train car. Ceony. One month ago he had played with the idea of courting her once she’d earned her magicianship and they’d both settled into their new lives, she as a budding Folder and he with the next sorry lout Patrice forced his way. He had no doubt that Ceony would pass her Folding tests at the end of the minimum two years’ apprenticeship. She had proved herself bright and eager to learn, and her remarkable memory still astounded him.

Yet in recent weeks that amount of time—two years—had begun to seem longer and longer. The squares of his calendar grew bigger, and the hands on clocks moved slower. Revealing so much of himself to one person, even if not by choice, had changed something between them. Created in a matter of days a deep, comfortable bond that often took years to achieve. Her cheer, her dedication, and her beauty made that bond that much harder to ignore, no matter how hard he tried to reason himself out of it.

And her food. Good heavens, everything that woman touched turned to gold in his mouth. She’d make him fatter than Langston before her year mark passed.

A smile touched his lips. He had grown accustomed to living on his own. The two years he’d spent alone in that cottage with just Jonto for company had never bothered him, save in retrospect. Perhaps it was some great fortune or—God forbid—an act of karma that had brought Ceony into his life to light up a house that he hadn’t realized had gone dark. A light he wouldn’t have been able to see if not for her utter stupidity in following an Excisioner clear to the coast for the sake of saving his life. She’d barely known him then. Now she knew everything.

Almost everything.

Emery refocused on the landscape flying by his window. Had he already passed Caterham? Perhaps time had finally decided to catch up to him. He only hoped it wouldn’t move too fast when he needed it most.

A man in a brown suit sat in the far seat across from him. Emery ignored his presence.

Emery had only faced Saraj personally once in his life, shortly after Lira had thrown her soul to the wind and run off with Grath and whoever else the Excisioner—no, Gaffer—had enchanted at the time. The Saraj was vermin, twisted like taffy and more insane than the world’s worst criminals. A man who would kill countless people for sport, who raped women and boasted about it to his pursuers. A man who stood outside society and fished into it with a jagged spear.

Grath was the only man Emery knew of who could befriend—and possibly control—Saraj, and if Hughes succeeded in capturing him, who knew what Saraj would do next, where he would go. The thought of him taking one more step toward Ceony drove Emery mad, made his fingertips itch and his stomach writhe. And so Emery had agreed to this last hurrah, this careful attempt to capture Saraj before he went wild. Emery wondered how much wilder the Excisioner could become.

He didn’t plan to find out. The train headed toward what he hoped would be Saraj’s last stand. Emery would see the man caged, and Emery would survive. He had to.

He finally had someone worth going home to.




The train arrived in Brighton near noon. Emery hired an automobile to Rottingdean, and then walked from there to Saltdean, on the coast.