The Master Magician

“Oh, bugger!” Ceony cried the following afternoon as sour smoke funneled up from the oven door. She waved a dish towel back and forth in a futile attempt to clear the air. Coughing, she pulled open the oven door. Smoke assaulted her and burned her eyes, but Ceony reached through it and pulled out a well-charred brisket, black down to its juice. Hacking, she set the smoking dish on the stove and retreated for the back door, yanking it open and savoring the clean, late-spring air. Tendrils of smoke wafted over her head, dissipating into the outdoors. The smell lingered between the cabinets.

Leaning against the door frame, Ceony took several deep breaths, hoping they would clear her head and calm her nerves. She hadn’t burned brisket since she was eleven. At least Emery wasn’t home to witness the catastrophe; he’d gone to Dartford that morning to inspect a new line of paper products designed especially for Folders, and he likely wouldn’t be home until after dinner.

Ceony slid along the door frame until she crouched at the bottom. Fennel’s dry paper tongue licked her knee, but when she didn’t respond to him, he hopped outside after the smoke, padding about the lawn with his new rubber feet. They gave more spring to his step, letting him run a little faster, closer to the speed of a flesh-and-blood dog.

Ceony rubbed the bridge of her nose where the cartilage met her forehead. She’d been upstairs reviewing written spells—paper magic accomplished with a pen or pencil—all while writing down next week’s grocery list when the burned brisket made itself known with the foul stench of dying food. Having formed a pact with herself that morning to keep busy, she’d barely allotted herself time to use the washroom, and she’d forgotten about the brisket, which she had cooked hours before dinner just to give herself something to do. Now, crouching in the smoke-laced air, her troubled thoughts caught up to her.

Emery had taken the telegram, but it didn’t matter. Its blocky letters had already inscribed themselves into her mind. Saraj had loosed himself on the world, and though Ceony would like to believe he would flee England and be done with them, she did not trust it would happen that way. There was something broken inside Saraj, something crucial. That’s what Emery had told her, not long after Grath Cobalt’s death. Emery didn’t like talking about Excisioners, but Ceony had insisted.

A sigh escaped her mouth. Yes, the house was warded, but that hadn’t stopped Lira from busting down the front door and ripping Emery’s heart from his chest. Paper was a poor repellant to Excision. And if Lira was little more than an apprentice, what horrors could Saraj dole out?

Ceony stood, examining the empty house. Emery picked one hell of a day to leave town! It seemed he had restored the spells concealing the house, at least.

Snapping her fingers, Ceony beckoned Fennel inside and locked the door, then marched to the front of the house and checked the locks there as well. The windows next. Despite the heat, she locked her window and the library’s, even secured the trapdoor to the roof.

As she stepped into her bedroom to resume her studies, her eyes settled on her empty desk chair, knocked askew from her flight to the kitchen. Her fears turned on her, transposing the quivering body of Delilah upon the chair, a gag in her mouth, ropes binding her down.

Ceony closed her eyes and rubbed circles over her temples in an attempt to stave off a growing headache. This wasn’t fair. She’d never meant for Delilah to be hurt . . . At least Grath had been buried six feet under along with her, though Ceony would have preferred for his grave to be even deeper.

Lowering her hands, Ceony studied her palms, imagining the scars that would have marred them had a nameless Excisioner at the hospital not wished them away. She could feel the bite of the glass as it cut into her skin, the pressure in her hands as she stabbed the shard into Grath’s torso and shouted, “Shatter.”

She didn’t feel guilty for killing him. Perhaps she should, but she didn’t. Her only remorse was not making it to Mg. Aviosky’s home sooner. If she had arrived before Grath, there was a chance Delilah would still be alive.

“Or you would be dead, too,” Emery had said when she related the thought to him, his tone dark.

She returned her focus to the chair, only this time she saw her brother Marshall tied to it, not Delilah. Marshall, Zina, Margo, her parents. Emery. It could have been any one of them. It could be any one of them.

Ceony pressed her lips together. She hated being the victim. If Saraj did come back, she wouldn’t be his. Not her, and not her loved ones. Not when there was a way to protect them—something she, alone, could do.

Leaving the door ajar, Ceony hurried down the stairs and made her way to Emery’s study, where she took several lengths of smooth twine. She revisited the cookbook in the kitchen for her ball of phosphorus, then retreated to her room, shutting the door behind her despite being the only one home.