The Master Magician (17 page)

Fumbling with her limbs, Ceony found her feet and hurried across the room as the piano man began a new tune. She approached a vested man behind a small bar and asked, “Please, is the owner awake?”

The man eyed her. “I’m he. What’s wrong, lass?”

“Do you have a telegraph I could use? It’s urgent.”

Sweat trickled down her back.

“Got rid of it,” he said, leaning his elbows on the bar. “Telephones are the new trend.”

He gestured with a tilt of his head to the upright, black-lacquered telephone at the back of the bar.

“It uses an operator?”

The man nodded. “Go ahead and try it. Will you need a room?”

Ceony didn’t answer but seized the phone and, with evident clumsiness, managed to connect to the local police.

“An Excisioner named Saraj Prendi is in Reading,” she said into the telephone’s mouthpiece. “He’s dangerous, seen by the docks not fifteen minutes ago. Please tell the Magicians’ Criminal Affairs.”

She hung up without leaving her name.

After staying the night acutely awake in the inn lobby in Reading, Ceony used her return train ticket early in the morning, hoping to avoid the notice of watching eyes. She bribed a buggy driver to take her to Mg. Bailey’s with some premade Folded spells, ones that could sell in the market for a decent price. With any luck, Saraj was holed up in Reading, licking his wounds.

Ceony managed to doze in the buggy, even dreamed that her fire spell had riled Saraj enough to scare him from England for good. But when the rough road leading to the Bailey residence woke her, she knew the idea to be
only
a dream. If anything, she had given Saraj a motive for revenge.

She wondered again if Grath had confided in Saraj about his desire to break his bond. If so, Saraj would know
exactly
what Ceony had done. No Folder could throw fire like that.

She dragged her heavy feet toward the mansion. Now there was a risk that the secret to bond breaking would fall into the hands of an Excisioner. Still, the Pyre spell had been her only way to escape. It had been that or her life . . . but if it came down to it, she’d die before revealing Grath’s secrets to accessing all materials magics. She wouldn’t let Saraj—or anyone else—use the knowledge for ill.

But I can’t keep everything secret
, she thought as she approached the front door.
I have to tell Emery the truth. Saraj will think I’m at the cottage. I can’t risk Emery’s life.

She reached for the knob, but the door swung open before her fingers made contact.

Bennet stood on the other side, looking about as tired as she felt, his hair in disarray, his shirt half-tucked.

“Ceony!” he said, half-scolding and half-relieved. “Thank the Lord you made it back!”

Ceony stiffened. “Has Magician Bailey—”

Bennet shook his head. “He hasn’t so much as mentioned your name. He’s in his study doing . . . something.”

The fellow apprentice stood aside to let Ceony in. “So where were you?”

Delilah’s face flashed through Ceony’s mind.

“A cousin of mine got into a bad lot,” she lied. “Gambling . . . He wasn’t specific. But he couldn’t collect enough money and he wound up in a cell, even though he’s only seventeen. Apparently he sent a letter to Magician Thane’s home asking for help—he was too embarrassed to ask his father—and Magician Thane sent it to me in a bird.”

Bennet rubbed the back of his neck. “That’s awful. How much was it?”

“Not too much,” Ceony said, pasting on a smile. “He was two pounds short.”

Bennet frowned. “I’m sure Magician Bailey could reimburse you if you explained—”

“Oh no,” Ceony said, dropping her voice. She glanced down the hall to ensure the Folder was nowhere in sight. “He’s only told me. John, that is. My cousin. He made me promise not to breathe a word of it to anyone. His reputation, you see. He wants to be a journalist, and they can get picked apart. He needs a clean slate. I shouldn’t have even told you.”

“But to have a woman go out in the middle of the night—”

“I’m a magician,” Ceony said with a wry grin. “Almost, at least. I can get out of tight spots, even if it’s just with paper.”

Bennet seemed to relax a bit. “I suppose that’s true. But I would have gone with you.”

“I appreciate it.” She yawned. “I guess I need a bit of rest, though. It was a long trip, once you add everything up.”

“Can I bring you breakfast?”

“I’m all right,” she assured him. She offered a last smile before heading down the hall and up the two flights of stairs to her bedroom, where she’d left the window open. She searched the sill, the brick outside, and the rest of her room for a message from Emery, but found none.

Her ribs squeezed in. Since arriving at Mg. Bailey’s home, Emery had sent her a message every day, even if just a brief note. Why hadn’t he last night? Even a vengeful Excisioner couldn’t have stopped yesterday evening’s letter.

She rubbed sleep from her eyes and pinched phosphorus and glass on her necklace before heading into the lavatory next door. Now a Gaffer, Ceony traced the boundaries of the mirror there and sought out the mirror in the lavatory of Emery’s home, which she had previously named “Cottage One.” She used one spell to spy into the room, ensuring its vacancy, and a second spell to initiate a transport.

The glass rippled, a liquid portal, and Ceony passed through.

C
HAPTER
12

I
T FELT LIKE AGES
since Ceony had left the cottage, though in truth less than a week had passed.

She stepped down into the sink and leapt onto the lavatory floor, then peered back into the mirror to adjust her blouse and hair. She’d tell Emery she’d come in through the front door after taking a buggy to the house—she still had the key.

Ceony made her way down the hall, peeking briefly into her room. The bed had been remade, and she smiled. Emery’s odd knack for tidiness had him folding and tucking blanket corners as though crafting a spell, and while he had demonstrated to Ceony how to properly make a bed, she’d never taken the time to mimic the art. She often kept the door to her room closed just so Emery wouldn’t be tempted to rearrange her things, but with her out of the house, there was nothing to stop him.

He must be bored.

She passed her room and stuck her head into the library, but the paper magician wasn’t there. The table and telegraph had both been moved to the right of the window, however. Terribly bored, then.

Across the hall, she knocked softly on Emery’s bedroom door. When she didn’t get a response, she pushed it open. The room, cluttered yet neat, lay empty before her.

She stepped back into the hall and opened the door to the stairs that led to the third floor. “Emery?” she called. She listened for a response but received none. Nor did she hear any shuffling or footsteps.

Her heart beat a little quicker. “You’re being paranoid,” she murmured to herself. Ceony retreated down the hall and took the stairs to the first floor.

He wasn’t in the dining room or kitchen, and Ceony noticed the distinct lack of noise in the cottage, like the building itself had settled into a deep, snoreless slumber.

Her fingers danced over her necklace as she moved to the front of the house, changing her material allegiance from glass to fire. Pyre magic was by far the most aggressive of the materials magics. Being armed with it—and matches from the stove to provide her with a flame whenever she needed one—made Ceony feel a little more powerful, a little safer.

She checked the office and the front room, the front yard and backyard, but Emery was in none of them. Even Jonto had been ceased. He’d left the house, then. He hadn’t mentioned any plan to go away.

Uneasy, Ceony went back to the magician’s bedroom and checked his closet. His magician’s uniform hung there, so he hadn’t left on any formal business. Perhaps he’d gone to the market for groceries, but Emery hated that chore and would hire a runner to do it for him if at all possible.

Ceony scanned his dresser, his nightstand, his bookshelves. She saw no sign of her Folded birds. She opened a few drawers and even glanced under the bed. Where did he keep them? Or had he thrown them away? But Emery wouldn’t toss her notes to him, would he?

She frowned, but thoughts of Saraj pushed missish worries away. Could he have come for Emery?

She searched the rooms again, one by one, until she made it back to the front door. No signs of blood or struggle, no signs of a break-in. Becoming a Gaffer again, Ceony used a piece of glass from
her purse to magnify the kitchen and dining room floor, searching for anything—a drop of missed blood, a piece of Saraj’s hair, perhaps. Nothing. She even did a reflection spell on the lavatory mirror to see what had happened in that room over the past day—that is, until the mirror displayed Emery undressing. She broke the spell and left the lavatory with red cheeks.

She leaned against the hallway wall by her bedroom door. “He must be safe, then,” she said. Hearing the words out loud gave her some small comfort.

Ceony waited several long minutes there, hoping she’d hear Emery unlock the front door, but the cottage remained silent. Peeling herself from the wall, Ceony went to the library and scrawled a note on a yellow square of paper there:

Patrice told me Saraj had been spotted near Berkshire. Please be careful.

Love you.

She Folded the paper into a songbird and left it on Emery’s bedroom windowsill, making it look like she’d sent the bird from the mansion. Then she slipped back through the lavatory glass and into her room at Mg. Bailey’s residence, where she finally managed to get a few hours of sleep.

Three days.

Three days of waiting for Saraj to make his move, of sending out birds to survey the area, of searching Mg. Bailey’s daily newspapers for articles about Excisioners. Three days since her run-in with Saraj in Reading, and she hadn’t heard one peep.

Not from him, and not from Emery.

Ceony still sent her birds—or moths, or bats—to Emery every evening as soon as twilight promised to hide their departure, but she hadn’t received a response. That made four days without any contact with him, and she knew he’d returned to the cottage. She’d checked Cottage One through the glass in the lavatory and seen his wet towel hanging on the wall.

So why had Emery stopped responding to her?

She doodled water lilies in the margins of her ledger as this question plagued her. She sat at the table in the apprentices’ study, across from Bennet, who labored over the links of an expansion chain. The command “Enlarge” would make the wearer of the chain appear larger to passersby. How large depended on the thickness of the paper. A rather complicated illusion spell, given the make of each link. It was one Ceony planned to use in her preparations for her magician’s test:
#37. Something to defend against a tramp
.

But, once again, Ceony found she had a hard time concentrating on her studies.

Mg. Bailey had certainly given her space, though he still asked her to sit in on Bennet’s evening lessons. He’d stopped ragging on Emery, but Ceony’s relationship with the belligerent Folder had hardly become peaches and cream. In fact, Mg. Bailey’s demeanor toward Ceony had soured further, if such a thing were possible. For days he’d looked at her with outright suspicion, treating her as the suspect to his detective. She could only guess that the man had noticed a scratch on his Mercedes and assumed Ceony to be the guilty party. And she was, more or less. Still, Ceony didn’t care enough to ask Mg. Bailey if his breeches had grown too tight. She had enough men to worry about!