The Glass Magician

Before the others could reload their pistols, Saraj lashed out at the nearest policeman and grabbed him by the throat, turning him about to use him as a shield.

No, Emery had been mistaken. Saraj snapped the man’s neck while the others looked on, helpless, and let him drop to the floor in a heap.

Saraj charged for Juliet, pulling from his pocket not a vial of blood, but of teeth.

Lifting himself onto his knees, Emery pulled free his snaring chain from his frock and swept it outward with the command, “Snare!” The tip of the chain snagged Saraj’s ankle just before he met—touched—the Smelter. The enchanted yellow teeth flew by Juliet and embedded themselves in the opposite wall like tiny bullets.

Emery leapt to his feet—a knifelike pain blazing through his collar—and jerked back his arm. Saraj fell onto one knee, but kicked his leg hard enough to tear the chain. The spell fell to the ground, lifeless.

Saraj danced backward as Juliet finished reloading her gun. He pushed another barrel into one of the two remaining police officers. The man collapsed against the far wall, unmoving.

Emery reached for his Burst spell as Saraj, chanting, returned to the man with the broken neck and plunged his hand into his chest, pulling out his heart.

Emery ran forward and shouted, “Don’t let him use it!”

Juliet switched her aim and fired, piercing the center of the heart with her bullet, ruining it. Saraj cursed and dropped it. The bullet had embedded into his palm, mixing the Excisioner’s blood with that of the fallen policeman.

Saraj’s good hand ran over the lips of his vials, counting corks. He was running low on ammunition—they all knew it—but with Juliet’s finger on the trigger, he had no time to collect from the policeman’s body. Saraj laughed, a high-pitched, maniacal sound. He uttered a few words, and the blood within the dead man’s body began to boil, filling the room with acrid steam. Saraj darted backward, taking the right exit just as Juliet fired her gun. Her bullet embedded into the wall, just missing the Excisioner. The bullets had been enchanted to hit their targets, but they couldn’t bend around corners.

The last policeman ran after Saraj, both hands on his gun, and Juliet followed at his heels. Holding up his right arm with his left, Emery chased after them, urging his body to fly, biting his tongue against the searing grinding in his collarbone. His eyes burned as he passed through the red steam, holding his breath.

Emery scrambled through the smaller room with the outside-leading door, noting a bloodied handprint on the wall. At the end of the hallway he caught up with Juliet, who was chasing Saraj into the storage rooms.

Red spotted the long sheet of paper lying on the floor and shoes had crinkled it, but it would still work. Emery ran over to it, then beckoned it upward with a single command: “Connect.”

Juliet and the policeman both leveled their guns at Saraj, who was still cackling, a blood vial in his hand.

“You should know no wall can hold me,” he said with glee. “Next time we’ll play on my board, yes?”

He threw down the vial, its cold contents splattering over the floor. It took only a second for Saraj’s face to fall. He had tried to teleport, but the blood didn’t heed him.

Wide-eyed, he lunged for a window and punched it, only to withdraw bloody knuckles. The window wasn’t made of glass. It didn’t exist, save as an illusion. Saraj’s fist had collided with the cement wall of the room—the wall behind the paper illusion masking the inside of the giant blind box that Emery had just sealed behind them.

Saraj’s magic wouldn’t work in here, but the firearms would.

“Hands up before I blow them off,” Juliet spat.

Saraj grinned. The sound of the revolver firing startled Emery; Juliet had shot Saraj in the calf.

The Excisioner raised his hands and dropped to his knees, seemingly unfazed by pain. “Well played,” he wheezed. He started chanting as the policeman came forward with cuffs. No, not chanting, singing. Emery picked out the lyrics.


In and out the Eagle

That’s the way the money goes

Pop! Goes the weasel . . .

Emery crouched, not wanting to lean against the unsupported paper wall behind him, and rested his right elbow in his hand. A fitting song, given the box.

“Send for the others,” Juliet said to the policeman. “We’ll haul him to London.”





CHAPTER 21



THE DARKNESS SHIFTED.

A haze of voices like water coursed somewhere in the shadows, and she flowed with them, bobbing up and down. Heavy enough that she feared she would sink.

She shifted again, and the voices grew louder, or perhaps she only heard more of them. Voices churning like a distant storm.

She jerked, and for a moment she felt weightless. Then her body hit something solid.

Somewhere in the black waters a thousand leeches burrowed into her skin, feasting and squirming, the pain lancing her skin.

She gasped.

“Get him now!” yelled a man’s voice. “He doesn’t need blood, she’s covered in it!”