Invisible
Dawn Metcalf
Some things lie beneath the surface.Invisible.With the power to change everything.Joy Malone wants it all–power, freedom and the boyfriend who loves her. Yet when an unstoppable assassin is hired to kill her, Joy learns that being the girl with the Sight comes with a price that might be too high to pay. Love will be tested, lives will be threatened, and everyone Joy knows and cares about will be affected by her decision to stand by Ink or to leave the Twixt forever.Her choice is balanced on a scalpel's edge and the consequences will be more life-altering than anyone can guess.
Some things lie beneath the surface.
Invisible.
With the power to change everything.
Joy Malone wants it all—power, freedom and the boyfriend who loves her. Yet when an unstoppable assassin is hired to kill her, Joy learns that being the girl with the Sight comes with a price that might be too high to pay. Love will be tested, lives will be threatened, and everyone Joy knows and cares about will be affected by her decision to stand by Ink or to leave the Twixt forever.
Her choice is balanced on a scalpel’s edge and the consequences will be more life-altering than anyone can guess.
Praise for Dawn Metcalf and Indelible, book 1 of The Twixt (#ulink_14f6c4a1-58f2-552f-bd35-72dc61ce7350)
“Fans of fae fantasy, YA paranormal and modern fantasy will adore this novel and find themselves willingly trapped within the Twixt. Read. This. Book!”
—Serena Chase for USATODAY.com’s Happy Ever After blog
“Regular readers will know I’m an unabashed fan of faery books, but as a fan, I’ve read a lot of them, and it takes a lot to impress me. Indelible definitely impressed me.”
—Niko Silvester for About.com
“This exhilarating story of Ink and Joy has marked my heart forever. Dawn Metcalf, I am indelibly bound to you. More!”
—Nancy Holder, New York Times bestselling author of Wicked
“[Metcalf’s] rich physical descriptions create a complex fey world that coexists uneasily with the industrialized human one. An uneven but eventually engaging story of first love, family drama and supernatural violence.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“Dangerous, bizarre, and romantic, Indelible makes for a delicious paranormal read, and I for one can’t wait to see more of the Twixt.”
—Bookyurt
“I was hooked from the very first page to the very last. I couldn’t stop reading. The way Metcalf’s writing style flows and the way the plot is perfectly paced just left me completely obsessed.”
—Gabby for Chapter by Chapter
Books by Dawn Metcalf available from Mira Ink (#ulink_fe576b53-6e37-50d2-9fbd-e44b5982961a)
The Twixt series
(in reading order)
INDELIBLE
INVISIBLE
The Twixt Book Two
Invisible
Dawn Metcalf
www.miraink.co.uk (http://www.miraink.co.uk)
This is for all the heroes around the table
(you know who you are!)
Contents
Cover (#u8470950c-0d24-5ad9-9a8f-b0ce0f9ae417)
Back Cover Text (#ue98715c5-7ab3-5ddf-96b2-7423f6a6808d)
Praise (#ulink_45f275ff-1031-5dfa-a0de-3bbe4c6c1381)
Booklist (#ulink_55d73474-cec3-5f79-baf0-56f82f638015)
Title Page (#u6d7be2e6-face-554d-bfa0-ff2caf2e943f)
Dedication (#ua7b662d8-8340-558f-98e1-d012638f62c7)
ONE (#ulink_1131e336-428b-592c-9169-762b2c00f7fb)
TWO (#ulink_a3427929-139c-558a-b952-2c3f2f4ba62a)
THREE (#ulink_0e4a5ee9-248e-5cb9-8524-26a775783729)
FOUR (#ulink_fad207b6-053f-5600-94fc-d743d107a4f4)
FIVE (#ulink_e7100353-913e-5f2f-a6d7-1fc19cce3dea)
SIX (#litres_trial_promo)
SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
TEN (#litres_trial_promo)
ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
TWELVE (#litres_trial_promo)
THIRTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
FOURTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
FIFTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
SIXTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
SEVENTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
EIGHTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
NINETEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
EPILOGUE (#litres_trial_promo)
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS (#litres_trial_promo)
Extract (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
ONE (#ulink_6bfe9149-a560-5104-943d-01d4914719ec)
JOY STOPPED ON the sidewalk at the sound of creaking wood. It was a wintry sound, both ominous and familiar. Despite the July heat, she shivered. She was just leaving work, exhausted and perfumed in garlic, cooking oil and sweat. Joy glanced around the back lot behind Antoine’s Café, adjusted her black apron over her arm and walked a little faster.
Fishing inside her purse, Joy skipped over her keys and her phone and went straight for the scalpel she kept hidden in the side pocket. She stumbled on a crack in the cement and cursed her decision to wear chunky heels to work. Clomping down the concrete, her footsteps obscured the sound of whatever followed. A prickle at her neck brought back icy memories and a half-remembered twinge in one eye. Should she shuck off her shoes or was she being totally paranoid? After all, it could just be the wind.
Right.
Contrary to the four-leaf clover in her wallet, it would be just her luck to be harassed by one of the Twixt on her way home from work.
She crossed beneath the overpass, echoes of her shoes bouncing over themselves in her haste to leave the busy downtown area. The Folk were notorious busybodies, but they could also be dangerous to humans. Curious as cats, they’d been peeking out at her from between buildings or through broken windows or from under birds’ nests, wanting to catch a glimpse of either the ex-lehman who’d escaped her bonds to the Master Scribe or the infamous girl with the Sight who’d somehow managed to keep both her freedom and her eyes. Joy wasn’t sure why she’d suddenly become more interesting over the past month, but the strange, inhuman paparazzi were getting bolder.
Those who had first appeared had been harmless, if unnerving, and Graus Claude had said the attention would pass once the novelty wore off. Then, last week, two dryads had whispered warnings to stay out of their world. Three days ago, a short, furry-haired creature had said that she should watch her back. Yesterday, a sprite wearing a floppy red cap had stood on the corner, smiling serenely while picking his fingernails with a serrated knife. The Folk were growing more menacing by the day.
Another scrape. Closer this time.
Joy’s heart thudded in her ears. She’d been preparing for this.
When the shadow moved, Joy lifted the scalpel, a thin stroke of silver that identified her in the otherworld. Knees bent, she readied herself for what she might see.
An armored knight, the color of old blood, emerged from behind a large fir tree. He held a longsword at attention, sunlight streaming down its length. Joy stared at the blood-colored knight, frozen in a foggy trance of disbelief.
His foot hit the pavement, a gritty scratch of metal on stone. The sound snapped her awake.
“I’m under the Edict,” she said quickly, the words tumbling out of her mouth. “The Edict,” she said again with a bit more force. “As decreed by the Council of the Twixt.”
The knight stepped forward. Joy stepped back.
“Duei nis da Counsallierai en dictie uellaris emonim oun,” she tried again.
He took another step toward her.
She shook the blade in her hand. “I bear Ink’s scalpel...”
The knight lifted the massive sword above his head.
Somehow she knew that wouldn’t work.
The sword scythed through the air, carving a parting whoosh in its wake. Joy’s brain stalled as the armored knight lunged. She gripped the scalpel. Her voice cracked.
“Stop!”
Ignoring her, the knight swung down at a wide angle. Joy stumbled off the sidewalk. The moment felt slow-motion surreal; she could see the sword tip passing her cheek—it was nicked and spotted with brown.
Out of the corner of her eye, Joy saw a woman push a double stroller across the street.
Screw the shoes. Joy kicked off her clogs and threw her purse. And the apron. It billowed like a cape, catching the sword and tangling it. She ran barefoot on the grass, adrenaline crackling and popping under her heels in manic bursts as she vaulted the manicured hedge into the wilder wood beyond. A steady banging followed.
Joy pounded over the uneven surface, her feet slamming into sticks and pebbles as she dived between the trees. There was a golden heat to running that soared up her limbs, shooting lightning from her soles up her spine. She had the advantage of being light and fast, but the knight charged after her, chugging like a train. She could hear his panting breath behind the metal faceplate.
Joy dodged around a tree and headed deeper into Mother Nature, avoiding broken glass bottles and bright-colored trash. She wove through the woods, putting as many trees, stumps and bracken between herself and her pursuer as possible. She cut to the north, inhaling deeply, tasting pollen and pine.
Tripping over a root, she grunted as pain exploded in her big toe and shot up her leg. Joy pushed through the injury and kept running, leaving the yellow-hot spark of agony somewhere far behind. Later, she would deal with it. Right now, she needed speed.
She broke through a small clearing, a patch of sun and weeds. She felt like leaping over the ferns and punching out a series of handsprings, but that was muscle memory talking. Her brain still equated running with gymnastics, but after her past few months as part of the Twixt, she knew that running equaled evading certain death.
The knight barreled through the woods, snapping fallen branches and lumbering up the incline. Energy frothed inside her, a flush of heat tickling over her arms and neck, filling her with a lightness, a clarity in speed. There was a heady rush to running for her life through the green grass. Joy felt like laughing. Perhaps she’d finally cracked? How else could she explain getting attacked by a medieval knight on a Thursday evening?
Whipping her tiny blade sideways, she wished that she could slice through worlds like Ink and cursed, not for the first time, that she no longer bore his signatura so he could not feel her panic or hear her call his name through the wind. Her skin was clean of True Names given form, so if she screamed, there’d be no one to hear.
Joy ran.
The land dipped and broke. A shelf of ragged earth loomed above a shallow crevice where the ground fell away. Joy scrabbled over the old streambed, using the smooth rocks as stepping-stones, tearing the seam of her capris as she jumped the ridge—long legs splayed out in a perfect one-eighty—stuck the landing on the other side and kept going. The clang and sweep of metal plates crashed somewhere far below. Joy wished again for the flash of light, the spark of connection that had bound her to Ink, now severed. Gone.
She knew it wouldn’t work, but she couldn’t help it.
“Ink! Ink! Ink!” Joy chanted as she ran, willing him to hear her. The trees ahead began to thin, and she heard the distant roar of cars.
There was a sudden explosion accompanied by a shriek of birds. The force pushed her forward, and she shielded her eyes from several fat splinters that bit into her skin. Something slammed into her shoulder, spinning her around.
Ears ringing, Joy squinted at the dark red sword stuck halfway through a ruined tree. The trunk’s shredded innards burst out in a jagged fluff of destruction. Bits and pieces of pulp peppered her entire body and most of the surrounding green. Pitter-patters of falling debris joined the snap of shattered wood. Through the ringing in her head, she could still hear the determined clomp-clomp of armored boots.
She blinked. The world slowly tilted. There was a deep, resonant crack as the massive tree began to list, groans and tiny clicks ricocheting off the surrounding forest as the trunk came crashing down. A gust of wind smacked Joy full in the face, blasting clouds of dirt and mulch. The knight had cut down a tree by throwing his sword and was now crossing the riverbed, headed toward her. Her hands tingled as terror splashed through her veins.
Joy squeezed the scalpel and spat wood chips off her lips. She tried to believe what Ink had said, what Graus Claude had said, tried to remember Inq’s advice, but as the rust-crusted helmet cleared the ridge, all Joy could feel was the quiet knowledge that she was about to die in the woods in bare feet while holding a pathetic metal weapon no bigger than a pencil. She pointed the tip toward her attacker.
“Leave me alone!” she said.
The knight ignored her, reaching for the embedded sword, hand open for the hilt.
Joy shouted, “Stop!”
The ground spit up bits of leaf and stone as a line slithered through the earth like a whip just inches from the knight’s plated boot.
Joy stared. The knight paused, and his helmet turned slowly to Joy.
The moment curled like a question mark.
Joy almost shrugged. Almost.
What was that...?
Grabbing the sword hilt, the knight swung around sharply. Joy stumbled back. The sword cleaved and clanged against something invisible, throwing off sparks that died in the dirt.
Joy blinked. That was a ward!
The knight tried another pass, pushing through a cloud of dust that smelled of campfire smoke. Joy could almost feel the sword’s impact against the invisible shield. She smiled unsteadily, knowing that her friends must be nearby, even if she could not see them yet.
“Hey!” Joy shouted into the woods. “Over here!”
The knight drew his sword slowly in salute and charged—ten feet away, nine, eight.
Joy dived around the back of a tree and ducked. There was a punch of impact and a half-imagined grunt as the knight missed her head as she scrambled for the next bit of cover. He withdrew his sword with a snarl and pursued. Joy turned and ran faster, toes gripping the moss. She spun midstride, sweeping her tiny blade sideways—there was a grating shing as a piece of metal split and thunked against the ground.
The knight stumbled back. Joy sprinted up the next swell. Glancing over her shoulder, she saw that the lower faceplate had split in half, exposing a gray chin full of bristles, black gums and blue teeth.
In case she had any doubts that this was one of the Twixt.
The wash of fear came again, sparkling and brutal, pushing Joy up up up! through the next tangle of thorns. She bounced off a birch trunk and, misjudging the distance, tripped over a thick branch and skinned her knee. Joy wondered why she was running and not climbing. But what good would that do? The knight had made a tree explode!
As if the thought were a prescient tap on the shoulder, Joy turned to see the knight’s elbow rise, arm cocked, shoulder back, before he hauled off and threw. The sword zinged through the air toward her. She stupidly, helplessly, raised her arms.
A ball of fire and superheated steam burst against an invisible wall. Joy’s hair blew in the aftershock, and she felt moist heat coat her face. A figure dropped from a fissure in the sky, backlit by the wash of flame. He held a straight razor in one hand and her purse in the other; a silver chain swung heavily from a pocket at his hip. He glanced at her with his all-black eyes.
“Joy,” he said.
She coughed and wiped a splinter off her forearm.
“Hi.”
Ink tossed her purse to the forest floor. The fallen sword at his feet smoked and smoldered, dead leaves curling to ash beneath it. The knight barreled forward. The black-eyed Scribe moved, nimble and daring, drawing a complicated design in the air. Another ward gleamed into place. Ink spoke through the shimmer of gold, his voice carrying across the wood.
“I do not know you,” Ink said to the wounded knight. “But you shall not harm her. She is protected under the Edict.” His voice grew taut. “And she is protected by me.”
The armored thing howled, charged and, with a last-moment shift, ran full force into a tree, disappearing in a shiver of pine needles.
Silence.
Joy backed away from the nearest tree, expecting a fresh attack. Ink extended his arm protectively across her body, holding his razor steady against the quiet. Joy pressed close, scanning the forest.
“Where did he go?” she asked.
Ink glanced around the glade. Branches swayed overhead. Leaves rustled. Querulous birds peeped.
“I suspect ‘away,’” he said.
Joy nodded. “Away,” she repeated, breathing fast. “Away is good.”
Ink hadn’t dropped his weapon, so neither did she. The tip of her scalpel—previously his scalpel—shook in her grasp. It looked a lot less confident than his straight razor. She could barely feel it in her hand, her fingers tight and numb, but she could feel him: a solid, calm presence with the gentle scent of rain. She swallowed against the sawdust in her throat.
“Can we go?” she asked. “Away?”
Ink picked up the sword and pressed her hand to his chest. “Away is good,” he said as he sliced the air sideways.
They stepped through the breach with a sharp scent of limes.
* * *
Joy could feel Ink’s hands on her face, the first sensation that pierced the cottony blanket of shock. They were in her room, in her house, and everything had that double-take quality of being suddenly normal, which felt strange.
“Are you all right?” Ink asked.
She coughed, tasting wood on her tongue. “Never better.”
The straight razor was gone, probably back in his wallet, and Joy watched Ink pluck bits of tree out of her hair.
“I thought you said you were only receiving threats,” Ink said. “This was considerably more than a threat.”
“This is the first time someone’s attacked me,” Joy said, brushing dirt from her ruined pants. “There’ve been snide comments, a lot of staring and some ultimatums, but Graus Claude said to ignore it. I didn’t think anyone would actually do anything.” A sigh stuttered out of her mouth. She shook her head, feeling the tension in her shoulders slip toward angry embarrassment. “I thought the Council’s Edict was supposed to protect me.”
“It should,” Ink said and picked up the sword. The smoke curling off it was tinted with mist. He turned it over, not bothered in the least by its obvious weight. “Although this might be evidence to the contrary.” Joy studied Ink’s face. It was still hard to tell if he was being funny or not. He glanced over the blade at her. “Did you announce yourself?”
“Yes! I told him that I was under the Edict in English and the Old Tongue,” she said. “Graus Claude made me repeat it often enough. I could say the words in my sleep!” She dropped the purse that had somehow been clutched in her hand. Her apron was stuffed inside. She still had no shoes and her feet were filthy. Joy paced her room, feeling the adrenaline ebb, leaving her weak and shaky and altogether freaked out. She didn’t like it. Even with Ink’s wards protecting her house, she was supposed to be able to live her life free from harm—that was what the Council had promised after she’d helped them take down Aniseed.
She stopped pacing. “Is this Edict thing for real?” she asked. “Was that what triggered the ward?”
“No,” Ink said, examining the room. “That was me.”
That still didn’t explain what had happened before he’d arrived, when the armored knight had reached for his sword. Joy frowned. “How did you find me?”
Ink blinked his fathomless eyes and smiled.
“It is you who have Sir John Melton’s boon,” he said. Joy still had a tough time believing that her four-leaf clover actually worked.
“Good thing, too,” she said, rubbing her arms as if cold. “That was... Is there a stronger word for ‘terrifying’?” She shook her bangs from her eyes and paced in place. “So are we sure that the Edict’s actually working?” she asked. “I mean, if it’s not protecting me, then what about Dad? Or Stef? My brother’s coming home soon...” The idea of putting her family in danger made Joy physically sick.
“The Edict is in place,” Ink said. “I attended the Council session myself.” His voice kept its steel of certainty. “Your family is safe, Joy.”
Joy twisted her fingers in her shirt. “Well, if I’m so well protected, then what happened back there?”
Ink almost shrugged. Almost. The subtle cues he picked up from Joy were making him seem more and more human every day. He was learning. They both were.
“Nothing happened,” he said matter-of-factly. “Which is most likely what the Council would say if we brought it to their attention.” Ink held up a hand to forestall comment. “You were not actually injured,” he pointed out, his black eyes sweeping over Joy. “They would agree that you look well enough. Yes, it was more than a threat, but not much more.” Ink rolled a piece of wood pulp between his fingers. “Yet...this person knew about the Edict?” he asked quietly. “He knew who you were?”
Joy rubbed at the spots of mud on her ruined capris. “I said the words the Bailiwick taught me, and the guy heard me just fine,” she said. “I think I can safely say that he knew exactly who I was.” She rubbed harder as if she couldn’t stop. Ink crossed the room and took her hand in his.
“You are hurt,” he said simply and tapped his chest. “Here.” He tried to catch her eye to confirm it, but she looked away. Her brain still twitched with firefly sparks. Her heart still pounded—she’d been so scared!—but it seemed as if she was only now feeling it, fierce and intense. Joy shivered. Ink squeezed her hand—it was something he’d learned how to do.
“I did not see it before,” he confessed. “But I know that just because a thing cannot be seen does not mean it is not there.” His voice lilted, coaxing. Joy nodded and squeezed his hand back. Her face felt hot. Her hands felt cold. She was overly conscious of Ink’s worry feeding hers. He sighed. “I cannot take back what has happened, and I cannot undo it,” he said. “Would that I could.” He brushed the hair from her face, tucking it behind her ear, his fingers lingering there. She remembered that first touch. His voice was open, crisp and clear. “What can I do?”
She whispered, “Hold me.”
Ink brought her close, and Joy wrapped her arms around him, pulling him hard against her as if she could press his solid calm into herself. Her heart thudded against his chest, an answering echo rebounding against her skin. She took several deep breaths, and it was several heartbeats later before she realized that he was copying her every move: his hand was in her hair just as hers was in his; his touch on her back was exactly where her palm rested on him. She could tell by the subtle changes of his body and skin that he was moving his senses to accommodate her—his muscles grew more pliant, his skin warmed to the touch, the strength in his arms became more like flesh than like stone. Joy smiled at herself and at him.
“Thank you,” she said. “This is perfect.”
He rested his chin on her shoulder. “A hug means many things,” he said. “Over thirty-six, by my count.”
Joy chuckled. “You’re counting?”
“Yes,” he said.
Joy laughed aloud, watching his smile dimple. Ink was funniest when he didn’t realize it.
“You feel better,” he said.
Joy nodded. “I do.”
“Good,” he said. “Then I will go and see what ‘happened back there.’” He dropped his hands abruptly. Joy thought maybe they should work on his exits. She stepped back knowing that the wards he’d carved around her home would keep her safe, but she felt better having him there. Just in case.
Ink paused, inspecting her face. Perhaps he saw her concern? He was getting very good at reading her subtle cues.
“Do not worry,” Ink said and underlined the statement with a slice of his razor, unzipping a door through time and space. He placed a slow kiss on her bottom lip, soft and tender. He felt that. She did, too. “I will return soon.”
Joy nodded and was still nodding as he disappeared, realizing a second too late that he’d left the smoldering sword behind.
She yanked her bathrobe off its hook and threw it over the longsword, snatched her phone on her way to the kitchen and quickly closed the door behind her.
Just in case.
* * *
She texted Stef, asking about his ETA, then pinged Monica as she entered the kitchen and leaned her elbows on the breakfast bar.
Home at last, she typed. Shift over = FREEDOM!
It took her best friend only a second to reply, if that.
Lol! Celebrating? Happy dance?
Joy smiled. After standing on her feet all day, she hadn’t gone dancing in weeks. She’d almost forgotten that places like the Carousel existed. Almost. You free?
Expensive as always, but im worth it!!!
Joy laughed as she sat down on a stool.
“Hi, honey.” Her father waved from the den. “I didn’t hear you come in.”
“I’m a ninja,” Joy said as she typed back a series of smiley faces. “It’s all part of staff training. It’s why we wear black.”
Her father chuckled as he hauled himself off the couch with a groan. His new gym routine included heavy cardio and weighted squats. Despite the grumbling, he had lost almost thirty pounds. He looked good, if tired. “I didn’t know waitresses required the art of stealth.”
Joy smirked. “We’re sneaky that way.”
He tugged her ponytail as he passed her on the way to the counter. “Well, I’m glad you’re home safe,” he said. Joy felt a twinge of guilt as she hid her mud-and-wood-pulp-spattered pants beneath the counter. She concentrated on typing a reply to Monica.
Any chance u can come over? Im stuck at home.
“I wanted to talk with you about something,” her father said by the sink.
“Oh?” Joy said as she read: Can Gordon come 2? Or is this estrogen-only?
Monica and Joy spent time with their respective boyfriends, but also had a regular Girls’ Night since, as Monica insisted, it was always important to stand by your sisters. Monica always checked if it was a co-ed party first.
Joy typed: Gordon=good times! Will see u 2 when?
“I’m glad we’ve been having a great time together this summer,” he said as he scraped the last of his Lean Cuisine into the disposal. “That camping trip to the lake will be one for the record books.”
“Mmm-hmm.” Joy nodded, still typing.
“But, you know,” he said nervously, “I also want to spend some quality time with Shelley...” As she waited for a reply, Joy imagined her father’s girlfriend—Shelley wasn’t a bad person, but it was still a bit weird, his having a life without Mom.
Xcellent! Will your boy be there 2?
Joy sighed. After five months, Monica was still attempting to meet Joy’s mysterious boyfriend. Joy couldn’t blame her, but, besides being inhuman, Ink was invisible to those without the Sight. Still, she gave her BFF points for trying. She typed back, Ummmmmmmmm, no.
“...and I made sure we’ll have more family time with Stef at the end of August,” her father said gently. Joy realized that he’d been talking the whole time and she’d tuned him out. She looked up and smiled to prove she’d been listening. Sort of.
“Sure, Dad,” Joy said. Her phone buzzed in her hand. 1 hour? Joy hit a colon, a dash and an end parenthesis. Send. “No problem.”
Her father smiled, both pleased and relieved.
“Thanks, Joy,” he said, giving her shoulders a squeeze. “I appreciate it.” She blew a kiss at him while scrolling through texts, her attention glued to the screen. He sighed. “And I really appreciate that you agreed to pay for that new data plan upgrade,” he added. “Otherwise I would have to yank that thing out of your hands right now.”
Joy hugged her phone against her chest and glared at him. “Hey!”
He laughed. “Well, at least I got your attention. Though why you need unlimited worldwide calling is beyond me...” Joy thought about her latest pics from Tuan and Antony’s trip to Belize and said nothing. It was one of the few ways she kept in touch with the Cabana Boys. It made her feel like one of them, one of the group, included—it was something she hadn’t realized she’d been missing since quitting the gymnastics team nearly two years ago, and she was more than willing to pay for it.
“Okay.” Her dad kissed the top of her forehead. “I’m headed out.”
“Poker night?” she asked.
“No, just a few rounds of darts with some guys from Doolin’s.”
Joy whistled. “Look who’s Mr. Popular!”
“It starts by getting out of the house,” he said. “You really ought to try it someday.”
Joy mock frowned and crouched over her phone. “Outside bad! Dark. Scary. Inside good! TV. Food.”
Dad rolled his eyes. “Don’t wait up.”
“Bye!” She waved over her shoulder. “Have fun!”
“Emergency number’s on the fridge in case you decide to break another window...”
Would she ever live that down? Joy turned and shouted, “Bye, Dad!”
He grinned boyishly as he shut the door.
Joy shook her head and typed a final message to Monica.
Guys r weird.
Monica’s reply came in all caps:
AMEN, SISTER!!!
* * *
With an hour to burn, Joy decided to clean her room rather than surf online. It would be tougher to tease her brother for being the family slob if her room looked messy when he got home. After filling her trash bag and emptying the hamper, Joy dusted off her dresser and wiped down the shelf that held three printed invitations to various swanky parties in Zurich, Melbourne and Moscow (care of Nikolai, on tour); a heavy glass snow globe from Glacier Bay, Alaska (from Enrique’s latest adventure); a cashmere infinity scarf (from Luiz in Paris); and an odd collection of figurines—what Ilhami called “booby dolls”—from various cultures around the world. She had eight so far, wide-hipped, big-bellied and well-endowed, lined up in a row. Ilhami thought sending them to the “Cabana Girl” was hilarious. He had even scribbled eyes on one of them in Sharpie marker, which was probably sacrilegious, but Joy got the reference: knocked up by Indelible Ink.
As if on cue, Ink zipped into her room through the space next to her nightstand.
“What are you doing?”
Joy shrugged and put down the booby doll. “I’m cleaning,” she said into the mirror, which failed to catch Ink’s reflection behind her. “I was bored.”
“I see,” he said with a smile. “You know, if you are ever bored, you can always call Inq.”
Joy neatened her ponytail. “I’m not that bored.”
He laughed. “Probably wise,” he said. He draped her pink bathrobe across the bed and picked up the sword. He inspected the weapon closely, watching the light gleam off the nicked and pitted blade. “The Bailiwick often says to be wary of wishing for an interesting life,” he said casually. “And while I have been gone, I have discovered many interesting things.”
Joy twisted her fingers in her shirt. “Such as?”
Ink’s eyes flicked to her. “I went back to the edge of the Glen where we fought,” he said. “And you were right—I do not think this was an idle threat.”
Joy crossed her arms against a sudden prickly chill. “So do you think that one of the Folk was really trying to kill me?”
“I do not know.” Ink’s boyish face grew serious. “To know that, we must bring this—” he hefted the sword “—to Graus Claude.”
Joy scraped her bare feet against the carpet. “‘We?’”
“Of course.” Ink grinned and held up her discarded clogs in his left hand. “Clearly, I can’t leave you alone for a minute.”
“Ha ha.” Joy took her lost shoes and slipped them on. “Monica and Gordon are on their way here,” she said. “To keep me company.” She almost added, I wish you could meet them. Almost. But didn’t. It was impossible, dangerous and probably stupid to expose her friends to her other life in the Twixt. And Monica and Joy’s motto had always been No Stupid.
“It will only be a moment,” Ink reminded her.
“If that,” she said, smiling. “I remember.” And took his hand.
A flick and a swish of citrus-scented breeze and Joy stepped from one world into the next.
TWO (#ulink_d9525521-8561-5395-9c4c-1f5e6f6781cd)
THE BAILIWICK’S GRAND brownstone was both impeccable and impressive. Its stone steps were swept clean, the ironwork polished and the miniature evergreens flanking the door had been replaced with urns of hardy bamboo. The stalks rattled in the wind as Ink rapped the brass knocker twice.
Kurt answered the door in his crisp black suit with white mandarin collar. Joy was overly conscious of her dusty clothes, but she’d arrived in worse states before. The butler stepped aside, making just enough room for Ink and Joy to enter past the bulge of his gun under his jacket. Today, Joy took comfort in Kurt being cautious.
She was about to say hi but then noticed that they were not alone. A strange woman sat in one of the foyer’s wingback chairs, her fist pulling a hooded cloak tightly around her face. She looked nervous, her yellow-gold eyes wide. A strange sort of squiggle ran along the edge of her jaw. She tucked her feet under her chair, politely allowing Joy to pass, but kept staring at the sword in Ink’s hand. Joy quickly sat in the second wingback chair, noticing that it no longer matched its twin—it had a different, though complementary, floral pattern, and the crystal bowl of eggs was notably missing. Joy wondered if she’d been the cause of both changes to the décor.
Ink offered Kurt his calling card, but the butler held up a gloved hand and beckoned them to follow. Ink withdrew the card and nodded to Joy. She gave an apologetic smile to the shrouded woman, who’d clearly been waiting there first, and hurried down the sconce-lit hall after them.
Kurt knocked on the great double doors before throwing them wide. The windows were open, flooding the office with light, and a fresh breeze tickled the gauzy inner curtains. Twin basins of lotus flowers lent a watery scent to the air, and jewel-winged dragonflies hovered over the fat lily pads. Natural light spilled into the room, reflecting off the emerald-green lamp and the crystal bowl of roe, now resting on the Bailiwick’s enormous mahogany desk. The Bailiwick himself stood up from his chair like a giant amphibious king before his court.
“Master Ink, Miss Malone, welcome.” All four of the great toad’s hands bade them enter. Two smoothed the edge of his tailored, pinstripe suit jacket, erasing an offending crease, while two more gestured to the chairs before him. “Please, sit.”
Kurt backed out of the room, but as he closed the doors, Joy caught a quick smile and a nod, which made her feel better. His stiff, formal demeanor as butler and bodyguard felt unfamiliar to her now. She’d last seen him on a beach in Mykonos, dunking Invisible Inq in the surf.
Graus Claude settled into his high-backed chair, the great wooden throne groaning under his monstrous bulk. “I have directed Kurt to grant you two immediate audience when I am available,” the Bailiwick said. “Given your recent propensity for dramatic and often untidy entrances, I thought it might be prudent.”
Ink settled into a chair. “Should that be considered a ‘dubious’ honor?”
Graus Claude smiled, his ice-blue eyes sparkling. “Quite.” One warty olive hand plucked up a fountain pen while a second clicked the wireless mouse and the third and fourth delicately steepled their fingertips together. “Now, then, to what do I owe the pleasure of this nearly pristine visitation?” Joy wiped her hands against her pants and tried not to think about her muddy shoes. “Might I presume that it has something to do with that sword?”
“Perhaps,” Ink said. “I would like to know if the Edict is still in place. The one protecting Joy?”
Whatever Graus Claude might have expected, it wasn’t that. His eye ridge rose, exposing widened icy blue eyes. “Of course. Why do you ask?” he said. “Even if we had held you to your declaration that you were no longer formally involved with Miss Malone, the Council’s decision was based on her service to the Twixt and not dependent on her status as your lehman.” His eyes flicked to Joy. “Although there has been no precedent to rescind an offer due to a change in status since the role of a chosen human consort has always been a permanent one.” Graus Claude’s voice purred. “Yet ‘permanence’ does not seem to apply when it comes to you, Miss Malone.”
Joy twitched, oddly chastised by his stare. Ink placed the sword on the great toad’s desk with a mellow thunk.
“Joy was attacked this afternoon by one of the Folk bearing this,” he said.
Graus Claude picked up the sword and examined it with all his hands. “It is an elemental blade,” he said. “It’s old. Poorly kept. Recently discharged...” The Bailiwick’s nostrils flared and he glanced at Joy. “Are you certain this wasn’t simply a threat, Miss Malone? I warned you that there might be those seeking to test your mettle and that you must not rise to the bait. A human provoking one of the Folk has the onus of fault.” His ice-blue eyes blinked. “Do not let them taunt you into ill-advised action.”
“He didn’t taunt me,” Joy said. “This armored guy showed up after work and tried to kill me. When I ran into the woods, he threw that—” she pointed at the sword “—into a tree and blew it to pieces.”
Graus Claude sniffed the blade. “Hmm. Definitely not a mere threat,” he murmured and placed the sword gently back onto his desk. “This was an uncommon weapon forged once upon an age, clearly fallen into disuse, but I cannot imagine how any might attempt to use it to circumvent the Edict. The protective safeguards would be enacted almost instantly.”
“That ward was you?” Joy asked. “I thought that was Ink.”
“Not I, Miss Malone,” the noble toad said. “But rather the Council. I am merely one of its members, the comptroller between worlds, hence my title as the Bailiwick of the Twixt.”
Joy picked a flake of bark off the desk where it had fallen from the sword. “Well, I don’t know why you think that some Council ruling is enough to keep me and my family safe,” she said. “People break laws all the time.”
“People do. Humans do. The Folk, however, do not,” Graus Claude said. “We aren’t subject to laws the way you are to yours. Human laws are collaborative suggestions that can be bent or broken, but our rules are absolute. Rules of magic dictate how our world works, irrevocably. It is part of the Twixt—we cannot change our true nature any more than our True Names.” Graus Claude spread his hands across the desk. “What the Council decrees are not mere words, Miss Malone. They are laws like sunlight and gravity. They are.”
“And yet they say that I am safe from the Folk,” Joy said. “But I’m not.”
“Let’s not be overly dramatic.” Graus Claude’s voice rumbled deep in his chest. “You are safe and sound. You’ve simply been frightened, and for that I apologize on behalf of the Folk. As you know, subtlety is not always a valued trait amongst my people, and they delight in pushing interpretation to their advantage.”
“No, you don’t understand—if Ink hadn’t shown up...” Joy trailed off, realizing that she still had no idea how Ink had found her in the middle of the woods. She glanced at him. It was hard to tell if he was avoiding her eyes or not.
Had she managed to call him without his signatura on her skin? Could that happen? Once she’d removed the mark of his True Name, Joy had severed the bond between them, much as she had cut the bonds that linked Aniseed to the millions she’d planned to kill with her magic-borne disease. Afterward, Ink had refused to redraw his mark, insisting that she was better off free, an unclaimed human, despite her asking. They’d decided to base their relationship on choice rather than magic.
But then how...?
Ink tapped the sword. “The question on the table is whether or not Joy is safe,” Ink said. “Currently, the answer is ‘no.’ This means that either the Edict has not been implemented, has been rescinded or is fundamentally flawed.” The Bailiwick’s eyes narrowed, but the Scribe continued, unshaken by his employer’s displeasure. “In any case, I would ask that you confirm its present state and status with the Council.” Ink straightened as he added a conciliatory, “Please.”
The Bailiwick sat back and reconsidered the sword on his desk. He let out a long, slow sigh. “What you ask is fair,” Graus Claude grumbled. “And, in fairness to you both, I will investigate your request as well as offer you some information and advice.” He shifted in his seat much like a frog settling onto its haunches. “Once you exposed Aniseed’s plot to foster a Golden Age by mass human genocide, we found that, while we had apprehended many of her supporters, her guiding sentiment had gained popularity.” The Bailiwick coughed politely as if it could mask his distaste. “As a martyr, Aniseed’s death has given it voice.” He stuffed his fountain pen into its holder in disgust. “The Council has been forced to recognize a faction calling itself the Tide, whose representatives have invoked old precepts that would grant them formal audience as well as a seat on the Council.” He smoothed his four hands over the carved armrests. “If there were any who would be most interested in this sort of base revenge, it would be the Tide.” Graus Claude extended one pointy claw. “And they are most interested in you, Miss Malone.”
Joy gripped her chair arms. “What? Why?”
“As an extremist, separatist faction, they see you as the primary example of the danger posed by humanity,” he said. “Sol Leander, the representative of the Tide, accuses the Council of negligence in allowing you to flaunt their jurisdiction by wielding power without authority.”
Joy gaped. “That’s not true!”
“Actually, it is,” Ink said. “You ended Aniseed’s reign by erasing her mark as well as Briarhook’s signatura. As well as Inq’s. And mine. Such a thing has never occurred before, and certainly never without consequence.”
“But I didn’t know—” she began, but Ink continued.
“In addition, you continue to wield the scalpel, an instrument exclusive to the Scribes, without anyone being able to stop you or lay claim to you, since you are already protected under the Edict. You are what all the Twixt has ever wanted to be—both powerful and free.” Ink’s voice remained neutral, but Joy could tell that he said this with no small amount of pride. The dimples were back.
Joy tried to put her thoughts into words. “So the Folk...are jealous of me? Or afraid of me?”
“It is enough to make anyone afraid,” Graus Claude said. “Sol Leander enjoys reminding everyone that his commitment, his auspice, is to survivors of unprovoked attack, like everyone in the Twixt.” He tapped his pen with one hand as another gestured to Joy. Hands three and four held the armrests. “You have abused a system that you cannot possibly understand, and without Master Ink’s signatura, you currently exist outside our parameters, yet inside our protections, which does, indeed, flaunt the authority of the Council.” He lowered his head to Joy’s to impress the weight of his words. “To put it bluntly, you are considered rogue, Miss Malone.”
He sat back with a satisfied air as Joy nervously tugged at her cuff. “And therein lies the heart of my advice,” he said. “I suggest that, for the sake of peace, you consider the following options—either return the scalpel that can erase marks to Master Ink, thus negating the concern of your power going unchecked, accept his signatura, which would bind you to the laws of the Twixt, or quit this world, Miss Malone.” Graus Claude folded his four arms together. “Walk away from this life and never return.”
A heavy quiet made the room seem darker. The Bailiwick sat patiently. She blinked at him. What? Was she supposed to decide now? Joy staggered under the dual weight of Ink’s gaze and Graus Claude’s words. Had Ink known this was going to happen? Had she been blind not to see this coming? Or simply hopeful? How long had she thought she could go on without being forced to make a choice? The Bailiwick had warned her it was impossible to be of two worlds and, one day, she would have to choose.
She took the scalpel out of its pocket. “I’ll give it back.”
“You cannot,” Ink said. “It was a gift and I gave it willingly.” He turned to Graus Claude. “It is done and cannot be undone. Not even by the Council.” Ink cast a quick warning glance at Joy. Without the scalpel, the Folk might discover that the power of erasure lay not in the scalpel, but in her.
“So you say,” the Bailiwick answered. “Yet ‘undoing’ seems to be Miss Malone’s specialty and expertise. Besides,” he said, “there are other options.”
Joy held the scalpel, the metal warm in her hand. It was important to keep up the ruse, protecting her magic and her life, but it was also important that she keep other things, like being human. And being free.
“Ink doesn’t want me to have his signatura,” she said.
“Because it binds you,” Ink said.
“Yes,” Graus Claude agreed. “Precisely its purpose, as a matter of fact.” The Bailiwick tapped his manicured claws against the wood. “Signaturae were developed to safeguard against human entrapment, making slaves of the Folk under the yoke of their True Names. By transferring our magic to sigils, we have secured our freedom. The Scribes, Invisible Inq and Indelible Ink, were created for the sole purpose to mark humans with signaturae.” The great toad’s eye ridge twitched. “That is what they do.”
“But it must be given willingly,” she said. “A signatura taken by force is powerless. So if Ink doesn’t agree, then that’s that.”
“I believe you have remarkable talents of persuasion, should you wish to employ them,” Graus Claude said drily. “And it need not be Master Ink’s signatura. It could be anyone’s, but the bond does carry certain obligations and responsibilities that are essential to the Twixt.”
Joy hadn’t realized that she and Ink had been bound to anything other than one another. When she had been marked as his lehman, Joy was considered to be his human lover/slave/helpmate. What other promises had Ink made by marking Joy? What did the Council know that she didn’t?
“She is human,” Ink said. “And, unlike us, she has her freedom.” Ink placed a hand over Joy’s. She looked at their joined fingers: human and almost-human, wound together. “She should not have to give that up under pressure from the Council.”
“Well, I’m not giving you up,” Joy said, dismissing the third option. She looked defiantly at Graus Claude. “I won’t.”
The Bailiwick sighed around his chins. “One cannot have it all, Miss Malone,” he said, giving his head a palsied shake. “Every choice has its price.”
Ink regarded Graus Claude coolly. “There must be another way,” Ink said. “And if anyone would discover it, I trust that it would be you.”
The massive toad’s great eye ridge arced in surprise. “Flattery?” the Bailiwick asked, smiling. “That is a new trick for you, Master Ink.”
Ink shrugged. “I am learning.” He touched the skin of Joy’s wrist gently, as if remembering how her touch was his first hint at being human, the music of fingers touching, skin on skin.
Graus Claude rearranged random things on his desk before two of his hands opened a polished wood case and a third withdrew a set of gold-rimmed spectacles. “Very well. Leave me the sword—let me ruminate on the rest. See if I cannot invent some solution.” He nodded to Joy. “Miss Malone, I ask that you consider the obvious alternatives within the month. By then, the Council will most likely demand a formal audience with you, and while I have labored to shield you from them, I cannot sway them from such an action as it would be well within their rights. They will customarily ask you for your voluntary acquiescence to respect their ruling and it might be in your best interest to express a preference with humility and sincerity. The Council is more impressed with a show of vulnerability than strength.” He peered through his tiny lenses, his nostrils squashed flat against his face. “In the meanwhile, Master Ink has informed me that your home is still well fortified with wards of his design. You should be safest there. Wait for my summons, and we shall see what cleverness I can devise.”
Ink tapped Joy’s hand, but she was the first to speak.
“Thank you, Graus Claude.”
“And thank you for your efforts to protect both our worlds,” he replied. “For anyone on the Council to condemn you without question is poor recompense, and I assure you that I, for one, will not allow it.”
Ink stood. “We are in your debt.”
Graus Claude speared the Scribe with a sharp glance. “Mind your debts, Master Ink,” he said. “I am certain your sister would counsel likewise.”
Joy thought back to Inq’s centuries-old deal with Aniseed, the one that might have first inspired the dryad alchemist to try spreading her fatal disease through signaturae. That one tiny trade almost destroyed all of humanity and the Twixt.
As if by magic, the doors parted and Kurt stood ready to escort them out. “Away with you, now,” Graus Claude said good-naturedly. “Master Ink, always a mystery. Miss Malone, always a pleasure.”
Ink bowed. “Thank you again, Bailiwick.” He held Joy’s hand as they left the office, exiting into the now-empty foyer with its dark wainscoting, oil paintings and ivory-colored walls. Joy wondered what had happened to the frightened robed woman. Perhaps she’d grown tired of waiting? Joy was suddenly exhausted. An eight-hour shift plus a run for your life, a hot shower and a formal audience with an eight-foot, four-armed amphibian took a lot out of a body.
“I think we’re starting to annoy him,” Joy said to Kurt as they approached the front door.
“Nonsense,” Kurt said in his smooth tenor, which Joy still thought at odds with his heavy muscleman body. “The Bailiwick looks forward to your visits. He remarks that they are rarely dull.”
“I’m so glad that my life is entertaining,” Joy said.
Kurt bowed a fraction. “Most mortals’ are.”
Joy considered his words and his carefully neutral expression. Kurt had been a human child who’d survived the Black Plague; his mother had called upon the Folk to save him and the Bailiwick had agreed in exchange for the boy’s servitude, extending Kurt’s mortal life so that he could work off his debt. Kurt had been Inq’s lover, yet never one of her lehman, dedicating his life to killing Aniseed and recently regaining his voice by breaking her curse. He had been trained in swordsmanship, marksmanship, magic, healing and service. His eyes looked old although his face barely looked thirty, and a long scar split his throat like a gruesome smile. Kurt’s life had been entertaining Folk for centuries. Joy wondered if he still considered himself mortal or not.
“You sound like my sister,” Ink said.
Kurt almost snorted. “A recreational hazard.”
Joy smiled. “Please tell Inq hi from me.”
Kurt placed a gloved hand on the doorknob. “You know she’ll take that as an invitation.”
“She might, as well,” Ink said. “We would welcome her thoughts on this matter.”
“I’ll tell her you said so,” Kurt said as he nodded his goodbye and, checking the perimeter, let them through the door.
Flicking his straight razor, Ink slashed a gaping hole through the thick of the world. Black eyes hard, he shielded Joy from the open air and any who might be watching. Joy slid against his chest as he pulled her forward into nothingness.
* * *
Joy stumbled into her room, banging her shin against the side of her bed. Ink strode past her, emerging from the rent inside the closet to check his wards on the window and the door to her room before striding into the hall to examine all the exits. Joy trailed behind him, switching off the house alarm and flipping on lights. It had been barely a minute since they’d left. Time did strange things when she traveled by Scribe.
“Everything safe?” she asked.
Ink ran his fingers over the security keypad. “As safe as I left it, but not as safe as I would like.” He marched a quick circuit around the condo.
“Do you think anything could happen here?”
Ink crossed the room. “No. I placed enough wards to keep the Folk at bay. Only Inq or I can enter here.”
“What about Folk like Graus Claude? Or Filly?” Joy asked, thinking of the last time the young Valkyrie had appeared in her kitchen, summoned by a trill of bells. Of course, that hadn’t actually been her kitchen, it had been an illusion, a trap, and, looking around, Joy doubted that the eight-foot-tall Bailiwick could even fit through the hall.
“Not without your invitation,” Ink said from the den. “You are safe here.”
“I’m not worried about me,” Joy said, even if it was only half-true. “Stefan is coming home for the last half of summer break, and Dad’ll be here, too.” The prospect of having her family home was both exciting and terrifying. When worlds collide... It was almost like the idea of having Mom and Doug meet Dad and Shelley. While she didn’t like the fact that her mother had left her father for a younger man and moved out to Los Angeles, Joy now accepted that her mom still loved her, but Doug was something Joy hadn’t dealt with yet. When she’d gone to visit in March, he’d been conspicuously absent, which was fine by her. Baby steps. One conniption fit at a time. She took a deep breath. “My family can’t even see the Folk. How are they supposed to keep safe?”
Ink unfolded his leather wallet on its silver chain. He tucked the razor back into its pocket next to the leaf-tipped wand and the empty compartment where the scalpel used to be, its shape still clearly visible, having molded into the leather over time.
“I do not believe that they are in danger,” Ink said. “I have been thinking about it more. Elemental blades are most often used in ritual combat. They were once wielded against true elementals, the forerunners who ruled before there was the Twixt, back when the world was divided equally between humans and Folk. The sword we left with Graus Claude was crafted with fire and water, disparate elements—powerful, but unstable, much like its wielder,” he said wryly. “I do not think he was in his right mind. The weapon was not forged for use against humans.” Ink’s eyes sought hers. “Nevertheless, you could have been killed.”
Joy sat down. “I wasn’t.”
“No,” Ink said. “But you could have been. Easily. Far too easily. And yet he chased you into the woods—an aged soldier in ancient armor, waving an antiquated sword. He was old, and it had been a long time since he had seen combat.”
He took her hand, forcing Joy to stop twisting her fingers in her shirt. “How do you know all this?”
“I inspected that portion of the Glen, following his trail and deciphering his tactics,” he said. “And I was there, with you, at the end. His endurance was waning, his reactions were slow, his aim was poor and his teeth were blue.”
Joy waited, but Ink gave no further explanation. “Um, what?”
“The Rakshasa’s fore-teeth turn blue as they age,” Ink said. “So an old soldier came out of retirement for you. Why?” Ink leaned back in his seat. “Perhaps he fought for honor or revenge, yet he fled rather than face the two of us.” He tapped the wallet again. “Honor and revenge are both strong motivators, and I doubt an old soldier’s pride would be weak, so the more believable incentive would be money or madness. If he were mad, he would have not retreated. Therefore, I think it most likely that he was paid to frighten you. His retreat was not out of fear, but prudence. Did you notice when he decided to flee?”
“When you showed up,” Joy said, sliding her thumb against his. “When you stood by me.”
“Yes—when he saw that I was there and had no intention of leaving,” Ink said. “I think he was paid only to deal with you, not me, as well, and either the odds were no longer worth the asking price or he left to get further instruction, knowing that he could always try again later.”
Joy withdrew her hand. “Is that supposed to make me feel better?”
“A little,” he said. Joy glared. “Very little,” he amended. “However, you might take comfort in the fact that if your attacker is motivated by money, then he will not be interested in harming anyone else in your family. And since his heart is not bound to it, the task may be easily abandoned.”
“How?”
Ink gestured offhandedly. “He can be outbid.”
Joy stared at Ink in surprise, laughter coloring her words. “You’d buy him off?”
“If necessary,” Ink said. “Working for the Bailiwick has many rewards, few of which have interested me as I have found them unnecessary. But, should it become necessary, I am confident that I could offer enough wealth to sway anyone motivated merely by greed.”
“Really?” Joy said, tracing the grain of the table. “So you’re both handsome and rich?” She smiled. “My hero.”
Ink’s face melted into a true smile. With dimples. “And Graus Claude wonders where I learned flattery.” He reached out a hand—one of his own Joy-like hands—and touched the edge of her eyebrow, tucking her lengthening bangs behind her ear. The touch brought back memories that made her shiver. “I cannot ask you to stay in this house,” he said. “But I would prefer if you did. For tonight, at least. It is one of the few ways I know that you are truly safe.”
“Okay,” Joy said. “But I can’t stay home forever. Aside from going stir-crazy, I can’t lose my job—with cutbacks going on at Dad’s office, he’s working overtime and I agreed to help out.”
“I could help you,” Ink said.
“Thanks, but that’d be tough to explain.” She tried to laugh, but it came out strained. She had been used to her father spending most of his time at work or with his girlfriend, Shelley, but he’d been making the extra effort to be around Joy and would likely notice if she was suddenly freewheeling with lots of time and spending cash. Although the idea of quitting Antoine’s was tempting, her father would ask too many questions she couldn’t answer. She’d never been good at lying.
Ink brushed her skin lightly and he seemed to come to a decision.
“Then let me do this,” he said, unwinding a length of string from his neck. He lifted it over his head and held it up for her to see. It was a necklace with a single metal pendant, a rune like a bisected Y etched into its surface. She touched the unfamiliar symbol; the metal was still warm from his skin.
“What is it?”
“It is a glyph,” he said, looping it over her neck so that the symbol rested against her breastbone. “A futhark. It can protect you against an unexpected attack. A second chance is sometimes all that you need.” He pressed the tiny symbol against her skin. “I had it made after I confronted Aniseed. If I had worn this, she would not have...” His voice faltered and his expression changed as he recalled the strange sensation of death. “Would not have caught me unawares,” he said. His eyes flicked from Joy to the wallet, and she could see the cascade of thoughts that skittered like a stone skipped across a pond: then he wouldn’t have needed to give Joy his scalpel, she wouldn’t have discovered that she could erase signatura, she would not have been captured by Aniseed and held as ransom for his mark and he wouldn’t have bled to death during the battle on the warehouse floor. Of course, then Aniseed might have killed most of humanity, taking the bulk of the Twixt with it. Joy might have died. Ink might have stayed dead. Aniseed might have lived.
There was no telling what might have happened. What might have been.
That one thought scared her most of all.
“You should keep it...” Joy said, knowing how much that brush with death had shaken him, even if it had been only temporary. The memory of his eyes spilling black as his body collapsed, gushing ink onto the floor, haunted her still. But he tucked the necklace beneath her collar, his fingers lingering at the base of her throat. She felt her pulse jump as his thumb trailed over the smooth silk of her skin.
“No,” he said almost hypnotically. “This can keep you safe if I am not with you.” Ink drew his fingers along the chain at his hip. “I must go mark a new lama in Tibet, but I will return shortly.” He tilted his face to one side. “I will always come for you, Joy.”
She nodded, nearly speechless. “I know.”
Ink touched his lips to hers. She felt him hover, his breath in hers, their mouths closing with delicate symmetry—withdrawing, returning, testing how they fit together—like a welcoming home, soft and warm. She felt a slow heat grow inside her, radiating out.
“I need you,” he whispered, breaking their kiss. His eyes blinked open, dark wells of forever. “I need you to be safe,” he said. “I need you to be free. If nothing else, and for no other reason, I need you to be free.”
Joy paused still tasting his breath on her lips. “I don’t understand.”
“No, you don’t. You can’t. And that is good,” Ink said. “There is an innocence in not knowing what you can lose.” His voice grew stern. “Do not allow anyone to place their signatura on you and claim you as theirs. Your body, your skin, your blood, your tears, your wishes, your dreams—they are yours and yours alone. Do not let anyone take them from you.”
Joy was taken aback, wondering what he meant and wondering again what she did not know.
“I won’t,” she said. “I promise.”
Ink looked at her strangely, almost sadly, drawing his fingers down her cheek. “You cannot promise such a thing,” he said. “You are only human.”
It was true, she was not bound like the Folk to never tell a lie, but his correction stung nonetheless. Before she could say more, the doorbell chimed. Joy glanced at the clock, disbelieving.
“Monica,” Joy said.
Ink stood up, folding his wallet and fitting the chain.
“I will return to Graus Claude and follow the answers,” he said. “In the meanwhile, please do not take undue risks. Remember, my theory is just a theory, and I would not welcome any opportunities to be proven wrong.”
Joy touched the glyph under her shirt. “I’ll do my best.”
Ink half smiled. One dimple only. A hand on her arm. “Thank you,” he said and let his hand trail, a lingering touch on her skin. He stepped back, palmed his razor and opened a neat door with a wave of his hand.
“Wait,” she said. “One kiss.”
“One kiss?”
“One kiss,” Joy said. “Nonnegotiable.”
His lips were warm and welcome and sweet, holding a promise of their own.
He rested his head against hers. His voice softened.
“I love you, Joy Malone.”
She smiled. “I love you, too.”
It was all she could say as he disappeared, since she realized in that moment that she no longer had his True Name.
THREE (#ulink_109fee99-514c-5277-b3e7-b9682574a19b)
JOY ANSWERED THE door holding up two mailers.
“Dino’s or Pizza Pi?”
Monica snickered as she walked in. “And hello to you, too.” Gordon propped the door open with his shoulder and offered one of two lidded paper cups.
“I come bearing caffeine,” he said. “One of these iced lattes is for you.” He glanced down. “Nice socks.”
Joy was wearing mismatched tennies, one green, one pink with daisies; it made her feel more like herself. She accepted a cup and took a sip, bowing. “You are a god.”
Gordon grinned and shut the door. “It’s nice to be worshipped.”
“Don’t let the humility fool you,” Monica said, dropping her purse and giving her boyfriend a kiss. In Joy’s head, she still called him “Mr. Wide” due to his quarterback shoulders and the size of his grin. Monica smoothed back her bob. “I vote Pizza Pi.”
Gordon shrugged. “I’m up for anything with extra cheese.”
“Don’t say ‘extra cheese’ around me for the rest of the day,” Joy said, snagging a phone and checking the number on the flyer. “If I hear one more order for anything involving extra cheese, I will seriously lose whatever is left of my mind.” She flumped on the bare couch. Joy missed the old afghan, but even after several covert washings, the yarn had snarled itself around the crusted stains of Twixt and human blood. She’d had to throw it out and tell her father that she’d accidentally left it at the beach. It had been her grandmother’s and she’d been grounded for two weeks. Lying sucked.
She dialed with her thumbs and kicked her feet over the back of the pillows. Monica made a face.
“Rough day?”
Joy groaned. “If this day went to the spa, it would need exfoliation treatments.”
“Hey, there’s an idea!” Monica said. “Spa day!”
“I wish,” Joy said. “I have to earn enough to pay for my plan or Dad said he’s taking my phone.”
Gordon whistled. “Harsh.”
Joy shrugged. “A couple of shifts a week should cover it,” she said as the phone rang. “Orders, please?”
Half an hour later, there was pizza cut into long, thin strips, three empty coffee cups and a half-eaten bag of Smartfood as they chatted about the latest in Nordic bubblegum punk.
“Crushed Tomato isn’t a band name,” Joy said, tossing her crust in the box. “It’s a pizza ingredient.”
“Actually, there’s a song off their new album that I think you might like,” Monica said from the opposite end of the couch. Her dark legs draped over Gordon’s lap and his hand rested on her knee as she stroked his blond crew cut. They looked entirely too adorable. Joy debated throwing a pillow at them.
“Oh no!” Joy said. “You’ve corrupted her ears! The only things she had left were her virgin ears. What will she save for marriage?”
Monica threw a pillow at her. “Well, they’re a lot better than Last Dog Standing.”
“Agreed,” Joy said, tucking the pillow behind her head. “And twice as good as that Der Franzen CD.”
Gordon placed a hand on his chest. “You wound me. I love that band!”
Monica patted his shoulder. “Sorry, sweetie, but I’m with Joy on this one. Your boys are into some seriously weird noise.” She placed her elbow on the armrest and tugged her knees free. “Speaking of boys, when, exactly, do you expect Stef home?”
Joy shrugged. “I dunno. Sometime in the next two days.”
Monica winked as the front door clicked. “How about now?”
Joy spun around to look over the back of the couch. Her brother walked in under a giant duffel bag, his face scruffy with two days of beard. He beamed at her through his rectangle lenses.
“Honey, I’m home!”
Joy squealed and flung herself at him in a full-body tackle, wrapping him in a tight squeeze. He hugged her back, smelling of open road and barbecue chips. His stubble scratched her ear, and she’d poked his glasses askew, but she didn’t care. She could feel his laugh in her chest and his voice in her ear. Stefan was back! Her big brother was home! It felt like she was the one returning after being away for far too long.
“Hey, you,” Joy said, letting him breathe. “Had a good trip?”
“Driving from U Penn to Columbus to Glendale? Never again. I pulled an all-nighter just to get off the road.” Stef waved at their guests. “Hi, Monica.” He offered a hand to Gordon. “Hi, blond stranger. I’m Stefan.”
“The infamous Stef! Nice to meet you. I’m Gordon.”
“Pleased to meet you,” Stef said. “And you brought pizza.”
“S’all yours,” Monica chirped.
Stef dropped his duffel bag on the floor with a thud. “You are now officially my new favorite people.” He pulled himself a double slice, and Joy beamed. Monica and Gordon held hands. Stef adjusted his glasses and took a bite. It was a perfect moment.
Stef spoke around a mouthful. “So where’s Dad?”
“Out with Shelley,” Joy said. “Where else? And he’s going to seriously kill you for showing up before he got home. I think he was planning on there being cake.”
Stef folded the second slice over the first and took another bite. “I wouldn’t say no to cake.”
“Yeesh. Where do you put it all?” Monica asked enviously. “Aren’t you supposed to get all freshman-fifteen?”
Stef looked long and lanky, much the same as he had when he’d left with his inside-out, backward shirt, scratched-up glasses and tight-fitting jeans. “Joy and I share the Malone metabolism,” he said between bites and adjusted his raggedy red friendship bracelet over his wrist. Joy was surprised he hadn’t ditched the thing while at college. It was so summer camp. “Besides—” he swallowed “—I had to keep up. Back in middle school, Joy’s appetite put me to shame.” He glanced at Gordon. “There’s nothing worse than being out-eaten at the school’s pie-eating contest by your pipsqueak little sister.”
“Ha ha,” Joy said, but she couldn’t help smiling. This was something that phone calls and IM chats couldn’t replace—the feeling of being in the same room, riffing off one another, sharing memories, teasing, being together. She hadn’t realized how much she’d missed it until just now.
Stef clapped his hands together as he swallowed the last bite. “Okay, I hate to be incredibly rude, but I need to collapse on my face,” he said. “But before I go catatonic, I want to give you your present.”
“You brought me something?” Joy asked.
“Yep! And it’s bigger than a bread box.”
Joy clapped her hands and squealed at Monica. “I’m getting a present!”
Gordon laughed. “I think you just turned six,” he said. “I could see pigtails and everything.”
Joy stuck out her tongue as Stef hooked her elbow, propelling her into the kitchen. “Come over to the window,” he said.
“The window?” Joy asked nervously as the four of them crowded together and craned over the sink. Joy swallowed back the momentary jitters she experienced every time she came near the kitchen window. Her mind played tricks as her brain mixed a wild concoction of fear and memory, leaving Joy half expecting to find another message written in light or a monster’s giant tongue about to shatter the glass.
Shaking off her first memories of the Twixt, Joy looked down into the courtyard. It looked completely ordinary with a fat couple sunning in folding lawn chairs as three kids chased each other with Super Soakers near the parking lot.
“You got me a water gun?” she guessed.
Stef pointed. “No. There. In the corner.”
Joy stood on her tiptoes, spying Stef’s used Kia. “Is it in the car?”
Stef dangled keys from his fingers. “It is the car.”
Joy screamed. “I get your car?”
“With a quarter of a zillion miles on it. I was going to trade it in, but Mom and Dad agreed to buy it off me and give it to you.” He dropped the keys into her palm. Joy bounced in her shoes. “I’ll help you clean her up before I pick up my new one at the dealership, but then she’s all yours,” he said. “Be careful with the driver’s side window—it sticks.”
Joy wrapped her arms around Stef’s chest.
“Thankyouthankyouthankyou!”
“You can thank me by giving me oxygen.” He laughed as though pained and ruffled her bangs. “Okay! Now that I have officially won the Best Brother Ever Award, I would like to thank the Academy before I grab another couple slices of pizza and go to bed.” Stef pinched his lip and nodded to everyone. “Nice to see you, Monica. Nice meeting you, Gordon. Nice surprising you, Joy. My pillow awaits.”
Joy gave Stef a parting kiss on his scruffy cheek.
“Thanks, Stef! Welcome home!”
“You’re welcome and good night.” He waved as he dragged his duffel bag into his room, across the hall from hers. The door closed, and they all heard a thump.
“Well, he seems nice,” Gordon said. “So when do I get a car?”
“Care to take us for a spin?” Monica asked.
Joy swallowed some of her excitement. She’d promised Ink she’d stay home.
“Not until after Stef helps me clean it,” she said. “You know how he is.”
“He’s a slob,” Monica translated for Gordon.
“Like you should talk,” Gordon said. “My mother would kill me if my room looked like yours!” Monica poked him in the gut. He poked her back. Monica squealed. Joy tucked the keys in her pocket and sauntered back to the den. She had her own car. Stef was in his room. Her dad was due home soon, and her friends were laughing in the kitchen—it was a perfect ending to an almost-perfect night. Joy smiled as she closed the pizza box.
All it was missing was Ink.
* * *
Joy was late to work. She logged in at the exact moment she realized she’d forgotten to wash her apron. There were splashes of dried coffee and smears of dirt and what smelled like marinara on the pocket. She soaked a dish towel and hurriedly scrubbed at the stains.
“Someone’s here for you,” Neil said, tapping her shoulder with his cheat sheet. “Table Four. Asked for an ice water, hold the glass.” His voice dipped in sympathy. He’d been her senior server when she’d started at Antoine’s, and he still tried to keep an eye out for her. “What a way to start the day.”
“Are you kidding me?” Joy peeked around the counter to see who was at the two-top and stared. Invisible Inq was quietly kicking her heels under her seat, chin propped on the back of her interlaced fingers, smiling.
Joy tied off the bow and grabbed her check cover, swallowing panic. No one should be able to see Inq except her. No one without the Sight...
“Don’t forget your ice water,” Neil said as he went to fold napkins.
Watching Neil out of the corner of her eye, Joy stopped at the fill station and scooped some ice cubes onto a saucer, placing a teaspoon on it for good measure. The freezer wasn’t the reason chills swept over her body as she marched to Table Four.
The wily Scribe twinkled and waved her fingers.
“Hi, Joy!”
Joy didn’t know whether to put down the saucer or not, as if leaving evidence would confirm that she was certifiably crazy to the rest of the staff. Fortunately, it was still early, and the café was all but empty.
“What are you doing here?” Joy said under her breath.
“I thought I’d come visit you at work,” Inq chirped. “Make sure that you were okay. I heard pillow talk that you had a bit of excitement yesterday, and Ink asked me to check on you.” She eyed the smeared black apron. “Nice digs.”
Joy held her temper, knowing she had to choose her words carefully when speaking to invisible people, especially Inq.
“This is not a good time,” Joy whispered, trying to think of some reason she could give for standing in the middle of the restaurant talking to an empty table with a saucerful of ice in her hand. Did Neil realize that Table Four looked empty? Did he have the Sight? Had Joy put him in danger by leading Inq here? Had she exposed herself by admitting that she could see Inq, too? Joy was one of the rare people born with the Sight who had managed to keep her eyes from being cut out. Joy’s mind drifted to the four-leaf clover in her bag.
“Yes, well, that’s the trouble with mortality, isn’t it?” Inq said smoothly, opening her menu. “So much to do, so little time.” She smiled again. “I hear Antoine’s makes a passable frittata.” Joy was about to snatch the trifold menu out of her hands when Neil walked by. Inq turned to him boldly. “Excuse me,” she said. Joy froze. “Could I trouble you for a new napkin?”
Neil handed one of his freshly rolled cloth napkins to Inq and gave Joy a conciliatory “What can you do?” shrug before continuing on to Table Ten. Joy stared at Inq, who dabbed demurely at the corner of her lips.
“He can see you,” Joy said under her breath. “How can he see you? Does he have the Sight?”
Inq blinked her innocent all-black eyes. “Do you recommend the frittata?”
“Inq!” Joy placed the saucer of melting ice in front of Inq and crossed her arms as if she could hold in her heart attack. “What, exactly, does he see?”
“He sees me, of course,” Inq said with a grin. “But it’s not him—it’s me. I’m wearing a glamour. I look exactly like me, sans spooky eyes. It makes things easier when I want to buy something pretty or eat out on the town. Otherwise, it looks like some sort of ghost is haunting the place with stuff floating all around. So cliché.” She shut her menu primly. “I’d like the frittata, a side salad and a large glass of fresh orange juice, please.”
Joy flipped open her notebook and started writing to cover her racing thoughts.
“A glamour?” Joy said over her pen.
“Mmm-hmm.”
A way for the Folk to be seen—in this world!—and look like normal, everyday people? The possibilities blossomed like flowers in her brain.
“You knew,” Joy said.
“I suspected,” Inq said. “It doesn’t take a genius. Sooner or later you’d want a way to show off my brother, even if only to prove that you’re not crazy.” She tapped the table. “I’ve had more than one lehman, remember? I know how humans think.”
Joy finished writing with a flourish. “Can you tell me where to get one?”
“I’ll do better than that,” Inq said. “After brunch, I’ll show you.” She handed back the menu. “Extra croutons on the salad, please.”
* * *
After lunch, Joy stepped out of the ripples onto a familiar stretch of sidewalk. The reality check pushed her completely off balance. Inq caught her elbow.
“I thought we were going to see a man about a glamour,” Joy said.
Inq grinned. “We are.”
“Are we stopping by my house first?” Joy pointed back up the path that wound toward her condo. “We’re right between my place and the mini-mart.”
Inq started walking with a skip to her step. “Really? Do tell.”
“Wait,” Joy said while jogging to keep up. She had been nervous about being outside despite wearing the futhark pendant and having Inq as her guide. She was pretty sure Ink wouldn’t approve of the outing, but now Joy was curious, excited and confused. “Are you trying to tell me that you can buy glamours at the C&P?”
“Don’t be silly,” Inq said. “You buy glamours from a wizard. And, because this is the Glen—the original one—there’s all sorts of magic still around! You just have to know where to look.” She spoke while almost dancing around Joy in her excitement to share a new secret of the Twixt. “You’re not the only special snowflake in the neighborhood.”
Joy felt a grin tug at her lips. “So we’re really off to see the wizard?”
Inq nudged Joy. “You’re not in Kansas anymore, Dorothy!” she said. “This is Glendale, once known as the Glen, one of the access doors to Under the Hill, and still chock-full of magic! Can’t you feel it?” They were coming up to the mini-mart with its giant signs for the ATM, blue-raspberry slushies and state lottery tickets. They’d had a five-thousand-dollar winner. Joy blinked, trying to use her Sight to see what was hiding beneath the familiar building, but she didn’t see anything unusual. In fact, everything looked deceptively normal.
Inq laughed and threw her arms out. “Here we are!”
“Wait, I thought you said that you couldn’t buy them at the C&P?”
“I said you buy them from a wizard,” Inq said. “But the wizard happens to work at the C&P.”
Joy pushed open the door with its friendly two-tone hello. The smell was the same weird mix of air freshener and hot dogs. People milled about the aisles of snack bags and candy bars. Joy took a few steps inside and hugged her purse under her armpit. She was nervous about having so many humans as potential witnesses to Inq’s antics, and she still had no idea what was going on. The familiar and unfamiliar started square-dancing in her head.
Inq pretended to check out the covers of magazines while Joy debated snagging a fruit-and-nut bar to eat on her lunch break. At the café she could stave off the worst of her hypoglycemia by grabbing a roll here and there, but the carbs gave her a slow, weighty feeling that she never really enjoyed. Her lean, mean days of gymnastics training had given her a taste for chalky protein shakes, energy bars and aspartame.
“Watch,” Inq whispered to Joy as someone approached the counter. Joy’s stomach clenched. Mr. Vinh, the old proprietor, picked out the numbers on his cash register as he rang up a bag of nacho chips, a half liter of Coke, a pack of peanut M&M’s and a packet of gum. Mr. Vinh totaled the bill, and the customer paid cash. Before giving change, Mr. Vinh placed everything into a bag, including two small packets wrapped in leaves and tied with brown string. He hit Return on the register and counted out change, turning to address the next person in line. Joy kept her eyes on the young man who left—he looked Puerto Rican, but when he turned to shoulder the door, Joy saw that his throat was laced with pink gills and his feet in flip-flops had pale pink webs. The door closed behind him with its two-tone goodbye.
“You can’t be serious...” Joy whispered, disbelieving.
Inq smirked. “Meet Mr. Wizard.”
Joy shook her head. “It can’t be,” she said. “I’ve come here for years.”
“Of course you have,” Inq said, moving down the aisle. “But how often since your Sight’s been active? And did you buy any gum?”
“Gum?” Joy said, wondering when was the last time she’d chewed gum.
“It’s a code,” Inq said and waggled a slim red-and-black packet. “Nobody buys things like clove-flavored gum anymore. And buying certain snacks in combination is really a request for...other things.” Inq shrugged and pointed up. “Security cameras still work, so it’s important to keep up appearances. No one wants to run our supplier out of business. And, hey—” she waved a Kit Kat “—chocolate!” She winked. “Food of the gods.”
Joy stared as Inq stuffed a careful selection of things into her arms and pushed her forward. “Here,” she said impishly. “Go introduce yourself!”
Joy stared at her haul in dismay. She didn’t even like Gummi Worms...
Mr. Vinh glanced up at Joy as she spilled her armload onto the counter.
“Hello, busy girl,” he said in greeting.
“Hi, Mr. Vinh,” Joy whispered. He picked up the packet of spice-flavored gum.
“No sugarless mint?” he asked. It had been Joy’s favorite when she’d been in training, covering the sour smell of stomach acid in her mouth—the same sort of taste that was in her mouth now, all fear and nerves and reflux. She couldn’t believe that he remembered. “Maybe you want some wintergreen instead?”
Inq peeked over Joy’s shoulder. “How about a dermal, fourth-circle glamour with a subvocal charm?”
Mr. Vinh’s eyes lowered under his deep epicanthic folds, but he kept speaking to Joy as if he hadn’t heard Inq. “You are together?” he asked.
Joy nodded as Inq squeezed her shoulders. Mr. Vinh rang up the total for the lot.
“Eight dollars and seventeen cents,” he said. Joy handed over a crisp twenty. Mr. Vinh rubbed it between his fingers and held it up to the fluorescent light, all but rendered moot by the bright summer sun. Joy twisted her fingers. She felt like she was being carded. He finally nodded and made change, punching a number into the nearby phone. He spoke in rapid-fire something-ese, then hung up.
“My son will be here shortly,” he said. “Please wait over there.” He pointed to the lonely stack of morning papers in their thin wire display. Joy took her plastic bag, which sported a yellow smiley face and Have a Nice Day!, and stepped to the side. Inq grabbed a paper and flipped to the entertainment section.
“What are we doing?” Joy whispered as Inq turned pages.
“Waiting,” she said. “It’s a power thing. The Bailiwick does it all the time.” Inq flipped to the back of the paper and sighed. “Men!”
A tall man in his mid-twenties wearing a blue button-up over a black tee and jeans opened a back door and loped to the counter, exchanging a few words with Mr. Vinh before taking his place at the register. He nodded to the next customer with a smile and said in English, “Next person, please.”
Mr. Vinh shuffled out from behind the counter, feet scraping against the floor in black socks and worn Birkenstocks. He led the way to a sign marked Storage: Employees Only and pulled back the heavy door. Clicking on the light, he gestured for Inq and Joy to follow.
The storage closet was packed with flats of juice drinks, boxes of snacks and plastic-wrapped rolls of paper towels. A lunar calendar was tacked up on the wall above a small electric-lit altar propped with photos of dour-looking people and tiny bowls of seeds and sweets. Mr. Vinh brushed past them and ran his hand along the back of one of the shelving units, his arm disappearing up to the shoulder as the back of the closet swung open with a click.
“Less magic,” he said matter-of-factly. “More secure. Come in.”
He pushed the hidden door wider and beckoned them inside. Wondering what she’d gotten herself into, Joy stepped forward. Inq strolled after them, nearly skipping into the dark.
“What did the nix want?” Inq asked conversationally.
“Bah,” Mr. Vinh grunted. “Modern maladies. Drink this to wake up. Drink this to go to sleep. Eat this to get fat. Eat this to get thin.” He turned on a light. “It’s like doing business in a Lewis Carroll novel.”
Joy tiptoed into the small room lined with bamboo slats. There was an enormous armoire composed of rows of tiny drawers, each one labeled with dark red paint. Bundles of dried herbs and wrinkled things were stuffed in heavy glass jars, ceramic jugs and urns, and a large, tinted-glass mirror hung on the wall in a chunky wooden frame. A glass cabinet full of strange instruments glinted in the light of oddly twisted bulbs that hung from the ceiling. Overlapping grass mats covered the floor, shushing underfoot and swallowing sound.
Mr. Vinh shrugged on a long black robe, the edge of it catching on his C&P name tag. He tugged it loose and buttoned it closed under his left armpit. After placing a simple flat cap on his head, he drew out a long stylus, dipped it in a small bowl of water and swirled it with quick strokes into a pot of black paste. He spoke offhandedly while he worked the bristles in. “You don’t really want a glamour, do you?”
“Of course not.” Inq spoke first. Joy frowned at her but kept silent. “What would she do with one? She’s human.”
Mr. Vinh stopped swishing the brush and said nothing. He smoothed the soft bristles against the edge of the pot, creating a fine point. “Well then,” he said. “How may I be of service?”
“She asked me about glamours,” Inq said. “So I brought her to you.”
“I don’t do tutorials, demonstrations or free samples,” said Mr. Vinh crisply.
“How about a sales pitch?” Inq said.
Joy stood to one side, trying to be as polite as possible. This was a different Mr. Vinh from the one she knew from the C&P. He was brisk, efficient, a little bit perturbed and a little bit scary. He was clearly in his element here in the secret wizard’s back room, a place very different from the fluorescent-bulbed store.
Mr. Vinh painted himself a note in liquid script, his pen dancing in quick, soaring strokes on a roll of ecru paper. “Why are you here?” he asked.
Joy swallowed. “I’m...”
“She’s lehman to Indelible Ink.”
Joy and Mr. Vinh both glanced at Inq. She held their stares. Joy frowned. Was she? Did Mr. Vinh know what that meant? Joy felt a blush light her cheeks and twisted her fingers around her purse strap. Mr. Vinh laid his brush gently on the pot lid, balancing its length across the lip, and crossed the room to the cabinet. He withdrew a small apparatus made up of many lenses; some were tiny microscope circles and some were giant magnifiers, others were milky half domes or tinted glass or bowed optics framed in twists of wire and wood. There was even a smooth stone with a hole in its center tied to the rim with copper wire. Mr. Vinh lifted the thing like opera glasses and made some adjustments with a rotating dial.
“Remove your glamour, please.”
Inq made a motion with her hand and...nothing changed. At least, not as far as Joy could see. Inq looked exactly the same.
“Thank you,” Mr. Vinh said crisply. He lowered the apparatus, squinted in Inq’s direction, then fitted the lenses back over his eyes. Joy got that he couldn’t see Inq without them. He made a few more adjustments in silence.
“Please reinstate the glamour,” he said. Inq swirled her hand again, and the wizard gave a grunt of satisfaction. He turned the multilensed thing at Joy. “Now you.”
“I’m not wearing a glamour,” she said.
“Of course not,” he said, tweaking a lens into place. “But I cannot see their handiwork without assistance. Hold still please.”
Joy tried not to squirm under the scrutiny. One of the lenses tilted. Another clicked into place.
“I am fascinated by the marriage of magic and technology,” he explained as he squinted through the rock with a hole. “How it overlaps, where it repels and attracts, like two polarized magnets. It’s a hobby of mine.” He lowered the device and frowned. “She hasn’t the Scribe’s signatura,” Mr. Vinh said. “She is no lehman.” He shook his chin at Joy. “You have no part in this.”
“But she did,” Inq lilted.
“Did?” Mr. Vinh shut the thing back in its cabinet. “Nonsense. She is not what you claim. She is not a lehman. End of story.”
“Well, I was,” Joy said quietly. “But I guess now I’m just his girlfriend.”
Mr. Vinh paused as he stepped behind his desk, staring at her for a long moment. Then he took up his stylus, holding his sleeve away from the wet page. “No,” he said and began painting furiously. “No, no. That cannot be.” He pointed his brush at Joy. “Listen to me. I do not know what this one—” he pointed to Inq “—has been telling you. But I know them. Yes, I do. I have known for many years. Them and you. And I am telling you that if you had been taken by one of the tien, there would be a mark on you—one that you could not see—”
“A signatura,” Joy said. “I know.”
Mr. Vinh stopped. “How do you know?”
“She has the Sight,” Inq explained. Joy nodded.
Mr. Vinh’s voice softened, as did his face. “You have the Sight?” he echoed and stopped to think. “Your family does not know?” Joy shook her head. Mr. Vinh drummed his fingers on the edge of the table and wiped the corners of his lips as if smoothing them closed. He spoke slowly. “You have the Sight and you are in love with a Scribe,” he said. “Yes. Perhaps I have heard of you.”
“You have?” Joy squeaked.
“Rumors, of course,” Mr. Vinh dismissed. “Everyone comes with rumors. Rumors and requests and cash.” He smiled, revealing tobacco-stained teeth. “So, yes, perhaps you exist. Strange that we have met so often and neither of us has known...but, then again, that’s the way of things nowadays—rush, rush, rush. So many people so close together and yet too busy to notice one another.” He shrugged and made a last careful note. “So maybe I can tell you something about glamours, after all. It is good for you to know these things. But before we get down to business, I have a question for you, busy girl, and I will tell you what I know if you would be so kind as to answer it.”
Joy glanced at Inq, who nodded. “Okay.”
“Good. Very good,” Mr. Vinh said and came around to sit on the mats. Joy and Inq joined him on the floor. He folded to a sitting position with ease.
“So what can I tell you?” Mr. Vinh said, placing his hands on his knees. “I am a wizard, which means that I provide services for humans and tien. Most often spells and most often for money, although I sometimes will take trade for hard-to-find things.” He opened his hands; one thumb was smudged in black paint. “My family was from a province near the Mekong River, before we came to America and brought our magic here. I make poultices and charms and small, everyday sort of spells, but glamours are my big magic—taught to me from my grandfather from his father and his father before him and so on, back centuries. It is an old craft and one that relies heavily on both art and discretion.” He smiled wryly. “My art at my discretion, you understand. It is the most common way that the tien may pass among humans.” He gestured with one hand. “You have the Sight—you understand why that is. You’ve seen what they look like without the veil.”
Joy shifted on the mats. “What veil?”
The wizard bowed toward Inq. “The veil is the natural aura of the tien that lets them slip past our eyes like oiled paper—” he drew his hands quickly past his face “—without notice. It is what has kept them alive in our world for centuries. Camouflage is an effective survival strategy.”
He rested his hands on his knees and continued. “The simplest glamour is not about creating something new, but dampening the individual veil, allowing humans to perceive them normally,” Mr. Vinh said. “This is not an option for many, as to see tien in their true form, unfiltered, would likely cause alarm, breaking pacts between our worlds, so minor modifications can be made to normalize their appearance or create an entire new facade,” he said. “It is a major undertaking and very expensive. Of course, in order to pass close inspection, there are additional changes necessary for masking horns, wings, tails, extra body mass.” He glanced at Inq. “Or unusual eyes.”
She winked.
Joy’s head spun. “But...how?”
Mr. Vinh grinned. “My son is a gifted animator,” he said with pride. “CAD modeling has greatly improved the quality of our glamours. We’ve been developing the technique since the early eighties.”
“No,” Joy said. “I mean, how is that possible?” She looked around the tiny room. “Spells. Glamours. Wizards. How is any of this possible?”
“A better question might be how are you possible, busy girl?” Mr. Vinh asked. “I cannot tell you how I make my magic, but perhaps you can tell me how you make yours.” He leaned forward slightly at the waist in interest. “So, my question—I have heard that you managed to remove your signatura, freeing yourself from your Master and unraveling the segulah’s curse.” Joy stared. Mr. Vinh was well-informed. She didn’t expect to hear these words from another human being. “Tell me,” he said. “How did this happen?”
“Oh,” Joy said trying to catch a cue from Inq, but she was busy inspecting the cabinet shelves. “It was an accident,” she said, choosing her words carefully. “Ink threw his scalpel to me after he’d stabbed Aniseed so that it could pass through her ward. I used it to free myself.” She and Ink had agreed to place the explanation for her escape and the magic of unmaking on the blade itself and not attribute it in any way to Joy, avoiding the truth that they had discovered while marking a man in a prison cell: that she could somehow erase marks that were supposed to be permanent, removing the True Names that linked the Folk to the last bits of magic in the world. “I had no idea what would happen,” she said honestly. “I was just trying to get out.”
“And so you did,” Mr. Vinh said as he rubbed his palms against his trousers. “This is a powerful thing. A valuable thing.” His eyes flicked to her. “You are full of valuable things.” Inq turned her head, almost frowning. Joy wasn’t sure what he meant, but she found that she’d been twisting her fingers in her lap. She flattened her palms against the mats. He pushed himself to a stand. “Like information,” he clarified as he straightened. “I value information because I value facts. Facts are the difference between real magic and trickery. It is very important to know all of the facts,” he said. “Here’s a fact—you do not need a glamour, so I do not know what I can offer you, but if you have need of a wizard, now you know where to look.” He fiddled with the frog buttons and placed his robe back on its hook. “I can offer you spells and remedies, and my son has a side business as a courier, should you wish to send something into the Twixt, but no discounts on store items. I still have to report to the IRS.”
Joy gave a small laugh. “Understood.”
He pushed open the Employees Only door back into the pool of glaring light and garish shelves of junk food. “Thank you for an enlightening lunch break,” he said. Joy’s stomach grumbled. This had been her lunch break, too. She needed to eat. He closed the door and shuffled back up the aisle. “If you need anything, drop by. Twenty-four hours. Someone is always available.” He smiled. “Busy girl is not the only one who’s busy around here.”
Joy rooted around her bag for something quick and edible. There wasn’t much. She was considering the worms. “Thanks, Mr. Vinh.”
“Anytime, busy girl,” he said cheerily. To Inq, he said, “Come back later. I’ll adjust the pupils. They’re not tracking as well as I’d like.”
“Artists!” Inq said and pushed through the door, ignoring its parting bing-bong. “Such perfectionists.”
Joy said nothing, knowing that humans noticed the details; it was how she’d known that something was wrong with Ink and Inq when she’d first seen them with their impossibly smooth skin and penetrating all-black eyes. The Folk seemed to bother only with surface impressions, which explained how the Scribes had gone so long without bothering to add little things like belly buttons or fingernails. It made sense that they would need a human to make convincing glamours for them.
She remembered the last time she’d sat with Ink, carving the perfect muscles of his neck and chest using a human figure drawing book as a guide. They’d laughed together as they molded a little innie in his long, rippled stomach. Her fingertips tingled with the memory. Or maybe it was low blood sugar. She popped a Gummi Worm into her mouth. It squished as she bit down. Ew.
“So,” Joy said around the orange glob. “Everyone can see you?”
“Of course. When I activate the glamour,” Inq said.
“Right. So why did you tell him I didn’t want one?” Joy said around another Gummi. “That is exactly what I want for Ink!”
Inq gave an exasperated sigh and flapped her hands. “You don’t just come out and tell a wizard what you want! They’ll jack up the price. Haven’t you ever haggled before?”
Joy swallowed. “No.” The one time she’d gone to Mexico for an international gymnastics competition, she’d been too intimidated by the constant hawking and badgering to buy anything at the market.
“Well, trust me—walking away now will make things easier for you later. Right now, it’s too obvious that you want something. I figured I would help you get the ball rolling and if we started asking about glamours today, then by the third or fourth time, it will be like you were hypothetically asking.”
“So—hypothetically asking—how much does a glamour cost?”
“Depends on the wizard, but he likes you. I bet we can get you a discount!” Inq winked, and Joy couldn’t help but smile. What she wouldn’t give to have Ink be able to meet Monica, Stef and Dad! To be visible, to be a part of her world like she was part of his. All she needed was to buy him a glamour—it would be perfect!
“I’d want to make it a surprise if I can manage it,” Joy said, grabbing another worm. “Don’t tell Ink.”
Inq touched a finger to her lips. “It’ll be our little secret.” She smirked, delighted in the same way she’d been when she’d first brought Joy through time and space to her own surprise party for Lehman’s Day. “Come on,” she said. “Let’s get you back to work. Start saving those pennies!”
She spread her hand, and the air bowed around them in concentric ripples.
“Approximately how many pennies are we talking about?” Joy asked.
Inq patted her arm good-naturedly. “Think of it this way—it’s always good to have a lifelong goal.”
FOUR (#ulink_1ab99a87-f3df-5bab-a05a-75a9ee440ab4)
STEPPING OUT OF the void onto the asphalt behind Antoine’s back lot, Joy and Inq stopped laughing the instant Ink sprang up from the back steps and started toward them, worry and fury warring on his face.
“Where were you?” he said.
“Shopping,” Inq replied before Joy could breathe. While technically true, it wasn’t really the truth. Joy was amazed at how skillfully the Folk could twist words.
“Shopping?” Ink said. “You were gone and I thought...” He shook his head and turned to his sister, sounding strangely human. “It is dangerous for Joy to be out right now.” He gestured to the heavy back door. “I cannot ward a public place like this—there are too many people! And we have not heard back from the Bailiwick yet!”
“Better, then, that she was with me and not out on her own,” Inq said primly. “Isn’t it sweet how he worries about you?” She winked at Joy and made a big show of adjusting her corset. “You fret too much, Ink. Everything’s fine. You don’t have to wait on the Bailiwick to keep living your life. It’s not as if anyone’s foolish enough to try anything out here in the open in the middle of the day.”
Joy was about to say that this was exactly what had happened yesterday when she saw a rust-colored shape move from behind a parked car and the words died on her tongue.
The knight’s footsteps crunched on the pavement.
Joy backed away stumbling, knees jellied and mouth gaping open, tasting air.
Ink spun around. Inq’s hands blurred. The knight raised his weapon—a curved scimitar this time—and charged. Joy backpedaled against a nearby car and stumbled, the hot chrome bumper burning her leg. Ink stepped between them, straight razor raised. Inq’s right hand swept down, severing the knight’s blade from its hilt in a whine of sparks. The knight huffed and charged with the damaged half, a shard of razor-sharpness that caught the sun on its edge. Inq held her ground. Joy frantically fished for the scalpel, dropping the C&P bag, rooting around tubes of lip gloss and mascara. There was a dark blur of motion. Ink flashed past. The straight razor arced, but the knight swung, batting the blade from Ink’s hand. It clanged off a Dumpster and slid in the dirt.
Inq dived, humming fingers stabbing straight, but the knight dodged and wove beneath her arm. Gripping the end of his sword, he tried to drive the broken bit into Inq’s sternum. Joy grabbed her scalpel. Ink drew his black arrowhead. Inq’s hands stilled, fingers spread wide, the same moment that Joy lifted the scalpel and Ink punched through the armor, grabbing the knight’s elbow from behind. Joy stared as the metal mesh protecting the shoulder joint split, spitting broken links across the gravel in a gentle rain of rings. With a twist, Ink snapped the arm sideways, a sharp crack. The weapon dropped from the armored grip. His knees buckled. The knight heaved himself up and punched Ink in the throat. Ink’s face absorbed the blow and hardened like stone. Ink frowned and slashed the arrowhead down.
There was a splash of blood and a rough scream. Ink spat a word.
“Yield.”
Inq’s eyes widened, a wild smile on her lips. Joy backed away from the spatter of bright blood on cement.
The knight grunted and grabbed Ink’s shoulder with his good hand as if to tear it from the socket. Ink used both arms to trap the elbow and bend it back with a shriek of ruined metal. The knight’s arm pulsed another great gout of blood.
“Yield!” Ink said.
“I do not yield,” the knight grated from beneath his helmet.
Ink’s grip tightened. The armguard squealed.
“You will not touch her,” Ink said. “I swear it.”
“Then you, too, shall die.”
Rage lit Ink’s features, something pure and terrible; the hot neon light sparked like fire in his eyes. He shoved his knee forward, driving the arrowhead through the knight’s back. The knight crumpled, a sagging calm of junkyard noises as he sank to his knees. Armor hit ground in tumbling percussion as the body toppled over with a crash.
The sound broke something inside Joy—it was as if the world swam into sharp focus between one breath and the next. Ink stood over the body, barehanded and calm. Inq lifted her palms warily and took a step closer. The knight was a rumpled pile of red armor, its head wrenched sickeningly back. Joy couldn’t help staring where the helmet had lifted away from the neck. Pale skin peeked out from under the edge of the faceplate. No pulse beat there. It was very, very still.
Inq relaxed. “Well, that’s that.”
She touched her brother’s wrist. Something passed between them that snapped him out of his stillness. Ink flinched away with a dismissive gesture and looked back at Joy.
“Go inside,” Ink told her. “You are safe now. It is over.” The words fell like stones, flat and black. He sounded lost, tired and confused—she felt the same way. She couldn’t go to work, not now, not after this! As if he could read her thoughts, he shook his head gently. “Act normal. Otherwise, it will call attention to...” Ink stopped and sighed. “Please go. I will come back tonight and escort you home.”
Joy walked around the pool of blood, speckled with gravel and tiny links of chain, and hurried up the back stairs into Antoine’s low lighting and the smell of hot bread. The last thing she saw was Inq moving to touch her brother and Ink standing very, very still.
* * *
Joy waited by the restaurant’s front window twisting her apron strings around her knuckles, watching the raindrops fall in a smooth sheet beyond the awning. Main Street shone like a river stippled with tiny splashes. Cars drove by, shearing sheets of spray. People walked under umbrellas. A knot of teens passed, laughing as one tipped back his face, mouth opened wide to catch the droplets. It was a fresh, clean summer storm. To Joy, it smelled like Ink.
She trusted that the rain would wash away the blood.
She’d tried not to think about the look on Ink’s face in the back lot, or the armored body that had disappeared along with Ink and Inq when she’d been brave enough to check. It was as if they had never been, as if she’d imagined the whole thing, everything from the moment Inq had appeared at work to the moment when she’d walked past Neil with the scalpel still in her hand. It had been easy not to think about it while she’d rushed mindlessly between tables, but now it all came back to her in a crazy montage: ice cubes melting in a saucer, blood spouting over gravel, Mr. Vinh in a black robe behind a secret door at the C&P.
The rainy day world was as foggy as a dream.
“Need a ride?”
Neil appeared next to her, staring out at the rain.
“No,” Joy said. “Thanks. I’m waiting for a friend.”
Neil nodded and tapped his cheat pad. “Friend-friend or more-than-a-friend?” Joy turned and noticed him smile. “Just asking.”
Ink appeared just outside the door, slipping between one flap of reality and the next. Joy watched him unzip a doorway along a parking sign and check the sidewalks and streets, heedless of the rain wetting his clothes. He raised a hand, inviting her to join him.
“I have to go,” she said.
Neil frowned. “But there’s no one—”
“Bye.” Joy pushed out the door, hugging her purse close to her body. Ink had his straight razor in his hand and led the way past the window
“Are you all right?” she asked into her collar.
“Let’s get you home,” Ink said, slipping into rare contractions and walking quickly around the corner, out into the rain. Cool pinpricks tapped her arms and scalp as she walked beside him. Joy blinked through the rain on her lashes. On Ink’s face, they looked like tears.
He stopped in the middle of the sidewalk and stared at her. The rain matted her hair and slid a wet finger down her back. She glanced around awkwardly and felt drops trace down her cheeks.
“What is it?” she asked.
Ink blinked in surprise.
“The water is cold,” he said as a shudder passed over his body, muscles quivering under the silk shirt plastered against him. She’d forgotten how he still needed to concentrate to feel things.
“It’s not really,” Joy said, but Ink still looked amazed. He placed a hand against his chest. The shiver came again, shaking raindrops from the tips of his hair.
“It is cold. I can feel it,” Ink said, pressing his palm flat. “I am alive.” He said the words as if he’d never thought them before, as if their very meaning had changed. His eyes lifted and saw her with wonder. “I am alive,” he said again in his crisp, slicing voice. “And you are beautiful.”
Joy wiped the wet bangs from her eyes and stepped forward.
First she tasted the rain, which tasted like him—cool droplets on his mouth that melted against her tongue. The lightness bloomed into something warmer. He pulled her closer, and Joy forgot the touch of raindrops. Her arms felt heavy in her wet clothes, her fingers tangling in his hair.
He pushed her back.
“No!”
Joy stopped, confused at the sudden space between them. Her hands were empty and open, the rain running through her fingertips like a question.
Ink did not look at her as he flicked the blade with an expert motion, sliced a door and, grabbing her hand, quickly stepped through.
They spun into her bedroom with the scent of limes, the cleansing breach cocooning them between one space and the next. Her white blouse clung to her body, ripples of white cotton outlining the wet patches. She shivered. It was cold in her room. The AC was on.
Ink let go of her hand, the last bit of his warmth leaving her as he strode the perimeter, checking that his wards were still in place. His silvery shirt hung off him like a limp sail, and the spikes of his hair dripped rainwater on the carpet. He moved with a feral grace, anxious and fervent. Joy watched him circle, feeling less and less secure.
“Ink?”
“The wards,” he mumbled. “The wards are whole,” he said, pacing. “Your room is sealed, as is the building. I even strengthened them to repel you from danger outside your door.” He was speaking quickly, almost babbling, which was unlike him. Joy had never seen him so unsettled. His nervousness crawled in her stomach, curdling her fears. “I met with Graus Claude and he said that he should have answers for us soon—”
“Ink.”
“—Inq delivered the sword to Kurt—no one knows weapons better than he—though he says he cannot be certain that this is a singular act, but any formal declaration would have had to pass through the Council—”
“Ink!” Joy shouted, and it stopped him in his place. She dropped her purse and the scalpel on her nightstand and flipped wet bangs out of her eyes. “What’s the matter?”
He looked up.
In three quick strides, he was kissing her. Their bodies pressed against the wall. He held on to her desperately, feverishly, a sudden heat washing over him that Joy could feel where they touched. She kissed him back harder, plastering her wet body against his. The fabric of their shirts slid between them, slick and wet against their skin. He held her hips, pulling her impossibly closer, matching her growing intensity with nips of teeth and tongue. She grabbed his arms to steady herself or pull him closer or hang on. He kissed the wet curls of hair at her neck.
“I cannot lose you,” he said. “Not yet.”
“Ink,” she whispered, still uncertain of this mood, and wrapped her hands in his hair. He held her waist, and she bunched the silk of his shirt. He pulled back and lifted it like a curtain over his head, slapping it to the floor and pressing his bare chest against hers. She felt the skin of his back, imagining his signatura spinning there. She was spinning, too. Clenching. Burning. Wanting. As they clung to one another, Joy felt like they were climbing the walls. Her feet kicked against the baseboard. They had nowhere else to go.
Ink slid his lips into the hollow space between her neck and shoulder. Joy leaned her head back and groaned. He lifted her easily, twisting them onto her bed. She held on to his hips with her knees, taking the weight of him as they landed. He kissed her again—her face, her eyes, her throat—pushing pillows out of the way, knocking over everything in their path as they climbed higher across the mattress, their breath filling each other’s mouths. There was bumping, crashing, thumping, breaking—but none of that mattered. There was only the want. Joy could feel his kisses all over her body. Her leg snaked behind his knee, pulling him closer, tighter. He pressed against her, flattening the ripples of her shirt. She ran her hands along his ribs, sliding from his chest to his back to his shoulders. He kissed the side of her neck, her collarbone, her breastbone, her throat. He shook the dampness from his hair.
Joy squirmed. She couldn’t seem to get enough air to breathe. Her clothes felt uncomfortable, stuck to her skin. She pulled at her blouse, wanting more than anything to feel his bare skin against hers, lifting the hem in bunched fists. As he kissed her cheek, she turned her head and saw the pale, glowing slash on his wrist. It hit her like ice water.
“What...?”
Ink froze. He didn’t need to ask what she’d seen.
He gasped quietly into her hair, the sound of it deep in her ear, before he lifted himself up, turning his left hand over. The signatura looked like a jagged crescent moon.
“It’s a mark,” he said. Catching his breath, he swallowed. “Grimson’s mark.” He kissed her temple once, as if saying goodbye to the moment. “He lays claim on those who have murdered someone of the Twixt.”
Joy twisted beneath him, no longer burning with need. “Did Inq put it there?”
“It is her job,” Ink said. “It was my doing.”
“But...” She struggled to understand. “I thought marks were meant for humans? I didn’t think the Folk marked one another!”
Ink sat up, the muscles of his chest bunched and taut as if he were expecting a blow. He hung his head, ashamed. “You have seen Inq,” he said. “She is covered in marks, proof of her experiences. I think she likes to collect them like trinkets or boys, as if they might somehow tie her tighter to the world.” Ink touched the spot on his wrist as if he could feel its foreignness, someone else’s signatura on his skin. “That is what marks are for, of course—tying our two worlds together, keeping the magic that binds us alive with so much string.”
Joy traced the edge of his pinkie finger, not daring to touch the sigil. “I don’t understand,” she said finally. “I know you and Inq mark humans for the Folk, but not why the Folk need to mark things in the first place.”
Ink turned his hand over, breaking her touch, and threaded his fingers together over his knee with a sigh.
“Imagine a dirigible,” he said.
“A what?”
He paused. “A hot air balloon,” he amended.
“Oh,” she said, tugging her plastered shirt away from her skin and leaning back on her pillow. “Okay.”
“The lines tether the balloon to the basket, or to the ship cabin. Without the ropes, the craft cannot steer or fly and the balloon will drift away, without direction. Both parts need to be bound to the other in order to sail the skies. Without strong tethers, each is lost.” He leaned back, pulling his arms taut and squeezing his knee. “So, signaturae are what tether us, binding our worlds together and us to one another. Sever the bonds or fail to have enough of them secured, and the Council fears our worlds will fly apart. We offer our True Names as a promise to uphold our auspice and keep the world’s magic alive.”
Joy hesitated, uneasy and uncertain. “A promise to who?”
Ink shrugged, a play of muscles and limbs. “To those who now exist beyond our reach,” he said. “And you know the Folk do not take promises lightly.” He sighed, and the mattress shifted beneath him. “In the beginning, the Folk claimed the land and a few mortal bloodlines as theirs, but since much of the land has been lost or damaged, the Folk needed to mark more humans—those who possess a bit of magic or fall under someone’s auspice.” Ink shrugged. “If someone survives a plane crash, that person can be claimed by whoever watches over survivors of the sky. If someone is lost in the woods—” he glanced at Joy, who swallowed back the bitter memory of wet leaves and burning flesh “—then that person might be claimed by the creature that rules there. And if someone intentionally kills one of the Twixt...” Ink’s voice hardened. “Then he shall bear Grimson’s mark forever.”
Joy stared at Ink. She barely breathed. This maudlin streak was unlike him, just as unfamiliar as his passionate crawl across her bed. It was as if his feelings had boiled to the surface, raw and unfamiliar, fresh and overwhelming, as if he’d never felt them before. And, she realized, he hadn’t—he hadn’t ever—not before he’d met Joy.
He had never taken a life or had another’s sigil mar his skin. He had told her as much when he’d gone after Briarhook. Inq had told Joy that she would be his very first kiss. His first lehman. His first love. His first heartbreak. Everything was firsts with Ink. Life was new—wonderful, disappointing, joyous, crushing—and he was feeling it all because of Joy. He’d once told her that he’d been proud of his purpose to safeguard his people; it was the reason that he and Inq had been created, after all. He could be counted on to protect the lives of the Folk—that was why they’d had to pretend to be lovers, to disguise the fact that he had made a mistake in marking Joy, because the Scribes had to be infallible, reliable, always. Their world, the world of the Twixt, depended on it. That integrity was his rock, the one thing he knew about himself, and now it was gone.
He stood up and crossed the room. Joy struggled to sit up. Her skin tingled. Her legs ached. The space on the bed was fast cooling and damp.
“I have always wanted to do good work,” he said, sliding the wallet chain through his fingers. “Yet I have also wanted to be more, and that was my failing.” Ink finally lifted his fathomless eyes to Joy—the hurt and confusion there was childlike and torn. “There is no greater loss than the loss of one of our kind, if only because we are so few.” His breath was coming shallow and fast. Joy felt she should do something, but didn’t know what. “As a Scribe, I was created to keep the Folk from harm—from human harm!—and now this.” His hands were open, helpless, exposing the stain on his wrist.
“Is this what it means to be more human, Joy?” His crisp, clean voice had a slicing edge. “I ended a universe of possibilities to save another universe of possibilities because I valued those more. Because that future was yours. Because you mean more to me than the life of someone I have never met who meant to do you harm.” He struggled with it, almost pleading; his chest heaved with the need to get the words out. He touched the space over his heart with hooked fingers, indenting the skin as if he could tear the feelings from his body.
“Do you understand?” he asked desperately. “I killed.”
The words fell like stones from the aether, heavy and burning. Even when she’d thought he’d murdered Briarhook for kidnapping her and burning his brand onto her arm, Ink had not killed him—he’d taken the giant hedgehog’s heart and placed it in an iron box. She’d seen Briarhook afterward with her own eyes, fighting in the battle against Aniseed with a metal plate welded to his chest—hideous, but alive.
But the blood-colored knight was dead.
She sat, stunned silent. She didn’t know what to do or say. She knew she could offer to erase Grimson’s mark but that Ink would hate it if she did. There were some things that could not be undone. She watched Ink’s hands cup his shoulders, his forearms crossing to hide his face; his every motion was filled with revulsion and shame. He had become something he didn’t recognize, all for the love of her. Joy twisted her fingers miserably.
“I killed him,” he said to the wall, to the floor. “Because he would have killed you—because I believed he would have killed you—because I believed he would have harmed you, although I had no proof.”
“He was going to kill me,” Joy said at last. “And he said that he’d kill you, too.”
Ink bumped the back of his head against the wall and dropped his arms. “I asked him to yield,” he lamented. “Why would he not yield?”
Joy shivered from more than the cold. She hugged her arms. “It was self-defense. Or in my defense,” she said. “You didn’t mean to kill him.”
“I did,” Ink said, still not looking at her. He placed his hands against the wall, studying his fingers, the lines of knuckle and cuticle and tendon they’d drawn together. The hands that he’d fashioned based on hers. The hands he’d used to take a life in her name. “I wanted to kill him and anyone who would harm you in any way.” He all but growled. Joy held her breath. “And when it happened, it happened so quickly, all I could think was that it was over too fast. That I was not done with him yet,” Ink said. “And then he was dead and I could not believe such a thought had ever existed inside me.”
Bared to the waist, he shivered. Rain still wet his skin. A few drops ran down the ridges of his ribs—the ones that they had sculpted together, the ones that heaved in fright. He glanced at her suddenly, pinning her fast.
“I disgust you.”
Joy gasped, “No!”
“I should,” he said. “I disgust me.” He ran clawed fingers through his hair, throwing water to the wind. “I have never understood war or killing or death. To protect, one can wound or warn or disable. But death? Death is final.” Ink rested his hands back on his hips; the chain on his left swung violently against his leg. He turned aside, rubbing his face in his hands. The sign of the ouroboros, a giant dragon swallowing its own tail, spun lazily between his shoulder blades. The scales flashed like reverse splashes of light.
“Is this what it means to love, Joy? To be loved?” he asked with bitter laughter. “To be willing to destroy anything and anyone else in your name?” He dropped his arms and looked back at her, broken, lost. It bruised something inside her. “Because, if I am honest, I would do it all again. Willingly, gladly. I would damn myself and call it love if I knew it would keep you safe.”
Joy crossed the room and took his hands. “No,” she said quickly. “No. It was a choice in a moment. You made a tough choice. You killed him and you saved me.” She stroked the inside of his palm where they’d drawn a life line together. He placed his hands over hers, squeezing them, and closed his eyes. Joy shivered now with more than the cold. These feelings that she’d given him were crushing him. “It sounds strange to say ‘I’m sorry,’ because I didn’t want to die and I’m glad that you stopped him, but I am sorry for what it’s done to you. For what I’ve done to you,” she whispered. “Even if I didn’t mean to.” She folded his fingers over her own. She wanted to hold him closer but felt she shouldn’t dare. His pain was creating a strange wall around him as unyielding as stone. Tears threatened. Her breathing grew stuffy. How could she explain? She was responsible; she had to make him understand. She squeezed harder. “That’s not love, Ink. But this is.” She lifted their hands together so he could see them. “This.”
His eyes stayed on their joined hands, fingers threaded together, like the first time.
“I love you, Ink,” she said and kissed his fingers, pressing her lips gently against each knuckle. Ink swallowed, the motion flickering in his throat. His eyes slipped closed and he took a deep breath. His thick lashes parted, revealing eyes like starless night.
“I love you, Joy,” he said. “No matter what, I will always love you.” His fingers tightened over hers. “But it frightens me more than I thought it would.”
“Me, too,” she said, trying to soothe the person she’d taught to feel. They held one another in the dark. “Me, too.”
FIVE (#ulink_027b6b35-f24d-5cd9-936e-6b18be734cf0)
STEF’S WELCOME HOME dinner featured a variety of his favorite takeout, including fried shrimp, cold sesame noodles, pulled-pork sandwiches, spicy hot wings, Greek salad, jambalaya and gooey potatoes au gratin. Stef was always hungry and Joy was hypoglycemic, but Shelley looked more than slightly alarmed at the amount of food the Malone family could put away.
“I don’t understand how you can stay so thin,” she said. “It’s inhuman.”
Joy snorted a laugh but managed to cover it with a sip of lemon seltzer.
“Dad used to say I made a pact with the devil.” Stef grinned.
“No, I said you were a devil,” Dad said. “I remember this one time Stef wanted to see if he could do stunts on his Big Wheel trike. But did he make a ramp out of a piece of wood and a brick like a normal kid? Oh no! I’m out raking the lawn and turn around to see my only son rolling down the porch banister on his Big Wheel and launch, soaring through the air with the biggest, toothiest grin on his face, and there I was—rake in hand, ten feet away, nothing I could do—and that smug little brat lands right in the middle of my pile of leaves. Stuff everywhere and not a scratch on him. I nearly had a heart attack.”
Everyone at the table laughed, even though there was a tug of pain as Joy remembered the old house with its homey smells of Murphy Oil Soap, old books and slow-brewed coffee. She could imagine the back porch with its peeling white paint and the taste of real lemonade that Mom would make with slices of rind. That was before everything changed—before Doug, before Shelley, before quitting gymnastics and Dad’s black depression. Before the move. Before the Carousel. Before Indelible Ink.
Stef saw the change in Joy’s face and switched the subject quickly.
“So have you two decided how long you’ll take off?” he asked.
Dad put his hand on Shelley’s. “We’re thinking two weeks.”
Joy stopped chewing her spring roll. “Two weeks what?”
Dad tried avoiding her gaze, but Shelley held his hand firmly. If nothing else, Joy appreciated that his girlfriend didn’t let him dodge his way out of confrontation. Another way that she wasn’t like Mom.
“You didn’t tell her?” Shelley asked.
“I did,” her dad said. “Or at least tried to. She wouldn’t stop typing on her phone.”
Joy swallowed. “Tell me what?”
“Shelley and I are planning to spend some time alone this summer, and I’ll be back at the end of August so we can still have some family time with Stef,” he said. “Any of this sounding familiar?”
Unfortunately, it did. Joy stared back, speechless.
“I had to check the dates with work,” Shelley said, taking on some of the blame. “We really didn’t know anything until yesterday morning.”
Joy swallowed her embarrassment along with a forkful of salad. It wasn’t Shelley’s fault. Joy didn’t blame her for wanting some time alone with her boyfriend. And, on the bright side, maybe now she could have more time with her boyfriend. The knight’s death and Grimson’s mark had affected him a lot. She played with her fork as she collected her thoughts.
“So where are you going?” Joy asked with a conciliatory grin.
“To the shore,” her dad said. “We’ve rented a place and a car and we’ll drive around exploring. No phones, no computers, total radio silence and some lovely peace and quiet.” He took Shelley’s hand. “Shelley’s been researching spots online and I have a tour map from triple A.”
“Did you check out that Dare to Tread book I told you about?” Stef asked. “It’s got a lot of great places that are off the beaten path.”
Joy slammed down her knife and glared at her brother, falling right back into that pit of fear that always burned at the bottom of her stomach: that little-kid hurt of finding out only after the fact that she was the last to know everything.
“Wait a minute. How long has Stef known about this?” she asked.
“We had to schedule things around Stef’s arrival,” Dad soothed. “We wanted him to be home for you before we took off.”
Joy slapped down her napkin. “What? Now I need a babysitter?” she asked. “I’m seventeen years old and have been practically on my own for years!”
“Oh, for Pete’s sakes, Joy—” Dad began.
Stef reached for more potatoes. “I’m not babysitting you, so you can quit acting like a baby.”
“I’m not!”
“You are.”
Dad sighed at Shelley. “Did I mention peace and quiet? Less than twenty-four hours and it’s like they’re nine and twelve all over again.” He speared a cube of feta cheese, then pointed it at each of them. “But here’s the difference—I can legally leave the two of you behind as semiresponsible semiadults without the authorities breathing down my neck. So don’t make me regret taking this time for myself and don’t make me think twice, or so help me, I’ll find a way to ground both of you for the rest of the summer. Do I make myself clear?”
Joy and Stef both chewed in their seats.
“Say, ‘Yes, Dad,’” he commanded.
“Yes, Dad,” they said.
“Good. And be sure to call your mother at least once a week. Now pass the chicken.”
Stef lifted the plate obligingly. “You started it,” he fake-coughed into his elbow.
A smirk pulled on Joy’s lips. She tried fighting it and failed. She wiped her lips.
“Did not,” she whispered behind her napkin.
“Did, too.”
“Dork.”
“Dweeb.”
“Lord help me,” Dad muttered, fighting his own grin as he sawed with his knife.
Shelley breathed a little easier and patted his arm. “I just love a man who takes charge.”
Her dad blushed as he took a bite.
* * *
Nine o’clock. Dad and Shelley had gone to her apartment to finish packing for their trip, Stef was meeting some friends at the movies, and Joy sat alone in the condo. Surfing the web, listening to music, Joy toodled around waiting for the numbers on the clock to read one-zero-zero-zero.
The wall of her room unfurled, and Ink stepped through.
Joy’s heart thumped as she removed her headphones and clicked off-line.
“Hey,” she said. “I wasn’t expecting you ’til ten.”
Ink slipped his razor past the wallet chain at his hip.
“I couldn’t wait,” he said.
“You ‘couldn’t’?”
Ink shook his head solemnly. One dimpled smirk. “No.”
Two steps and his arms came around her. She curled into his chest. He held her close and stroked her hair, breathing a sound of relief. Joy rocked in his arms, content. He was getting better at hugs. She wondered which of the thirty-six versions this one was.
“I am sorry,” he said past her ear. “About before. I am still...”
“Shh,” she said, squeezing him tighter. “It’s okay.”
“It is not,” he whispered into the crook of her shoulder. She could feel his breath there, warm and gentle and sweet. “But it will be.”
“Yes,” Joy said, touching his face so that she could see him. “And you’re here.”
Ink chuckled despite himself. “Oh, I am very, very here.” He lifted her hand from his cheek, cupping the back of her fingers in his. He inspected each of her fingertips: pink and perfect. A mischievous spark lit his fathomless eyes, and his eyebrows formed a question.
Joy’s heart pounded. This was their game, invented at her kitchen table the first time they’d created his hands based on hers, tracing life lines and heart lines and the intricacies of each other’s skin as they slowly started to become one another’s—hers, his, theirs. She remembered that moment and he saw the memory spark. He smiled wider.
Joy slowly lifted his left hand in hers.
He will be learning about everything, watching you. Joy remembered Inq’s words as she cradled the back of his hand, feeling his eyes on her as she brushed the side of her cheek with his knuckles, feeling the whisper of his skin on hers. He slowly did the same, sliding the back of her fingers against his cheek, smiling back at her. Joy brought his hand to her lips, opened her mouth and breathed slowly into his palm. His fingers twitched. His breath caught in surprise. She glanced up at him through his fingertips, a slow smile on her lips.
He brought her hand gently to his mouth and copied her, breath for breath, exhaling slowly into the cup of her palm. She could feel the warmth pool there and run rivers down her back.
Joy shivered. Ink smiled.
Joy brought his hand closer, tilting it back. Watching him watching her as she touched her lips to the soft inside of his wrist. His whole arm flinched. The sensation skittered over his features. Hot pink fireflies danced in his eyes.
“Can you feel this?” she asked, the words tickling his skin.
“Yes,” he said. He bent his head forward and bent her wrist back. His lips touched the exact same place—the delicate, exposed skin of her wrist. Joy felt his breath hover there, warm and sweet.
“Can you?” he said. “Feel this?”
“Oh yes,” she murmured and slipped her lips along the edge of his palm. She felt him do likewise. Her breath hitched in her throat. She closed her eyes even though she knew Ink still stared, watching her with impish eyes, learning, hungry, eager for more.
She kissed his skin, her tongue barely touching the barest spot on his wrist. He tasted of water. He tasted like rain.
Joy thought she might melt when she felt him do the same.
Warmth slid down her arm and her elbow twitched, a rippling she felt along the edge of her limbs. Her fingers threaded between his, tightening, drawing him closer, moving his entire arm by the wrist. Sliding her bottom lip over the slick spot of her kiss, she felt Ink’s arm stretch, tighten, pull her closer, heard him shudder on the exhale. Joy scraped her bottom teeth over the dip in his palm.
He grabbed her fingers tightly, a groan slipping from his lips. She felt an answering sound somewhere deep in her throat. Joy rolled her head back as she felt his teeth graze her palm. A nip. A bite.
“Ow!”
Ink dropped her hand instantly. He looked worried, flushed.
“Are you hurt?” he asked.
Joy rubbed her wrist. “No,” she said with a chuckle. “You bit me.”
“And that was wrong.”
Joy tried not to laugh too hard. “It was...more than I expected.”
Ink cocked his head to one side. “You bit me first.”
He sat on the edge of her bed, and Joy sat next to him. He took her hand back tenderly and traced his thumb over the spot, soothing it with circular strokes. Joy felt the tensions—both good and bad—pass. Glancing at each other, they both started laughing, transforming two awkward, separate people into “us, together.”
“I am sorry,” he said.
“Don’t be,” she said. “I’m not.”
“I am learning.”
“You are learning.”
A dimple reappeared. “Some things are eagerly taught.”
Joy felt the heat of the blush on her cheeks. Was she supposed to feel wrong for wanting? For showing? Asking? Knowing? Well...she didn’t. So there.
Ink drew his thumb along the “7” in her palm. “I like what I have learned,” he said. “I like learning with you.”
Joy grinned. “I’ll bet.” She caught his fingers, giving his knuckles a quick kiss. His eyes crinkled in the corners. A second dimple appeared. Joy couldn’t help laughing as her heart skipped a beat. His moods were so honest and wondrous and new. He didn’t make her feel bad for feeling the same.
He rested their hands on his knee, a tangible tangle of Joy and Ink.
“I wanted to see you before I confront the Council,” he said. “I am requesting proof of the Edict and an investigation of the elemental blade. Graus Claude has arranged an audience using his ‘considerable pull,’ which I can only imagine means that he will be asking me for some sort of favor later on that will undoubtedly be steeped in mystery and intrigue as the Bailiwick has a finger in every pie.” Ink rubbed their joined hands against his knee, making his wallet chain jingle. He stared at their fingers. Joy squeezed. He squeezed back. “But I do not want to go. I do not want to leave you.”
“I know.”
“You are safe in your home. The wards...”
Joy smiled again. “I know.”
His eyes lifted, his voice, sincere. “I will be back soon.”
Joy nodded, unblinking. “I’m sure it will only take a moment.”
Ink smiled. “If that.”
He stood, the wallet chain slithering off his hip. Joy untangled her fingers and tugged the edge of his sleeve. She slid her palm over his chest and placed a kiss on his cheek that made him turn and look deeply into her eyes. He kissed her, not quite gently, not quite shyly, a moment that stretched and yielded under their lips. Their mouths lingered, his breath and hers mixed.
“Be well, Joy Malone,” he whispered.
His hand slipped into his back pocket and removed the razor, drawing it swiftly sideways and down. Slicing a hole in the universe, Ink peeled away a flap of nothing at all. He stepped back and disappeared, leaving the tingle of his words still sparking on her lips.
* * *
Antoine’s. Lunch shift.
Joy sniffed her sleeve as she folded napkins around flatware, thankful that Monica had promised to help wash the car that afternoon, something to keep her mind off Ink. Stef had agreed to help, too, on the condition that Joy help him lug Dad’s storage boxes out of his room and into the basement and they’d reward themselves with pizza and gelato all around. It promised to be quite the party once she could get out of here.
“Specials list will be up in five!” someone called from the back.
Joy hurried through her last five sets, knowing she needed enough time to write down the new menu items before they threw open the doors. She dropped the last napkin onto her pile and crowded next to the other servers, furiously scribbling the details of the salade Niçoise and the ingredients in the soup of the day. Food allergies were a server’s worst nightmare.
“Good morning,” Neil said over Joy’s shoulder.
“Good afternoon,” Joy said with a quick smile. “Dine here often?”
Neil laughed. “Listen, about yesterday...”
“No big.” Joy shrugged. “I have a boyfriend.”
“As well as a lovely Bic pen,” Neil said, smoothing away the ripples of an awkward conversation before it started. “Pens are so twentieth century, don’t you think? Observe.” He snapped a photo of the specials board and waggled his smartphone. “Come! Join us in the modern age—half the time at twice the price.”
“That’s brilliant!” Joy said and ran to her purse. Grabbing her phone, she swiped the screen only to feel a large hairline crack under her thumb. A triangular piece of the casing was missing. She could see the silver and green of microchips. “No...” she moaned. “No no no no!” She pressed buttons, tried resetting, nothing. The face stayed blank. It must have broken when she and Ink... Joy blushed at the memory of knocking everything off her bed stand. She remembered hearing something break...
“Argh,” she muttered. Dad and Shelley were leaving in a few hours! No way Dad was going to get her a new phone, and the idea of going two weeks without one was too horrible a fate. Dad might welcome a vacation from technology, but that would be more like a nightmare for Joy. She briefly wondered if she’d bought extra insurance. She’d have to stop by the store later and ask. Joy shuddered at the idea of having to buy a replacement—one more thing she’d have to save up for, not including a glamour for Ink.
Tossing the useless hunk of plastic back into her purse, Joy hurried back to the specials board, whipping out her pen.
“Forgot your phone?” Neil asked.
“I wish,” Joy said, scribbling words like ahi tuna and anchovies and smearing the blue ink. “It’s broken.”
Neil whistled through his teeth. “Sorry. That sucks.”
Joy grumbled and scribbled down the last details as Neil tucked away his cell. He lingered by the board.
“Can I ask you something?” he said.
Joy double-checked the prices. It was a mistake she’d like to make only once this summer. “Yeah, sure.”
“That friend of yours, the one who stopped by the other day? Miss Ice-water-hold-the-glass?”
Suspicion prickled up Joy’s arms. “Yeah?”
“Is she seeing someone?”
Joy laughed. “Um...no. I mean, yes. She’s seeing someone...” Joy thought about the Cabana Boys—Luiz, Tuan, Antony, Enrique, Ilhami and Nikolai, as well as the indomitable Kurt—all hard bodies and exotic faces. Joy was afraid Neil didn’t quite fit the bill. “Um...several someones, in fact.”
Neil raised his eyebrows. “Really?” he said, patting his stiff spikes of hair. He went back to texting and shook his head. “Man,” he whispered under his breath. “That is so hot.”
* * *
Goodbye, Shelley! Goodbye, Dad! Hello title transfer! And now for a hot date with a sponge...
Joy scrubbed the last crusty bits from the windshield. She wasn’t sure if it had been bird poop or squashed bugs from the road, but she planned on throwing the rag in the garbage and soaking her hands in bleach.
“I’m washing it right now,” Joy said into the house phone tucked by her ear. “There are Cheeto stains on the ceiling, Mom. The ceiling!” She sighed in disgust. “Your son is the messiest driver who ever lived.”
“Is he there?” her mom said. “I told him to call as soon as he got there.”
“He went out to get Turtle Wax,” Joy said and wiped her bangs out of her eyes. “Why does anyone need to wax turtles? Their shells are already so shiny.”
“I’m sure I don’t know,” her mom said. “You never had any interest in pets.”
“Does an iPad count as a pet?”
“Har-har. Just tell him to call me later, okay?” she said. “I have to go meet Doug at the gallery. I love you, I’m glad you have a car, I’m proud of you, please remember to eat something that does not have a foil wrapper and—oh, by the way—I love you. Did I mention that already?”
Joy squeezed the rag in her hand. “I love you, too, Mom.”
“Bye, Joy. Hugs to Stef.”
Joy hung up and slipped the phone into the glove compartment to keep it dry. Soapy water ran by her feet and into the gutters, trickling over her toes. She still felt damp after using the hose—Monica and Gordon’s offer to help was much appreciated but also far soggier than she’d anticipated—but they’d agreed that the outside of the car had been a lot easier to clean than the inside. Stef’s car was a free gift in a very smelly wrapper.
They’d attacked the Kia with sharp-smelling fluids and thick, bubbly suds, using rags and old toothbrushes and toothpicks along the seams. They’d played “spray tag” across the backyard, yelling and ducking, before Stef bequeathed the hose to Gordon and ran to the C&P to get more wax. Monica was scrubbing the rear bumper, soaped to the elbows. Gordon aimed a tight spray near the back wheels.
“Hey!” Monica’s voice spiked from behind the trunk. “If you spray my feet one more time, I swear I’m going to come over there and force-feed you this sponge!”
Gordon fixed Joy with comically wide eyes, then sprayed again. Monica shrieked.
Gordon winked as Joy laughed. “Oops.”
Monica less-than-gracefully stumbled to her feet, her orange tank top soaked over a flower-patterned bra. She threw the sudsy sponge at her boyfriend, which Gordon dodged easily. He sprayed her again in self-defense, laughing and backing up, but not fast enough to avoid getting tackled into the yard. Bits of freshly mowed grass clung to their bodies as they rolled over the hose, fighting for the nozzle and getting drenched. They yelled and squealed as Joy wiped down the side mirrors. She ignored them until she got a cold splash across her back.
“Hey!” she shouted and whipped around. Monica waved a sorry and went back to wrestling her beau.
“Ah, young love,” Stef said, approaching with fresh rags and a plastic bag. “Or, in this case, a mating ritual courting massive allergies.”
Joy picked at her pruney fingers. “Mom called while you were gone. Call her back. There! My deed is done.” She pointed at the bag. “Found the car wax?”
“Yep. Stored cleverly between the rat poison and boxes of cornflakes. Don’t confuse the two.” Stef held up the small red tin. “Okay, so—first we have to rinse all this off, towel it dry and do an even coat of this stuff. Wait an hour—then wipe it off. Not too hard.”
“Says you,” Joy quipped. “My arms are killing me.”
“Oh, please. I’ve seen you flip twenty times in succession to the operetta from The Fifth Element,” Stef said. “Your wimpy arms can take it.”
“Yeah, well, it’s been a while.” She sniffed. “I’m out of practice.”
Stef crossed his arms in his I’m-coaching-you way. It was so familiar, it made Joy’s stomach lurch with performance butterflies; her body psyched up for a Level Nine routine. For a split second, she was back on the mats with a panel of judges, a crowd in the backdrop and her family near the bench. She could feel the air-conditioning, smell the chalk dust and sweat. It was as if she’d been plunged back years at a glance: her brother’s coaching from the sideline.
“Is that an excuse?” he barked.
“No,” she said. It was her line. “No excuses!”
“That’s right,” Stef said, wagging a finger at her. “You can do this.”
Joy dropped her dirty rag and toed off her flip-flops. Tossing her ponytail, she rolled her shoulders and bounced on her toes. The backyard was open and empty and as green as Abbott’s Field. She whispered words to no one.
“I know I can.”
Dipping her chin, Joy ran for the yard, bare feet clearing the parking barrier and touching wet grass. She felt it tingle up her spine, sending electric pops through her toes. Joy sprang in the dirt into a quick roundoff and slammed a series of back handsprings, fast and tight, in a snapping cycle that felt like flying. She landed in a corner. Everyone had stopped, stunned.
Joy was still moving. She pivoted left, right, and took off again, her mind’s eye imagining the triple twist, double back before it could happen, both knowing that the ground wasn’t a spring floor and that she could do it, anyway. She could feel it. Warmth pulsed up her legs like golden wine, warming her hip joints and filling her lungs, pouring liquid light out her palms.
She ran forward and dived, her fingers squelching in mud and wet grass, slippery and dangerous, but the rush was upon her—she wouldn’t stop, couldn’t stop!—and tucked herself through the spin, landing with an impossible stick. Present left, present right, a split leap and a long, stretched pose, reaching for the sky and straightening her knees, rolling the energy from her heels to her toes, pointing in crisp formation.
Final measure. She lifted her chin: finis!
There was a scatter of applause from other windows in the complex. A couple of whistles and a hooting shout. Joy blinked. She’d collected quite an audience. She stood up shyly as she lifted out of her performance trance, doing a little bow and a wave for the kids in the corner condo.
Monica and Gordon clapped wildly from their spot in the grass.
“WOO!” Monica hollered, spinning fists over her head.
“Wow!” said Gordon. “That was incredible.”
Stef ran over, eyes wide, mouth open, caught somewhere between awe and concern.
“What was that?” he said and patted her arms as if checking to be sure she was all still there. She breathed deeply, bright and beaming, and wiped at the grass sticking on her palms.
“That was awesome!” she said.
“That was insane,” Stef snapped. “Are you kidding me? You could have broken your neck! This is soft ground with loose grass and way too small...” He shook his head and helped wipe off green bits with a rag. “Seriously, Joy, what were you thinking?”
She picked bits of weeds off her tank top. “I wasn’t thinking,” she admitted.
“Yeah, got that.” Now that the shock was over, her brother sounded angry. “I thought you said you haven’t hit the mats in over a year,” he said, turning her around to wipe her back. “I’ve never seen you that crisp. Not in ten years—maybe ever. You looked Elite. I have no idea how you got that air...” He stopped as she shook out the end of her ponytail. She turned around curiously. His eyes had gone flat, his mouth a tight, thin line. She hadn’t realized she’d made him so upset.
“Sorry,” she said.
His eyes flicked up to her eyes. He held her shoulder hard, either steadying her or ready to shake some sense into her. “Are you okay, Joy?” he asked suddenly. “Do you feel okay?”
“Yeah,” Joy said, confused and suddenly every inch his little sister. “Just winded. Adrenaline crash imminent, but otherwise, I’m fine.”
Stef’s face was pale. The rag fell from his hand. He bent to pick it up and his voice was strained and strangely subdued. “You should go inside and eat something.”
At the mention of food, her whole body tingled. “Good idea,” she said and examined his face. “Are you okay?”
Stef looked alarmed by the question.
Monica slammed into her back, throwing her dark arms around Joy’s neck.
“You were amazing!” she gushed. “A one-woman show!”
“That was seriously awesome,” Gordon said. “I never knew you could trick.”
“Eleven years of gymnastics,” Joy murmured, still looking at Stef, who was busying himself with the wax. She felt like she was seven years old, the day after the talent show, ashamed and self-conscious for showing off at school. “I’m going inside to grab an apple,” she said. “Anyone want anything?”
“How about another towel?” Gordon suggested as he sprayed Monica’s toes. With a squeal and a shout, they were at it again. Stef shook his head.
Feeling oddly chastened, Joy nodded and left.
She rubbed her hands together as she took the stairs, the tight tingling in her fingers and a slight woozy sensation telling her she’d burned too much too fast and needed to refuel. Of course, she should have expected the glucose drop after her wild little stunt in the yard—no warm-up, no practice and on inadequate turf—Stef was right, she’d been stupid. And her and Monica’s motto was No Stupid. She could have easily slid into the pavement or hit the fence or landed on her head. She still nursed the injury of two broken toes from that time she’d blown an aerial, and that was back when she was in top form, with her coach in the gym and all the safeties in place. Today, she had just been...reckless. Maybe she could blame it on summer? Ever since she’d been barefoot outside, she’d been itching to really move. She’d barely enjoyed any sun since she’d started working at Antoine’s. The long days had become all about earning money, which sucked, but now there was a promise of obtaining a glamour: the carrot at the end of a very long stick.
She hopped onto the landing and let herself into the condo, entering the security code and thinking maybe she’d invite Monica and Gordon to go out dancing and blow off some steam. Neil had said that there was some party going on at the beach. She hadn’t considered going because she didn’t want him to think that he was asking her out.
That was the trouble with having an invisible boyfriend; it was hard to appear to be a couple when the guy in question never appeared.
Joy grabbed one of the oranges out of the bowl on the counter, but it was gushy to the touch. She put it back, opting for a couple of bananas and a stack of whole wheat crackers. She checked the fridge for some cheese, making a mental note to add sharp cheddar to Stef’s growing grocery list. As she shut the fridge, Joy caught a glimmer on the very edge of her Sight.
It wasn’t the flash of splintered light that she’d experienced when Ink first cut her eye, but it brought the same chilly wariness that she could feel in her lungs, edgy and tight.
She kept her hand on the fridge, replaying her footsteps in her head: Had she accidentally stepped over a ward? Dialed a combination? Triggered a key? She swore at herself for being lazy; she couldn’t forget how easy it was to become someone else’s plaything, someone else’s prey. In the Twixt, Folk were cats and humans were mice.
But she was no mouse.
Joy cautiously let go of the handle and tried to locate the source of the spark. It had the same sort of shimmer that she associated with the Twixt. If she could catch sight of it again, she’d probably know for certain—she, like Ink and Inq, could see signaturae, unlike the rest of humans and Folk—but there shouldn’t be anything here inside Ink’s wards. He’d checked them so carefully. No one could be inside the house!
She retraced her steps, drifting past the counter, opening the fridge, carefully peeking around the corner while keeping her eye on the kitchen window to catch any reflections. Joy wondered how she’d ever felt safe with her head stuck in the fridge. She closed the door and saw it again.
It was reflected in the stainless steel, milky and indistinct.
Joy looked behind her—nothing. Even with the Sight, there was only her ordinary kitchen with her ordinary snacks on the ordinary countertop. She edged closer to the refrigerator; the sunlight from the kitchen window was bright on her shoulder, warming her skin through the air and glass. Maybe that was it? A flash of sunlight on skin?
Not likely.
As she turned, she saw it again: a flash reflection. Her whole body tingled. It was something on her.
Joy remembered when she’d been first marked by Ink, when he’d attempted to obey the law of the Twixt and blind a human with the Sight, but he had missed, accidentally scratching her cornea instead. The wink of light that had speared her eye hadn’t been the wound; it had been his signatura drawn directly on her eye. She remembered the sort of Flash! Flash! she’d had when seeing things in the Twixt for the first time: horrible monsters and fabulous creatures and the glowing shapes of signaturae on skin. This was the same sort of flickery brightness, the same sort of echo of light.
Her stomach dropped with an odd twist of shame and nervous dread. She ran to the bathroom and switched on the light. Removing her shirt, she sat on the sink with her back to the mirror and, twisting awkwardly, tried to see what it was.
There was a ghostly smear stuck to her skin.
Joy reached her hand over her shoulder and tried to touch it, but it was too far down her spine. She tried reaching behind her back, but it was too high, out of reach, like an impossible itch. She pulled the skin at her shoulder and saw it move. There was definitely something there. Joy squinted, but it was cloudy and vague, unlike the clear designs of True Names. It wasn’t the black of Ink’s marks or the pale watermarks of Inq’s reverse-henna tattoos, but Joy recognized what it was just the same.
A chilly sort of horror crept up her arms. She knew.
She’d been marked with someone’s signatura.
* * *
Joy sank to the floor, her legs weak with fear. She’d been marked—not by Ink or Inq or anyone that she knew. The knowledge squirmed inside her, setting off sparks in her brain. How was that possible? She hadn’t seen anyone! She hadn’t seen it happen, and for some crazy reason Joy thought, after everything she’d been through, she ought to have felt something happen, at least.
She crumpled against the wall. After all Ink’s efforts to keep her safe, to keep her unclaimed and free, she’d been marked, tied to some stranger in the Twixt. Her mind spun with the implications: Who? How? When? Why? With someone already out to kill her, the mark on her flesh felt like a beacon. Joy felt inexplicably violated, exposed. I can’t believe this! What happened? What could she do? What would she tell Ink?
Oh my God. Ink!
Joy remembered his rage when Briarhook had branded her. He’d been livid, a sharp, deadly quiet, and when he’d returned to Graus Claude’s, his arms had been soaked to the elbows in blood. She’d thought for certain he’d killed the gruesome hedgehog and his sneering accomplice, Hasp. She’d been horrified at his violence and herself for feeling avenged, but she had felt it all through a woozy thickness that had been her healing trance that night. Whatever Kurt had given her had left her memories both foggy and bright, but she could still see the vivid streaks of blood against the sink’s porcelain knobs and what it was like to see Ink’s signatura for the first time: an ouroboros, a living tattoo winding over his back.
Yet Briarhook lived because Ink valued life, instead cursing him to earn back his heart, now kept in an iron box. Ink said that he had never killed another living being...until now. What would he do if he found out that she’d been claimed by some stranger? Would he hunt down whoever was responsible, only to later be crushed with self-loathing and remorse? She pictured him hugging his arms over his head in misery. Joy never wanted to see him like that again.
Grabbing her purse from the hallway, she took out the scalpel. She returned to the bathroom, turned her back toward the mirror and tried catching the edge of the blade under the newfound mark. The blade head slipped, snagging nothing. She tried again. Either she couldn’t get the right angle or she was doing something wrong. Maybe it wasn’t a real signatura? Maybe it was too fresh? Maybe it was something else? Joy wasn’t completely clear how signatura worked, and since she didn’t know whose it was or where it had come from, perhaps that made it impossible for her to erase? She’d only ever removed four signaturae from her skin: Ink’s, Inq’s, Briarhook’s and Aniseed’s. Of course, that was four more than anyone else had ever managed, and the reason that the Council was interested in her still. She felt stupid for having assumed that removing anyone’s signatura would be just as easy and then furious to be proven wrong now.
Why NOW?
She kicked the linen door in frustration and stretched her arm farther, straining her shoulder and wrist. She felt the blade skip against her skin and realized that she’d probably cut herself before she’d do any good. She tried to remember what it felt like to slice Briarhook’s brand off her arm, erase Aniseed’s mark in the air or slowly fuse Inq’s belly closed—that oily, slick, reverse-spark of undoing.
Whatever it had been like, this wasn’t it.
She dropped her arms and examined the shape: it was a roughly circular blob, runny and blurred. She blinked and tried another angle. Squinted. No use. She couldn’t make it out and she couldn’t risk asking Ink. Joy knew she had to get rid of it before he found out and did something...horrible. She didn’t want to be responsible for hurting him again.
Dropping the scalpel back into its pocket, Joy picked up her brand new phone—replaced thankfully under warranty—and prayed that all her data was retrievable from the cloud once her transfer was confirmed, but she couldn’t access her contacts list until then. She ran to her room and opened her desk drawer, rifling through old papers, library cards, business cards, magnets and Post-it notes, excavating the one she’d hoped to find: a crisp piece of card stock with exquisite penmanship. Graus Claude’s voice mailbox was a convenient 800 number.
She dialed quickly, waiting for the automatic voice stating its standard instruction that she could please record her message after the beep.
“Hi, this is Joy,” she said, feeling foolish. “I have something I have to show you.” She added, “Alone. My cell phone’s reestablishing voice mail, so please call or email. I’ll check for messages until I hear from you. It’s kind of urgent. Thanks.” She recited her phone number and spelled out her email address and hung up, wondering if she was making things worse.
Ink trusted the noble toad absolutely, but Inq was suspicious. The Bailiwick already suspects something, Inq had said when they’d been passing off Joy as Ink’s chosen, his lehman. But that was before Joy had proven herself, undoing Aniseed’s pandemic curse, potentially saving both worlds, and falling in love with Ink. Graus Claude knew that she was on their side, didn’t he? He counted her as a friend. A niggling voice chased that thought through her mind. Well, he didn’t actually SAY that he considered her a loyal friend—he’d implied it—but the Folk twist the meanings to suit their own ends. The Bailiwick is no different.
Joy trembled with more than apprehension; she still hadn’t eaten.
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