Invincible

by Dawn Metcalf

  Ink turned away. “I do not know,” he said. “Hasp told Inq that—”

  “Hasp has Ilhami?” Joy jumped out of her seat. “We have to find him! Hasp’s a lunatic! He’ll torture him—”

  “Yes,” Ink said. “That is exactly what he will do.” Ink touched her arms, her hair, as if memorizing this moment. “He will do it because he wants you to come after him. And that is why we must not go—because that is what Hasp wants. He wants you.”

  Her phone buzzed. Text message.

  Hey Cabana Girl

  ...

  I screwed up again

  ...

  We’re in your old hangout by the river

  ...

  No booby dolls here

  Joy’s breath quivered with every three dots. She could hear Ilhami bleeding. She could see his hands shaking as he typed an obituary in texts.

  Be sure I get a gallery show & get higher than the sky!

  ...

  I’ll tell E you say Hi

  ...

  I’m sorry

  “Dover Mill,” Joy said, grabbing Ink. “Take me there.”

  Ink covered her hand with his, his face as still as stone. “Do not ask me to do this,” he said. “I told Inq I would not interfere.”

  Joy grabbed her purse, snagged her shoes and slipped the scalpel into her pocket. She couldn’t let Ilhami die. She wasn’t heartless—not really—she was still human.

  “I’m not asking you to,” Joy said. “Not when I can stop it. Just take me there. Please.”

  Ink’s face hardened. “Do you know what Hasp wants?”

  Joy felt her tiny blade bite through denim. “I think I can guess.”

  * * *

  It looked the same from the outside—an old, abandoned mill alongside a quiet, muddy stream, its wheel fixed in concrete, and the rough, patchy lawn dotted with hazardous No Fishing signs. It was always windy, but it wasn’t always cold. Joy shivered as she and Ink approached the illusion of Dover Mill.

  Aniseed could be here!

  Piercing the illusion bubble was easy when you knew what to expect, and so when the rickety toolshed became a large wooden overhang over a set of descending stairs, Joy was not surprised, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t terrified. She knew she was walking into a trap.

  Ink checked the wards as he descended the stairs, straight razor drawn, guarding her bodily as they stepped into the underground cellar that had once been Joy’s office and Aniseed’s hidden cache. It was where the aether sprites had led them months ago in order to turn in one of their own. Hasp.

  There were four bare walls, empty shelves, and the ever-present slab of slate. Ilhami lay slumped in a corner and an aether sprite hung upside down above him like a bat.

  The yellow-green eyes opened. The football-shaped head split in a grin.

  “You came quickly.” Hasp’s sibilant hiss hugged the dark. “Mustn’t be kept waiting. You do learn, after all.” His head rotated as his body unfolded, impossibly long fingers hooking into the tiny holes drilled into the wall where the suspension shelves had been, clicking and scraping as he lowered himself to the floor. One multijointed finger wrapped like a bicycle chain around Ilhami’s throat. “This one said you wouldn’t come.” His eyes flicked between them. “Yet here you are. Scribe. Lehman to Ink.” He paused thoughtfully, his breath expanding his thin rib cage. “Or is it Scribe and lehman to Joy?”

  Ink switched his grip and so did Hasp, who bared his teeth.

  “Stay back,” the damaged aether sprite spat. “You gave your oath.”

  “I said I would not interfere,” Ink said. “But that only extends to your plans for him.” He gestured toward Ilhami.

  Hasp sneered. Another knuckle slipped around Ilhami’s throat.

  “Yet you came,” Hasp said, his gaze swiveling to Joy. “You care whether this one lives or dies.” He dragged the young Turk across the dusty floor. “Monsiegneur Ladybird got what he wanted and then delivered him to me. But the Monsiegneur did not get what he wanted from you.” Hasp grinned sickeningly. “So maybe now you have something for me.”

  She was through playing games. Her vision fuzzed. She needed more sleep.

  “What do you want, Hasp?” Joy said, using his name as a reminder that he had not been able to change his True Name no matter how much he’d toadied up to Briarhook and no matter what Aniseed had promised. The crippled aether sprite snarled, and she knew the barb had struck home. Joy wondered if he’d always been ugly, even before the Council had torn off both his wings, or whether he’d been wallowing in human pollution for too long and it had turned the normal fairy beauty foul.

  “Business,” he said simply, drawing out the s. “This is a place of business and I am here as a paying customer to offer trade.” He hunched closer to Ilhami’s body, farther away from Ink. “Business with Briarhook’s gone sour.” Hasp’s bulbous eyes blinked. “Hasn’t the heart for this. But you—” His hooked forefinger unwound, stretching toward her. “You know business,” he hissed. “And you, Master Scribe, will not interfere, but will bear witness in accordance to the Accords of the Twixt. Proper, legal, binding. Yes,” Hasp snarled through a maliciously clever grin. “Will it be so?”

  Ink gave a delicate snarl. “It shall be witnessed, in accordance to the rules.” He lowered his razor as he turned Joy aside. “All you must do is listen to his offer. It is like parlay in the rules of war. You only have to listen. You do not have to obey. I am your witness.”

  Joy glared at her kidnapper, Briarhook’s accomplice. The tip of the scalpel shook with the memory of pain and fear, humiliation and snow. “What do you want?”

  “What I have always wanted! What I’ll always want!” he spat. “I want my locqui.” The word shivered down his bare ribs. “I want my birthright, my magic! I want to fly! And so, I must be free of my Name that chains me to earth and the Council’s damned rules.” He tipped back his oblong head, exposing the underside of his chin. Joy’s Sight revealed the barbed-hook shape of Hasp’s signatura carved into the tip of his jaw. His long, pointed finger speared the sigil like a knife. He lowered his face to look at her. “I know what you did within these walls, and now you will do it for me.” His breathing quickened. “Erase my mark and everyone goes free.”

  Joy’s surprise was a hiccup of shock. Hasp took another step, dragging Ilhami behind him.

  “Well?” he said.

  “I c—” She gagged on the lie. She could, and part of her wanted to, relishing the chance to finish this, once and for all, but she was very aware of Ink standing witness. What Hasp asked for was possible, but it wouldn’t do what he thought. A signatura wasn’t a mark given to him by anyone else—it was the symbol that he’d accepted along with the power of his True Name. If she erased that, she’d erase him completely. He’d cease to exist. As tempting as that was, Joy was no assassin—she’d learned that the hard way. She cleared her throat and squeezed the scalpel harder. “I don’t think you really want me to do that.”

  Hasp smiled. “Oh, but I do,” he said. “As the Scribe is my witness, I most certainly do.” His eagerness seemed to feed a desperate strength inside his shriveled limbs. He shook Ilhami by the throat. “You will do it or I will snap this one’s neck!” Ilhami flopped bonelessly in his grip. He wasn’t simply unconscious, he was under a drug or spell or worse. “Do you understand?”

  “The bargain is witnessed,” Ink said swiftly and turned to Joy. “Do you accept?”

  She stared at Ink. He’d barely nodded—it was one of those subtle, human cues he’d learned by watching her. His pulse beat in the side of his neck as he swallowed. Anger brewed in his eyes, flushing his face. He was becoming so human, fingernails and forearm hairs, shades of meaning and shared moments together; now she could almost read his thoughts. Ink believed that she could walk away and Ilhami would die,
but Hasp would not hold anything over her and they could leave in peace. Or, if she agreed to his demands, Hasp would be severed from the Twixt, no longer under the rules, and Ink would be free to kill him without the punishment or the guilt of Grimson’s mark. But Joy knew if she did this, Ink would see that she had used his gift, his instrument, to commit sacrilege beyond murder—erasing one of the Folk—and that she was, as the Tide always claimed, the most dangerous girl in the world. It would reveal her ugliest secret, her greatest betrayal, and there would be no going back.

  If she did this, she might lose Ink, but save Ilhami.

  If she didn’t, she would never forgive herself.

  If she did this, the Folk would kill her.

  But she would undo Hasp and he would never torture anyone ever again.

  Joy swallowed, gripping the scalpel. Her arms shook.

  “No.”

  Hasp’s other hand grabbed Ilhami’s ankles, like a wishbone. “Then he dies in pieces.”

  Ink appeared in a flash, the razor held just under Hasp’s throat.

  “Then you die,” Ink said.

  Hasp swallowed, the knobby Adam’s apple bobbing under the steel. “You swore you would not interfere.”

  “I will not interfere if you choose to kill him, but once he is dead, then I am free to act as I wish and so you will die soon after.”

  Hasp smiled. “Won’t bring him back,” he whispered. Ink corkscrewed the blade on the edge of his smile.

  “Nor you,” Ink said. “I can kill you.”

  “Can you?”

  “Yes,” Ink ground his teeth. “I have killed our own before.”

  “Stop!” Joy shouted. She’d caused this. She’d forced Ink here. And she knew how this would end.

  Death. Killing. Blood. Guilt.

  Remember: he will be learning about everything, watching you.

  “It will kill you!” Joy said, her words loud in the cache. “What you are asking for—it will do more than kill you. You will cease to exist.”

  Ink froze, every muscle caught unawares. Hasp’s smile drooped to an uncertain frown. His hands tightened on Ilhami. “You lie!”

  “I can’t lie,” Joy said. “You know that. I am part of the Twixt.”

  Ink stared at Joy as the aether sprite struggled with the news. She couldn’t meet his eyes, staring instead at the smooth slate wall that had once held all of Aniseed’s stolen signaturae, a map of marks, the blueprint of her plan to cull humanity from the world. Joy had written her own hours of operation on it in chalk before Ink had found her here and found her out. And now this, her last confession. So many secrets. These walls knew too much about her.

  “No,” Hasp croaked finally. “You are lehman, ex-lehman, half-breed, Earth-claimed, but you are still mortal—I can smell it on you.” His slit nostrils flared as if to prove his point. His face had gone pale, his many knuckles white. “You are human and you lie!”

  He lifted Ilhami’s body with preternatural strength, a meat shield between himself and Ink. Ilhami’s head lolled back sickeningly. Hasp swelled with effort, his shoulders straining, gaze locked on Joy, mad, desperate. He was going to tear the Turkish artist limb from limb.

  “Stop!” Joy screamed, hands up. “I’ll do it!” She held up the scalpel and steadied her breath. “Okay? I’ll do it. Put him down. Okay.”

  Ink blinked, confused, his breathing tight. “Joy?”

  “You swear it?” Hasp said, tense, on the brink. “You swear it on your life?”

  Joy wiped at her face. “My life. His life. My father’s life. Whatever you want,” she said. She pointed up the blocky steps. “But let them go,” she said, turning to Ink. Please. Please go. “Take Ilhami and go.”

  Ink hesitated, shoulders back, standing tall. “I cannot,” he said. It wasn’t a lie. “I am a witness.” Joy knew and knew it was true. He had pledged to be present in order to fulfill the rules or fate or whatever magic bound them together. Ink was committed to bear witness to this in accordance to the Accords of the Twixt. It was as if everything had been pointing to this moment between them, when all the secrets came out.

  “Damn,” she whispered, missing her heart, missing her chance. “Damn you.” And while she really meant it, it felt more like Damn me because she knew what would happen next and there was no turning from it. Fate unflowered like a many-petaled lotus; as if it were happening to someone else, as if it had happened already, and Joy was only just remembering it now. Too late.

  Time slowed down for déjà vu.

  Tears pooled in her eyes as she nodded. The two combatants eased apart. Ink was chagrined and Hasp was triumphant, but she knew that neither would be so for long. Hasp unwound his fingers, a heady smirk on his face. Ilhami fell to the floor with a thud. Ink stepped aside as Hasp squatted on the ground, tipping his head back, yielding his throat to her knife, his tennis-ball eyes slipping closed. Joy remembered Ysabel, her yielding and trust. Freeing her had felt nothing like this.

  Joy touched the tip of the scalpel to the edge of the hook, tracing the tightly wound glyph carefully around its many switchbacks squeezed like a button beneath Hasp’s pointy chin. She could feel Ink’s hot, burning gaze as she watched her own fingers, white on the handle, follow the blaze of undoing, unmaking it—erasing it—as the sigil neared the central point. It was the spot on which Hasp’s signatura balanced, encompassing the whole of who he was, what he had pledged to be for his people, witnessed by the King and Queen, and that which he’d broken when he’d disobeyed their Decree.

  Joy realized she didn’t know what his crime had been.

  She hesitated. Tears blurred her vision. The scalpel trembled. Furious, Hasp hissed through his teeth.

  “Finish it!”

  Obediently, she drew the final curve, imagining Hasp on his knees, prostrate before the Council as his great wings were torn from his body. How long had he lived as an outcast? How long had he suffered in the toxic, polluted air? When had Briarhook found him, lost in the woods? How had he been bribed to Aniseed’s side as she promised a Golden Age, without humans? How that had happened—no one would ever know.

  The signatura flared and Hasp, grinning, disappeared.

  Joy dropped to the floor on her hands and knees and sobbed.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  JOY DIDN’T NEED to see Ink to know he stood behind her. She didn’t need to see the naked blade to know that it was there.

  “I told him,” she whispered again and again through salty lips. “I told him.”

  “Yes,” Ink said flatly. “You did.” His voice came closer, barely a breath by her ear. “Now you must tell me.”

  She didn’t face him. Kneeling, penitent, she was a child on her knees confessing her greatest sin to the voice of God.

  “I erased his signatura,” she said. “It wasn’t a mark he’d been given or a scar or a glyph—it’s his Name.” She took a breath that shuddered in the back of her throat. “If I erase a True Name, then that person is erased completely, as if they’d never been.” The words themselves were like cracks, truth slipping between the lies. This was her last shred of armor, gone.

  Ink hovered just beside her. “You knew this would happen?”

  “I told him—”

  “But you knew,” he said. “You knew that this would happen.”

  “Yes.”

  “Because it happened before.”

  Joy nodded. “Yes, but that was an accident. I didn’t know.”

  “The Red Knight?” he guessed.

  “Yes.”

  “You went after him,” Ink’s voice filled the cache, crisp and clear. “To stop him. To save me. But you didn’t know that this would happen then?”

  She shook her head.

  “This time you did.”

  His voice was more distant, withdraw
n. Joy felt like crying all over again, but the tears were gone. Her eyes were dry and scratchy-swollen. She hadn’t known what would happen when she’d trapped the assassin with Briarhook’s fast-growing seeds nor what would happen when she carved the Red Knight’s True Name into his armor. She’d thought it would lock the magic, keep his incarnations set to one Name; instead, it had negated everything he was and left her alone in the briar.

  This time Hasp had willingly given her his signatura, demanding she erase it—but she knew it amounted to the same thing. She felt dirty and guilty and wicked that she had wanted it. Wanted it to be over. Wanted him to be gone. What kind of person did that make her? Or was she even a person at all? Was she still human or had she changed too much, gone too far? Without a heart, had she become heartless? Something other than human?

  “You’ve denied him Faeland,” Ink said. “Now he can never return.”

  Joy covered her face, miserable beyond words.

  She felt Ink’s arms around her, shielding her as if from the bain sidhe, his hands on her back and in her hair, whispering fervently into the space between her shoulder and chin.

  “Tell me,” he whispered. “Tell me something I can believe in.”

  She knew what he wanted—something that could save her, some sort of proof, something he could use to excuse her crime so that he would not have to protect the Twixt from her. Ink knew what he should do—what he’d been created to do—and what he most wanted to do, which was to love her, to keep her safe. All he needed was a loophole. Fortunately, she knew one.

  “Sometimes we must choose immediately unpleasant things in order to prevent greater unpleasantness.”

  The words hung between them like a string of fairy lights, connecting the past to the present and to a possible future. They had been his words to her, echoed from her mouth to his; it had always been the way between them—his, hers, and ultimately, theirs. Memory wavered in his eyes, testing his resolve; she could see it in the way his face could not commit to one expression. What would he choose to believe?

  Ink smiled sadly. One dimple.

  “Yes,” he said, relaxing. “That is true.” He cupped a palm against her face. “And you warned him, tried to stop him, and cried afterward in remorse. You spoke no lies, you did not deceive him, but even given the truth, he would not believe you.” Ink rested his forehead against hers and took a cleansing breath. “I believe you,” he said. “And I believe in you.”