The Glass Magician (The Paper Magician Trilogy #2)(19)

The front door to the police station opened, and in walked Mg. Aviosky, a very exhausted-looking Delilah, and Mg. Hughes, a Siper—rubber magician—whom Ceony had formally met after Emery’s brush with death three months ago. Mg. Hughes sat on the Magicians’ Cabinet for Criminal Affairs, and Ceony knew from the third chamber of Emery’s heart that he was the one who’d involved Emery in hunting Excisioners in the first place.

Ceony stood and set Fennel and the rest of her soaked belongings down on her chair.

Mg. Aviosky reached her first and seized her shoulders, taking a moment to look her up and down. “You have a knack for getting into danger, Miss Twill,” she said with a click of her tongue, followed by a sigh of relief. “Thank goodness you’re well.” Her face paled. “Magician Thane?”

“He’s fine, just a bump on his head,” Ceony said. She hadn’t noticed the injury—and the dried blood coming down from Emery’s hairline—until they had reached the police station.

She was completely and utterly useless.

“He’s talking with Magician Cantrell,” she finished, gesturing to the closed door across the room. She had met Mg. Cantrell—a Smelter—only briefly. She had seemed far more interested in Emery’s account of the accident than in Ceony’s.

Delilah pushed forward and gave Ceony a tight hug, but spared her the double kiss. “Oh, Ceony, I’m so sorry. How dreadful this must be.”

“I’m all right,” Ceony said, though she felt less than confident in her answer. She felt tired, frightened, worried, relieved, anxious—did “all right” fit with any of those?

“You’ve filed your reports?” Mg. Hughes asked. He sounded gruffer than Ceony remembered, but that could have been due to the late hour.

She nodded.

Mg. Hughes frowned and rubbed his trimmed white beard with his thumb and forefinger. “A knack for danger is something of an understatement. This is the third incident you’ve been involved in this week.”

“Third?” Mg. Aviosky repeated, eyes bugging behind her thin glasses.

Mg. Hughes nodded. “I received a report yesterday evening concerning the reappearance of Grath Cobalt. Seems he’s back in town, and he paid Miss Twill a personal visit.”

Delilah gripped Ceony’s arm to her chest and shuddered.

Mg. Aviosky’s skin paled. “But he left England!”

“So we thought,” Mg. Hughes said. “But he’s come back for this one.”

“No, he’s come back for Lira,” Ceony interjected, adjusting her damp shirt with her free arm. The towel she had been given upon her arrival had already soaked through and now hung off the back of her chair. “He thinks I have the secret to restoring her.”

But Ceony barely understood how she defeated Lira in the first place. They had fought outside the cave. In a struggle for Lira’s knife, Ceony had sliced open the woman’s eye . . . and in a moment that her memory could still not piece together, Ceony had written Lira froze on a piece of damp paper. Written as she would a story illusion. Only Lira’s frozen state was no illusion.

“Seems he didn’t like your response,” Mg. Hughes said, intrigued.

“No,” said a tired baritone behind them—Ceony recognized the voice as Emery’s. “This wasn’t Grath.”

They all turned toward Emery. Mg. Cantrell, who had also emerged from the office, was busily writing something in a ledger at a nearby desk. Delilah’s grip on Ceony’s arm tightened even more.

“Ceony agrees with me on that much,” Emery said, giving Ceony a sympathetic look. She felt a surge of relief that the paper magician wasn’t angry with her for making a bad situation worse—or, at least, he didn’t seem to be. “I don’t know for sure. I had a poor vantage point and it was dark, but I suspect that Saraj Prendi might still be in cahoots with Grath.”

Mg. Hughes frowned. “We haven’t heard high or low on Prendi for nearly three years.”

“I imagine you have,” Emery said, “you just didn’t know it was him.”

Mg. Hughes scoffed, but he didn’t debate the point.

“Who is Saraj?” asked Delilah.

Mg. Hughes sighed. “Perhaps you should take your apprentice to another room, Patrice.”

“Please let her stay,” Ceony said. “She should know, too. She was almost part of it.”

Delilah’s mouth dropped, but she kept her wits about her enough not to ask how for the time being.

Mg. Aviosky nodded, and Mg. Hughes shrugged.

“Saraj Prendi is an Excisioner who hails from India,” the Siper said. “At least, his lineage is Indian. We don’t have enough details on his history to confirm his place of birth. But we do have a solid criminal profile on him.”

Gooseflesh prickled Ceony’s arms.

“Which is?” Mg. Aviosky asked.

“He’s unpredictable,” Mg. Hughes said. “Sometimes he does solo jobs; sometimes he works with large groups of Excisioners, such as the one Grath Cobalt used to lead, until our sting operation in 1901 disbanded it. Two things we do know are that Saraj Prendi likes to show off, and he has a distinct lack of conscience.”

“Show off,” Ceony said, “like with explosions.”

“Perhaps,” Mg. Hughes said, “but we have no evidence to link him to the paper mill. In fact, we have nothing to tie the mill to these other events save for you, Miss Twill.”