Текст книги "Conjured"

Автор книги: Sarah Beth Durst

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Текущая страница: 16 (всего у книги 19 страниц)

Chapter Twenty-Two

The Storyteller dances the marionettes with ease. They leap and twirl at the twist of her gnarled fingers. She shouldn’t have such dexterity in her old hands, but she does. Children on the grass hill laugh and clap their hands.

“Once upon a time,” she says, “there was a boy and a girl lost in the woods …” She tells the story of Hansel and Gretel. A third marionette joins the others on the wooden stage. This one is dressed all in black, and her cloth face is pinched in false wrinkles. She looks like a cloth copy of the Storyteller. “Who is nibbling on my house?” The Storyteller tells of the witch pushed into the fire, and Hansel and Gretel locking the cast-iron door. She tells how they run out of the house into the forest, where they starve and die and their bodies are ravaged by wolves and then carrion birds and then crawled over and claimed by maggots and earthworms until they are nothing more than dirt and leaves on the forest floor.

She then beckons, and I dance on the stage between the dolls.

* * *

The click of needles was the only sound.

I opened my eyes and saw the Storyteller seated against the shuttered window. She was knitting an arm, a doll’s arm. The rest of the doll lay next to her, and a bag of scraps leaned against the shutters. The doll had black yarn hair and black button eyes. Its body was magenta, and it wore a crocheted white dress. The Storyteller had not yet given it a mouth.

The other dolls were missing.

Lifting my head, I looked for them—and I saw a pile of burned rags in the corner, a tangled mass of charred dolls. Arms and legs stuck out at awkward angles. Half a charred face stared sightlessly at me. I had burned them all.

“She’s awake,” the Magician said.

I jerked at the sound of his voice. After hearing him in my visions and memories for so long, his voice felt oddly disembodied outside my head. Bending over me, he peered at my face, only inches away. He raised my eyelids higher and examined my eyes. “Where’s Zach?” I asked.

He lifted my chin and turned it. With yarn pinning my arms to my sides, I couldn’t do anything but tilt my head back away from his hands. He pinched my cheeks, and I yelped. “Perfect teeth,” he said. “The details are magnificent.”

“Are you my father?” I asked him.

He looked amused. “Yes.”

“He is not,” the Storyteller said.

“I’m the closest she has.” The Magician didn’t look away from me. He stroked my cheek. “I thought I lost you, little one.”

“Freeing her was the humane approach,” the Storyteller said.

“Losing her was my worst nightmare,” the Magician said, an edge to his voice. I saw myself reflected in his eyes. His eyes were full of me, as if he were swallowing me whole.

“Once upon a time,” the Storyteller said, “there was a lion who was raised from infancy by a man and his wife. They bathed him in their tub, fed him from their plates, and slept with him in their bed. One night, they missed dinner, and as they slept peacefully beside their adopted leonine son … he ate them.”

“She’s a girl, not a lion.”

“You can’t keep her,” the Storyteller said.

His eyes stormy, he turned toward the Storyteller.

“I too felt joy when I first saw her. I even thought it would be all right if she simply left again.” Her voice was tinged with regret. “If she’d stayed away, it would be different, but …”

I interrupted. “I want to know what you’ve done with Zach, the boy who came with me.” I tried to keep my voice even and calm. I wouldn’t let them scare me, even though I was bound with yarn that felt like steel wire. It was wrapped around my ankles, torso, and arms, securing me to the cot.

“He’s safe.” The Magician waved his hand toward the boxes that hung on the ribbon, but he continued to glare at the Storyteller. I strained to see into the boxes, but from my cot, I couldn’t tell if they were empty or full. I imagined Zach, shrunken inside one, alone and afraid. But alive. At least he was alive! “If you’re a good girl, he’ll stay safe.”

The Storyteller laid her knitting to the side, and she rose. She hobbled across the wagon to stand by the Magician’s side, looking down at me. “She’s here to kill you.”

“She’s mine.” Leaning toward me, he inhaled, breathing in my breath, and then he smiled at me, fondly.

“She’s more dangerous than you begin to comprehend.” The Storyteller sat beside me and stroked my hair. Her fingers worked through knots in my hair, untangling it as she spoke. She then jerked her hands away as if she hadn’t meant to touch me. “Dangerous to both of us, as much as I wish it were otherwise.”

“She’s a miracle! She left us broken, and she came back perfect!”

Gently, the Storyteller looped yarn around my neck as if the yarn were a necklace. “She shouldn’t have come back. That fact seals her fate.” She pulled the yarn tighter, and it bit into my skin. The fibers felt like metal, cool and unyielding. “I’ll make it quick. You don’t have to watch.”

“Father!” I cried. I drew on my magic. But before I could release it, the Magician’s hand shot out, and he knocked her back with a rush of wind that flew from the palms of his hands.

Sailing across the room, the Storyteller knocked into the bench that lined the opposite wall. The wagon rocked. The boxes on the ribbon swayed. The skulls tapped against each other, and the bottles clinked.

She didn’t move.

He’s killed her, I thought. My heart began to thud faster and more wildly, as if it were a bird thrashing inside a bone cage.

But she spoke, soft at first. “Everything I have done has been for you. Everything. You felt alone; I gave you companionship. You felt old; I gave you youth. You felt weak; I gave you power. And you cast me aside. Imprison me. Strike me!” She rose, shaking. “But even if you despise me for it, I will protect you from yourself. I will destroy her—for you!”

Knitting needles flew at me, sharp and fast. Again before I could react, the Magician held up one hand, and the needles reversed—shooting back fast and straight. Two needles embedded themselves in the Storyteller’s heart.

She clutched at them, and then she toppled forward onto her knees, hard.

I heard screaming. My scream. It tore out of my throat and filled the air, and I couldn’t stop. Blood welled on her breast, staining her clothes.

The Magician fell to his knees in front of her. “No! No, no, what have I done?” He cradled her as she slumped to the ground. Quickly, he lifted her and carried her to me. Her breathing was ragged. A drop of blood dotted the corner of her mouth.

He slammed his lips onto mine and inhaled so deeply that it felt as if he were swallowing my scream. He broke away, my scream silenced, and he focused on her.

Her face shifted, smoothing. Her white hair darkened and softened. Her eyes cleared, ivory whites and brown irises. I’d seen her with this face in my visions, her younger self. The Magician yanked the needles from her chest, and he pressed his hands over the wounds. They didn’t heal. He didn’t—I didn’t—have the power to heal so grave a wound.

As he concentrated, her body shifted again: first, she became a dog; blood seeped into her short gray fur. Then she changed again, shrinking into a cat. Her wounds didn’t close. He changed her into a bird, a songbird that lay limp in his hands. Then an owl. Then a mouse. Pressing himself against me, he inhaled again. I saw tears bright in his eyes, unshed. Determined, he continued, trying to find some form that wouldn’t bear her wounds. He transformed her into a tree, rooted in the floor. Sap still leaked from gashes in her bark. “There, there, you’ll be all right, yes, yes.” He put his hand over the bark. “You won’t die. You can’t.” He changed her again, back to the woman with the silk black hair. She was paler now, her skin almost frostbitten. “No!” He changed her again—a stone. It was smooth and flawless. He transformed her back.

She was still dying.

No matter what form he chose, when he returned her to human, she was weaker than before. She put her hand, gnarled despite the youth of her face, on his wrist. “Enough,” she whispered. “We never … drained one … who could heal.”

His voice was broken. “I am sorry.”

“Do it. Don’t waste my strength.”

I watched the color drain from his face. But he said nothing.

The Magician found a stick of chalk. With shaking hands, he drew a circle on the floor of the wagon. He marked it with symbols—I’d seen the symbols before, both on his Tarot cards and on this same floor. I felt memories bubble inside of me. Those symbols … “You can’t!”

He didn’t respond.

“Please, not to her!” The Storyteller used to soothe me with stories as we traveled between worlds. Her stories had power of their own. They wrapped around you and forced you to listen. I remembered she used to do puppet shows for the children at the carnival, drawing her audience with her voice. Sometimes she’d use me in them. She’d tie strings around my wrists and ankles, and I’d dance on the stage. She’d praise me if I danced well, and I’d reveled in her praise.

Her breathing was loud, ragged enough to drown out the soft inhales and exhales of the dolls. She coughed, and blood speckled the floor. She opened and closed her mouth as if she wanted to talk but couldn’t. Her hands, around the wounds, were red, and a pool of red spread across the wood, seeping toward the chalk circle.

“She said she wasn’t my mother.” But she had to be. As mixed with nightmares as my memories of her were, she still felt like family. I couldn’t remember any other.

“She wasn’t, and she was.” The Magician didn’t look at me. I saw he had tears staining his cheeks. He plucked boxes from the ribbon, all except for one, which I knew must hold Zach. As the Magician plucked each box, the ribbon shook and Zach’s box swayed.

“Who are my parents?”

“You have none.” The Magician drew a knife from within the folds of his conjurer’s robe. It had a black bone handle, and the blade was covered in writing and runes.

“But where did I come from?”

“From her,” he said shortly. He crossed to me and picked me up as if I were a pile of cloth. He dropped me down beside her, in the blood. My face was inches from the Storyteller’s. Her young brown eyes stared into mine. I didn’t think she saw me. The blood smelled acrid, and I felt its warm wetness seep through my shirt.

I wanted to scream again.

“Breathe,” he told me.

And I remembered him saying that many, many times before. I remembered lying bound on the floor, facing eyes … green eyes, brown eyes, red eyes, cat eyes, black eyes, blue eyes.

“Breathe in her magic. Don’t let it be wasted.”

The Storyteller fixed her eyes on me. Milky eyes, old eyes again—her true eyes. I couldn’t look away. She was still alive, but only barely. Each breath was harder, slower. Her bloodstained hands lay limp across her chest.

Gently, the Magician lifted her face and placed her mouth close to my lips. I shrank back as far as I could, but the steel-like yarn held me tight. I felt the Storyteller’s breath, tasted it in my mouth.

And then I felt a rush of wind inside me.

It was magic, her magic, filling me.

She lay slack and still. Dead.

He began to cut her body. The knife slid through her flesh, her muscle, and her bone as if they were soft cheese. Blood didn’t drip where the knife cut. He severed each limb, and he placed each in its own box. He was methodical and silent, crying as he cut. Last, he lovingly carved out her eyes one by one and placed them in boxes.

He placed the rest of her in the final box and closed it. One by one, he strung the boxes on the colored string, and then he knelt next to me in the pool of blood. He leaned toward my lips. “Whisper sweet nothings to me,” he said.

He breathed in. Leaning back, he closed his eyes. He then picked up the needles, stained red with blood, and he chose a ball of yarn. Eyes still closed, he began to knit.

And I blacked out. But this time, it was the oblivion of darkness. There were no visions.

When I woke, the blood was gone, and the chalk had been erased. I again lay on the cot, bound in the Storyteller’s unbreakable yarn. I smelled of dried blood.

The Magician was seated across from me next to the unfinished doll. He was watching me.

“What … what am I?” I asked.

“You’re a doll,” the Magician said. “You were yarn and cloth and buttons and stitches. She made you to hold the magic we collected.”

I opened my mouth and then closed it.

“No person can hold another’s magic. Not for more than a few hours. It fades. But you can. You can hold it forever, or at least as long as you exist. You were to be our power source—our battery, so to speak—to draw on whenever we pleased. She made you that way. Creating you was her magic.”

It felt like truth, horrible and hideous.

“We filled you with transformation magic, plant magic, flight, weather … so many different kinds of magic.”

Except healing, I thought.

“Over the years, the magic changed you,” he said. “You absorbed more than merely power. You absorbed the essence, the life spirit, of those people, and you … woke. With the others, the new ones, we’ve been careful. Only a little power, only a few thoughts, only a few bits of soul. But with you … You were our first. We didn’t know.”

I remembered now. All of it. I was made from stolen bits of magic, comprised of bits of the thoughts and personalities of their victims. That’s what woke me up, made me alive—or at least lifelike.

I closed my eyes.

I’m not real, I thought. I am a patchwork doll made of leftover bits of the dead. The words repeated in my head. I’m not real. Not real. Not real. I am no one. I am nothing.

“She and I … we were together for a very long time. A very long time. I did not intend to trade her for you. But now … it’s you and me. We’re together now.” I heard his footsteps as he crossed the wagon, and I opened my eyes. He was kneeling next to me. I shrank away as far as I could. His lips didn’t touch mine, but he drew a breath close to me. “You may look human, but it’s only an illusion. It’s time for you to be what you truly are, what she and I created you to be.”

I felt my body change, softening inside and out. I saw my hair, which lay splayed across my cheek and the cot, thicken into yarn. I knew without a mirror that my face was cloth, my eyes were green marbles, and my mouth was embroidered. My body shrank and changed as my skin reverted to cloth.

“Welcome home,” the Magician said.

Chapter Twenty-Three

The doll laid on the bench and counted the boxes on the ribbon, the silk scarves, the potion bottles, and the bird skulls. And then she counted them again.

Across the wagon, the boy wouldn’t stop talking. “I think each skull is from a different kind of bird. You can see the differences in the shapes. Hooked bills … they have to be raptors. And the ones in the corner must be seed eaters. Sparrows and such. I think most are songbirds. Don’t know if that means he likes songbirds or hates them. He must have practiced killing birds and worked his way up to humans. You know, a common sign of a disturbed kid is torturing animals—it’s a sign he or she lacks empathy. You don’t lack empathy, Eve. When the Magician walked through the door, you hesitated. You’re more human than he is, not less.”

The boy was tied to a cot on the opposite side of the wagon. The doll was tied to a bench with the same steel-like yarn. The Magician was asleep—or feigning sleep—in his cot. She knew better than to trust he was truly asleep.

After the transformation, while the Magician slept, she’d used magic to sever the yarn and had tried to reach the boy. The Magician had caught her before she’d crossed the wagon, and the vision had taken her. The vision had been full of death and screams, and when she had woken, the Magician had hurt the boy.

Next time, she’d waited until she was certain his breathing was deep and even, and she’d used her magic to free the boy. Awakening, the Magician had broken the boy’s fingers.

She’d tried once more, changing the Magician into a tree, hardening his body with bark and sealing his face with leaves, but she’d lost consciousness before she could reach the boy. When she woke, it was five days later, and the boy’s face was streaked with blood and bruises. That was when she’d stopped thinking of him by name.

The Magician released the boy from his bindings twice a day, and the doll lay on her bench while the boy ate, drank, and relieved himself in a pot. The Magician never released the doll. But he did allow the boy to talk to her.

At first, the doll thought this was a kindness. But after a while, she changed her mind. It was a constant reminder that the boy was here because of her and that she couldn’t save him. He chattered fast, like a magpie. The doll found that if she didn’t focus on individual words, she could let his voice swirl around her like birdsong.

Every few days, the wagon would move. The boxes and skulls would sway as the wagon lurched forward, and she’d listen to the clatter and clang and clink of the bottles and bones. When the wagon reached its next destination, the Magician would entrap her and the boy in separate boxes and leave. Sometimes she slept, though as a doll she didn’t need to. Sometimes she’d lie awake, curled into a ball of cloth, and try not to think.

She’d be jolted awake when the Magician released her from the box, took her magic, and then trapped her again while he performed another show. When he returned, he’d release her, secure her to a bench, and talk for hours. He’d tell her about the new world outside and how much the audience had loved his show. The carnival had been dying, he said, but now that she’d returned, his shows were full of magic again and his tent was full of people. The other dolls had been too weak, too new, too empty, to give him what he needed, but she was marvelous! He’d be giddy for a while, even kind, and then he’d fall silent again.

After a while, he grew more ambitious. He wanted his shows to have more magic, instill more wonder, and inspire more awe, but there were limits to how much magic he could inhale and how long it would last. He was efficient in his magic use—a single breath could sustain him for multiple tricks—but it wasn’t enough for him. So he began to train her. He fed her lines to say, and he positioned her to hold his hat, his cloak, his Tarot cards. He choreographed how he would siphon magic from her mid-show, a subtle breath here and a brush past there, so the audience wouldn’t notice. He practiced with her in the confines of the wagon, and then he’d leave to conduct his shows without her. He returned between sets to breathe in her magic.

She woke one night with his sour breath in her face. She held still and wished she could stop breathing. He grinned when he saw her eyes open. His teeth were brilliant white, gleaming in the candlelight from the lantern that hung in the corner of the wagon. “I have a surprise for you,” he said.

The doll looked up at the shuttered windows. No light leaked in. It had to be night. She wondered how many days she’d been here, and then she squelched the thought. The boy was tied to a bench across the wagon. He was awake as well.

With a flourish, the Magician pulled a dress out of a paper bag. It had been sewn with hundreds of bird feathers and set with thousands of jewels. It fluttered and sparkled as he waved it through the air.

He pointed to a bucket in the corner. “Clean and dress yourself. You’ve accumulated filth from the road.” After untying the yarn that bound her, he yanked her to her feet. Her cotton-stuffed legs shook, and she caught herself on the wall of the wagon as the world tilted. It had been many hours since she had last stood, not since their last practice session. She stumbled to the corner of the room with the bucket.

The Magician paced through the wagon while the doll slowly peeled off the clothes that she had worn for days and days. She hadn’t sweat into them, of course—she couldn’t—but dust and dirt had seeped into the wagon and onto her. She found a sponge in the bucket, and she rubbed it over her cloth body. The fabric that was her skin soaked up the water. She scrubbed her green marble eyes, and she wet her yarn hair. The water in the bucket grayed, and a puddle formed around her fabric feet. She tried to dry herself with a towel, dabbing her body as best she could, and then she pulled on the dress. The feathers scraped and poked into her cotton. She fastened the buttons hidden within the feathers and jewels. For her yarn hair, the Magician presented a comb inlaid with clusters of the same starlight jewels, and for her feet, he had golden shoes.

“Lovely,” the Magician said. “You will enchant them.”

The boy was watching her. She wondered if she enchanted or repulsed him, and then she reminded herself not to think about him.

“Spin,” the Magician ordered.

Cloth legs wobbling, the doll turned in a circle. The skirt whispered around her, rising lightly into the air as if it would lift her higher and higher until she flew. She remembered she had flown … with the boy who laid bound across the tent.

Looking at him, she faltered.

The boy began to talk again, “He may call himself the Magician, but he’s a fraud. He has no magic of his own. He’s a parasite.”

The Magician plucked an empty box from the ribbon, and he clicked it open.

The boy shrank back, but he didn’t stop talking. “You’re the magic one, Eve. He has no magic. He steals it all from you. You’re the special one. You have to believe that.”

The Magician pressed the clasp to the boy’s skin, and the boy vanished into the box. The Magician shut the lid. “You may hold the magic, but you can’t use it, not without dropping into dreamland. We built that ‘quirk’ into you. A sensible precaution, as it turns out.” He smiled, pleased with himself. “Obey me in all things, and we will all three return here unharmed after the show. Disobey me, and you and I return alone.”

He held out his arm, bent at the elbow, as if to escort a lady. “Our audience awaits.”

* * *

Inside the tent, the acrobats were performing. Rings dangled from the rafters of the tent, and three men and two women dangled from them by one hand or one foot or one knee. They spun in sync, five pinwheels in the wind. In unison, they unfurled ribbons from their sleeves. It looked as though their shirts were unraveling. The ribbons plummeted into the audience, and the acrobats shimmied onto the ribbons. Dancing in the air, they wrapped the ribbons around their bodies and swooped and soared with them. The ribbons twisted together in midair above the audience, and then they released from the rings and fluttered down on the crowd. The acrobats hung in midair, suspended by seemingly nothing, as the audience applauded, and then they somersaulted down, bowed, and exited.

“Come,” the Magician said to the doll. He hauled her through a silver mirror at the back of the tent. He kept a grip on her arm tight enough to bruise if she’d had human skin, and they stepped out of a second mirror onto the stage—a dramatic entrance. At his signal, a stagehand wheeled away the silver mirror.

The audience clapped politely. They had seen portals before. In most worlds, they were ubiquitous. A few patrons fidgeted and rustled their bags, gathering their belongings as if preparing the leave. But they quieted when she walked forward on her shaky cloth legs—a living doll. Somewhere in the tent, a baby cried.

“My beautiful assistant!” the Magician said.

The audience laughed at her thread face, her yarn hair, her wobbling legs.

And the Magician began the show.

He started with sleight of hand, magicless tricks with cards, balls, and scarves. But then he added real magic: he tossed the scarves into the air, and they didn’t fall. Over his head, the scarves twisted slowly as if they were underwater. And then the scarves burst into flame.

The audience gasped, their attention rapt.

Silent on the stage, the doll watched the audience through glass eyes. Children. Men. Women. Most had painted faces: leopard spots, zebra stripes, fish scales, feathers. Their clothes were fashioned out of fur, feathers, and scales to match their faces. A few held caramel popcorn in a red-and-white-striped bag, forgotten as the Magician performed. One child sucked endlessly on a lollipop.

Near the center of the audience, one face was unpainted: a perfect face with blond tousled hair and bright-blue eyes. He watched the Magician as intently as a hawk watches a mouse.

The doll watched this boy as she took the Magician’s cloak and waved it with a flourish, the perfect assistant. The Magician pretended to kiss her cheek in thanks and instead stole her breath. She kept watching as he tossed card after card into the air. Each card stopped in midair until at last he had a ladder of cards leading up to the scarves.

The Magician climbed the card ladder up to where the fiery scarves spun and sparked. On one foot, he stood on the top card, and he juggled the silken balls of fire. As the scarves dissolved into ash, the applause was thunderous.

The boy in the audience didn’t clap.

The doll knew his name. Aidan. She fought against the memories that rose inside her, and she fixed her eyes instead on the Magician.

Coming down from the ladder of cards, the Magician held his hand out toward the audience. A girl in the front row leaped to her feet and scrambled onto the stage.

No, the doll thought.

The girl looked so innocent. Her face was painted like a swan. She wore white feathers in a skirt. She was smiling as if she’d won a prize. With broad gestures, the Magician invited her to climb the ladder. Laughing, the girl climbed, and he stood beneath her. On the tenth card, her foot slipped. She grabbed at the card above, but it slid out of her hand. Screaming, she fell.

He turned her into a bird before she hit the ground.

The Magician scooped his hat from the doll’s hands. He laid it over the bird that fluttered on the stage. Slowly, he raised the hat up, and the girl stood under it, wearing his hat. She laughed and clapped her hands. The Magician bowed. The girl curtsied before scurrying back to her seat, and her parents hugged her with proud smiles on their painted faces.

The girl wasn’t his next victim. The doll wished her cold, dry eyes could cry. She wished she were more than cotton inside so she could feel relief in her heart, her stomach, and her breath. Perhaps no one would die today.

The show continued. Soon, other carnival people gathered at the back of the tent. The Magician’s shows never went so long. But the Magician didn’t slow or tire. Between tricks, he’d kiss his doll assistant on the cheek, secretly filling his lungs each time. He drew a cloud into the tent and caused it to rain on the stage. He transformed the raindrops into butterflies, and then he forced the butterflies to fly in patterns against the roof of the tent—and then he changed them back into rain that fell toward the audience, transforming at the last second to paper confetti that melted into nothingness.

He then caused the seats to sprout, as if watered by the vanished confetti. Vines spread over the arms and legs of the audience. Roses blossomed on the vine, and then just as quickly, they wilted. The vines blackened and crumbled. Each audience member was left with a rose on his or her lap.

The applause was thunderous.

The Magician bowed. “And now for my final trick …”

Plucking the cards from the air, the Magician displayed them, showing that each card had a drawing of a figure: an old woman, a young girl, a harlequin, a queen, a reaper … He blew on the cards, tapped them, and the figures detached from the card faces. The paper figures lurched across the stage. He sent them into the audience. They crawled over the audience members, their eyes flat and their progress unslowed. They climbed onto the shoulders or heads of different audience members, whose smiles faltered as the paper feet and hands touched them.

“This time, the cards choose you,” the Magician said.

A few of the audience members tried to remove the paper creatures and people. They clung fast. Some pulled harder, and the paper bodies tore.

The Magician shuffled the blank Tarot cards.

As one, the paper figures turned their heads toward the center of the audience. They climbed over people faster with a single-minded determination, converging on the boy Aidan. They climbed up his legs and over his body, laying against his clothes as if glued to him.

“Remember him,” the Magician said softly to the doll. The boy Aidan didn’t move as the paper figures stuck to his shirt and hair and skin. “He has magic.”

The doll met Aidan’s eyes.

And Aidan vanished with a soft pop.

* * *

Outside the wagon, after the performance, Aidan waited on the steps. He still had the paper figures from the Tarot cards on him. One sat on his shoulder, swinging his paper legs. Another clung to the pocket of Aidan’s shirt. Others were stuck to him like magnets.

“I believe these are yours.” Aidan flashed a dazzling smile at the Magician.

The doll felt unable to move, as if she were on strings but no one had tugged them to make her walk or talk. A part of her wanted to scream at Aidan to run. A part of her wanted to run to him. The rest of her did not move or speak.

The Magician smiled. “Did you like the performance?” He fanned the blank cards, and the paper figures clambered down Aidan’s body and crawled up the Magician and onto the cards.

“Very impressive.” Aidan stood up lazily, as if he didn’t have a care in the world. He hadn’t looked at her yet, the doll noted. She stared at him with her green marble eyes that couldn’t blink. “But I am here on business.” Aidan drew a wallet from his back pocket and flipped it open. A badge with a ring of circles was inside.

The Magician’s smile did not waver. “Oh, it’s show and tell!” He drew out a box from the pocket of his robe. “Have you ever seen one of these?” He turned the box over in his hands, sliding it over the backs of his hands and around in a figure-eight. “Marvelous device. Impervious to strength or weapons or magic. Yet if you twist it in a particular way and squeeze, you can crush it and its contents with one hand. A trade secret.” He fixed his eyes on the doll as he said this. “Now, how can I help you, officer?”