The Paper Magician by Charlie N. Holmberg Page A

between toppled chairs. Lira dripped several droplets of Thane’s blood into her palm, smiled, then threw the blood to the floor. She vanished in a swirl of red smoke.
    Ceony cried out the moment the woman faded. Scrambling to her feet, her hips screaming with deep-set bruises, she ran to Mg. Thane. Before she reached him, the spell holding him up wore off and he slumped to the floor.

C HAPTER 6

    “N O , NO! ” C EONY CRIED , tears streaming readily from her cheeks. She put an arm behind Mg. Thane’s neck and laid him down, gaping at the deep, scarlet hole in his chest, still rimmed with glittering gold magic. The hole grew smaller and smaller with each of her own heartbeats.
    Fennel whined beside her, an airy, paper whine. Ceony, shaking, looked to the dog, then back to Mg. Thane, his skin growing paler and paler with each passing second.
    She bolted upright and ran for the study, knocking a kitchen chair out of her way as she went.
    Her mind swirled, her legs felt numb, and her hands perspired as she climbed over rubble in the hallway that had once been the front door and threw herself into the study. She ran for the shelves of paper, frantically sifting through them until she found a thicker piece. Not the thickest, but she had no time to be choosy.
    She ran back into the dining room and slipped on spilled blood. She stumbled onto her knees and winced, but began Folding right there, against the wooden floorboards. She didn’t know the Folds—she couldn’t—but she had to try.
    Visions of Mg. Thane’s handiwork zoomed through her mind. His Folding of the bird, the fish, the fortuity box. The paper trinkets, sculptures, and chains lying around the house. The few lessons on paper magic she had taken notes on at the school. The half-point Fold, the full-point Fold. Folds she didn’t know the names of. Anything. Just line the edges up.
    She Folded the paper in half, then in half again, working it until she had the square that started Mg. Thane’s long-necked bird. From there she made up the rest, her brain summoning images from Anatomy of the Human Body . Her hands stilled. It looked something like a heart. Something like it . . .
    She crawled to Mg. Thane, to the still-closing pit in his chest, and commanded the heart, “Breathe!”
    It pumped weakly in her hands. She pushed it into the bloody cavity and withdrew her hands just before Mg. Thane’s skin closed around it.
    The paper magician didn’t stir.
    “Please,” she cried, his blood on her fingers. She patted his cheeks, slapped them, pressed her ear to his chest. She could hear the paper heart pumping weakly, like the heart of an old man on his deathbed.
    He didn’t stir.
    “You have to live!” she screamed at him, tears falling from her chin onto his chest. If magic couldn’t save him . . . this was all she had!
    Breaths coming in short gasps, Ceony stood, ran up the stairs, and bolted to the library. Grabbing the telegraph, she connected the wires to the one person whose route she knew—Mg. Aviosky.
    Her trembling fingers punched in the code quickly. She swallowed against a dry throat.
thane hurt stop come immediately stop emergency stop excisioner stole his heart stop
    She backed away from the telegraph as though it were a corpse and pressed her palm to her mouth to suppress a sob.
    Fennel barked at her feet, jumping wildly on his paper legs.
    As soon as Ceony glanced at the dog, Fennel darted into the hallway. Ceony ran after him, following him back down the stairs and into the dining room. She heard Thane’s rasping breath just before she saw him.
    “Thane!” she cried, dropping to her knees beside him.
    He looked dead, his eyes merely slits and his veins showing through his white skin. He tried to lift a finger to point, but dropped it. “Window,” he said, the words straining through his throat. “Second . . . chain. Get . . .”
    Ceony jumped up and ran back into the study, distinctly remembering the chains hanging over the