The Master Magician (10 page)

“I don’t think he left England,” she replied, softer. “And if that’s true, I want to know why. Did you know he escaped near a naval base? Even he wouldn’t risk crossing the water near so many soldiers.
What if he’s trying to lose himself among the common folk, all the while harvesting them as he plans his great escape, or worse?”

Emery stepped into the room, a long breath passing through his nostrils. He set a heavy hand on either of Ceony’s shoulders. “I messaged Alfred today, but he had little information to share. I will contact him again and ask to be kept informed,” he offered. “Will that be enough?”

Would it? Ceony didn’t know. “So long as he doesn’t involve you in the case,” she said.

“Or you,” Emery added. His grip lightened, as did his tone. “Promise me you won’t try to go after this man.”

Ceony frowned. “I’ll promise if you will.”

A slight smile touched Emery’s lips and eyes. “Promise.”

“Promise.”

He kissed her lightly on the lips. “Let’s find something for dinner,” he said. “And pack your bags. I’m to introduce you to Magician Pritwin Bailey tomorrow morning.”

Nerves roused Ceony early the next morning, but she took her time getting ready, humming old lullabies to herself as she dressed and pinned her hair in an effort to keep herself calm. She chose a rose-colored dress from her closet—she’d obtained a few rather nice pieces of clothing during her apprenticeship—and summoned Jonto to help her with its buttons. She looped a light-red ascot around her neck and, despite the warm weather, the dark-olive jacket that had come with the dress. She left the matching hat on her bed while she had a boiled egg for breakfast. It would be impossible to stomach more than that.

Today is the start of the finishing
, she thought as she broke into the shell of her small meal.
A couple weeks with Prit—no, Magician Bailey—and I’ll take my test. I’ll become a magician.

Emery entered the kitchen, covering a yawn with his knuckles.

Ceony slid the spoon into the egg’s flesh.
I won’t be Emery’s apprentice anymore. No more secrets. No more gossip. No more waiting.

She smiled to herself and chewed on the bit of egg. It grew bland in her mouth.
Unless I fail.

She could take the test again, eventually. But Ceony suspected that the humiliation of failure would carry a greater weight than the failure itself.

“Should I be jealous?” Emery asked as he pulled a half loaf of bread out of the cupboard—cheese-and-herb bread Ceony had made two days ago.

Ceony glanced up from her egg. “Hmm?”

“I don’t think you’ve worn that since Patrice’s luncheon. Magician Bailey will be impressed.”

Ceony rolled her eyes. “I want to make a good impression.”

Emery chuckled to himself and buttered two slices of bread. “The buggy should be here soon. Do you have your suitcase packed?”

“So eager to get rid of me?”

“Eager?” he repeated, rolling back the sleeves of his favorite indigo coat. “My kitchen will be empty in two days and I’ll be forced to purchase my own groceries. How could I be eager for that?”

Ceony smiled and scooped out more egg. “You could always have Jonto cook your meals.”

In fact, Emery once
had
tried to get Jonto to cook his meals. It had taken the paper magician two days to reconstruct the right hand and arm of the paper skeleton, which had burned off after Jonto attempted to light the coals in the oven.

“I’ll be sure to stock up on sandwich supplies,” Emery murmured.

“And all you’ll miss is the food, hm?”

His eyes glimmered. “I may miss the mid-night companionship.”

Ceony flushed. “Emery Thane!”
That was
one
time.

Emery just chuckled, the cursed man. Peeling the shell off her
breakfast, Ceony asked, “When was the last time you saw Magician Bailey?”

“Saw him?” Emery repeated between bites. “I suppose at that fund-raising banquet. The one where a certain hot-tempered young waitress dumped a pitcher of wine on a guest’s lap.” He smiled. “Spoke to him, though . . . My graduation from Praff, unless you count the recent telegrams and mail birds.”

“You really don’t like each other, then.”

“He doesn’t like
me
,” Emery corrected. “And I can’t blame him. But he’s not the most remarkable fellow himself.”

“Emery!”

The paper magician smiled, the expression all in his bright-green eyes, like he knew something Ceony didn’t. Ceony sighed. She would miss those eyes. But her test had been scheduled for three weeks from today. Compared with how long she’d already waited, three weeks was next to nothing.

The buggy arrived. A violet paper butterfly rested on the seat beside the driver, bearing the cottage’s address on its right wing in Emery’s handwriting. Emery loaded Ceony’s suitcase into the automobile’s trunk before taking a seat beside her. The buggy turned around and headed back into London.

“Relax,” Emery whispered after a few minutes on the road. He placed a hand over Ceony’s, which had been twisting a pleat in her skirt between thumb and middle finger. “You’ll be fine.”

“Would I pass your test?” she asked back, keeping her words low. “If you tested me, would I pass?”

“It’s all the same test. There are certain regulations.”

“Maybe the answer keys are all the same,” Ceony began, “but that doesn’t make it all the same test.”

Emery hummed an agreement. He said nothing more, only took Ceony’s hand between his own. The warmth of his skin buzzed up her arm like fireflies.

The buggy drove through London, hitting a bit of horse traffic near Newington. Ceony focused on her pleats as the buggy passed over the River Thames. They drove by Parliament Square and headed west out of the main city, toward Shepherd’s Bush, where Mg. Bailey lived.

Shepherd’s Bush was a mostly rural and residential area spotted with farmland. Ceony watched the houses scroll by, their yards and walls growing with each passing mile. She soon found herself staring at homes bigger than the cottage, then bigger than Mg. Aviosky’s house, then bigger yet. The space between the houses grew, too, and the street became narrower.

She glanced at Emery, but he seemed just as curious as she. Of course he had never been to Mg. Bailey’s home.

After a few more miles, the buggy reached the end of a long dirt road with a row of grass growing in the middle of it. The vehicle turned about in a wide circle, pulling up to a thick and well-pruned wall of bushes that acted as a fence around a property that seemed larger than the entire Mill Squats. The trim grounds had no flowers, only decorative shrubbery of all shapes and sizes.

Ceony stepped out of the buggy, her movements sluggish, her mouth agape. The house itself stood a dozen times larger than the cottage, built of brick that looked like sandstone in the sun and mauve in the shade. Three chimneys rose from the tightly shingled roof, and every window held three glass panes trimmed with white. Ivy covered half the house, including a smaller section on the left that looked to be servants’ quarters but seemed unoccupied.

The mansion dwarfed Ceony the way Big Ben might dwarf an ant. She had thought Mg. Aviosky’s house excessively large, but Ceony’s entire family, her cousins included, couldn’t possibly use all the space inside this manor.

But perhaps the starkest difference was the lack of paper. Emery’s home was covered in paper wards and paper décor. Even
the gardens sported paper plants. But not a shred of magic touched this house. It looked positively normal, if expensive.

She glanced to Emery. “This
can’t
be the right place.”

“Oh, I have a feeling it is,” he commented, circling the buggy to pull Ceony’s suitcase from the trunk. “The textbook industry must be doing remarkably well.”

“Textbooks?”

“Last I heard, that was Prit’s specialty. Enchanted textbooks that rewrite themselves depending on the student’s reading level, diagrams that pop off the page, and the like. Very popular in America. Did you not have them at Praff?”

She frowned. “No, but wouldn’t that have been remarkable? Perhaps I wouldn’t have dragged my feet about Folding so much had my donor provided them.”

Emery chuckled.

Ceony scanned the bushes until she found an arched gateway several paces to her left. She took a few steps toward it before turning back to Emery and asking, “Do we . . . let ourselves in?”

Emery opened his mouth to respond, then spied over the bushes and answered, “Seems help is on the way.”

Ceony followed his gaze and stood on her toes. She spied a cobbled walkway leading from the mansion’s central door and a flash of sunny-blond hair bobbing along it—hair that made Ceony think of Delilah. Moments later the gate unbolted and a man Ceony’s age stepped through.

Though it had been two years, Ceony recognized him immediately. “Bennet Cooper?” she asked. He had graduated with Ceony from Tagis Praff, having placed third in class. Ceony had placed first.

Bennet offered a sheepish smile. Sunlight glinted off his straight, equally sunny hair. He wore simple tan slacks and a simple, white, collared shirt without pockets under his red apprentice’s vest. Ceony wondered if she should have worn her apprentice’s apron as well.

“Hi, Ceony,” he said. He then stiffened like a soldier and added, “Magician Thane, it’s a pleasure to meet you finally.”

Bennet took a few long strides and offered his hand to the paper magician, who stood taller in height by several inches. Emery shook the apprentice’s hand with an amused twinkle in his eye. Bennet continued. “I’ve heard a great many things about you.”

“And you still shook my hand?” Emery asked. “Your mother raised you well.”

Bennet blinked wide eyes. “Sir?”

Emery patted Bennet’s shoulder and strolled up to the gate. “I’m sure Magician Bailey has chattered quite a bit about me in the last few days . . . Ah, here he comes now.”

Bennet glanced in Ceony’s direction and finnicked with the elbows of his shirt before hurrying to the gate. He pushed it open and held it for several seconds before a tall man emerged.

Ceony recognized him from the memory of Emery’s secondary-school experience, though Pritwin Bailey had certainly grown these last fifteen years. He stood straight and narrow, wearing simple clothes as Bennet did, though they had been well tailored and made of fine materials. His pale skin looked as if it had never seen the light of day, and his dark hair only made his complexion appear more washed out. He had a long, slim face free of any facial hair and a pair of thin, gold spectacles perched on his nose.

But what struck Ceony foremost about his appearance was the lack of a smile on his face—or any sign of goodwill whatsoever.

“Thane,” he said, clasping his hands behind his back. There would be no handshake, then. “You seem unchanged.”

“I do try,” Emery replied. His lip quirked almost as if to smile, and Pritwin’s mood seemed to grow ever grimmer.

Bennet cleared his throat. “Magician Bailey, this is Ceony Twill, Magician Thane’s apprentice.”

“I know who she is,” Mg. Bailey said, and though his response
was bland, Ceony didn’t detect malice in his tone. Good—the man had no reason to hold qualms against her, save by association. Mg. Bailey adjusted his spectacles and looked down at Ceony. “I hope you’ve come prepared. I have no intention of postponing your test for lack of study.”

Ceony chewed and swallowed a frown before it could touch her lips. “I assure you, I’m quite prepared.”

Emery said, “Miss Twill could take the test tonight and pass. I have every confidence in her abilities.”

“Hmm,” Mg. Bailey said. “And that confidence is the reason you’re leaving her with me, is it?”

“I’m sure there’s something you can teach her that’s slipped my mind. Something somewhere in this enormous house of yours. How are the acoustics, if I may ask?”

Mg. Bailey’s face took on the puckered look of someone who has tasted a bad lemon. Bennet began playing with his sleeve elbows again.

“I’m sure the acoustics are grand,” Ceony said, turning to Emery for her suitcase. She gave him a warning glare, but he pretended not to see it.

“Oh, here, allow me,” Bennet chimed, hurrying forward to take the suitcase before Ceony could get a grip on it.

“Well,” Emery said after a few seconds of silence between himself and the other Folder, “I suppose I should be on my way. You’re in well-practiced hands, Miss Twill. You may be a Folder the next time I see you.”

Ceony paused at that, meeting Emery’s gaze, wondering if he noticed her surprise.
I hope it’s not that long
, she thought, urging him to read her mind. He smiled at her enigmatically.

“She may be,” Mg. Bailey agreed, though he seemed to emphasize
may
without actually emphasizing it at all. Perhaps Ceony had imagined it.

She wanted to say good-bye to Emery, to embrace him, to kiss the line of his jaw, but she certainly couldn’t with two witnesses—three if she counted the buggy driver, who had worked his way through half a fag while still seated in his automobile.

Emery nodded to the other paper magician and to Bennet before telling Ceony, “Good luck. You know how to reach me in case you need anything.”