The Glass Magician (The Paper Magician Trilogy #2)(13)

Ceony drew in a shaky breath and carefully maneuvered her clammy fingers over her lap. Full-point Fold, duck Fold.

“It took a while to track you down,” Grath said, playing with Delilah’s fork. It looked so tiny in his giant hands. “All I knew to look for was a redheaded girl with strange magic. And you turned out to be Emery Thane’s apprentice, of all people. How is the bugger? Still kicking, I hear.”

Ceony said nothing. She kept her gaze fixed on Grath’s cool stare.

Grath chuckled, but his smile vanished too soon. He leaned forward, dangerously close. “I want you to tell me what you did to Lira.”

Adrenaline made Ceony’s skin prickle. “I-I didn’t do anything.”

Grath slammed his fist on the table, rattling the dishes and earning a few curious looks from the other patrons. It took all Ceony’s willpower not to jump. “You’re not in any position to lie to me, Ceony Maya Twill. What strange sorcery did you cast on her?”

“I did nothing strange,” she lied. Four-corners Fold, and she flipped the napkin over. “I’m a Folder, that’s all.”

“What spell?”

Ceony sucked in a long breath, fingers prodding the napkin to check its alignment. “I won’t tell you,” she whispered. “The world is better off without her. The sooner—”

Grath jerked her chair to the left. Ceony winced, but made her last Fold without flinching.

“You think I care about the people here?” he growled, barely above a whisper. “You think I care if they have to watch me slice the skin from your bones? They’re cowards, Ceony. They’ll run the minute blood spills. And I will spill all of it, drop by drop, until you tell me what I want to know.

“Or maybe I’ll start with them,” he said, cocking his head toward a family of four in the corner. They had an adolescent girl and a young boy with them. “Do you know how strong a child’s heart is, Ceony? The sort of spells I could cast with one?”

Ceony shut her eyes for a moment. Too many memories, things she wished she could unsee, came flooding up at those words—the gaping hole in Emery’s chest as he collapsed to the floor, his heart clutched in Lira’s hands; the pressure of the bloody, sweltering walls of Emery’s heart pressing against her on all sides; the sight of harvested corpses strewn across the floor of a warehouse storage room. She coaxed them down, burying them deep within her mind. Hadn’t Delilah just called her calm? Be calm, she pleaded to herself.

“All right,” she said, careful. “You want to know how I froze Lira?”

Grath knit his fingers under his chin, waiting.

Ceony drew another deep breath. “It started with this.”

She dropped the rhombus-shaped napkin on the middle of the table and whispered, “Burst.”

The napkin began to vibrate rapidly. First Grath looked confused. Then his eyes widened.

In one movement, Ceony twisted her chair away from the Excisioner’s foot and leapt from the table, bolting for the back door.

The Burst spell exploded.

The explosion wasn’t as strong as when Ceony had used the spell against Lira, since this one had been made with thin napkin paper, but it was large enough to send dishes flying and chunks of table scattering. Large enough to burn anyone who came too close, even an Excisioner like Grath.

Ceony didn’t survey the damage. She slammed her body into the back door and bolted into the sunlit street.

She sprinted across the road, earning an angry yell from a driver, and took a sharp corner around a bank and out of Parliament Square. Her heart raced with her legs as she rushed down one street and dodged between a hotel and a rug shop, jumping over a busted curb. Distance. She needed to get as far away from Grath as she could, put as many things between them as possible.

Emery! She reached for the Mimic spell only to realize she’d left it at the restaurant, along with her purse, mirror, and bike. She had no way to contact him.

Delilah! But which glassblower had she gone to? She could be anywhere by now.

Ceony paused at an intersection between a single-story pet-supply store and a two-story antique shop, panting, peering through the mass of people who were blissfully unaware of the danger in their midst. Grath didn’t care about people—he had said as much. She needed to get away from the crowd.

She heard shouts behind her and ran to the right, nearly knocking over a man laden with groceries. Her lungs began to burn as she pushed past him and kept running. Aviosky. Magician Aviosky lives in the city. If Ceony could round the next block and make it over the bridge, perhaps she could reach—

She took another sharp right and collided into something solid—a huge man in a brown vest and brown trousers. The impact sent her toppling backward. She landed flat on her rump.

Stars filled her eyes.

“Miss!” the man exclaimed. “Are you all right? I’m terribly sorry! Here, let me help you up.”

He extended his thick hand, which was even bigger than Grath’s. Ceony clasped it, and the man pulled her up so swiftly her vision swam.

“Thank you,” she mumbled between breaths as the world settled back into place. She blinked at the man before her. He appeared to be in his late twenties and would have looked rather portly if not for his height. His mousy-brown hair had been well oiled and slicked to one side, and his brown eyes—

Ceony recognized him.