by Dawn Metcalf
Joy heard the tiny jingle of Ink’s fingers sliding over the chain at his hip.
“Now, then,” Maia said, setting her cup aside. “I imagine the Bailiwick’s got ye wearing something traditional—white or gold?”
“Gold,” Joy said, grateful for the new topic. “And pearls.”
“Pearls?” Maia looked horrified. “Water pellets! Expelled irritants coated in spit an’ nacre—how appropriate is that for a welcoming, might I ask? Mollusk puke!” She shook her head in disgust. The flowers wobbled, furry stamens wagging like tongues. Joy bit back a laugh. “Will you be masked?”
“Themed,” Ink said. “Damselfly.”
Joy pointed a thumb at Ink. “Heron.”
“Bah!” Maia spat. “The frog’s got no mind fer it, no mind a’tall! Subtle as a stick to the head!” She rummaged farther inside the box, deeper than the chest should have rightfully allowed, her arm disappearing up to the shoulder. “Unimaginative, narcissistic, ill-advised...’less he means to insult Sol Leander by getting a rise outta Avery, which—in tha’ case—would be fairly well played, but it’ll put the two o’ you in an awkward position.” She glanced between them, her jowls bunching. “Though I doubt ye care much for the Tide’s high opinion.”
Joy frowned, remembering Graus Claude’s self-congratulatory glee. “Who’s Avery?”
“Ye’ve seen him,” Maia said, distractedly. “The dandy in the feather cloak? Sol Leander’s boy. He’s usually somewhere underfoot bein’ all courtly and justified.”
Joy flashed on a swallowtail coat and sea-colored eyes. Avery? Now she had a name but didn’t know what to think of him. He’d last left her with a warning and a confession that he’d been assigned to spy on her. Whose side is he on, really?
“Not a bad sort,” Maia said. “More the fault o’ the comp’ny he keeps.”
Ink frowned. “But why would he—?”
“Ach! Here we are,” Maia said as she lifted something from the depths of the chest, cradling it in her palm. It was a hair-comb set with crystals, dangles of sky blue, aquamarine, pale purple and yellow-gold. It winked as Maia held it up against Joy’s hair. “That should suit,” she said. “An’ be no more objectionable than the Water Folk’s pearls.” She rolled her eyes. “Pearls! Hmph.” Maia shut the box with the flat of her hand, and the latches slammed home. “Now, ye wear that an’ Folks’ll know that you’ve been t’ see me and that Earth’s acknowledged yer right to wear it and claims ye, as well.” Her face slid side to side as she began to morph, holding the box. “Water Folk may school you, but we’ve got yer roots.”
It was a lot more than Joy was asking for, deeper than she’d bargained, but it was another token in her political arsenal, and she wasn’t about to pass it up. She took the comb gently in her hands.
“Thank you, Councilex—Maia,” she said and paused before asking, “Does it do anything?”
Maia smiled slyly. “It looks pretty in yer hair.”
That was all the answer she was likely to get. “It does,” Joy nodded. “It will. Thank you again.”
“Now let’s wrap it up nice an’ tidy,” Maia said, pulling a handful of cotton batting out of one of the seat cushions and massaging it into a ball. “Wouldn’t want t’ break it by accident.” She winked as she tucked the comb in its cotton cocoon, and Joy folded it in tissues from her purse for good measure. She tucked the bundle into her purse pocket along with the scalpel and pouch. She zipped the whole thing closed over the dowsing rod, wondering if she should buy a bigger purse.
“We should go,” Joy said and levered herself out of the low chair. Ink lent her a hand, strong and smooth as glass.
“I’ll see ye at the gala,” Maia said good-naturedly as she toddled back to her wall, kicking her long hair out of the way and stretching her body to set the chest back in its place. She drew a wormy finger over the shelf’s surface and tutted at the dust. She bobbed down, wobbling back into her original shape, jiggling a little as she licked her finger clean. “You an’ yer feathered friend ought to have quite the night.” She laughed as she bowed them out. “Can’t wait t’ see it!”
“Many thanks, Councilex,” Ink said as he stood by the door.
“Mmm,” Maia answered. Joy knew the Folk did not say “You’re welcome,” which could be taken literally. Her head bobbed gently as she ushered them out the door. “Good day, unless I lost track o’ the time—else good night and fare well.”
The bird’s eye maple shut with a deep thump behind them.
Ink withdrew his straight razor, and Joy was relieved that he had kept it in his wallet the entire time. “That was nice,” Joy said. “Now, aren’t you glad you didn’t try to kill her?”
“I likely would have failed,” Ink admitted. “I did not consider that those on the Council might be particularly adept at maintaining their long lives. You are right, I must be patient,” he said. “And try it your way.”
“Our way,” Joy said, taking his hand. Ink hesitated, fingers on the blade. He didn’t draw a door. He barely moved. She felt a curl of fear. “Ink?”
“I do not want to see them.”
Joy touched his forearm. “Who?”
“My mother, Graus Claude, Inq—all of them.” The words squeezed from his chest. “I do not want to face them. I do not know what to feel.” He ran a hand over his chest, his wallet chain swinging against his hip. “They lied to me, Joy,” he said, almost marveling at the idea. “How can that be?”
And while they hadn’t exactly lied, Joy understood what he meant.
“I’m sorry,” Joy said. “I don’t know why. But I’m certain it was done out of love.” She took his hand and shook it slightly, loosening his fingers enough to tuck hers inside. They slowly threaded their hands together, and Ink looked like he might smile but was too tired, too tense. Not even one dimple creased his cheek. He looked defeated, unmoored; without his plan to kill the Council, he needed a plan B. Joy leaned closer and tapped her purse. “Do you want to find out who did this?”
Ink turned, eyes sparking like fireworks. His voice was almost hungry. “Yes.”
He switched his grip on the straight razor, arcing it forward. Joy took out the dowsing rod and held it like handlebars, its base pointing forward. She felt like they were finally doing something, seeking answers, getting closer. She would help Ink make things right by finding out who was to blame. She squeezed the worn wood and whispered, “Amanya.”
Nothing happened. Joy hesitated, worried that Hai might have given her the wrong spell. She turned in a slow circle, waving the end of the Y-shaped stick in each direction, repeating the word, desperate to have something to show Ink.
She felt a tiny tremor in her palms.
Wondering if she’d imagined it, Joy turned back counterclockwise, passing the same point in her circle; there was a baby bee buzz, growing stronger. Excitement bubbled in her chest.
“I think I’ve got something,” she said as the buzz became a tickle and the tickle became an itch, an almost uncomfortable sensation crawling up her bones. She wiped her right hand on her back pocket, and the rod swung violently to the left, whipping her arm and popping her elbow. Ink blocked with his forearm. Joy grabbed hold again. This time, she held on tight. She could feel the shiver in her teeth.
“Let’s go,” Joy said as the force began dragging her elsewhere. “Now!”
Ink wrapped a hand over the center of the rod, somewhat stilling it, and concentrated on a point she could not see.
“I will have to cut a series in order to follow,” he said. “We will be traveling blind. I will have to be quick, and you will have to be nimble. Do not stop. Do not let go. For anything.” Joy nodded, and he sliced a door open just as they were yanked forward with a jolt that she felt in her shoulders. “Run!”
She tripped on the edge of the world as they were sucked through, Ink’s arm
flashing in swooping arcs, slicing a series of half doors through the length of the world, one after another after another flying by in a montage of light and sound and smell, the terrain churning and shifting under their feet. Joy held on, remembering her violent chase through foreign forests, yanked through pine trees leashed to Kestrel hot on the trail of the Red Knight. For a moment, she could almost believe Filly was beside them as the terrain changed from wood to grass to snow quicker than she could blink. They followed the insistent pull of the magic, racing to the source of the spell on her lips. Joy squinted against the torrent of light and blurring color and tried to wait it out, keep running, wondering when it would stop, imagining where they’d end up when it was all over.
What would they find? Who was the traitor? Would they remember? Would they confess? Would Ink try to kill them and lose himself, a price he was more than willing to pay, but one which Joy could not allow?
They halted violently, skidding into a set of steps—
—wide, stone steps—
—leading to a door with a brass knocker—
—flanked by Chinese urns filled with stalks of bamboo.
Ink and Joy stared up at the brownstone, mute.
ELEVEN
“THEY MUST BE INSIDE,” Joy said, feeling the rod pulling up the stairs. “Whoever it is might be in there. Right now. With Graus Claude—” Joy didn’t finish, because if the great amphibian was still frozen in his office, who knew who might have gone down into the pocket universe and found...
Ink vaulted the stairs and sliced through the door, pulling Joy behind him in his stony grip. There was a shock of light and sound, and Ink threw up his arm, shifting his body to shield Joy as three shots rang out in quick succession. Joy screamed.
There was a neat hole in Ink’s arm and two in his chest. Black stains spread and dripped slow, oily blood. Ink ignored them. Joy felt faint.
“The Bailiwick,” he called crisply into the foyer. “Is he here?”
“He is in his office,” Kurt said sharply. Joy peeked over Ink’s forearm as Kurt holstered his gun. “You know better than to rush in unannounced,” Kurt said unapologetically and glanced at Joy and the quivering thing in her hand. “Even emergencies knock.”
“He’s in danger,” Joy said. “The traitor’s here!”
Kurt didn’t pause. He turned quickly and led the charge down the hall. Joy hurried after him, following the rod, with Ink at her side, dripping thin trails of neon black, his chiseled profile determined and grim. The large bodyguard grabbed one of the office door handles and slipped his gun easily into his other hand. It looked heavy and dangerous. Ink’s razor was sharp and deadly. Joy gripped the rod, its quiver rattling her jaw. She wanted to be somewhere else. Anywhere else. This was too much, too soon! This couldn’t be right. This couldn’t be happening. She felt a trickle of heat spiraling up from inside her, familiar and flush. Not now! Kurt pushed the door open.
Graus Claude sat at his desk holding a Taser, a snub handgun and a remote-control detonator in three of his hands; the fourth rested gently on the wireless mouse. His eye ridge rose calmly over his ice-blue eyes. Joy glanced around the office. The Bailiwick was alone.
“I heard shots,” he said mildly.
“Yes, sir,” Kurt answered. “There was a frontal breach.”
Joy looked at the curtains, the fountains, the floor. There was no one inside. No one else there. The rod pointed unerringly forward, trembling.
The Bailiwick’s gaze slipped to Ink.
“Is that blood?” he asked.
Ink paused, his every move a question.
“A little,” he admitted.
Graus Claude put down his various implements with a sigh and thumbed a key code into the remote, which stopped beeping. “Kurt, please, clean up our guests before they stain the carpet. Then I expect a full report after your rather abrupt and untimely departure without leave during our lesson, Miss Malone.” A growl crept into his erudite lecture. “We are here to learn decorum and etiquette, and I dare say you are off to an abysmal start. This will be corrected immediately. Is that understood?”
Joy’s mouth moved, but no sound came out. The dowsing rod yanked in her arms. Ink’s grip tightened on the razor’s handle. Kurt, noting both reactions, swiftly pushed both of them back into the hallway, bowing to the Bailiwick and shutting the doors with a deferential click.
Joy dropped the rod. It shivered against the floor with a rattle, then stopped, still pointing at the office doors. She shook out her fingers. She felt sick. “Graus Claude—?”
Stone-faced, Kurt ushered them down the hallway. Joy grabbed the inert rod and stumbled before Kurt’s insistent grip. Ink allowed himself to be led, pressing his thumb into the bullet hole and massaging the skin back into place. He spread his flesh with strong, even strokes like a sculptor with living clay. The three of them stopped before a familiar archway with its overlapping, dragon-scale slats.
“Are we going to the back rooms?” Joy said just to irk him. Kurt knew that she’d been there with Mademoiselle Lacombe, the French Canadian water sprite who had sought to escape her sadistic lover by removing his mark. She’d petitioned the Bailiwick, the keeper of secrets and tugger of strings, and Joy had removed the signatura at the cost of exposing her power to Graus Claude.
The wall opened under Kurt’s hand, revealing the brass-and-velvet elevator. He marched them inside. “We are going upstairs,” he said as he shut the door, cranking the lever at his left with a twist.
Joy touched the mirrored glass, which was its own hidden door, wondering how many secrets were buried in the walls. She felt the lift shudder under her feet and squeezed the rod in one hand. How loyal was Kurt? How trustworthy, Graus Claude? How much did they know about the princess and the door? Did anyone else know what was happening here?
“To Graus Claude’s private apartments?” she guessed. She hoped that Ink heard her warning, but he stared at the holes in his shirt and pressed his stained fingers inside, fishing for bullets. It made a gruesome reflection in the mirrors.
“No,” Kurt said as the elevator shushed to a halt. “Mine.”
The door opened. Ink wiped his black-stained hand on his pants. Joy kept a hold on the rod but wanted her scalpel. She was feeling less comfortable by the minute; Kurt’s tight-lipped silence was different than when he was in butler mode, different than when he’d been mute, mutilated to save him from Aniseed’s deadly curse. The stark scar above his mandarin collar seemed a violent and foreboding reminder of what this man had survived, what he was willing to do and what he was capable of doing.
Joy stumbled through the doorway under his no-nonsense coaxing, stepping onto the edge of an enormous patterned rug. Red, shuttered windows cast complicated jigsaw patterns of sunlight on the hardwood floor, and the dark walls were interrupted here and there with silk embroidered paintings, exposed brick and artful triptychs of carved abalone and inlaid wood. There were racks of weapons in one corner along with a set of weights, a punching bag suspended from a chain, a pair of thick, spongy mats, a gun cabinet and rolls of tied grass stacked like firewood against the wall. Sleek black leather couches formed a neat square by a set of bookshelves, and where a coffee table would be squatted a circular cast-iron fire pit. Ultramodern suspension lights hung tangled with colored ropes of various widths attached to shining pulley chains and various cranks set in the wall. Kurt’s apartment looked like a cross between a dojo, a private study and a professional training gym. Joy took a step beyond his reach and adjusted the purse strap on her shoulder, hooking her finger there to anchor her hands. She felt fidgety and anxious, suddenly unsure of her company. Who was Kurt loyal to?
Three doors led from the main room to other rooms beyond. Kurt evidently lived on the entire third floor. Joy glanced at the door they’d come through—there seemed to be only one exit, and Kurt stood grimly before it.
>
There was the splash of water from behind one of the doors, and the gentle squeak of a tap made everyone turn.
“Hello, Lover,” Inq chirped as she entered the apartment, wiping her hands on a towel. She stared at Joy and Ink, her lips curving into a grin. Her smile was all teeth. “Excellent!” she said, glancing at Ink. “Who’d you kill?”
“No one,” Joy said quickly. “He didn’t kill anyone.”
Inq tipped her head. “Then whose blood is that?”
Ink frowned. “Yours.”
Inq rolled her eyes. “Oh, don’t be so dramatic,” she said, crossing the thick, hand-knotted rug. “You are my brother. What’s mine is yours.”
Joy flashed on a memory of Ink feeding himself to Inq, his fingers sliced off and brimming like a grisly champagne flute.
“You mean like our mother?” Ink said. “The one you kept secret from me? The child of royalty trapped in a forgotten cell inside the belly of the Bailiwick?”
“Yes. And now you’ve met her,” Inq said. “Isn’t it wonderful?”
“It is not—!” Ink seemed to realize that he was being baited. He inhaled slowly, his anger cooling to a simmer instead of a boil. “Why?” he asked. “Why did you not tell me?”
“Why?” Her demeanor changed instantly like storm clouds gone black. “Because you didn’t care,” she said. “About her, about me, about anything—and then you did.” Her gaze snapped sharply to Joy, who quailed from her glare like a lick of a whip. “You learned to care,” she amended. “So I’m telling you now.”
Ink growled. “Now is too late.”
“Time means nothing to us,” Inq mocked. “Don’t speak to me of time. It was you who refused to remember—unlike the rest of the world, who conveniently forgot. You left me alone to deal with everything all this time. You, who were more a thing than a person, that I helped nurture for centuries until you could awaken. I didn’t tell you to keep you safe!” she spat. “I was the one who couldn’t depend on you!” She swept her arm angrily, and a buzzing ripple cascaded through the air. Joy took an involuntary step back, recalling Inq’s attackers exploding into a pink mist of atomized blood.