The Paper Magician (17 page)

A door appeared to Ceony’s right, beside the dissipating paper magician. Not a white door rimmed with scarlet, but a red door edged with shadow.

“
No
!
” Lira shouted, blood raining onto the floor. She ran for Ceony, red hands outstretched.

Ceony bolted through the door before Lira could grab her, Fennel at her ankles. But instead of the red walls of Emery’s heart, she found herself once more in the dark office lit with a single starry window. Back to where she had started. Shadows moved before her, predatory. Ceony’s own heart ebbed within her chest.

She had been trapped.

C
HAPTER
13

E
MERY RUSHED HER
,
HIS
forearm across her collar, and shoved her into the wall where the red door had just been. She squeezed her eyes shut, waiting for herself to phase, for the scene to replay itself, but it didn’t. Emery’s forearm pressed down onto her, and when she dared to look, Emery’s eyes flared with green fire.

Cold sweat kissed her skin. Fennel barked his whispery bark beside Ceony, biting at Emery’s leg with paper teeth. Ceony struggled, but the paper magician didn’t move.

“You have no business here,” he hissed, his voice too low, too rough. Not like Emery Thane at all. Even the Emery Thane from this very scene, enraptured in rage and heartbreak, hadn’t sounded so cold. Ceony would have trembled had she not been pinned so securely against the wall.

“I’m sorry,” she cried. “I didn’t mean—”

Shadow-Emery pulled back far enough to grab her shoulder. With little effort, Shadow-Emery hurled Ceony into a stack of boxes and books meticulously piled in the corner. Cardboard corners dug into her ribs and spine; paperback novels rained onto her head.

“I’m trying to save you!” she shouted.

Shadow-Emery laughed—cackled—a noise like broken organ pipes that sent cold chills up Ceony’s arms. “No one can save me. You’ve swum into dangerous waters, Miss Twill.”

Fennel hunched on his legs and barked wildly, but Shadow-Emery didn’t see him, didn’t hear him. His molten eyes fixated on Ceony, an owl watching the desperate run of a mouse before swooping down and nabbing it in thin-tipped talons.

Ceony tried to steady her voice, but it quivered in her throat. “Please, just let me go. I can help you if you let me go.”

“Help me?” Shadow-Emery repeated with a sneer, as if the words on his tongue were laced with vinegar. “And who will help
them
?”

The vision faded by half, leaving the dark wooden walls of the office in place, but the furniture, shelves, and floor disappeared, replaced with the floor of the warehouse storage room and the ripped and torn bodies strewn across it.

Ceony averted her eyes and pressed a hand to her mouth, willing her stomach to stay calm. “I don’t need to see it again!” she shouted between fingers.

“Don’t you?” Shadow-Emery asked with a raised voice. “How good
is
your memory, Ceony Twill? You seem to have forgotten about them already. I killed them.”

“No!” Ceony yelled, tears wetting her eyelashes. Still, she did not look. “The Excisioners killed them, not you!”

“But I didn’t stop them.”

“You tried to, didn’t you?” Ceony asked, almost more to herself than to him. “I saw you try. I saw you try to save them.”

“Not save
them
,” Shadow-Emery said as the vision of death faded back into the office, to the silhouette of a littered desk and the dark splotches of literary debris across the floor. “Save myself. I was only after the Excisioners.”

She looked up at him, the spilled boxes and books still hugging her. “You didn’t know about them, did you? Not personally. They were victims, but not yours. Did you even know their names?”

Shadow-Emery looked away.

“That’s why, don’t you see?” she pleaded. “You hunt the Excisioners because they hurt people, even people you don’t know. How is that evil?”

Shadow-Emery laughed. “I’m just like her. Just like Lira.”

Ceony flew to her feet. “She manipulated you, Emery Thane. You loved her once. I saw that you loved her.” She folded her arms and rubbed their skin, fighting off a chill creeping into the vision. “I’ve never loved like you have, so I know I don’t understand completely, but if I were in love and there was a chance I could save it, I would take it.”

Just like I’m trying to save you . . .

Shadow-Emery faded and reappeared behind her, grabbing a fistful of her hair. Ceony gasped as he wrenched her head to one side.

“There is no love here,” Shadow-Emery growled.

“Maybe not here,” Ceony whispered, “not in this room, but this is only one part of you, isn’t it? Just one piece of the whole—”

Shadow-Emery released her, vanishing and reappearing again several paces away. Fennel yapped loudly, jumping on all four legs. Scowling, Shadow-Emery snatched Fennel up, crushed the dog’s paper skull in his hands, and tore the creature in half.

Ceony screamed and lunged for Fennel, but the spell on the dog’s carefully crafted body had already been destroyed. The paper pieces that had comprised her companion pattered softly against the floorboards as Emery released them.

Ceony stared in shock. She dropped to her knees. Tears streamed down her face.

Emery had
made
Fennel for her. Because she missed Bizzy. Because he cared. Fennel, her only real tie to the world outside Emery’s heart. Her one companion in this dark place, her one constant in a world that wouldn’t stop changing.

She touched the broken paper pieces, feeling as crumpled as Fennel’s lifeless, misshapen head.

“This isn’t you,” Ceony whispered, pulling a cold finger back from her dog’s lifeless form. “This isn’t who you are!”

“Ha!” Shadow-Emery barked. “Do you even know who
I
am?”

His fingers seized her hair once more and hauled her to her feet. “Dark and dangerous waters . . . ,” he repeated.

A new laughter—Lira’s laughter—filled the room, and Ceony felt herself crack like a hot glass pan set in snow. She didn’t see the woman, however, and Shadow-Emery didn’t seem to hear her. At least, he didn’t react.

“Didn’t you know, little girl?” Lira’s distant voice echoed through the dark office, as if her larynx had been embedded into the very walls. “The rules of Excision are very clear cut, especially for the heart.”

“I d-don’t understand,” Ceony said with a dry tongue, her eyes locked on Shadow-Emery’s, her fingers clutching his to keep him from pulling her hair from her scalp.

Lira laughed again, the sound somewhat fainter. “No man can harm his true love within his own heart. Don’t you see what that means?

“He doesn’t love you, you beef-witted girl.”

She laughed again, thinking the situation truly wholesome and fun, and then the noise faded. Where she went, Ceony didn’t know—the laughter died out like a fire caught in the rain. With Ceony so thoroughly trapped, Lira must have abandoned the heart to finish whatever it was she had planned. Another gruesome spell. Escape across the ocean, with Emery’s heart in tow.

Emery would die if she did.

More tears trickled down Ceony’s face, and she squeezed Shadow-Emery’s wrist. “I know,” she whispered.
I know you don’t love me.

Not yet.

And it was that last thought that drove her.

“Do you think you’re the only one who’s done something wrong?” she asked. “Do you really think no one in this world has made a mistake but you? Are you so
blind
that you can’t see beyond this room?”

Shadow-Emery snarled, but Ceony didn’t flinch. She dug her nails into his wrist until he released her hair; then she pushed him back. She would not be the mouse in this. She
would not
.

“What about Lira?” she asked, gesturing to the door as though the Excisioner stood behind it. “What about what she’s done?”

Shadow-Emery’s glower only darkened.

“What about me?” Ceony asked, fainter, pressing both palms to her own heart. “What about my mistakes? I think about them, too, but where would I be if I thought of nothing else? What sort of person would I be if I drowned in them?

“What about the time I was supposed to pick up my baby sister from school because my mom was having surgery on her foot?” she asked. “It was the middle of January, but I didn’t go because I had a diorama I was supposed to present in English the next day and I wanted to get it done. It took me three hours, Emery! Three hours my sister stood in the cold, waiting for me. She got pneumonia and almost
died
because my homework was more important than her!

“And I’ve stolen before,” she continued, taking a small step forward. “I saw an old man drop six quid on the side of the street and I pocketed it. Took the long way home so he wouldn’t notice.”

Shadow-Emery cackled once more. “You think those are comparable to these blackened halls? You think your cold sister and sticky fingers tip the scales?”

“Who gave you the right to judge my mistakes against your own?” Ceony shot back. Her heart wrenched with guilt, twisting as her own memories bubbled up. “Do you want to know why I lived in the Mill Squats for so long? My dad had a good job as a chauffeur for the prime minister’s family, but when I was twelve I stole the buggy and crashed it into the queen’s wall. My dad lost his job and all our savings went to pay for that automobile. We had no money left, so we had to move to the gloomy side of town, all because of me. All because I wanted to drive a buggy and didn’t listen when my parents told me no.

“And what about Anise? Hm?” she asked, more tears sliding down her face. “Do you know about Anise Hatter? Do you?!”

Shadow-Emery didn’t answer.

“She was my best friend!” Ceony cried. “She was my best friend, and our first year of secondary school was hard on her. I don’t know why, because I never asked. She just waned, withdrew into herself, became sickly. And one day before winter break she asked me to come by and see her. Said she wanted to talk. I was late. It doesn’t matter why, but I was late. And when I got there I found her in her bathtub with her wrists slit up to her elbows.”

Ceony covered her mouth with her hand, stifling a sob. How vivid that memory was, even with the years masking it from the rest of the world. How many nights after that incident had Ceony lain awake, wondering what would have happened had she arrived just a half hour earlier? For someone else, they would have blurred together, become a mass of days full of grief and tears.

But Ceony’s memory was
perfect
, and she had counted those nights. Seventeen. She remembered every hour spent crying, every nightmare of Anise’s white face and her bloodied arms, her glass eyes staring into nothing. She remembered every counseling session and every bad grade that followed.

The worst part was knowing everything—remembering everything. Everything but the reason why. Anise hadn’t even left a note. Even her own parents had been speechless at the funeral.

“Was it my fault?” Ceony asked, almost whispering. “Was it my fault she killed hersel
f
?” She didn’t wait for him to answer. “Was it your fault Lira and the others killed that family?”

She sucked in a long breath, swallowed, and murmured, “I forgive you.”

Shadow-Emery twitched.

“I forgive you, Emery,” Ceony repeated. “I’ve seen all of it, and I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to. I didn’t intend any of this to happen.” She blinked away tears and stifled a sob lurking deep in her throat. “But I forgive you. It’s okay now.”

He shifted. Warm hope sparked in Ceony’s chest. Something she had said had hit him. She took one step toward him.

He growled and seized her by her upper arm, flinging her back to the floor.

“You don’t have the power to forgive,” that low, unnatural voice spat.

“Then forgive yoursel
f
!” she shouted, pushing herself back up. She pressed her palm against the wall for support. “Everyone has a dark side! But it’s their choice whether or not they cultivate it. Don’t you understand? Lira’s exploited hers, but not you. Not you, Emery Thane.

“You’re a good person!” she exclaimed, her own voice ricocheting off the walls as Lira’s had moments before. “I’ve only known you less than a month and even I can see what a good person you are!”

Shadow-Emery retreated into the shadows.

“So let go,” she begged. “Let go of the hate, the anger, the sadness. And let go of me. I can’t help you if you don’t let go!”

The office around her flashed red and peach. A laborious
PUM-Pom-poom
filled the air, which became hotter, moister. Ceony blinked and found herself once more in the literal chamber of Emery’s heart, silent save for its waning beat. Empty, save for herself and the broken pieces of Fennel at her feet.

Dropping to her knees, Ceony collected the pieces of her paper companion with reverence, smoothing crumpled corners and folding them carefully along their original creases.

“You’re a good boy,” she whispered as she stacked the pieces one on top of another, filling her lungs to their limit with every breath to keep from crying. She was tired of crying, and like her mother had always said, crying solved nothing.

After setting Fennel into her bag, she pulled free a piece of bread and swallowed it half-chewed, enough to alleviate the hunger cramping her belly.

She eyed the valve across the carpet of skin and veins.

“One more,” she promised herself. “One more until the end. And even if there’s no door to freedom, at least you know you tried. One more, Ceony.”