The Glass Magician (The Paper Magician Trilogy #2)(39)

“Saraj greatly disliked Lira,” she remembered Emery saying. Perhaps the Excisioner hadn’t tried, then.

Grath ground his teeth together. “We have a spell that can stiffen the body, yes, but the reversal didn’t help Lira. This is a different spell.”

Ceony picked apart his words. “Not we. Saraj.”

Grath’s expression darkened. “Yes, Saraj. For now. But I know Excision like the back of my hand, Ceony Twill. If you can’t break the curse, I will, once blood is my domain. You haven’t let my secret slip, have you?”

He stepped forward.

Ceony held her ground, but she fisted her hand in her bag. “I’m not stupid. I know how to keep things to myself,” she lied. All of Criminal Affairs now knew Grath’s hidden identity as a Gaffer.

Grath paused again, about seven paces from Ceony. He lifted his hands. “It’s all in the material,” he murmured, studying his own palms. “I’ve researched for years, and I know that much. A magician’s magic is all in the material. Those blasted sealing words are so easily spoken, yet so final.”

He hesitated, then scowled, perhaps realizing Ceony was wasting his time. “Tell me what you did!” he barked. “Fix her!”

Ceony jumped at the volume of his voice, which boomed against the rafters and empty walls of the barn. Mirrors quivered under its strength. Swallowing hard, she took a step toward Lira’s mirror.

She stared at Lira, the thorny beauty whose hand and hair concealed most of her face as she crouched in unending agony. Emery had loved her, once. Three years he’d been married to her. Even when Lira had turned away from him, even when Grath had pulled her to darkness, Emery had still loved her. Not until the very end—when all hope had been lost—had he severed the bond between them. Ceony knew. She had seen it for herself.

Lira had been a nurse, Emery had said. A healer. Nurses helped people. Perhaps that was what had drawn Emery to her, besides her beauty. Lira had worked to cure the sick.

Ceony’s memory swirled to the rocky cave on Foulness Island, where Emery’s heart had sat beating in a pool of enchanted blood. Ceony had shot Lira in the chest with her pistol. But the Excisioner had used dark magic to pull the bullet free, healing herself. For a brief moment, under Grath’s scrutiny, Ceony wondered if that could have been what drew Lira to Excision. Had Grath offered her a way to heal people to which modern medicine couldn’t compare? Had Lira initially wanted to be the kind of person who could heal someone with just a single touch, a single spell?

Ceony peered into the mirror. Lira had been a good person, once. To win Emery’s love, she must have been. But Excision had darkened her, stolen her soul away.

“Grath was our neighbor when we lived in Berkshire . . .”

Grath. She turned toward him. Grath had planted the evil in Lira’s heart, nourished it like a gardener would his plot. No, Ceony wouldn’t free Lira; Emery had given her chance after chance, and she had proved she had no redemption left in her.

But Ceony couldn’t free Grath, either. She couldn’t let him go back to the city and hurt more people, draw more innocents into the dark arts. Possibly become an Excisioner himself. She had to stop it.

Reaching down to the very base of her bag, Ceony gripped her Tatham percussion-lock pistol and pulled it free from its bed of Folded spells.

She leveled it at Grath.





CHAPTER 13



GRATH FROWNED AT THE pistol. “Is this your plan, pet?”

“You’re not an Excisioner,” she said flatly, though she moved her other hand to the pistol to hold it steady. She hadn’t used the gun since her confrontation with Lira, and the rickety barn hardly made for ideal concentration. “You can’t heal from it like Lira did.”

“Are you so sure?” he asked.

Ceony leveled the gun at his heart.

Grath stepped forward. Ceony cocked the hammer.

He chuckled. “You ever killed someone before, little girl?” he asked.

“I did that, didn’t I?” Ceony said, jerking her head toward the mirror that still showcased Lira. But that isn’t death, just magic, she thought. If I shoot him, I’ll kill him. I’ll be a killer just like he is.

But no, this was different. This was Grath or Ceony, and Ceony thought a bullet to the chest was undoubtedly far more merciful than whatever Grath had planned for her.

Still, she lowered the muzzle down, to his hip. Better to incapacitate him here and let Criminal Affairs deal with him.

She hated how the gun trembled in her grip.

Grath did not seem amused. “I’ll track down your blond friend like I promised. Delilah Berget, isn’t it?”

Ceony tried very hard not to glance at the oval mirror by the doors.

Reaching behind him, Grath pulled two short daggers from his belt, their blades made of thick, frosted glass. They looked like carved ice. He brought one to his lips and kissed it.

“I’ll cut off her toes first,” he said, taking a small step forward, sliding his boot across the dirt floor. “Then her fingers, her ears. I’ll pull her teeth one by one, then her tongue. And when she can’t scream anymore, I’ll—”

“Stop it!” Ceony shouted. “It doesn’t matter! I’ll stop you, and Delilah will be fine!”

“Oh, she might be, but what about the others?” Grath asked. “You don’t know much about Saraj, do you? He’s a mad dog, the kind that kills for fun, not for food. He’ll go after your friend, and Patrice Aviosky, and Emery Thane. He even blew up the Dartford Paper Mill just to flush you out.