Invincible (17 page)

Joy was really starting to hate “something like this.”

Anger bubbled beneath her ribs, a hot, roiling acid that slid along her limbs. Her eyes winked with spots of light. She clenched her hands so hard, they shook. She wanted to step outside, take a breath, calm down...but no, that wasn't really true. She didn't want to calm down, she wanted to
explode
!

She thought about making some excuse, running to the car, zipping out to Abbot's Field, flipping across the grassy plain and letting it all go. But she didn't crave the release of her free-form routine, the flips and leaps and three-sixty spins, it was the feel of the earth breaking apart, shattering, embracing her like stone serpents, squeezing her like a cocoon until she burst. Joy could
See
herself becoming something both powerful and pure—a thing of vengeance, rage, unstoppable, invincible.

YES!

The keys were in her pocket. She was a dozen steps downstairs, nearly out the door. A short ride. A quick trip. No one would know. No one could stop her. And then— And then—

A montage of violent, explosive images flashed across her brain: red-eyed golems, orange fur coats, black earth spewing, the Carousel toppling, spinning glow sticks, smashed glass, broken fairy lights—and some deep instinct held her back.

Joy stopped on the stairs. It was an addict's dilemma—to leave it all, shuck her shoes, wade through the lawn, delve through the earth and soil and layers of rock, reach down with the greedy, fiery feel of freedom yet knowing that it would be very, very bad. She wanted to rip the world open, search the planet through the roots of the world, find her enemies—make them hurt, make them pay—and
CRUSH
them...!

A drop of sweat trickled down her spine.

“Hey, Joy?” She turned. Gordon waved from the dining room. “Give me a hand?”

She dropped the keys in her pocket and took a shaky breath. “Yeah. Okay.”

He pointed to where all the drawers had been emptied of silver and cloth napkins were now repacked, the dishes had been piled neatly in stacks on the table and the pictures were once again arranged on the walls. Only the chandelier hung at a disconcerting angle, half-yanked from the ceiling, dangling by thick wires. Gordon pointed up.

“I don't want to stand on the table, but we have to feed the wires back into the drywall and hold the whole thing up while screwing it back in place.” There was a short stepladder next to the wall. “I can hold it up or you can hold it up, but it's a two-man job.”

“Or woman,” Joy said. “Any prefs?”

“You any good with tools?”

“I have opposable thumbs,” Joy said.

Gordon chuckled. “Excellent. You hold it. I'll screw.”

Joy bit the inside of her cheek as she stood on the table and lifted the heavy light fixture. “You've been hanging out with Monica too long,” Joy grunted. “Haven't you heard of innuendo?”

“Innuendo in, innuendo out...” Gordon muttered as he stood on the top step of the ladder and began tightening screws with quick twists of his wrist. Joy could feel the threads catch as they sank deep into the wood. It shook the glass crystals by her face. Gordon smiled and continued thumbing screws into the ready-made holes. “Can I ask you something?”

Joy shifted her grip. “Sure.”

“Do you know what's up with Monica lately?”

Joy was glad—briefly—that she didn't have a heart because she was afraid it would be beating triple time and he would hear it, but she wasn't part-Twixt for nothing. She knew how to dodge. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, first Monica's in the hospital, then she gets all secretive—stops talking, stops texting, breaks some dates—then her house gets tossed and you—you're always there,” he said with a hint of suspicion. He shook his head as he twisted the screwdriver. “I mean, is it just me?” He shifted his grip. “I know she's not the together-all-the-time type, and I get that, which is good, but there's this distance creeping in and I don't know what to think.” He ground the screwdriver harder. “But I feel like if I don't do something, it's over.” He shot Joy a quick look over his elbow, checking her face. “You're her BFF. So I'm asking you, friend-to-friend, if there's somebody new.” Gordon sounded grim. “Is she interested in someone else? Was she really at your house or am I just an idiot?”

“You're not an id—” Joy said.

“Look,” he said, cutting off her protest. “This isn't an ego thing. I just want to know if she's going to break up with me again, because we already did that once and it was
not
my idea of a good time, so if I could avoid that, I'd like to do it ahead of schedule.”

Joy frowned. “By preemptively breaking up with her?”

Gordon paused, muscles taut. “Should I?”

“No,” Joy said quickly, feeling the weight of the chandelier lift by inches. “I don't think you should because yes, she was at my house with me and no, I don't think there's anyone else and PS, I don't think she's planning to break up with you, unless, of course, you act like an idiot.” Joy tried to sound stern as the chandelier wobbled and chimed. “If you're going to blame anybody for her weirding-out, it should be me—I've been soaking up a lot of her time with my drama and dragging her into my mess. She's been checking in on me, stopping by, putting me first, mother henning—you know how she is.”

“Yeah, I do,” he said, helping Joy let go. The crystals twinkled back and forth as they steadied its swing. Gordon looked right into her eyes. He was a straight-talker, down-to-earth and vulnerable. So very human. “I know you two are tight, but I also know she's not one to go looking for trouble...unless it's with you.” He stepped down off the ladder. Joy dropped off the table. Their feet met the hardwood floor with a double-strong punch. “Do you know anything about what happened here?”

Something whizzed past the bay window. Joy was grateful it was just a robin and not a pixie or a banshee or an aether sprite. Did she know anything? No, but she suspected it had something to do with the Twixt, and she'd hate to have to try to lie when she really wasn't sure. Instead, she watched the bird peck the grass and take flight.

“No,” she said before turning to him fully. “I don't know what happened or who did this or why and, by the way, I hate feeling helpless about it as much as you do.” Joy tugged her shirt and twisted the hem around her fingers. “I wish I could stop feeling like a lightning rod for bad luck.”

Gordon laughed, down-playing his worry. “Ever thought of getting a four-leaf clover?”

Joy snorted. “Already got one.”

He hooked the ladder over his shoulder and scratched his cheek. “You know I love her, right?”

“Yeah,” Joy said, surprised. “I do.”

“Then watch out for her, okay? The way she would for you.” He pointed a finger at her and it stabbed something inside her, just to the left of guilt. The gesture reminded her of Monica. “I'm trusting you, Malone,” he said. “Remember—No Stupid.”

Joy smiled weakly. “Right,” she said. “No Stupid.”

Ink emerged from the basement, arms empty, his wallet chain trailing a thin wisp of dusty spiderweb. He'd come upstairs quickly. There was something urgent in his eyes.

“We should go,” he said.

It was what he didn't say that scared her.

Joy took the hint and called upstairs, “Hey, Mon? We have to head out.”

There was the drumbeat of Monica's feet taking the stairs double time. “Already?” she said, checking the grandfather clock. “Yikes! Did you call your dad and tell him that you were here all day?”

Joy hesitated. Ink's mouth was a tight, thin line. Her guts clenched like a fist. “Um...”

Mrs. Reid came down from the master bedroom in jeans and a dust-smeared T-shirt, wiping her hands on a rag. “Not a stitch out of place, not a piece of jewelry missing, nothing wrong with the safe...” she muttered as she descended the stairs, stopping to put on her Beauty Queen smile, rich and sweet. She was way better at it than Joy. “You sure you don't want to stay for dinner?” Her eyes reached right into Joy's with a familiarity that ached. “You're more than welcome.”

It was the forgiveness she'd been craving, the moment Joy had prayed for since that terrible day at the hospital, but she knew that this wasn't the time. Not now. She could feel Ink's impatience.

“Thank you,” Joy said, grabbing Ink's hand. “But I've got to get home. We left in kind of a hurry and I didn't tell Dad where we were.”

“I understand,” Mrs. Reid said. “Thank you both for coming.” She put an arm around Monica. “It's good to have good friends.” She nodded to both Joy and Ink. “Be good, now. God bless.”

Monica grabbed Joy in a hug. “Thank you,” she said.

“Thank
you
,” Joy whispered back. “Remember, you're
my
best friend, too.” They let each other go. “I'll call you soon,” Joy said as Ink opened the door. Gordon lingered near Monica and pointed a warning finger at Joy. Joy pointed a finger back.
Got it. No Stupid.

She made a beeline for the car. By some miracle Ink had parked it on the curb and not on the sidewalk. Joy made certain to run on the asphalt, even avoiding the tiny bits of grass eking up through the cracks. She didn't trust herself. She didn't trust the Earth. She wanted it too much. She could taste the tang of metal on the back of her tongue.

“What's going on?” she whispered.

“Something set off the wards.”

“Here?” Joy said. “Already?”

“No,” Ink said, circling the white Ferrari 486. “Your house.”

“My house?” Joy said, jumping into the driver's seat and slamming the door. “What's at my house?”

“I do not know,” Ink said, buckling in. “But it is most persistent.”

Joy gripped the wheel. That didn't make sense. She wasn't there and neither was Graus Claude. No one could have tracked them there. The only one home was—

“Stef!” she yelped.

She yanked the car into gear, peeled into the street and hit the button on the dash that slammed them into slipdrive; but not before a familiar twinkle caught the corner of her eye.

Sol Leander stood by the azaleas, glowering in his starlight cloak.

* * *

The car appeared on the grass, slamming with a sudden break of g-force and magic. Joy barely shut off the engine before she grabbed her scalpel. Ink circled the car quickly, razor in hand, and they both ran straight for the gate.

Ink laid a hand on the keypad. “It is not a counterspell,” he said. “Nor a breach.” Ink flipped his grip. “The wards have activated. Therefore, it is an intruder.”

Joy ran through the courtyard, scanning with her Sight. “But they didn't break the wards?”

Ink paused. “They did not have to,” he said. “I made a gap. For the satyr.”

Joy gagged, tasting bile. “Dmitri's doing this?”

“He would not give me his True Name,” Ink said. “So I opened the window for the Forest born.”

Forest. Satyrs. Golems. Dryads.

Aniseed.

Joy's throat squeezed shut.
“Stef!”

Slicing downward, Ink yanked her through the nothing that smelled citrus-sweet. She blinked in the sudden indoor darkness, the momentary vertigo splintering at the explosive crash of breaking wood. Joy ran down the hall and wrenched open Stef's door.

The golem took up most of the room, shoulders braced against both walls, hemmed in, growling, its ruby-red eyes burning in its flat slab of a face. The wall had been torn open, bits of wood and plaster and glass hung off the frame. Its face was in shadow, but the glyph on its brow burned. The mud golem had gathered an impressive mass before hauling itself through Stef's window, but now it was stuck.

Joy's anger boiled. She knew this thing. Golems had found her in the woods, in the Carousel on the Green, and she'd found one squatting at the feet of that horrid thing in the Glen.

Aniseed's pet.

“You,” she whispered.

It turned its head sharply. Joy looked down.

Stef!

He lay on his bed, motionless, fetal, face turned away.

With a grunt, the golem lifted its foot and brought it down on Stef's skull.

FIFTEEN

JOY SCREAMED AND
kept on screaming.

The golem ignored her, its foot grinding down.

“NO!”

Ink braced himself. “Get d—”

The thing shrieked, a hollow sound that punched her body with the force of gales, knocking Joy into the hallway, slamming her onto her back. She rolled and came up quickly, her fingers scrabbling against the floor. She squinted. Ink shouted something, the words whisked away by the buffeting wind.

The golem ran out of air. Between one breath and another, Joy pounced.

It raised one club-like arm and smashed the wall. Cracks shot through the paint like veins. Chunks of plaster fell from the ceiling, powdering against the floor. Ink switched the straight razor for his obsidian blade, drawing a hasty barrier; a smoky antilight corroded the air with a low, dental buzz. Joy clenched her teeth against the uncomfortable humming in her head. The golem reared back and struck again. A bookshelf shattered. Joy saw nothing but her enemy, its flat face, its burning sigil and its red eyes, hot as coals.

Joy tried to reach for Earth before she even realized it, but she was indoors, trapped inside the human world of plastic and paint—they didn't even have houseplants—so she gathered the feeling of the grass outside in the yard, the bits of dirt, the living world that knew her well. She touched the golem, its body of mud and branches, soil and clay. She fisted her power around it and
pulled
.

Pinhole lights skimmed her vision, the distant voice whispering in her ears. She concentrated with all the hate and fury she felt for its master, the
segulah
witch.

Aniseed!

Joy was suffering, people she loved were suffering, and the suffering wouldn't end until she CRUSHED EVERYTHING THAT STOOD BEFORE HER!
HER ENEMIES WOULD BURN!

The golem bellowed another roar as it beat at the gray, buzzing barrier, the impacts exploding with hissing sparks. The homunculus reeled back, stung. Joy snapped her hand sideways. She felt the coursing, focused energy pour through her, flicking along the baseboards, skittering over the floor like a static shock.

A thousand electric crackles lit up its body, fracturing it from within.

The golem raised its head and
howled
, mouth open, lips peeled back, red eyes bulging like bubbles of lava. Joy slammed her palms against her ears as if she could blot out the noise, but it pierced her brain like the scalpel, driving her to her knees. Ink cringed, then just as quickly, stood up, unaffected—Joy envied that he could shut off his ears.

There was a
crack
of sound and light, and the golem collapsed, disintegrating into steaming hot dust.

Joy pitched backward, the steam baking her face. The buzzing hum continued as Ink slashed the thick clouds. She coughed as her lungs tried to sieve out the air. Falling to her knees, she scrambled, searching the floor...

“Ink!” she screamed, coughing on waves of heat. “Stef!” she cried, fumbling blindly, not knowing where he was.

Spears of light spliced the fog, stabbing sharp arrows through the room. Silence slapped like a bedsheet. Her eyes teared, blinking rapidly against the dust and her mounting fears.

Joy pawed through the blankets, the broken bookcase, the bed.

“Stef?” she choked. “Stef!”

The fog lifted. Her brother's room was a wreck, but there was no sign of him. Joy froze, fingers splayed over the carpet, powdered in clay dust. No body. No blood. Ink stood in front of the ruined window, backlit by the sun. The glyph on the windowsill still shone, intact. Moisture dripped off the end of the knapped and pitted blade.

He dropped to his knees beside her. The room was hot and empty.

“Where is he?” Ink asked. “Did it take him?”

“No,” Joy said slowly, her thoughts whirling. “No, I don't think so...”

She sat down heavily and started laughing. Joy curled over her stomach, suddenly hysterical, keening for breath. Ink touched her tentatively, a gentle brush of frictionless skin. She caught his worried gaze and laughed harder, crying and tugging his arm.

“He's not here!” she gasped. “It wasn't Stef. It was his doppelganger!” She'd recognized the curled position of her brother asleep in his pajamas. “It was magic! An illusion!” she said between breaths. His magical decoy double had fooled someone other than her! “It's a spell that looks like him. He left it asleep on the bed! He must have gone somewhere with Dmitri.” Joy exhaled, relieved, her voice still hoarse and sore from screaming, her fury disappearing with the mist. She surveyed the damage, contained in the one room, and was ridiculously thankful that it wasn't worse.

Ink hovered near her, still clutching the arrowhead and watching her cues—he was still new to things like nuanced facial expressions and the extremes of human emotion. He didn't look reassured by her laughter or her tears or the intense gleam in her eye. She turned and gazed out the broken wall. There was a scattered pile of drywall and glass two floors down.

“Where do you think they've gone?” she asked.

Ink tucked the obsidian blade back into his wallet. “If the wizard wished them gone, they might be anywhere on Earth—I am unfamiliar with the breadth of your brother's power. However, he has yet to display the ability to travel by magic, so they may not be far.”

Wiping away tears, Joy glanced over the mess, stopping when she saw the pile beneath the knocked-over nightstand. There was a clock blinking twelve, Stef's wallet, a box of condoms, his Fossil watch and a broken plastic hook on a bit of string. Joy picked it up. She'd know that piece of plastic anywhere.

“They used a beacon,” Joy said. “I know where they are.”

* * *

Something was wrong. Joy felt it the moment she stepped into the meadow on the edge of the Grove. The creepy, magic feeling reminded her of being inside the Bailiwick—which reminded her of the princess, the King and Queen, and Graus Claude. The grove in the Bailiwick was an exquisite copy of a real, living forest but this—this was real, as real as anything, as wild as any fairy-tale country, a wildness that wasn't hemmed in by fences or projects, cities or farms, or anything human. This was the world as it had been, as it once was, as it had every right to be, and that was both freeing and terrifying.

She didn't belong here.

Ink hovered by her side. There was a sharp
click
as the straight razor snapped open. It would have echoed if the Grove had had walls.

“You feel it, too?” she whispered.

“Yes,” he said simply. “In there.” He indicated the deep woods with his chin.

Joy led the way across the field into the Forest Grove.

The air cooled as the canopy grew thicker, the underbrush cracking under heels and snapping as they passed. Shadows deepened from spring green to emerald, and evergreen to black. She half expected a party of satyrs to come boiling out of the trees, but given the eerie silence, maybe not.

And that was far worse.

She wished that she could somehow sense Stef, but all she had to go on was the gut feeling that Stef would have gone with Dmitri, and Dmitri would have come here. Maybe they'd recognized the golem, too, and come searching for answers. The last place she'd seen one was here in the Grove.

Guarding Aniseed's graftling.

Joy stood in the meadow on the edge of the wood, feeling like she
ought
to have some way to find her brother; they were connected by blood and Earth, after all.
Blood is thicker than water.
Inq was onto something. Joy was used to demanding the impossible from herself and recently, she'd been able to get it.

She slowed, listening. Her body tingled. She felt her senses extend, searching for her brother like a red spot in her head. It wasn't until she was halfway through the forest that she realized that while it felt like she'd been moving, her feet were standing still.

She didn't remember taking off her shoes.

The world flowered open, offering color and fragrance and a taste she could touch.

“Joy?” Ink's voice came from far away, but she shushed him with barely a breath, the air leaking from her lungs. Her eyes unfocused as she sifted through the warm layer of topsoil, sending tentative tendrils spiraling out and she, at the center, drinking it in. Depth had a scent, direction had a flavor, and all that passed through these woods lingered like a ghostly aftertaste on the tip of her tongue. If she could sort through them all, she could find him. She knew it. The thought tickled like delicate ferns and clover, a giggle of movement that brushed the leaves like a breath of wind.

She laughed, her voice pitched low.

“Joy?”

Ink's voice held a hint of warning, but not enough to call her back from exploring the roots of a tree that seemed to recognize the shape of Stef's passing, some odd tidbit of hair or skin or blood. It chilled her and fascinated her and the scent of him was almost within reach...

“Joy!”

She blinked. Trapped, she looked down. She was thigh-deep in earth; a rough hillock had formed around her like an anthill, an avalanche in reverse. Rocks and stones and clods of dirt had gathered to cluster at her feet, surrounding her ankles, pushing together, climbing over one another to worship at her knees. A dry crust had formed, riddled with cracks, protecting her in the center of the moist, brown soil. It was warm and rich and brown and
alive
. Joy fell backward, kicking hastily at the dirt and landing hard on her hip. She extricated herself, flailing and clawing. The connection—if there was one—snapped, broke, gone.

Joy lay on the ground, panting. Ink wound a hand around her forearm and hauled her to her feet. She clung to him, pulling him hard against her, grasping him with both hands and gasping.

“What happened?”

“You called Earth to you,” Ink said. “And it answered.”

“I—” She faltered and slid her hands down her arms, over her stomach, touching her legs. “I didn't—?”

“Change? No,” Ink said. “It stopped. You stopped.” He weighed his words carefully. “I waited to be sure.”

Joy stared at his eyes, endless pools of fathomless black flecked with flashes of neon light. Would he have killed her if she'd changed? Become an Elemental? Broken her promise? What would he have done to protect the Folk from the Destroyer of Worlds?

His eyes begged her not to ask questions she didn't want answered.

“Did you find—?” he asked.

“No,” she said, looking toward the Grove. “I sensed him, but I would have thought we'd be greeted by now.”

Something stirred beyond a distant tree, rippling the leaves. Joy pulled on her shoes and held her scalpel. Ink raised his blade likewise, eyes on the approaching slither of movement. Joy felt the familiar patter along the top of the earth a moment before it reached them in a burst of branches.

Two spears hit the ground with a meaty
chunk-chunk!
Ink whirled around, dropping a ward with a sweep of his razor, golden glitter sparkling as the satyrs came to bear.

Last time she'd seen the troop, they had been alarmed, but Joy had never seen them
livid
; she had no doubt from their faces that the keepers of the Grove would have gladly stabbed her first and asked questions later. They glared at her through the sparkling ward, their serrated spears and yellow teeth bared and glinting.

Joy turned slowly, squinting through the ward's golden veil, taking in the many spears, bows and machete knives pointed straight at her. The satyrs seemed to have materialized from the woods themselves. It made sense, in a way, as they were the keepers of the Grove.

Ink held out his straight razor like a warning between them, staring around the troop through the curtain of his long, black bangs. “What is this?” he asked simply, his voice slicing smoothly through magic and malice. “Why are we greeted in this manner? We mean you no harm.”

Breathing heavily, angrily, and shifting their weapons, the Grove's keepers did not seem inclined to talk. They'd steeled themselves for silence. Most of their faces were wretched. A few bearded faces held back tears. One auburn-haired satyr, younger than the rest, scrubbed a grubby fist against his eyes, leaving a childish smear of grime across his nose and one cheek. Joy hesitated, empathy softening her confusion.

“Please—”

Snarling, the young satyr flung himself at her and was physically restrained by two of his comrades from rushing the ward. His bare chest strained at their heavy arms, his hooves pawing at the ground, his screams drawing spittle.

“She did it! She took it! You did this!
You!
” He lunged in impotent anger. “Where is it? Tell us!
Where?
”

Joy was too surprised to feel anything besides shock. She was more confused than afraid. “What?”

“Tell us where it is,” another voice barked. “Now!”