The Master Magician

“Yes, please, to the cottage,” she said, moving to the back door. “No need to get up,” she added as Frank reached for the driver door’s latch to help her in. She slid into the backseat quickly and patted the seat before her to signal she was settled. Frank waited a moment for traffic to pass before pulling out onto Addison Avenue.

Ceony leaned against the backrest as the buggy made the forty-five-minute trip back to Emery’s cottage. She watched the city flash by her window, the houses gradually moving closer together and shrinking in square footage, the streets and walks filling with more and more civilians carving through another day. She saw a baker airing smoke out of his small shop, boys playing marbles in a narrow alley space, and a mother pushing a stroller while a young boy held on to the pocket in her skirt. This last sight made Ceony think of one of the first spells she had ever learned, a fortune-telling spell called a “fortuity box.” She would never forget what she’d once seen in one—a warm, blessed image of herself standing on a flowering hilltop with two children, presumably her own. The man standing beside her in that vision had been none other than her assigned tutor. There was a stigma attached to the very idea of a romance with her mentor, of course, which was why Ceony had confided her secret concerning the paper magician to no one save her mother, who had only met Magician Emery Thane once.

Eventually the city died away, and Frank drove the buggy up the familiar dirt path toward the cottage, dotted with spring-green trees along the way. Ceony averted her gaze from the river beyond it. A small river, but one that unnerved her still. Twenty months ago Ceony had worried that she and Emery would have to leave the quaint, country-esque cottage behind for the sake of safety, but with their enemies either dead, jailed, or in a perpetual state of being frozen, danger had decided to leave them alone. It was a relief, if for no other reason than that Ceony surely wouldn’t be ready to test for her magicianship if she had to battle for her life every ninety days.

Reaching into the purse nestled in the corner of the tote bag, Ceony slid her fingers over the round surface of a makeup compact, tracing the engraved Celtic knot on its surface. She shouldn’t make light of her past . . . adventures . . . even in fanciful thoughts. The cost had been steep. She swallowed a bitter taste of shame.

The buggy pulled up to the cottage, which from the road looked like a dilapidated, towering mansion infested with poltergeists, complete with self-made wind and cawing crows. The “haunted house” was Emery’s favorite illusion to put about his home, more so than the barren plot or the quaking graveyard he had tried out last March. Ceony’s protests had made him take it down after two weeks. Or perhaps it was the milkman’s heart arrhythmia that had ultimately convinced him.

The illusions were Folded about the fence, so their spells vanished as soon as Ceony stepped past the gate, revealing the house as it was: yellow-bricked with a porch Ceony and Emery had painted russet two weeks ago. A short stone walk bordered a garden of paper daffodils, and a flesh-and-blood starling clung to the ivy hanging over the office window, shrieking at the small paper dog sniffing too close to its nest.

“Fennel!” Ceony called, and the paper dog lifted his head to seek her out with his eyeless face. He barked twice, a wispy, papery sound, and bounded down the path toward Ceony, leaving prints in the dirt between the tiles. A few months ago, he would have barely left a mark, but Ceony had given him plastic bones back in February. It had taken months of study to learn how to form the bones and joints so that they’d move with Fennel, though the Polymaking spell that held them together had been simple enough to master. She had done the magic in secret, of course. These were studies best kept quiet.

The dog jumped at Ceony’s feet and propped his front paws on her shoes, wagging his plastic-reinforced paper tail wildly from side to side. Ceony stooped down to scratch him under the chin.

“Come on,” she said, and Fennel ran ahead of her to the front door, where he waited with a whipping tail, his nose buried in the doorjamb. When Ceony opened the door, Fennel ran to the end of the hall and back, then dived into the perfect clutter of the front room, where he immediately began chewing on a wad of stuffing protruding from the sofa’s most threadbare cushion.