Invincible (26 page)

“And you,” he said, eyes twinkling at Monica. “Are you certain I cannot convince you to part with your bit of magic stick?”

Monica glanced at Joy again. Her best friend hesitated. “Can it help Joy out there?”

Mr. Vinh's face broke into sly wrinkles. “You are smart to ask. Smarter to stay out of this altogether, but I imagine it's too late for that.” He pointed at his own eyebrow. “You are marked. And you can See them. They don't like that, but they should think twice about interfering if you hold on to that.” He raised two empty hands. “Keep it. For now. But my offer still stands.”

“Okay,” Monica said uneasily. “Thanks.”

Mr. Vinh dipped his brush back into the pot of paint. “Then our business is done,” he said. “Goodbye and good luck.”

Joy paused in the door. “Thanks again.”

Mr. Vinh paused midstroke. “Do not thank me,” he said solemnly. “I expect your brother to do so himself.” He pointed the end of the paintbrush at her. “Go bring your family home.”

Joy nodded. “I will.”

All of them
, she promised herself. And, as they all knew, she couldn't lie.

As they exited the back room, Hai paused from straightening the magazines and put on a pair of Ray-Bans etched with runes.

“Done for the day?” he asked. The other customers barely noticed. Hai was just as good as any of the Folk at speaking in code.

Joy nodded. “Yeah.”

“Good,” Hai said. “Did he tell you that we've sold more in the past month than we have in the past twelve years?” Joy paused, knowing they weren't talking about potato chips. Considering how much Mr. Vinh had quoted her to buy Ink's glamour, she could barely imagine how much money Mr. Vinh was making selling glamours to the Twixt. She remembered the dancers at the Carousel, her head spinning like the glow stick lights. Hai winked. “Yeah,” he drawled. “You should have asked for commission.” He tipped his chin to Ink. “Come back later and I can put a little more chrome reflection on the chain. It's not catching the light quite right.”

Ink nodded as he followed Joy and Monica through the door.

“Artists!” he sighed, sounding exactly like Inq.

TWENTY-TWO

THEY LEFT MONICA
at home behind new wards that included a special dispensation for Sol Leander, should he be needed. Joy didn't like it, but she knew that the Councilex would never harm Monica. Besides, she shuddered to think what would happen if he learned that she and Ink had locked him out a second time.

Monica gave Joy a long hug at the door and pointed a warning finger at Ink. “You watch out for her,” she said. “I am trusting you to keep her out of trouble.”

Ink gave a gentle bow. “No promises, but I shall try my best.”

Monica crossed her arms. “Not good enough.”

“I know.” He said it quietly, sadly, like a confession. “We are a work in progress.”

Monica glanced back at Joy. “Please be careful.”

“I will.”

“You'd better!” Monica held the door open an extra second. “Now go get Stef back!”

“Will do,” Joy said. “Now go call Gordon before he freaks out and buys you something expensive for real. Remember—No Stupid. Talk to him.”

“I will.”

Joy watched the door close, heard it lock and walked with Ink back down the slope of the Reid's front yard. Ink stopped and examined her face. He looked taller, somehow. Older. He placed a kiss on her lips like a fingerprint and brushed an errant strand of hair from her eyes.

“Ready to go?” he asked.

“Yes.” She took Idmona's business card out of her pocket and wrote down the time. The appointment disappeared, reappearing with a confirmation within seconds. Joy took another deep breath. “With a little luck, this plan might work after all.”

Ink smiled. “Do you still have your John Melton's boon?”

Joy patted her wallet with the pressed four-leaf clover inside. “Hey, I may be crazy, but I'm not stupid.” She glanced back at Monica's front door and whispered, “Remember—No Stupid.”

She tore the card in half, and they disappeared.

* * *

“Remember, you cannot linger,” Graus Claude cautioned as Joy paced the length of the underground pool, attempting to reread the scroll in her hands. The words were slippery and wouldn't stay on the page. It was hard to concentrate with the Bailiwick's constant litany of warnings ringing off the subterranean walls. She'd already heard it all.
Danger. Army. Trespass. Capture.
But there was only one word that mattered to her:
Stef.
At this point, she didn't even care about the King and Queen or her ultimate fate. She just needed her family home, together, safe.

The Bailiwick jostled small ceramic cups on his dinner tray. “Even if we theorize that physical contact is required for you to trigger Faeland's natural defenses, there is no guarantee that the shoes will work.” Graus Claude glared at Ink. “You should have consulted me to make the necessary inquiries.”

“You have taught me well, Bailiwick,” Ink said with a bow. “Idmona believes that the boots and gloves will protect Joy from direct contact with the soil. Lining the soles with her own silk should fool the magics into accepting Joy's passage as one of the Folk. And, as she is a proper descendant, it should still satisfy the conditions of Faeland.” Ink looked up curiously at his employer's concern. “Do you doubt Idmona's work?”

The great amphibian's browridge shot up in surprise. “I would never be so bold,” he said. “Or so foolish.”

“Then it shouldn't be a problem,” Joy said. She wiggled her toes in the unfamiliar soft leather, feeling the spongy give of the pads. She'd needed Filly's help to lace them up to her knees and the elbow-length gloves felt strangely elegant. “She said they'd work and so I trust they'll work.” The giant spider-woman had circled Joy's feet, adjusting the leathers and laces for a proper fit, slicing off excess sole with a thin little knife. She'd grown used to the tickle of Idmona's long, stiff hairs and the clunk of her beads, but her many limbs scuttling across the mirror reflections made Joy twitchy. She suspected that Idmona secretly enjoyed scaring her clients. Joy's stomach still felt watery even an hour after they'd gone. “We have plenty of other things to worry about.”

Graus Claude smoothed the collar of his silk jacket and grumbled, “Lest we forget.”

“Are we ready?” Filly said impatiently. Her blue eyes sparkled and her smile was lusty and wide. “What's taking you so long? The spell's not going to cast itself!”

“Someone is anxious,” Ink teased. The young Valkyrie grinned and licked the blue spot below her lip.

“The fun is in the chase,” she said, and shot a wink at Joy. “You should know that by now.”

“This isn't supposed to be fun,” Joy said. “It's about not getting caught. I need you to keep whatever's in there busy until I can track down Stef.” She lifted the dowsing rod. It was hard to feel it through the silk gloves. “Ink will stay with me while we get Stef to accept his True Name. When we give the signal, break for the door.” She blinked into the unsteady light. “We get out together or not at all.” She gave a
hmph
of annoyance as the words of the spell slid from her memory like US History. Joy tried reading the scroll again.

“Give it to me,” Ink said gently. “I can adapt myself to read any spoken language.”

“Oh?” said Filly, sounding surprised.

“I can shape my tongue.”

“You don't say?” She turned to Joy with a smirk. “Is this true?”

Joy bit the side of her cheek.

“I wish that you would allow Mistress Inq and Kurt to accompany you on this adventure,” the Bailiwick muttered. Joy knew it was hard for him to feel helpless, left behind.

“Inq and Kurt are our fallback plan,” Joy explained again. “If we're captured by the King and Queen, there needs to be someone on this side who can try again.” She tried to speak to the anxiety on his face. “Don't worry—we'll give them the proof that they need to come home.”

The Bailiwick nodded, a gesture all but lost as his palsy shake returned; his hunched shoulders were more pronounced than usual.

“I know what must be done,” he said, his icy gaze made almost radiant in the pool light. “I simply wish that you were not the one to do it.”

Joy wasn't sure in that moment if he meant that he regretted putting her in danger, that he wished to keep her safe or that he didn't think that she could do it. She swallowed her anxiety and placed a hand on his arm.

“Trust me.”

He patted her hand with one of his own. “I do, Miss Malone. I do, indeed.”

She nodded. Ink stepped closer. Filly bounced on her heels.

“I demand entrance to the Bailiwick of the Twixt.”

* * *

The princess's meadow remained slashed and broken with great swathes of nothing ripped sideways and torn. The pocket world lay in tatters, shredded like a razor blade through a precious painting. Joy stared at her shoes, embarrassed and sorry, remembering how hesitant she had been the first time to step on a perfect blade of grass. In her fury, she'd ruined a thousand years of patient waiting, a thousand years of one person's solace, a world created to both remember and forget.

“What happened here?” Filly said, hand on hilt.

Joy sighed, ignoring Ink's sidelong glance. “I was mad.”

Filly gave a soft chuckle, her short cape of finger bones rattling as she surveyed the carnage. “Remind me never to make you mad, Joy Malone.”

Joy shook her head. “It won't happen again.”

Filly winked. “Your secret is safe with me.”

They rolled along the world's surface, sliding until the shimmering portal hung before them in midair. Ink and Joy took up positions on opposite sides of the door. Foreign sunlight eked out the edges, splicing hot rainbows through the sky. Filly crouched in front of the doorway, rocking back and forth on the balls of her feet, her blue eyes fixed on the scintillating light.

“You know what to do,” Ink said, his words crisp and clear.

“Yes.” Filly grinned.

“Tell me.”

“Distraction. Mayhem. Extraction.” Her eyes crinkled, catlike and sly. “Preferably in that order.”

“Close enough,” Joy said. She squeezed the dowsing rod in her hands. It was slippery through the silk gloves. “Ready?”

Filly huffed a laugh through her nose and clanged her vambraces together.

“I was born ready.”

Ink flicked the razor and opened the door.

Filly jumped through.

She ran straight through those guarding the door, punching and kicking in a whirl of motion before the soldiers had even registered her presence, but by then she was already gone. Racing past them, down the slope, she threw one of their helmets into the air with a naughty whoop of laughter. Joy saw her vambraces flash as she rained a tornado of blows through an unsuspecting knot of infantry, grabbing a sword from one and borrowing another's shield that was still attached to their arm in order to block a sloppy attack. With a kick, one was down, the other stunned with the flat of the blade as Filly ducked, spun and was off again, casting weapons and assailants aside like a child through a pile of leaves, leaving joyous chaos in her wake.

Ink glanced back at Joy from his side of the door. “I almost feel sorry for them,” he said as they watched their friend sprint pell-mell for a saddled creature with a brown eagle head and a lionesque body. It hissed and lunged for her. Filly raised her arms and sang out like a lover,
“Gyrefalcon!”
It reared and brought its front paws crashing down, its sharp claws gouging holes in the turf. It gave an offended shriek as Filly slipped smoothly to one side, grabbed a hold of its bronze harness and launched herself onto its back. She deftly hooked a foot into its stirrup and unholstered a spear in one hand. She yelled something triumphant as the creature sprang into the air, a hundred-foot wingspan snapping a great shadow, and twisted in an attempt to dislodge her. The horde of ground troops pursued.

Ink grinned, both dimples. “Almost sorry, but not much,” he confessed.

“Let's go!” Joy urged and Ink followed, pushing through the wobbling membrane of the door into Faeland. She held her breath as she jumped, feeling the filament shear over the surface of her skin. She landed, her held breath punched in her lungs. She stared at her feet. The ground stayed solid.

She took a step. Nothing. Joy exhaled and ran.

The landscape had changed again, as if turning counterclockwise, revealing strange new turf and a changing sky. Joy didn't stop to admire the thick tendrils of autumn-colored clouds, the spires of green glass in the distance or the enormous mountain caves glowing with dragon heat. They dived toward an outcropping of stone she hadn't remembered seeing before, worn by nothing more than memories and dreams. It was as if it had been created for the purpose of shelter, a shadow of something that might have been in a storybook back on Earth. Joy had a crazy thought, wondering if Faeland itself remembered where they'd come from.

Ink and Joy ducked beneath the lip of stone and looked for the tents and yellow banners snapping over the courtyard from a distance. Joy couldn't see them from here, but she did see the roofs of the sugar-spun castle so she knew where they had been.

“Well, that worked,” Joy said. “So far, so good.”

“May this work as well,” Ink said, unrolling the wizard's scroll and placing Joy's hands firmly on the dowsing rod. She felt his hands as warmth and pressure, missing something through the glove. “Hold firm. This is wizard magic—I am uncertain what it will do.”

“As long as it finds my brother,” Joy said, “the rest doesn't matter.”

Ink paused. “Be careful what you wish for. Especially here, Joy Malone.”

“Right,” she said, chagrined.

“Do not make me break my promise to Monica,” Ink said. “I hear she has thumbscrews.”

Joy smiled as he curled his hand over hers and read the words on the parchment. The language was something old and slithery. The sounds dripped from her ears into her limbs down into the wood itself, playing over the worn grain like water through a maze, pooling in the tiny divot darkened with her blood. The droplet deep in the wood pulsed once, twice, like a tiny heartbeat—one which made Joy's own missing heart ache—and then it ignited, flaring along the dowsing rod and shooting a narrow beam of blood-red light out the end, which faded several feet in front of them like a penlight into the dark. The power of the spell shivered under her palms. It tugged like Kestrel, keen for the hunt.

“This way,” Ink said as he lifted her elbow up and they started running.

The buzz turned into tremor as they kept going east, if the sun was anything to go by. Joy's eyes locked on her hands and Ink's hand locked on hers, which was locked on the wand. He kept scanning the landscape, directing her by touch. The blood-colored light swerved and Joy's elbows twisted, her forearms wrenching sideways. They wove their way into tall, furry grasses that were like nothing Joy had ever seen before, the scent pouring off them something between wildflowers and wheat.