The Glass Magician (The Paper Magician Trilogy #2)(44)

She pointed in what she assumed was the direction of England. Then an idea struck her.

She tucked the mirror shard into her waistband and pretended to write on her hand. “Paper?” she asked. “Uh . . . papel? Papier? See-voo play?”

She thought that sounded French.

He paused, then nodded and opened the door, motioning with one hand for Ceony to enter. A slightly older man who resembled the first sat on a short, apricot-colored couch with a newspaper on his lap. He eyed Ceony with curiosity.

The first man moved to a desk in the corner of the room and pulled out a small pad of paper and a pencil. “Papier?” he asked, holding out the supplies.

“Yes, yes! Uh, oui,” Ceony said, grasping the pad. The familiar tingle of the paper beneath her fingers gave her some comfort. She quickly scribbled a sentence on the first page, receiving strange looks from both men. When she had finished, she read, with strong inflection, “After losing her way through mirror transportation, Ceony found herself in an unfamiliar place and unsure of how to get home.”

She pictured what images would best illustrate her point, and they danced before her in the air—ghostly, translucent pictures of what happened to get her to this house. The two men jumped a little when the images first appeared, but then they watched in fascination.

She lowered the pad and wrote some more, then read, “Ceony wondered where she was.”

The image of a map of Europe floated before her, with a question mark hovering above it and a thumbtack wavering between England and France.

“Belgique,” the first man said. He hesitated, glancing at the man who Ceony assumed was his brother. In a poor English accent, he said, “Belgium.”

“Belgium?” Ceony repeated, and the story illusion dripped away like wet paint. And I smelled the ocean . . . That must have been the English Channel. I crossed it through the mirror.

How on earth would she get back?

“Gaffer?” she asked, drawing a stick figure below her words and sketching a hand mirror in its hands. “Do you have a Gaffer here?” She lowered the pad and stepped over to the window, tapping on the glass.

The first man turned to his brother and said, “Je pense qu’elle est celle qu’il veut. Elle est rousse. Elle enchante papier.”

“Papier,” Ceony repeated, nodding. At least she knew that word. “Oui, papier.”

The brother nodded, and the first man gestured for Ceony to follow him farther into the house. He held out his hands, and she reluctantly handed over the pad. Perhaps the generosity of these men would extend to offering her a quick meal, too. Her stomach growled. She hoped the man heard it.

If he did, he didn’t show it.

Ceony followed him through a small but immaculate kitchen, then down a steep set of stairs that required her guide to hunch over to keep his head from hitting the ceiling. In the basement she passed a closed door; then the man led her into an empty, rectangular room with a few crates stacked in the corner. Near the crates, an old mirror with a broken frame leaned against the wall.

Ceony froze just inside the door. Behind the mirror, arms folded across his broad chest, stood Grath Cobalt.

“Est-ce que c’est la fille? On a le douxieme parti?” the man asked, barring the door with his arm when Ceony tried to back away.

“Bien s?r, vous avez bien fait,” Grath answered in a flawless French accent, his gray eyes focusing on Ceony, whose heart had begun to beat so high in her throat she could almost taste it. “S’il vous pla?t, donnez-moi un instant.”

The man nodded and stepped out of the room, shutting the door behind him.

Ceony reached for the handle.

“Nuh-uh,” Grath said, unfolding his arms. “I’m used to wild goose chases, love, but I’m much better when I play the goose.” He took a step forward. “For us, this ends now.”

Ceony trembled. “P-Please, I don’t have what you want,” she murmured. “Just let me go.”

“And risk more scars?” he asked, rubbing his side where Delilah had shot him. His shirt still bore a hole from the bullet, but the skin underneath looked unscathed. Had Grath visited Saraj before tracking her down? Did that mean the Excisioner still lurked in the city, or did Grath just know how to find him using the mirrors?

Ceony seized the door handle, only to find it locked. She hadn’t even heard the metal click.

Her stomach sank, no longer hungry. Tears sprang to her eyes. “I’ll d-do whatever you want,” she whispered. “Her blood spilled on my paper. It was an Illusion spell, but I wrote the words in her blood, and it took. That’s all I did. Please don’t hurt my family.”

Grath took another step forward, and another, his face a mask that her words didn’t alter. Ceony focused so intently on him—on the vein throbbing in his forehead and the shadows dancing in his eyes—that she didn’t notice the swirling mirror behind him. One moment, Grath was sauntering toward her, and the next a familiar voice called out to him from behind, freezing him in his tracks.

“We really should stop meeting like this.”

A surge of relief rushed through Ceony with such force she nearly lost her balance. Grath scowled and turned, one shoulder still pointed toward Ceony.

There, on the right side of the mirror, stood Emery without his indigo coat. His features looked sharper, darker. His voice lacked its usual mirth. On the left side of the mirror stood Mg. Hughes, who looked rather calm given the situation.