The Master Magician (The Paper Magician Series Book 3) Read online

  ALSO BY CHARLIE N. HOLMBERG

  The Paper Magician

  The Glass Magician

  Followed by Frost

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Text copyright © 2015 Charlie N. Holmberg

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by 47North, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and 47North are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781477828694

  ISBN-10: 1477828699

  Cover design by Megan Haggerty

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2014956168

  To the person who works all materials: Phil Nicholes, my dad. Thanks for teaching me the importance of hard work.

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  EXCERPT: FOLLOWED BY FROST

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  CHAPTER 1

  CEONY, WEARING HER RED apprentice’s apron over a ruffled blouse and plain brown skirt, stood on her tiptoes on a three-legged stool and stuck a square of white paper against the east wall of the Holloways’ living room, right where the wall met the ceiling. The family was celebrating Mr. Holloway’s awarding of the Africa General Service Medal, and had submitted a request to hire the local Folder—Magician Emery Thane—to fashion the party decorations.

  Of course Emery had passed the “frivolous task” on to his apprentice.

  Ceony stepped down from the stool and backed up to the center of the room to survey her work. The large living space already had most of its furniture removed for the sake of the elaborate decorations. Thus far, Ceony had adhered twenty-four bearing squares to the wall and plopped large sheets of plain white paper around the room, cut according to the measurements Mrs. Holloway had sent via telegram.

  After ensuring her bearing squares aligned correctly, she said, “Affix.”

  Twenty-four long sheets of paper leapt up from their looping coils on the ground like hares darting through a field, each surging toward its appointed bearing square and latching to it. The heavy sheets sagged from their bearing squares until Ceony called out, “Flatten,” and the sheets adhered to the walls like wallpaper, evenly coating the room in white. Minus the stairs on the north wall, of course.

  Mrs. Holloway had requested a jungle theme to reflect her husband’s brief campaign in Africa, and so Ceony—after referencing several books on the subject—had written the requisite spells on the backs of the large paper sheets and Folded the tips of their corners accordingly. Now she only had to test her design.

  “Portray,” she ordered, and to her relief each sheet darkened into hues of green and brown, coloring and morphing the same way a paper doll would. Dark swathes of hunter green cast shadows against the walls, and brighter mints and chartreuses gave the appearance of light pouring unevenly through leafy canopies threaded with vines. Wisps of olive formed patches of long, wild grass amid shades of umber and mahogany in the uneven soil near the floorboards, and the song of a red-throated loon called between fluttering bug wings in the distance. At least, Ceony’s best rendition of a red-throated loon. She had never actually heard one before, only guessed on the sound based on what bizarre African birds she had been able to find in the zoo.

  Ceony circled the room with small steps, taking in her massive illusion, a live mural created from the magic of her own hands. Every thirty seconds a long-eared mouse skittered between two trees, and every fifteen seconds leaves and vines rustled in a gentle breeze. Despite not holding paper, her fingers tingled with it. Spells like these never ceased to amaze her.

  She let out a long breath. No mistakes—good. If she couldn’t perform illusions like this one flawlessly now, she’d never pull them off when she tested for her magicianship next month. She planned to take the test within a week of her two-year anniversary as Emery Thane’s second-and-a-half apprentice.

  Retreating to the front door, Ceony crouched over her large tote bag of spells and pulled out a wooden case filled with starlights, which Langston, Emery’s first apprentice, had taught her to Fold so long ago. The small pillow-like stars were no larger than a farthing, and all had been Folded using amber-colored paper, although the merchant who sold the paper to Ceony had listed the color as “goldenrod.” Ceony had Folded dozens of the stars over three days’ time, until her fingers cramped and she feared early arthritis. She had then affixed a small zigzag of paper to the back of each star, also amber.

  She dumped the starlights onto the darkly polished floorboards and commanded, “Float.”

  The starlights all turned zigzag side up and glided like bubbles to the ceiling. Ceony ordered them, “Glow,” and the starlights burned with a soft internal fire. Once the Holloways extinguished the electric lights, the room would take on an eerie and somewhat romantic radiance.

  Ceony animated small paper butterflies that would flutter about the room, as well as triangular confetti across the floor that would shift around guests’ feet, giving the illusion of blowing wind. She had even Folded and enchanted paper napkins for the dinner, which would glow turquoise and read “Congratulations, Alton Holloway” when the guests unfurled them. She had considered including the occasional ghostly story illusion of an elephant or lion, but she would need to stay during the party in order to read the spells. That, and she feared some of the older guests might react poorly. Just a few months ago she’d read an article in the paper about a grandmother who’d had a heart attack after seeing a mirror illusion of an oncoming train by the theatre, an ill-advised advertisement for the new American play being performed there. It would surely ruin the party if a guest attempted to shoot a paper lion.

  As Ceony released animated songbirds with the instructions to only fly close to the ceiling, Mrs. Holloway came down the stairs and let out a startled cry, which was fortunately followed by a wide, tooth-filled smile.

  “Oh, it’s astounding! Just magnificent!” she cried, hands pressed to her heavily powdered cheeks. “Worth every pound! And you’re just an apprentice.”

  “I hope to test for my magicianship next month,” Ceony said, though she beamed under the compliment.

  Mrs. Holloway clapped her hands twice. “If you need a recommendation, dear, I will give you one. Oh, Alton will be so surprised!” She turned to the stairs. “Martha! Martha, leave the laundry a moment and come see!”

  Ceony grabbed her bag—much lighter now—and bowed out of the home before her customer’s excitement could grow too out of hand. The decorations needed no further maintenance, and Mrs. Holloway had prepaid by check earlier that week. Emery would no doubt let her keep the entire sum—a considerable sum—though apprentices usually had to work for free, minus a monthly stipend. She would send most of the money to her parents, who had finally moved out of the Mill Squat
s and taken up a flat in Poplar. Her mother, especially, hated receiving “charity,” but Ceony could be just as stubborn.

  Crouching on the walk outside, Ceony pulled out a sheet of paper and created a small glider with oblong wings, then wrote in its center the address for the intersection at the end of the street. Bringing it to life with the command “Breathe,” she whispered coordinates to it and released it to the wind. The little glider flipped a loop and took off southward.

  Slipping her bag over her shoulder, Ceony started down the walk, her simple brown skirt swishing about her ankles, her two-inch heels clicking like shoed horse hooves against the ground. This was a ritzy suburb of London, with a great deal of green space between its houses, half of which were guarded by elaborate stonework or wrought-iron fences. A few were adorned with Smelter-worked ornamentation, such as elinvar pickets that rotated in response to passersby and brass gate locks that unlatched themselves when an expected visitor drew near. The year had matured enough to erase all lingering signs of winter, and May flowers bustled up in tidy gardens beyond the fences. A few had even managed to grow in cracks where the walk met the cobblestones, in utter disregard of the precise order of the neighborhood. A breeze tousled a few stray hairs from the French twist holding back Ceony’s pumpkin-colored mane. She tucked them behind her ear.

  A few minutes after Ceony reached the corner of Holland and Addison, a buggy pulled off the road and up to the curb. Ceony bent down to peer through the glassless passenger window.

  “Hello, Frank,” she said. “I haven’t ridden with you in a good while.”

  The middle-aged man grinned and tipped his bowler hat toward her, the small glider she had Folded pinched between his index and middle fingers. “Always a pleasure, Miss Twill. Heading toward Beckenham again?”

  “Yes, please, to the cottage,” she said, moving to the back door. “No need to get up,” she added as Frank reached for the driver door’s latch to help her in. She slid into the backseat quickly and patted the seat before her to signal she was settled. Frank waited a moment for traffic to pass before pulling out onto Addison Avenue.

  Ceony leaned against the backrest as the buggy made the forty-five-minute trip back to Emery’s cottage. She watched the city flash by her window, the houses gradually moving closer together and shrinking in square footage, the streets and walks filling with more and more civilians carving through another day. She saw a baker airing smoke out of his small shop, boys playing marbles in a narrow alley space, and a mother pushing a stroller while a young boy held on to the pocket in her skirt. This last sight made Ceony think of one of the first spells she had ever learned, a fortune-telling spell called a “fortuity box.” She would never forget what she’d once seen in one—a warm, blessed image of herself standing on a flowering hilltop with two children, presumably her own. The man standing beside her in that vision had been none other than her assigned tutor. There was a stigma attached to the very idea of a romance with her mentor, of course, which was why Ceony had confided her secret concerning the paper magician to no one save her mother, who had only met Magician Emery Thane once.

  Eventually the city died away, and Frank drove the buggy up the familiar dirt path toward the cottage, dotted with spring-green trees along the way. Ceony averted her gaze from the river beyond it. A small river, but one that unnerved her still. Twenty months ago Ceony had worried that she and Emery would have to leave the quaint, country-esque cottage behind for the sake of safety, but with their enemies either dead, jailed, or in a perpetual state of being frozen, danger had decided to leave them alone. It was a relief, if for no other reason than that Ceony surely wouldn’t be ready to test for her magicianship if she had to battle for her life every ninety days.

  Reaching into the purse nestled in the corner of the tote bag, Ceony slid her fingers over the round surface of a makeup compact, tracing the engraved Celtic knot on its surface. She shouldn’t make light of her past . . . adventures . . . even in fanciful thoughts. The cost had been steep. She swallowed a bitter taste of shame.

  The buggy pulled up to the cottage, which from the road looked like a dilapidated, towering mansion infested with poltergeists, complete with self-made wind and cawing crows. The “haunted house” was Emery’s favorite illusion to put about his home, more so than the barren plot or the quaking graveyard he had tried out last March. Ceony’s protests had made him take it down after two weeks. Or perhaps it was the milkman’s heart arrhythmia that had ultimately convinced him.

  The illusions were Folded about the fence, so their spells vanished as soon as Ceony stepped past the gate, revealing the house as it was: yellow-bricked with a porch Ceony and Emery had painted russet two weeks ago. A short stone walk bordered a garden of paper daffodils, and a flesh-and-blood starling clung to the ivy hanging over the office window, shrieking at the small paper dog sniffing too close to its nest.

  “Fennel!” Ceony called, and the paper dog lifted his head to seek her out with his eyeless face. He barked twice, a wispy, papery sound, and bounded down the path toward Ceony, leaving prints in the dirt between the tiles. A few months ago, he would have barely left a mark, but Ceony had given him plastic bones back in February. It had taken months of study to learn how to form the bones and joints so that they’d move with Fennel, though the Polymaking spell that held them together had been simple enough to master. She had done the magic in secret, of course. These were studies best kept quiet.

  The dog jumped at Ceony’s feet and propped his front paws on her shoes, wagging his plastic-reinforced paper tail wildly from side to side. Ceony stooped down to scratch him under the chin.

  “Come on,” she said, and Fennel ran ahead of her to the front door, where he waited with a whipping tail, his nose buried in the doorjamb. When Ceony opened the door, Fennel ran to the end of the hall and back, then dived into the perfect clutter of the front room, where he immediately began chewing on a wad of stuffing protruding from the sofa’s most threadbare cushion.

  Ceony headed first to Emery’s office, a rectangular room filled with shelves bearing stacks of paper of varying thicknesses, colors, and sizes. The ivy over the window gave the room a dark-aquamarine light, almost as if the cottage were submerged beneath the ocean. Emery’s desk sat across from the door. Heaps of paper, a wire note holder, glue and scissors, half-read books, a jar of pens, and a vial of ink littered the desk’s surface, though littered may not have been the best word to describe it. Every item fit into its neighboring items like pieces of a puzzle, and nothing was askew. Only a fraction of elbow room to work in, but the desk, like everything in the cottage, looked as immaculate as a mess could look. In all her twenty-one years, Ceony had never met a hoarder so tidy. At present, the room was empty.

  Behind the desk hung a wood-framed corkboard, upon which Ceony and Emery both pinned work orders, receipts, telegrams, and memos, all neatly spaced from one another, fitting together like brickwork. Emery’s doing, of course. Ceony pulled Mrs. Holloway’s decoration request from its brass tack and took it to the dustbin, but first commanded it, “Shred.”

  The work order tore itself into a dozen long pieces and fluttered into the dustbin like snow.

  After leaving the office, Ceony closed the door behind her so Fennel wouldn’t make a mess and passed through the kitchen and dining room to the stairs leading to the second floor, where the bedrooms, lavatory, and library were situated. Her room was the first door on the left, and she stepped inside to drop off her tote bag.

  The room looked much different now than it had when she arrived two years ago. She’d moved the bed to the far corner near the closet and set her desk by the window, since she spent most of her time in her room there, either Folding or writing the occasional paper when Emery went on an academic whim. She’d stained the floorboards a deep cherry during a bout of boredom last winter, and her own paper creations adorned the walls and ceiling, much the way Emery’s decorated the wainscoting of the kitchen and dining room. Tiny paper dancers dressed in elabor
ate ballerina skirts seemed to dance down one wall, and an assortment of premade chain spells hung from the other. Paper carnations with spiraling petals, alternating red and blue, framed her window; fringed paper garlands in the same colors bordered her closet door. Paper star ornaments with twelve or eighteen spikes hung on string from the ceiling, varying in size from half a fist to a dinner plate. Paper feathers cut from women’s magazines, a mobile of animated sea horses, and starlights ringed her nightstand, upon which sat a vase of red paper roses Emery had created for her twentieth birthday. A four-foot-tall paper cutout of London occupied the wall space at the head of her bed like a giant snowflake—a gift Emery had made for her two Christmases ago. Paper clouds hovered near the door, and baby-pink paper pom-poms sat upon a two-shelved bookcase where Ceony stored her textbooks.

  All of the décor had accumulated over one year and eleven months’ time; it wasn’t until Ceony’s baby sister—Margo—visited in April that Ceony realized she had created something of a wonderland.

  A crinkled envelope rested on her pillow. Abandoning the tote bag, Ceony approached it and felt its contents: the rubber buttons she had ordered from the Magicians Today catalog. She stashed the small package in the bottom drawer of her desk, where the book Precise Calculations of Fire Conjuring was hidden, along with certain other materials she preferred to keep out of sight, and trotted to Emery’s room.

  She knocked, opened the door, but found the space empty. The library as well.

  She heard a thump overhead.

  “Working on the big spells again,” she murmured to herself, opening the door to the set of stairs that led to the home’s third story, which made up in height what it lacked in floor space. Emery didn’t work on his “big spells” often, but when he did Ceony could count on him being absent for entire twenty-four-hour periods.

  He’d finished his seven-foot-long paper-puff-shooting “elephant” gun in March, which he donated to the boys’ orphanage in Sheffield. She wondered what absurd idea he’d put his hands to now.