The Paper Magician

EMERY RUSHED HER, HIS forearm across her collar, and shoved her into the wall where the red door had just been. She squeezed her eyes shut, waiting for herself to phase, for the scene to replay itself, but it didn’t. Emery’s forearm pressed down onto her, and when she dared to look, Emery’s eyes flared with green fire.

Cold sweat kissed her skin. Fennel barked his whispery bark beside Ceony, biting at Emery’s leg with paper teeth. Ceony struggled, but the paper magician didn’t move.

“You have no business here,” he hissed, his voice too low, too rough. Not like Emery Thane at all. Even the Emery Thane from this very scene, enraptured in rage and heartbreak, hadn’t sounded so cold. Ceony would have trembled had she not been pinned so securely against the wall.

“I’m sorry,” she cried. “I didn’t mean—”

Shadow-Emery pulled back far enough to grab her shoulder. With little effort, Shadow-Emery hurled Ceony into a stack of boxes and books meticulously piled in the corner. Cardboard corners dug into her ribs and spine; paperback novels rained onto her head.

“I’m trying to save you!” she shouted.

Shadow-Emery laughed—cackled—a noise like broken organ pipes that sent cold chills up Ceony’s arms. “No one can save me. You’ve swum into dangerous waters, Miss Twill.”

Fennel hunched on his legs and barked wildly, but Shadow-Emery didn’t see him, didn’t hear him. His molten eyes fixated on Ceony, an owl watching the desperate run of a mouse before swooping down and nabbing it in thin-tipped talons.

Ceony tried to steady her voice, but it quivered in her throat. “Please, just let me go. I can help you if you let me go.”

“Help me?” Shadow-Emery repeated with a sneer, as if the words on his tongue were laced with vinegar. “And who will help them?”

The vision faded by half, leaving the dark wooden walls of the office in place, but the furniture, shelves, and floor disappeared, replaced with the floor of the warehouse storage room and the ripped and torn bodies strewn across it.

Ceony averted her eyes and pressed a hand to her mouth, willing her stomach to stay calm. “I don’t need to see it again!” she shouted between fingers.

“Don’t you?” Shadow-Emery asked with a raised voice. “How good is your memory, Ceony Twill? You seem to have forgotten about them already. I killed them.”

“No!” Ceony yelled, tears wetting her eyelashes. Still, she did not look. “The Excisioners killed them, not you!”

“But I didn’t stop them.”

“You tried to, didn’t you?” Ceony asked, almost more to herself than to him. “I saw you try. I saw you try to save them.”

“Not save them,” Shadow-Emery said as the vision of death faded back into the office, to the silhouette of a littered desk and the dark splotches of literary debris across the floor. “Save myself. I was only after the Excisioners.”

She looked up at him, the spilled boxes and books still hugging her. “You didn’t know about them, did you? Not personally. They were victims, but not yours. Did you even know their names?”

Shadow-Emery looked away.

“That’s why, don’t you see?” she pleaded. “You hunt the Excisioners because they hurt people, even people you don’t know. How is that evil?”

Shadow-Emery laughed. “I’m just like her. Just like Lira.”

Ceony flew to her feet. “She manipulated you, Emery Thane. You loved her once. I saw that you loved her.” She folded her arms and rubbed their skin, fighting off a chill creeping into the vision. “I’ve never loved like you have, so I know I don’t understand completely, but if I were in love and there was a chance I could save it, I would take it.”

Just like I’m trying to save you . . .

Shadow-Emery faded and reappeared behind her, grabbing a fistful of her hair. Ceony gasped as he wrenched her head to one side.

“There is no love here,” Shadow-Emery growled.

“Maybe not here,” Ceony whispered, “not in this room, but this is only one part of you, isn’t it? Just one piece of the whole—”

Shadow-Emery released her, vanishing and reappearing again several paces away. Fennel yapped loudly, jumping on all four legs. Scowling, Shadow-Emery snatched Fennel up, crushed the dog’s paper skull in his hands, and tore the creature in half.

Ceony screamed and lunged for Fennel, but the spell on the dog’s carefully crafted body had already been destroyed. The paper pieces that had comprised her companion pattered softly against the floorboards as Emery released them.

Ceony stared in shock. She dropped to her knees. Tears streamed down her face.

Emery had made Fennel for her. Because she missed Bizzy. Because he cared. Fennel, her only real tie to the world outside Emery’s heart. Her one companion in this dark place, her one constant in a world that wouldn’t stop changing.