Indelible

by Dawn Metcalf

  Ink tapped Joy’s knee.

  “I need your Sight. If you are able to see the sprites ex-loqcutious, then you may also be able to see where they are now,” Ink said and rubbed his pant leg in a sort of nervous gesture she’d never seen him use before. “It goes against protocol, but they were the ones who initiated the attack—I half expect it was an invitation.”

  “An invitation or a lure?” Inq muttered.

  “Another trap?” Joy asked.

  Inq smirked. “How many people have you offended, Joy Malone?”

  Joy bristled, but considered it. “Would Briarhook want revenge?”

  Ink smiled a not-nice smile. “He wants his heart,” Ink said. “And knows better than to irk me for it.” Ink shook his head, another human habit he’d adopted. “No. I think it is something else.”

  He leaned forward, addressing Inq past Kestrel’s hood. “Joy is with me. You have things well in hand?”

  Inq smiled and waggled her fingers around the leash.

  “No problem,” she chirped. “If you need anything, remember—scream like a little girl!”

  Ink ignored her. Joy did likewise.

  The breeze felt good, a welcome change. Joy remembered the smell of the river even in the cold. People used to fish along the walk that ran the length of the mill, casting lines out over the edge of the man-made dam. Joy had learned to fish here. Now there were signs everywhere with bright red warnings. No one ate fish out of the river anymore. Joy watched a fast-food wrapper and a plastic cup make their way over the falls. It made her inexplicably sad.

  “Stand behind me,” Ink said. “Stay close. This is where the trail originates. Kestrel says the scent is too faint to be present, but with aether sprites, it is hard to tell. If you can really see them...”

  “I can see them,” Joy assured him.

  “Well, they can certainly see you.”

  The idea of facing more than one thing like Hasp with the ability to teleport in bits and spurts made her blood freeze. It must have shown in her face.

  “Are you all right?” Ink asked.

  “Sure,” Joy lied. “Peachy.”

  He’d learned too well. He wasn’t fooled. “Perhaps you should not come with me,” Ink said.

  Joy shook her head. “You need me.”

  His face changed subtly. “I do, which is why I also wish that you would stay in the car,” he said. “But you are right—I need your eyes.” He looked up at the gray-green mill against the gray-green water framed in brown dead grass.

  “That’s been our theme,” Joy said. She took his hand, threading their fingers together easily, and stepped onto the walk.

  Together they crept alongside the building, passing its single door draped in long shadows and deep, weathered cracks. Joy could feel it shudder each time the wind snapped its reins. She brushed the hair from her face, pawing at a single strand that stuck to her lip gloss. All her senses prickled as they stepped over the chain.

  “Feel it?” Ink asked. Joy nodded, a flood of memories bringing back a childhood fear of ghosts. It was like stepping into static. They glanced around the mill. Ink studied each window, each corner, each dark nook. His voice scythed the hollow wind. “We should get Inq.”

  “I can do this,” Joy said.

  “Can you?” he asked. “What do you see?”

  Joy peeked out of the corner of her eye where things like Ink and Hasp and orange shadows dwelt. She turned her head slowly, trying to scan the area. Her eye muscles strained. She blinked hard. Flash! Flash!

  “There,” Joy said, afraid to point. There was an overhang of jutting wood, gnarled vines and uneven steps descending into darkness superimposed on an image of what wasn’t there. “There’s an arbor or something. With stairs going down.” It was hard to convince herself that what she was seeing was real, because when she looked straight at the mill, there was nothing but mortared stone and a rickety tool shed with a rusted lock.

  Wordlessly, Ink unsheathed his straight razor. The chain at his side swung heavy and loose. Joy followed, hand upraised, keys arranged between her fingers like an iron claw.

  Three steps and it still looked like an old mill. Two steps and the wind smacked their chests, pushing them back. One step and Joy was certain she’d been mistaken, her strange Sight playing tricks with her head and her eyes. Ink pivoted his wrist, pushing the razor straight as a sword. They stepped forward. The tip of the blade popped the illusion like a balloon.

  Wide, rough struts appeared through a roof of overgrown briars, bare and black. Thorns shivered down their lengths and grew so dense, it was hard to see where the tangle ended and the shadows began. Joy caught glimpses of smooth wood, the glint of glass and the first wide step going down. Each riser was made of one solid block of wood set into the ground and fringed in moss. This place had been hidden from the world for a very long time.

  Ink let go of her hand and stepped down into the darkness. Joy followed, step for step.

  The wind stopped with a vacuum-sealed sound. Joy’s and Ink’s footsteps clopped on soft wood and echoed off walls. Glass bottles of every size and color were stacked along mismatched shelves, each bottle labeled in strange runes and stoppered with wax. Joy was surprised to see a collection of plastic half-liter bottles, their runes written up their sides in black marker.

  One slate wall stood exposed, chalk markings scribbled all over its surface. Archaic symbols fought one another for space—anorexic in some corners, a traffic jam in others, notations crisscrossed and reconnected by arrows. A large table in the center of the room was built out of an old door propped on cinder blocks, bowing slightly in the center and raining peeling paint. Papers and homemade journals littered its surface and a ratty quill stuck out of the rusty keyhole. Joy picked up a crumpled dry cleaner receipt scribbled with similar runes. The floor was speckled with bits of rock and leaf. Small shoots eked through the cracks in the stairs, straining toward the light.

  Ink placed his blade on the table and opened the largest hand-stitched book. Its yellowed pages were filled with columns of arcane symbols. He flipped pages impassively as he skimmed. Joy compared the notes on the table to the markings on the wall and the labels of nearby bottles. Nothing seemed to match. And nowhere could she find the sinister eight-eyed flower. Or anything obviously linking to the aether sprites or Hasp.

  But then she saw something she recognized and swallowed an ice cube of shock.

  “Ink,” she hissed, pointing at the stylized rose drawn in white chalk. Ink set down the book and examined the wall. His hand hovered above its surface, fingers moving slightly as if touching his thoughts. Ink considered the book on the table, the bottles on the shelves, the hidden staircase. His eyes sought Joy’s.

  “They led us here,” he said simply.

  “Who?”

  Ink stood up. “The aether sprites.”

  Joy felt herself flinch. “It’s a trap?”

  “No,” he said, resting his hand on a shelf. “The aether kin knew about this—” he touched a bottle “—but could not tell us outright. We needed to discover this place on our own...or at least have it appear that way.” He grabbed another book, talking as he read. “The aether sprites knew if they attacked you that I would track them down, so it would look like an accident that we found this place.”

  “They threw rocks at me to get your attention?” Joy said, annoyed.

  “It worked,” Ink said, closing the book and catching her eye. “Aether sprites are not particularly subtle and they do not like humans much.” He glanced sternly at the room as if considering what to do with it.

  “So what is this?” Joy asked, rubbing her brand through her sleeve. “What’s this all about?”

  “Signaturae,” Ink said. “True Names.”

  “Names?” Joy tapped the book. “This is...a registry?”

/>   “No, an encyclopedia. An alchemical index. A catalog of signaturae,” he said. “A list of symbols, of True Names.”

  “Symbols like yours?” Joy asked.

  Ink smirked. “Not mine,” he said. “She does not have my signatura.” He patted the book’s cover, his near-to-human hand rested there.

  Joy edged closer. “‘She’ who?”

  “Aniseed,” Ink said. His voice burned. “This place is hers. She has been collecting True Names and is planning...something.” Ink gestured to the wall filled with scribbles and script. Joy’s eye snagged on a small set of concentric circles, like a bull’s-eye, stashed in one corner. She glanced up as Ink knocked his new knuckles against the binding. “Folk have been bartering with Aniseed using their signaturae, which is illegal. It circumvents the Bailiwick and goes against the mandates of the Twixt.”

  Joy frowned. “I thought you said that the symbols are useless unless they are given willingly.”

  “Yes,” Ink said. “But I believe these were given freely—they match the roster in the books.” He ran a hand along one of the shelves. “Or, if not freely, then bought at an attractive price.” He shook his head. “This is wrong. Selling your True Name is like selling your soul.” Ink leaned closer to the chalked wall. “I wish there was a way to bring this to Graus Claude.”

  Joy pulled out her phone, aimed and snapped a picture. Hit Send.

  “Done,” she said.

  Ink smiled. “Well, then let’s go.”

  “You’re not taking the book?”

  “No,” Ink said. “She will most likely realize that we have been here, but there is no need to confirm it. Or that we understood the significance of what we have found.” Joy wasn’t certain she understood its significance, but it was good to know that the aether sprites would not be bothering her again.

  She took the stairs, picking her way up to the filtered daylight. Halfway up, she stopped and glanced at Ink.

  “Did you just say, ‘Let’s go’?”

  Ink touched the small of her back, urging her gently upward.

  “I’m learning many things today.”

  * * *

  The smell inside the Bentley was a spicy blend of animal and old leather. Inq held the leash slack as Ink reported what they’d found. Kestrel rustled under her cloak and hood. The driver drove on.

  Joy watched the mill disappear in the distance. It didn’t seem so familiar anymore.

  “The connections are exponential,” Ink was saying as they rode through the woods. “The map showed tiers of interlocking signaturae—one mark linked to a dozen others, each in turn connected to dozens more.” He jerked his chin. “It was vast. Too complex. Too much like something the Bailiwick would have dreamed up.”

  “And you propose taking this straight to him,” Inq said with disapproval.

  “Who better?” Ink replied.

  A tense silence followed.

  “I don’t understand what this has to do with names,” Joy said, finally. She wanted to be part of this conversation. It was hard to be indispensable when she didn’t know what was going on.

  “Not just names. True Names,” Ink said. “The essence of a thing is fixed once given a name. Names are powerful. Signaturae are True Names given form.”

  Inq leaned forward. “Think Rumpelstiltskin.”

  Joy gaped. “Rumpelstilskin is real?”

  “No,” Inq said. “‘Rumpelstiltskin is a story. But stories hold old truths. And in the story, Rumpelstiltskin was outsmarted, controlled and banished by the use of his True Name. Signaturae were created to avoid being trapped by humans’ speaking our True Names by transferring their power into a sigil, and we, the Scribes, were created to place signaturae on living beings in order to minimize the Folk’s exposure and risk.”

  “So you can be controlled by your signatura?” Joy asked.

  “Don’t get any ideas,” Inq said with a smirk. “It has that potential, but you are no warlock. You wouldn’t know what to do with a True Name. They’re used to create a bond between the Folk and those humans who are special, claimed by magic, even if they don’t know it. And no signatura has power unless it’s...”

  “Given willingly,” Joy finished. “I remember.”

  “Signaturae are our True Names, our selves, written down,” Ink said. “A True Name is who and what we are.” His voice grew oddly distant. “There are those who may regret their choices, their actions, but must still wear it in their name.”

  “Like Hasp?” Joy asked.

  Ink nodded. “Yes. Like Hasp. There were two symbols in the book, slightly altered variations, for Hasp,” he mused. “If Briarhook has convinced Hasp that he could somehow change his True Name, change his signatura, then the decree against Hasp would no longer be in effect. Hasp would no longer be Hasp in terms of the conditions laid upon him by the Council and he could potentially regain his loqci and clan.” Ink sat back and mused. “Not a bad plan.”

  “A loophole,” Joy said. “Could he do it? Change a True Name?”

  “Not Briarhook,” Ink said. “But a segulah, perhaps.”

  Joy got it. “Aniseed.”

  “She could sell such a service at any price if she could evade the Twixt’s justice, perhaps changing her own True Name to escape it,” Ink said. “I think Hasp’s clan discovered the backdoor bargain and did not approve. Such a loophole would be a blot on their honor, defying their allegiance to the Council and its decree. I think the aether kin meant for us to find out, to hold Hasp and whoever was behind this accountable.”

  “You mean Aniseed?” Inq asked.

  “Yes. Aniseed,” Ink said. “This site could be one or one of dozens. But I don’t believe this is simply a matter of changing names. She is connecting them somehow. Intertwining them. Linking them.”

  “But to what end?” Inq asked dismissively. “It doesn’t make sense. Who cares how many signaturae a human has on its skin? Many of the Folk make multiple claims—it happens all the time. It makes no difference. It changes nothing.”

  “It does to me,” Joy said. She knew she wore Ink’s True Name, and now Briarhook’s and, somehow, Aniseed’s. She rubbed her forehead. It hurt to think. She’d gone through too much today. “I’d like to go home.”

  “After we deliver Kestrel,” Ink said softly. The hood shot sideways with a hacking trill. “And after payment,” he amended.

  They left the tracker where they’d found her, in the deep woods tied to a post in the ground. Inq handed Kestrel a dead rabbit that she grasped blindly and massaged in strong fingers.

  “Payment as promised,” Inq said. “Delivery for the next two moons at the southern drop-off. Scent of cedar.” Inq patted the cloaked shoulder, like a pet. “And good hunting.”

  Joy scootched over so Inq could slide into the backseat, turning away as Kestrel tucked the rabbit beneath her hood and pulled. Something pink and glistening tore through the fur. Joy flinched.

  “Squeamish?” Inq taunted. “You eat meat.” Joy didn’t bother pointing out that her food came plastic wrapped and postmortem. It embarrassed her for some reason. She pressed next to Ink, who took her hand, lining up their fingers and threading them together.

  “We will take you home now.”

  “Can’t you just...?” She waved her hand in a familiar swooping gesture. He looked impressed and surprised that she knew it. She’d been watching, too.

  “No,” he said gently, “the car is far safer. Not just from Aniseed, but also for you.” Ink considered their entwined fingers. He flexed the digits, sliding them gently against her skin. She could feel the warmth flicker, saw the change in his face that said he was feeling her now. All in a touch. If she thought about it, she could feel it, too—every hair, every ripple, every shift of skin on skin.

  “When I take you with me, it feels like no time ha
s passed,” he said. “But it all moves forward. Always forward.” Ink studied her fingers. “I am trying to be present in these moments. To be here with you.” He turned his fathomless eyes to Joy. “I am aware now how swiftly it passes, and so I am left attempting to do the impossible—I am trying to hold on to time.”

  Joy hesitated. “It hasn’t been very long,” she said quietly.

  “No,” Ink said with weight in his words. He caressed her face slowly. “It is not long at all.”

  His lips touched her forehead—soft and precious and fragile as snow. He pressed her hand to his chest. Joy could almost feel his heart beating. She fell asleep to the sound of water and the smell of rain.

  * * *

  “We’re here,” Inq said.

  Joy woke, embarrassed—she had nearly forgotten that Inq was there. Invisible.

  Joy disentangled from Ink’s embrace and struggled to say something.

  “Thanks.”

  Inq grinned. “For kissing you or for saving your life?” Ink slapped his twin’s knee. “What?” she said. “I am told that I’m a fabulous kisser.”

  The tension dissolved in a rush as Joy laughed. It felt good.

  “I will check back soon,” Ink said. “After I consult with Graus Claude.”

  “It was nice seeing you, Joy!” Inq called cheerfully. “Let’s do it again soon!” Joy glanced at Ink. His face held a promise that lit a small candle inside her. She cradled it against the wind as she opened the gate. The Bentley slid away onto Wilkes Road.

  Unlocking the door, she keyed the alarm off. Beep-beep-beep-beep. The red light flickered before it turned green. The house was quiet. There was a Post-it note by the microwave that said, Gone out. Back by 5. Next to the note was a cinnamon coffee cake.

  Joy sighed and opened the silverware drawer, taking out a knife for her obligatory slice. She resolved to cut a big piece, since Shelley might have brought it over and she could use something to obliterate the lingering taste of Inq in her mouth.

  She aimed for the best chunks of crumble topping and, in one smooth motion, cut. Knife hit plate.