Insidious

by Dawn Metcalf

Her father frowned. “I thought Stef said you went to bed at nine thirty.”

  “I meant I didn’t get much sleep,” she said. Yesterday she’d...what? Gone out with Stef, brought him to Dmitri, gotten the rod and a beacon, met Monica for coffee, ensorcelled a letter opener, introduced Ink to his mother, stopped him from killing Maia, failed to stop him from attacking Graus Claude, found the source of the spell but not the true traitor, destroyed her favorite dance club, fought off mudmen and Avery and woken up still not knowing if Ink was all right. Hours and days had lost all meaning. Travel in the Twixt completely scrambled her internal clock.

  And her brother had covered for her. Again.

  The car trundled into the parking lot. Stef lowered the window, welcoming all the scents of forest, lake water and pine. They were soothing smells reminiscent of childhood summers and outdoor memories, now layered with flashes of red armor, Filly’s blood in the snow, Kestrel’s feral screaming and the mothlike zing of Inq’s touch, leaving behind a Grimson’s mark. Joy reflexively touched her shoulder and felt a slight chill that had nothing to do with the wind.

  “Everybody out,” her father said, and three Malones opened their car doors. Joy was surprised to find that she missed Mom’s fourth slam. She wondered if Mom and Doug ever went camping in California. As far as Carolina camping, the last time had been a disaster.

  Her father seemed to hear her thoughts as they traded a look across the roof of the car. “Now, remember,” he said. “No fancy knots this time.”

  “Dad—”

  He raised his hands in defense. “I’m just sayin’.”

  Joy yanked her pack out of the back. “That wasn’t my fault!”

  “Clearly,” her father said as he shouldered the tent bag. “It was a diabolical plot by mischievous bears.”

  Joy slung the supply bag over her shoulder. “Dad—”

  “They never did get over the Goldilocks incident,” he said. “Turned them on to a life of petty crime.” He shook his head sadly. “Such a waste of wildlife.”

  Stef laughed as they trudged across the hilltop field to the foot trail, his Adam’s apple bobbing above the collar of his backward, inside-out tee. “I can’t wait to hear about this one.”

  Dad smirked as he led the way. “You’re one to talk, Mr. Butterfingers.”

  “Ugh! That was fifteen years ago!” Stef groaned. “Enough already!”

  Mr. Malone smiled. “Now, there’s our spot. It’s got a great view.” He pointed across the lake as they walked under the locust trees. “The lakeshore’s down the bluff, and you can see Shortoff and Table Rock from here. There’ll be plenty of time to fish and swim and hike, but no s’mores. Shelley’d kill me.” He dropped their gear on the picnic table and stretched. Joy thought her dad looked like a younger version of himself, which was weird since she felt older. Of course, in the past year he’d started dating, and she’d become half-human. It was enough to change anyone.

  Mr. Malone slapped his chest and grinned. “Let’s set up the tents and get in a quick hike before lunch. I think they said we can see the Pisgah from up there.”

  Stef glanced at the park’s brochure. “The Fox Den Trail’s only two-point-two miles,” he said. “I thought you said we’d be hiking.”

  “We’ll do a more serious hike tomorrow, okay?” his father said. “I want to take it easy and branch out from here. Consider this base camp. We’ll explore some more options later tonight. I just want us to enjoy some time together as a family. Talk about ourselves and our plans for the future.”

  Joy got the hint. She’d been occupied with a lot of things besides family, and the only future she could think of was the gala Sunday night. She had to focus—this was their last family gathering until Thanksgiving. And Dad was serious about next year—would she be going to college? What would she do? Her life had once been all about Olympic training, and now it was all about the Twixt. She wanted the freedom to choose, but didn’t know what to choose. What do I want to do? Where do I fit in?

  She tugged on her tent bag, which was half under Stef’s butt.

  “Get off,” she said, yanking harder. “C’mon! I want to pitch my tent.”

  Stef ignored her as he double-tied his boots. “You mean pitch a fit?”

  “Stef,” she whined. “Move your keister!”

  “Keep your shirt on.”

  “Dork!”

  “Dweeb!”

  “Dad!” they chorused.

  “I’m sorry, what was that?” Mr. Malone placed a hand theatrically by his ear. “I can’t hear you over all the loving family bonding time we’re having.” He tossed the stakes in the dirt and glared at each of them. “You, stand up,” he commanded. “And, you, grow up. Now let’s get this camp in order before I send you both to your tents without supper.”

  Stef and Joy jumped. With Dad on a diet, this was no idle threat.

  “Yes, Dad,” they said.

  Mr. Malone went back to pitching his tent and unpacking essentials like aluminum foil and DEET. Joy glanced at her brother staring out at the pines. She could see the longing on his face as plainly as the glyphs on his glasses. She rattled her pack’s buckles and caught his eye. Joy mouthed, Sorry. He nodded and unclipped the bungees with a shrug. She snuck her hand into the pack’s pocket and showed her brother Dmitri’s glow stick. “Soon,” she said and winked.

  Stef’s ears turned pink.

  Mr. Malone kicked some rocks out of the nettles. “Hey, you two make up yet?”

  “Yeah,” Stef said, picking up a handful of stakes.

  Joy nodded. “Yeah. We’re good.”

  “Wonderful,” Dad said. “Glad to hear it. Now, would you mind coming over here and helping me get this thing upright? I don’t want the nylon lying in the damp grass.”

  Stef and Joy took their familiar positions on either side of the deflated tent, quickly threading the rods through the flaps and lining up the loops without saying a word, working together like a well-oiled machine. When they were little, everyone had shared a tent, cuddled in separate sleeping bags, sharing one lantern and damp, sleepy air; but the family had split into smaller tents sometime around Joy’s first training bra. Joy secretly missed the family tent—including Mom and her unladylike snoring. They’d felt together then, a family, even if it wasn’t all roses and song. She still remembered hitting Stef with a pillow every time he farted in her direction on purpose.

  They zipped up the tents and tossed their valuables into the car, then filled their water bottles at the spigots and strapped on light packs. Dad had his naturalist guide, and Stef packed extra gorp. Joy took her essentials, which now included her water bottle, cell phone, emergency soy butter, Burt’s Bees lip balm, a pouch of vellum notes and two magic blades. Joy paused to consider what this said about her life as she locked the Pearls of Wisdom in the glove compartment and double-tied her hiking boots.

  Dad led the way from the fishing pier south along the lake into the woods along the orange-blaze trail, pointing out tulip trees and hemlock, shelf mushrooms and Indian pipe, their boots crunching on the cleared forest floor as he and Stef chatted about life at U Penn. Joy snapped a pic and sent it to Monica with the text Gorgeous morning! The sloping treetops were a dozen shades of green cradling Lake James, full of silver-gold ripples, the shining water an unbelievable blue. The pic almost looked Photoshopped. She laughed when she got a text back, a pic of Gordon waving Monica’s teddy bear at the camera. Monica’s text read Gordon-ocious morning! Joy typed back You win! and tucked the phone back into her pack.

  She wished she could text Ink.

  Her dad’s voice cut across the trail. “So, Joy, if you’re not into U Penn, are you interested in Raleigh or Chapel Hill?”

  Joy kicked a stone off the trail. It was hard for her to imagine being so close to home when her original plan had been to train in Australia
. She tugged the straps on her pack and took a deep breath of clean air.

  “It would depend on my major, I guess.”

  Stef chimed in. “What do you want to major in?”

  She’d given it some thought. Logically, she could go into phys ed, teaching or coaching, or something in physical therapy or sports medicine if her grades were good enough, but the truth was that she wasn’t really interested in any of these—and she could only tell the truth. The truth was that she didn’t see herself doing anything but traveling the world, watching black tattoos burst and re-form on people’s skin alongside Indelible Ink. How stupid was that? She knew that she had had her own dreams once, but those were gone. So, what did she want for herself now? What was her future? If she could do anything, what would she like to do?

  If she stepped with both feet into the Twixt, she wouldn’t have to worry about things like money or a career. She would be with Ink, and her job would be keeping magic and herself alive.

  Was that all she wanted?

  “I thought about a lot of things—phys ed and sports therapy—but those were part of my old life,” she said, scraping her boots in the grass. “I’m trying to think about making a new life, and I’m still figuring out what that looks like.”

  Her dad smiled. “I’m glad you’re thinking about it seriously, and I don’t mind if you want to take a year to figure it out, but trust me—time has a way of sneaking up on you. It’s good to have a plan, but it’s also good to be with other kids your age who are figuring it out, too.” He looked around the skyline, contemplating the clouds. “And even if things don’t work out the way you planned, you’ll be closer to something better than where you started.” He smiled. “You grow.”

  “I had a plan,” she said. But so had her dad. So had Stef. Life sometimes had different ideas. Plans changed, and you had to change with them, whether you wanted to or not. But Joy was afraid that she was changing in more ways than one.

  She glanced at her father and brother—what would happen if she changed completely? What if she all of a sudden disappeared? Stef would still have the Sight, but what if he, too, began to change? And what if he didn’t? What if she never saw her mother again? Joy still had Inq’s elixir, the last drops that Aniseed had made for Inq to give the Cabana Boys the Sight. But would she do that to her parents? What if the sight of her drove them mad like Great-Grandmother Caroline? Joy shook her head with a shudder. She couldn’t let that happen.

  “I had dreams of winning the gold,” she said. “I had dreams of sponsorship and endorsements and going on the circuit.” Athletes didn’t earn much money until they were a “face” that could be marketed beyond medal bonuses and into coaching or philanthropy careers. She’d had her eye on a few leads, included subtle product shots in her online profiles and promo pics. She and her mother had mapped out her next steps according to a plan. And then everything had changed. Mom changed. I changed. “Now I’m not sure what else I’m good at.” Joy hiked her pack higher and shrugged. “I don’t want to be folding sweaters forever.”

  “It’s a job,” Dad said. “But you want to think about a career.”

  “I’ve never dreamed of being anything other than an Olympian.” It was weird to say it out loud after burying it for so long. It didn’t hurt the way she’d thought it would, but it left a blank silence afterward.

  “It’s good to have dreams,” Stef said. “But maybe it’s time to make some new ones.”

  She knew he meant college, but she heard Dmitri.

  That brought her back to her life in the Twixt. She didn’t want to wonder if Avery was in the shadows or when Ink would wake up or what the Tide might come up with next. She didn’t want to think about sprouting wings or fins or horns when she’d be wearing her cap and gown. And she didn’t want to think about the surrounding pine trees sprouting unkillable knights...but such was her life. Is it paranoia if everyone really is out to get you? Her insides twisted as she adjusted her pack, imagining the scalpel tucked in its pocket. She wanted to talk to Kurt. She wanted advice from Graus Claude. She wanted Ink by her side.

  How could she think about college when she was to be formally presented to another world in two days?

  Joy kicked a rock to the side of the trail, debating what would happen if she skipped the gala altogether. She suspected that it would be a bad idea, given Graus Claude’s reaction, but it was tempting. She’d been offered the chance to walk away from the Twixt, to never be part of that world again, and instead she’d accepted her place among them, as well as her signatura. She’d taken a True Name. She’d made her choice. It wasn’t possible to back out now.

  Or was it?

  What she needed to do was talk to Ink, clear Graus Claude and free the princess. While Graus Claude had cast the Amanya spell, it had been altered by Aniseed, and with her being dead, Joy couldn’t break the spell by forcing a confession out of her. So the only thing left to do was to find the mysterious door and open it. Bringing the King and Queen back would negate the Amanya spell. In a paradox, the earlier spell wins out. If the King and Queen returned, then they would be remembered, canceling out the spell of forgetting. They could return to this world and bring the rest of the Folk back with them. Then everything would go back to normal, and she could ask them to stop the changes happening inside her.

  Find the door. Open it. Break the spell. Change the rules.

  Joy had a plan.

  Stef marched down the trail with extra skips and hops, fairly bursting with energy as he dived off trail, then returned with a smile while picking burrs off his clothes and brushing cobwebs from his hair. Joy wondered if he was feeling the surge that came from being outside, the excitement of anticipating his next meeting with Dmitri, or if his extra energy was because the mountain somehow called to him as part–Earth Folk. She felt it, but the sensation was dulled, tethered by worry and blunted by thick rubber soles between her and the ground. Stef’s obvious glow made him smile more, laugh more, there was a lightness to him that she envied. He didn’t know. A gray, guilty feeling wormed inside her as she wondered when and how she’d ever tell him the truth.

  “Okay, enough puttering,” Stef announced as they rounded the next bend. “I’m going to run the rest of the loop.” He slapped Joy’s arm. “You coming?”

  “I was going to help Dad with lunch,” Joy said. Lunch sounded good. She’d finished her gorp. Now she wanted her soy butter. And possibly a pizza.

  “Awww,” her brother teased. “Are we still a widdle sweepy?” He tossed a pebble at her playfully. It bounced off her head.

  “Hey,” Joy said with an edge under the laugh.

  Stef back-jogged, kicking up his heels. “Dad’s old,” he said. “What’s your excuse?”

  “You leave me out of this,” Dad protested. He turned to Joy. “It’s okay, honey, you go on ahead.” He walked past her, muttering loud enough to hear, “Do me a favor and leave his smug mug in the dust.”

  Joy grinned. “Okay, Daddy,” she quipped and gave him a quick kiss on the cheek.

  “Suck-up!” Stef called through cupped hands.

  “Suck this!” Joy shouted and took off. Stef whooped, turned tail and ran.

  Joy pounded after him, gratefully losing herself to the run, but her brother had a good lead, booking a straight line through the woods flanked by controlled-burn regrowth and trail-marker signs. Only a few straggler branches reached into the path like outstretched arms. Joy bent forward and put on a small burst of speed, feeling the quick-time pounding of her feet against the ground, something oddly removed and buffered, as if she were running on a spring floor—a slight give, a detached feeling, removed from reality, breathing canned air. Joy tried to ignore the weird sensations as she watched her brother’s easy pace; she recognized his stride—he’d kept up running while at college. Wasn’t he supposed to be staying up late partying and getting fat?

&n
bsp; Joy took the next turn at a clip, leaning into the curve, pumping her elbows tight against her sides and chugging her way up the incline. She passed two strolling hikers and a couple of kids, but she was too busy concentrating on catching up to Stef. Chin down, shoulders tucked forward, she angled her spine and sprinted.

  She burst into the next stretch and checked the trail, right and left—she’d lost sight of him. Joy spun around, still jogging. There was no way he’d gotten that far ahead. Joy wondered if he was hiding in the woods, planning to spring out at her. The trail snaked up ahead, the path interrupted by mossy boulders and a steep, rocky slope. The ground felt harder; the air crisper, cleaner. Joy didn’t have enough breath to spare calling his name, but her mind begged the question, Where’s Stef?

  Alone on the trail, her calves started to burn, and her breathing began to change—the gooseflesh on her arms had nothing to do with running but rather the vague, eerie sense that something was wrong. The worry began to bloom in her brain, a premonition, a certainty that something was off. Her thoughts leaped to the scalpel. The one thing she wouldn’t tolerate was the Twixt putting her friends and family in danger. Monica’s scar was one close call too many, and the guilt was something that she lived with every day.

  No, she silently swore. Not again.

  Joy flung herself around the next bend, hoping to see her brother safe and smug up the trail, but before she could call out, his voice reached out to her. She sagged in relief until she heard the shape of his words.

  “Joy! Look out!”

  She staggered to a stop. She punched the clip at her breast and swung her pack off one shoulder, grabbing the scalpel just in time to see the first homunculi clear the turn.

  They boiled out of the woods, ruby-red eyes and mouths gaping wide. Her body froze, fighting the incline and the fear, before she started backing away, almost sliding in her hurry to retreat. The horde charged, glomming together as they came, merging seamlessly into pairs and triads, their bodies smashing together, eyes bouncing like billiard balls against one another as multiple limbs matched pace in a grotesque pursuit until only three long bodies snaked their way over the mountain trail, fiery eyes lining their sides, a sinuous caterpillar wave. Triangular heads rose, glowering down like baleful dragons. Joy balked as her body smacked hard against a rock.