Indelible

by Dawn Metcalf

  Ink glanced sideways at her. “No one has ever said so before.”

  “Trust me,” Joy said. “You’re a laugh riot.”

  They slowed by the front gate. Joy withdrew her hand and hugged the milk. She knew that she should say something. Or he should say something. It was awkward and growing more so, because there was no reason to be awkward. Who was she kidding? The whole night was awkward—impossible and frightening and beautiful and strange. The moment sputtered and sparked with unsaid things.

  “That was a neat trick you did with the milk,” Joy said too quickly.

  The dimple reappeared. “It is something I developed over the years.”

  Joy leaned against the gate and looked at his face, smooth as a sculpture, ageless as the moon. “How long have you been doing this?”

  He matched her stance against the gate. “Many, many years.”

  “Care to give a number?”

  Ink spread his hands. “When you can slice through time, what do years matter?”

  “Point taken,” Joy said. “So how old are you?”

  Ink crossed his arms over his smoky shirt, impossibly pristine after battling a banshee, catching a jug of milk in midair and taking a round trip to the Emerald Isle. Joy watched the silk ripple as he traced a finger over the mortar between bricks.

  “How old are you?” he asked.

  “Sixteen,” Joy said. “I’ll be seventeen in May.”

  “And how do you know that?”

  Joy rolled her eyes. “Um, ’cuz sixteen years ago, I came out of my mom on May twenty-third.”

  “Exactly,” Ink said. “I have no mother. I was not born. I just am,” he said, leaning forward from the waist. “How old am I?” Oddly, it sounded as if he really wanted an answer. It was an impossible question, asking for something that Joy couldn’t give.

  She shook her head. “I don’t know.”

  “Exactly,” Ink said. “No one does.”

  Silence enveloped them. Joy rocked on her heels. Lingering at the gate, she found that she didn’t want to go back to being normal. Not just yet. As if sensing her hesitation, Ink stepped forward. She felt his shadow on her skin and smelled the scent of rain. It twitched something inside her.

  “No mother,” Joy said adjusting the milk jug in her arms. She found it hard to meet his eyes. “That’s sad.”

  “Is it?” Ink said, curious. “You have a mother.”

  A sudden tightness welled in her throat. “Sort of.”

  He was very close now, his voice crisp as apples. “Does having a mother make you less sad?”

  Joy couldn’t swallow. It was too much. Much too much. She had the crazy impulse to tell him how it felt, to say aloud what it was like to be alone and abandoned and lose everything in the world that made sense, but she couldn’t. She couldn’t.

  She shook her head. “No.”

  Joy stepped back. Ink did, too. The moment wasn’t broken, but it was bruised. He stared at the tears caught in the corners where her lashes met. She saw him staring, guileless and open. He waited like a question. It wasn’t one she could answer.

  “Well,” Joy said, touching the hinges and forcing a smile. “I’d better get going. Dad’s waiting for me.” She lifted the milk jug. “And this. He’ll be worried.”

  “It only took a second,” Ink reminded her.

  “Right,” Joy said, punching in the key code. “If that.”

  “Yes,” he said softly. “If that.”

  The gate opened and Joy pushed past, pausing to wave, remembering to keep things looking friendly, feeling awkward and sad and happy all at once. “See you,” she called back, which seemed a stupid thing to say. She jogged for the door.

  “Wait.” Ink’s voice sliced across the courtyard. Joy turned around.

  “What?”

  “You were helpful today,” Ink said.

  Joy laughed, walking backward. “Gee, thanks!” Pausing, Joy dared one last question. “So, if I’m going to be your lehman or whatever, why don’t you try using my name?”

  Ink stared through the gate. He looked hopeful. Intense.

  “I do not know your name,” he confessed.

  “Oh.” She smiled, feeling silly. “It’s Joy,” she said, bumping unexpectedly against the doorknob. “Joy Malone.”

  “Joy,” he said, unblinking eyes wide. “Good night, Joy Malone.”

  She fumbled with the door and mumbled, “Good night.”

  Joy ran up the stairs and went straight to bed with two uneaten candy bars, a pack of gum and a smile.

  CHAPTER SIX

  THE SCENT OF rain haunted her throughout the next day, something not even hot lunch or bleached locker-room smell could erase. Joy could hardly believe she was walking through the halls of her school—she’d gone to Ireland! And not even a stamp on her passport to prove it.

  Sheep and shattered glass and ice-cold milk seemed far more real than chemistry or The Crucible today. Even though the banshee had frightened her, Joy secretly admired something so set on fulfilling a pledge that it flew across the ocean and half a continent to get it done. That was real loyalty. It was something that could not—and would not—be ignored. This shepherd kid, whoever he was, was from a family that had not been forgotten, even after hundreds of years. Someone remembered. Somebody cared. Somebody watched over him, even if he didn’t know it.

  Joy envied that. But then again, Ink had come when she called.

  Flash! Flash!

  That splice of light was a reminder that all of this was real. She felt less invisible, less sad, having that spark in her eye. It made her important to someone, somehow. That’s what Inq had said. Joy wasn’t sure she felt important, but she felt looked after. Safe. When had she stopped feeling like that? When had she started feeling so alone?

  Monica flung herself at Joy in the hall.

  “Gordon,” she said happily.

  Joy grinned. “Tell me.”

  “I will,” Monica said. “We were up until almost two in the morning texting back and forth—I swear, I’ll have to put him on the plan before my folks get the bill and nix my phone. Mom’s threatened it before.”

  “What did you talk about?” Joy asked, rising to the best-friend cue.

  “Nothing. Everything. You know how it is.”

  And for the first time, Joy thought that she might.

  Monica gasped dramatically.

  “What?” asked Joy.

  “You’re blushing,” she said.

  “I’m not....”

  “You’re blushing!” Monica insisted. “It’s all over your face. It’s a guy. There’s a guy! Who is it? Tell!”

  Joy felt her face radiate heat. If she wasn’t blushing before, she sure was now. She stumbled over the word “Nobody.”

  She was furious at herself. How completely mental to be blushing over some guy. Especially a not-really-real sort of guy. A guy, by the way, who’d tried to stab her in the eye. Whether he had really wanted to or not shouldn’t be the issue. He was dangerous. She was obviously insane. Psychologically unstable. Joy adjusted her book bag and started walking quickly down the hall. Monica matched her step for step.

  “Well, Mr. Nobody has left quite an impression, I see,” Monica drawled. Her voice dropped. “It’s not someone you met online, right?”

  “No.”

  “’Cuz you know those always turn out to be some old pervert or a crank with a rusted pickup and a shovel,” Monica said. “You aren’t going stupid on me, right?”

  “No,” Joy said, feeling stupid. “No Stupid.”

  But somehow, Joy felt that she might be trying to convince herself more than Monica as she scribbled black eyes in her notebook margins all during class.

  * * *

  Finding the wax-seale
d envelope felt like winning the lottery.

  Ink was written across the heavy paper in beautiful script, the black lettering elegant and liquid thick. Joy whispered his name as she closed her locker door, heart thudding as she walked into the cold outdoors, welcoming the sparkly, breathy excitement as she saw him standing by the Glendale Oak.

  The giant oak tree loomed on the corner of school campus, heavily tattooed over the years by couples carving a bit of infamy for themselves and their high school sweethearts. Ignoring the bus line, Joy consciously kept her feet from running and her face from looking too eager as she approached.

  “Your school day is over,” Ink said. Light played through last season’s stubborn leaves, skipping shadows over his face and silk shirt. He wasn’t wearing a coat but didn’t seem to mind the cold. Joy glanced around so she wouldn’t seem to be talking to herself.

  “Yeah. I was about to catch the bus home,” she said. “But then I found this.” Joy handed him the thick, folded paper, strangely conscious that their fingers were only an envelope’s width apart.

  Ink popped the seal, unfolded the paper and read it to himself. Joy found her hands empty with nothing to do. She hadn’t realized her hands had ever needed something to do—they always just did things—and now that she’d started thinking about them, she couldn’t stop. What the heck had she ever done with her hands? Joy tucked them under her arms then, worried that she might look angry, rested them on her hips, hooking her thumbs through belt loops. It grounded her, tying herself to denim.

  “We have a social engagement,” he said. Joy’s heart beat faster. She wasn’t sure if she should smile. He folded the paper and tucked it away. “There is someone who wants to meet you and someone whom you should meet.”

  Joy joked, “Is it the same person?”

  Ink flashed that oddly impish grin. “More or less,” he said and sliced open a door right through the Glendale Oak, cutting a clean line through chopped-out hearts and penknifed initials to someplace beyond. It was just as unreal as the first time. Just as magical.

  Casting a glance over her shoulder, Joy hurried through.

  They arrived at the base of stone steps leading up to an old brownstone, its bricks covered in ivy and surrounded by a squat wrought-iron fence. The door was painted in black lacquer and flanked by neat evergreens in Chinese urns. Ink began climbing the stairs. Joy hung back.

  “Why didn’t we appear inside?” she asked.

  Ink glanced over his shoulder. “It is considered polite to be let in.”

  Without further explanation, she followed him up the stairs. The stone was worn smooth beneath her feet and the sound of the old iron knocker hitting the brass plate was a pleasant change from electronic buzzers or rings. Joy noticed that there wasn’t any button for a doorbell, something that struck her as strange. The only thing odder was when an honest-to-goodness butler answered the door. Joy covertly wiped her feet.

  The butler stepped aside, looking professionally capable of deep courtesy or deep trouble. Joy pictured butlers as old and British, but this guy looked fresh from an underground street-fighting ring—if he flexed his muscles, he’d probably burst through his sleeves. Joy kept herself small and made no sudden moves as she followed Ink inside.

  They were ushered into a dark-paneled antechamber of baroque paintings and ivory lamps. Two upholstered wingback chairs sat in stately feng shui around a marble-topped table bearing a silver tray, a cut-crystal bowl and an elegant orchid arrangement. Ink reached inside his left back pocket, as opposed to the wallet on his right, and placed a crisp business card on the silver tray before settling himself into one of the chairs. Joy sat down in the opposite chair. Wordlessly, the butler picked up the tray and marched down the hall, rapping smartly on a set of double doors. After a moment’s pause, the manservant quietly let himself in. The doors closed behind him with a heavy sound.

  Joy turned to Ink. “Where are we?”

  “In a receiving room.”

  Joy rolled her eyes. “I got that,” she said and switched tactics. “Why do you need business cards?”

  Ink cracked a small grin. “We do well to observe the niceties and use proper etiquette here. The Bailiwick enjoys his little games.” He touched the upholstery with his inhumanly smooth hand. “We are in his receiving room and are waiting to be received. The dance is old, but so is he, and we are his guests.” He tapped the trim with two fingers. “He is also the one we must convince of our ruse.”

  “So...humor him?” Joy guessed.

  Ink’s lightness fell. “Humor me. Respect him. Always.”

  Approaching footsteps silenced further conversation. Joy twisted her fingers in her lap. Her stupid hands had nothing to do! She debated sitting on them, but that hardly seemed ladylike. She folded them over one knee.

  The butler locked eyes with Ink and gave a short bow, his Adam’s apple bobbing behind his stiff mandarin collar.

  Joy glanced at Ink for a clue of what to do.

  “Stay here,” Ink instructed, but paused where he stood. Fishing out his long wallet and unhooking the chain, he looped its lengthy weight into her lap. “Hold this.” Ink said formally, “I entrust it to you.” Then he turned and followed the butler down the sconce-lit hall.

  At the sound of heavy doors closing, Joy exhaled a tiny sigh. She had no idea how long this might take and there wasn’t so much as a magazine or book to be found. The oil paintings weren’t much to look at, so she eyed the ceiling medallions and elaborate crown molding for as long as she could. There were loose frosted grapes in the bowl and Joy moved to take one. The globes were deep purple, almost black, and it turned out that the white dusting on their surface wasn’t cold, but actual dust. She left fingerprints where she’d touched one and it jiggled when she let go.

  She decided she wasn’t hungry.

  Joy finally inspected the wallet in her hands. The leather was thick and shiny, worn and glossy with age. Shifting the chain, Joy opened the trifold compartments, noticing how the leather had molded to each instrument’s shape over time. The tools of Ink’s trade winked in the buttery half-light.

  Joy examined the scalpel, the most ordinary-looking thing in the case. She was careful not to touch the blade, suspecting her fingerprints might leave telltale marks. Instead, she put it back and marveled at the narrow black arrowhead next. She carefully lifted the stubby weapon out by its wooden handle.

  At first, she thought it was some stone-age thing, but up close, it looked cut by precision lasers, each notch more sliced than struck, every edge sharp as broken glass. Joy realized that it probably was glass—obsidian or something like it—microscopically sharp. She carefully placed it back into its sheath and removed the next of Ink’s tools by the hilt.

  The leaf wand was the most unusual, its serrated shape mimicking an ivy leaf or a rose. Veins had been carved in long grooves, capillary-size funnels that looked made for drawing ink or blood. Unlike the others, this piece looked handmade and old. It felt different. She spun it around in her fingertips, watching the light climb along its edge like stepping stairs. Joy tilted her head as it rotated in her hand. It looked like a homicidal fairy wand.

  She touched her finger to the flat surface; a tingly chill prickled up her fingers, cold and clean like peppermint. Startled, she tucked it quickly back into its place, wiping the surface with the hem of her shirt, and folded the wallet back up just in time.

  The door opened and something huge stepped out.

  The thing that lumbered down the hallway took up most of its berth. Joy first thought of a giant amphibian with scoliosis. Its spine curved up and over in a hunch, its low-slung head moving slightly back and forth as it shuffled forward wearing tailored clothes.

  It wore a smoking jacket made of dark Chinese silk, white cuffs turned crisply over each of four hands that ended in long, manicured claws. The rippling skin was mottled o
live and gray with a low protruding brow shading surprisingly blue eyes. Its fleshy lips pursed in what Joy guessed was a thoughtful expression—that or something more sinister—it was tough to tell. Its eyes shone like chips of pale mirror under a thick postorbital ridge. It was hairless and wrinkled and when it opened its mouth, it had lots of pointy teeth.

  Joy sat very still as the thing squeezed into the foyer. It looked even larger up close. Ink stood in the hall at a polite distance. Both gazed down at Joy. The monster’s head hung nearly level with her own, although it must have stood eight feet at the shoulder. She tried to look calm as its nostrils flared. She could feel the whiff of air as it sniffed.

  “Innocence.” The thing’s voice was scraping stone. “Delicious.” Another deep sniff, and its ice-blue eyes slipped closed. “Fear,” it said with a grin like a shark’s. “Divine.”

  Joy stared helplessly at Ink, who was devoid of expression. She glanced back at the monster, who extended two of his four arms.

  “Welcome, lehman to Ink,” it intoned formally. “Miss Malone. Come.”

  Ink slid to one side as their host shouldered past, the hardwood creaking under its elephantine feet. She was amazed to discover that the monster wore spats. Joy decided it was hard to be too frightened of something that wore spats.

  Everything in the hall was expensive in that subtle-yet-obvious way: hand-carved chair rails, glittering sconces and elaborate corbels mounted along the length of the hall. Paintings and gilded mirrors reflected Joy’s face in portraits of antique silver and glass as they passed.

  Joy felt maybe she should have worn a skirt. With hose.

  The private office had built-in shelves, a wide wooden desk and a very modern computer, sleek and slick as one of Ink’s razors—the only thing that looked as though it belonged in this century. A deep stone basin filled with water stood in a corner with fat lotus flowers blooming through waxy, heart-shaped lily pads. The four-armed, blue-eyed toad monster settled into an incredibly large chair. Joy suspected that it might have originally been a throne. He gestured for them to sit.