The Paper Magician (The Paper Magician Trilogy, #1)(35)

Ceony stared as she watched her younger self storm back into the kitchen—where she would promptly be fired—as Sinad Mueller continued shouting expletives. Two of his colleagues darted from their chairs with napkins ready to make a futile attempt at cleaning the man up.

She released the rail and took a step back. All her muscles went lax.

That was why Ceony had lost the scholarship. She had dumped a pitcher of wine onto the very man who would have awarded it to her.

“He deserved it.”

Ceony turned to see a second Mg. Thane standing over the one sitting down. This one wore a long indigo coat and his arms folded across his chest.

Ceony’s eyes darted between the two Thanes, nearly identical, and gasped. “Thane?”

But the second Thane didn’t look at her, only at the scene unfolding below. He appeared almost as unaware as his counterpart. And yet, when he spoke, it seemed as if he spoke to her.

“Sinad Mueller is a vile man behind closed doors,” he said. “You can hear it in his voice, the way he talks, the way he looks at women—even young men. He hoards his money and doles it out publicly to only the best specimens, and he makes sure half the country knows of his ‘generosity.’ He plays the school board like a fiddle, and I for one believe he cheated on his exit exams. He enchants rubber about as well as a tire salesman.”

Ceony clutched the strap of her bag and felt Fennel circle her legs. “He knew who I was.”

“I found out who you were,” Thane said, and Ceony wasn’t sure if it was in response to her statement or merely the next line of his monologue. “He revoked your scholarship, so I stepped in.” He chuckled to himself and rubbed his chin with his thumb. “I wanted to see the look on his face when that ‘petulant, fiery girl,’ as he put it, waltzed into Tagis Praff and stuffed his manner and his foul money right back into his coat pocket.”

Ceony glimpsed the ballroom floor, but Sinad Mueller had already left the room. “You gave it to me to spite him?” she asked. “Fifteen thousand pounds just to spite someone you didn’t like . . . not that I’m ungrateful. You have no idea how much it means to me—”

She turned back only to see the second Thane vanish. She darted from the railing, searching for him, but he had disappeared as easily as the moon on a cloudy night. If only she could put into words how much that scholarship meant to her, regardless of why she received it. The thank-you letter in Mg. Thane’s office couldn’t even come close to covering it. One more reason she couldn’t let him die.

Ceony’s gaze dropped to the ballroom and locked onto Lira, who appeared to be searching for her as well, near the string quartet. She held a small pool of blood in her palm and shook it slightly. A divining spell?

Ceony backed away from Lira’s view, slipping her hand into her bag and counting her thin arsenal. She had something, at least, but what real good would paper animals do against a practiced Excisioner? Folding had never been meant for combat! “I have to get out of here,” she whispered, picking Fennel up beneath his front legs. “I have to get out. Thane, where are you?”

But he didn’t answer. Whatever method he had used to speak to her earlier had been lost.

Swallowing and clutching Fennel to her chest, Ceony hurried across the balcony. Where could she hide? What sort of damage could she do with a mere stack of paper? There was a reason she never wanted to be a Folder!

I need to get out! her mind screamed.

She slowed at the end of the balcony, then stopped altogether. Before her stood a door that she knew wasn’t part of the ballroom—a white door rimmed with scarlet, without knob or handle. Glancing behind her, she saw Lira’s head crowning the top of the stairs that led to the balcony.

Ceony pushed her way through the door and staggered through a puddle of blood.

She gasped and bit her lip to stifle a scream as the door behind her vanished. She had reentered the fleshy chamber of Thane’s heart and stepped right into a river of blood that flowed steadily past her ankles. The loud pulsing of Thane’s heartbeat reverberated through the chamber’s walls: PUM-Pom-poom.

Trying to steady her breathing, Ceony followed the river’s current, her knuckles straining with the closed fists at her sides. The blood flowed higher and higher up her leg until she waded with it above her knees. Almost too deep. She gritted her teeth and tried not to think of being pulled beneath its surface.

She saw another door, but this one made of flesh and veins, pulsing in rhythm with the rest of the room. One with no windows or knobs, no locks or hinges. Just flesh pressed tightly against flesh, like a long, swollen cut that wasn’t meant to heal.

Somehow, Ceony knew she needed to get through it.

Lira’s voice sounded softly above her, no doubt carried on the particles of a spell, for the woman lingered nowhere in sight. Caught up in a vision, somewhere, Ceony hoped. “Not that I’m discontented to leave you trapped in here, dearie,” the voice said, “but I don’t want you stinking up the place. Let’s get this over with, shall we? Swift and quick. I’ll even leave your body in one piece. Maybe two.”

Despite the wet heat of the chamber, gooseflesh pimpled Ceony’s arms. She clutched the strap of her bag and forced air into her lungs, though a flutter broke her breath here and there. She couldn’t fight Lira, not yet. Her best option was to keep going—find the end of Thane’s heart and, hopefully, its exit.