by Dawn Metcalf
She moved her leg a fraction. He moved, too. Closer. He was misunderstanding her, and she couldn’t correct him—or, perhaps, he wasn’t misunderstanding at all. She wanted to turn and look at him. She wanted to pretend she hadn’t noticed how warm he was. She wanted to feel his lips. She wanted him to kiss her. She wanted to kiss him. But he couldn’t read her face with her face turned away, so it was her secret—a secret her body was whispering even as Joy tried to hush it, to keep very still. It wasn’t working.
She pressed his fingers against her lips as a signal to quiet them. He stroked a soft line over her bottom lip, making her salivate. Damn.
Someone turned over in their tent, and she stopped, midmotion. She pressed her tongue against the back of her teeth and clamped her knees tight. Ink held himself preternaturally still. As the sounds settled, the silence stretching, she started to breathe again. Her breath tickled his wrist. He responded by breathing into her ear.
Warmth coursed through her, reminding her of beaches, warm and inviting. She squeezed his fingers. He touched his chin against her shoulder and kissed the spot. She felt the touch of his lips all the way down her calves. Joy squirmed, tensing, one foot hooking behind his ankle. He moved his hand to the edge of her waistband and kissed the nape of her neck. She rolled her head to the side, pressing into the pillow, his right hand splayed over her belly between her shirt and her shorts, his two middle fingers just touching, flesh on flesh; she could feel them there, politely, perfectly still.
Joy closed her eyes and willed them to move.
Curling her head forward exposed the back of her neck. The scrape of his chin and his breathing tangled in the roots of her hair. She arched into him. He stayed grounded like a rock. She turned slightly, his hand brushing her rib. She tried to turn enough to kiss him, but it only rolled her under his touch—his palm slid across her waist, his fingers hot against her stomach. She twisted. He kissed her temple, her earlobe, her cheekbone, her throat; his hands stayed, fixed points of warmth—one cupping her head, the other just touching her belly button.
Belly button, singular. Important things, belly buttons. She stroked the back of his hand. She could feel where they’d traced bumps of veins and knuckles and skin ridges and tapped hardened nails. She knew these hands. She trusted these hands. These hands knew her.
“Joy?” he whispered a question.
“Yes.”
Those hands moved.
Joy leaned into the pillow and clenched a fistful of down. The sound in her head was so loud, she was certain everyone could hear the blood rushing through her ears. Her thoughts whirling, gaining speed, crashing behind her eyes—all words ripped away. Her insides wrung taut. She held her breath as her legs curled around his. Heat zinged up her spine, a froth of champagne bubbles tickling on the surface of her skin. She let go of his hand and rolled to face him; his arm around her waist, his fingers in her hair, their legs wound together—his, hers—together, theirs. Always. Always like this.
She opened her eyes, opened her mouth and kissed him.
He groaned. She nearly whimpered for him to keep quiet, but it was as if he could taste the words on her tongue. He drank her lips like he was speaking into her. She covered his mouth with hers, pulling them closer, bodies tight, knees bent, tongues touching, but quiet—so quiet—that they could hide their breathing beneath the crackle of trees, the distant wind and the shush of leaves.
Joy melted. Her head was floating, filled with white sparks. His hands kept her grounded, holding her close. Her breath fed his, echoing in his mouth, and he gave it back, willingly, gratefully, awed. Slowly they separated into two people kissing; two pairs of lips, four pairs of limbs, two bodies under one blanket, stifling with sweat. Joy’s clothes were damp, her bangs wet and her lips buzzed, soft and swollen, but Ink was pristine—his face unguarded, his eyes wide as waxing moons.
“Joy—?”
“Shh,” she whispered and placed a finger on his lips. They were pliant and smooth. She traced the shape of them, muzzily entranced. His eyes slipped closed as he followed her touch. She knew his senses were awake, alive.
Remember, Inq’s chirpy voice was like a half dream, he will be learning everything, watching you.
Smiling, Joy drew her hand away and rested it on his chest, feeling the pulse of his heart under the puddle of silvery silk. She nestled her head in the crook of his shoulder, curling one knee above his, shrugging the sleeping bag aside as her skin breathed in the night. She pressed her ear against him, listening to the gentle, liquid rush of him washing against the shore—or maybe it was the eelet singing, lulling her to sleep. She didn’t care. She had this moment. This. Now. Ink.
Thump-thump. Thump-thump. Thump-thump.
His heartbeat slowed as sleep blurred the corners. Something about it nagged her—something she was forgetting, something important—but before she could shape it into words, it slipped away into dream.
EIGHTEEN
JOY WOKE UP with a start—it was dark, and the ward had flared in a warning shower of sparks, the fading post-fireflies still playing catch-can before her eyes. Ink was beside her, half crouched, razor open, leveled against the looming shadow of whoever was standing outside.
“Get up,” Stef whispered and kicked the ward again. It rippled with a crackle of energy. “It’s almost four.”
Joy froze with her scalpel in hand. “Stef?”
“Come on out, Ink,” Stef said. “Time to go home.”
Ink glanced at Joy and then unzipped the tent flap, dissolving the ward with a flick of his wrist. He stepped out of the tent. Joy heard his feet crunch through the salt barrier as she scrambled to untangle herself from the bag. She crawled out of the tent in time to see her brother and boyfriend exchange a long look before Ink stepped past him, slicing a line of nothing and folding it quietly behind him, escaping to somewhere far beyond.
Stef kept his eyes on the gleaming rift until it zipped closed. Standing next to him, Joy crossed her arms over her chest and shivered. She almost said, Nothing happened, but that was a lie. It wasn’t nothing, it just wasn’t everything. Her brother wiped his glasses on his shirt.
“Remind me to kick his ass,” Stef said.
“Stef...”
Her brother turned and gave her a brief once-over. “And remind me to kick your ass,” he added with a yawn. “But later. After breakfast.”
He crept around his tent, and she followed, circling the fire pit slowly in the dark. Joy stared at her brother’s tent, seeing the shape of a sleeping body and hearing the low hush of his steady snoring. She stopped dead, goose bumps skittering to join the cold.
“Who’s that?” she whispered. Stef grinned.
“That’s me,” he said. “Or, at least, a phantom of me.” He tilted his head. “I slept somewhere else.”
Joy didn’t ask, although she could guess. “What is it?”
“It’s a Level Three doppelganger, simpler than a glamour.” Stef unzipped his tent and showed her his sleeping twin on the bed. Her Sight made it look slightly transparent, but it was an eerie likeness. “I had to film myself with the webcam sleeping for seven nights straight to get all the angles, and all it does is snore and sleep, but it works like a charm.” He waggled his fingers in front of her eyes. “Wizard, remember?”
She squinted at it, impressed. “Is it enough to fool Dad?”
He smirked. “It’s been enough to fool you,” he said. “I haven’t been home until about noon most of the summer. You were just lucky I was home to get an earful of ice cube that morning or you would have been in for quite a shock.” She gaped at him. He tsked at her, and she pulled her shirt lower. “Some of us don’t like having Dad within earshot.”
“It isn’t like that,” she whispered. “We didn’t—”
“La la la la. Don’t want to know.” Stef mimed covering his ears. “Plausible
deniability.” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder. It had a Band-Aid wrapped around it. “Go back to your tent. Get some sleep. I’ve got Dad, and you’ve got an appointment.”
That was right—she did. But Ink—? Joy missed him already in the cold early-morning-after. She sighed. There was nothing she could do about that right now. She picked her way back to her tent, grabbed her flashlight and keys and stuck her scalpel in her pocket.
Stef frowned. “Where are you going?” he whispered.
“I left some stuff in the car.”
Stef rolled his eyes and followed. The glyph in his hand glowed very slightly. She noticed that his red bracelet was gone.
“I’m coming with you.”
“Then hurry up.”
“Dork.”
“Dweeb.”
The chill hurried her steps—it was dark and shadowy on her way to the car; the parking lot felt lonely, vulnerable and exposed. Late moonlight streamed over everything, washing it bright blue. Unlocking the car sounded like a gunshot. Joy popped the glove compartment, grabbed the velvet box and shut the door, holding on to the handle so it would click shut instead of slam. Stef kept his head up, watching the woods. Joy worried that any twinkles of light between the trees were unfriendly eyes, watching, waiting. She pressed her key fob, locking the doors. They ran back to the site—every crunch of their footfalls like a B-movie scream. She tightened her grip on the scalpel and ran faster.
Crawling into her tent, she felt childishly better, like pulling the blankets over her head to protect herself against the monsters under her bed. Except now she knew: monsters were real, and blankets wouldn’t stop them. She took out her scalpel and held it between her finger and thumb.
“Now go to sleep,” her brother said as he reset the ward.
She zipped the tent closed as he peeled back his Band-Aid and squeezed out a small bead of blood. Checking the contents of the velvet box and confirming the time, she turned the card over in her hand. The idea of being fitted for a dress seemed more impossibly ludicrous than snapping a glow stick so her brother could rendezvous with his imaginary friend. Of course, she’d just spent the night curled up with her invisible boyfriend, so who was she to judge? She touched the floor of the tent beside her, but not a hint of Ink’s warmth remained. It made it hard to believe that it had happened at all.
But it had. It did. Joy lay back against the pillow. She could smell Ink there. That was real. She smiled to herself. That was very, very real.
Placing her scalpel next to her jewelry box, the business card and her phone, she tucked herself back into her sleeping bag and zipped it demurely into shape. She stroked her hand over his side of the pillow and switched off the flashlight. She dozed, listening to the zip of tents, the shuffle of shoes and the low whisper of male voices as they gathered their things—the click-clack of poles, the rattle of the tackle box and the crunch of receding footsteps as they made their way down to the shore. These were familiar sounds, family sounds, comforting and well-worn as slippers, and yet all she could think about was escaping to her other life full of danger and obligations. She was clearly insane.
Joy touched the burnt spot in her tent, the tiny hole the match had melted, no bigger than the tip of her finger. She felt the dry dirt, the small speck of earth, and closed her eyes. There it was again—the cool surface, the gritty texture she could almost feel on her tongue, the taste of salt and iron and old, old ice. That vein of thought and feeling blossomed, growing cavernous and awesome, widening into depths that shrugged off the rocky chill, pushing deeper, tighter, building pressure she could feel inside her body, filling up the empty spaces where she’d become cold and hollow after...after...
She sat up. Her breathing stuttered.
“Hello?”
Joy grabbed her scalpel and blinked back a jolt of panic. She’d fallen asleep. She’d just woken up. It was just a nightmare. She wasn’t—
“Knock knock,” a woman’s voice said outside Joy’s tent. “The boys asked me to take you to your appointment. I hope I’m not too early.”
Joy stumbled forward and unzipped the tent, squinting past the ward.
“Raina?” she gasped.
The Pantene-haired beauty smiled. “Come on, Cinderella. Time to get dressed.”
* * *
“Lift your arms—there we go. A little tighter in the bust, I think,” Raina said with authority. “Take a deep breath. Now let it out? Fine.” She pinched a half an inch. “That will keep you trim and show off your profile.”
A giant black spider stabbed a silver pin expertly through the fold and swiveled around Joy, making similar adjustments with a dance of many legs. Joy tried to keep her eyes straight ahead, staring at her own reflection in the trifold mirror as Raina continued to prattle suggestions nonstop. Rather than being annoyed, Joy was profoundly grateful—Raina’s constant chatter was staving off Joy’s imminent freak-out. After Joy had torn the business card in half, they’d arrived in a sunny solarium draped in diaphanous fabric sporting a stunning golden dress, several polished mirrors and a five-foot-tall spider who’d politely asked her to strip.
Joy stayed very still, feeling the pins graze her skin.
“Tuuuurn,” the spider woman purred, and Joy obeyed, willing her skin to stop crawling. She’d hugged a giant frog, been dragged through a forest by Kestrel and been kissed by Invisible Inq. This shouldn’t be a big deal.
The tickle of legs wriggled along the edge of her Sight. Joy squirmed.
The black spider logo—not a starburst—should have been her first clue. Still, it might have been something good to know before she’d nearly swallowed her tongue. Given Graus Claude had half as many limbs, Joy shouldn’t have been surprised by his choice of tailor, but it was still a shock...almost as shocking as the naked torso protruding from the bulbous spider body covered in a fine sheen of gray fur, growing coarser and longer as it spread down her spine, across her abdomen and down each of her legs, which were black at the feet, fringed in long, silky white hairs. She’d introduced herself as Idmona, pronounced with long, drawling vowels that turned Joy’s stomach to water. She wore only long loops of measuring tape around her neck and several strands of clunky beads. Idmona never stopped smiling—it was as if she was used to shocking people and secretly enjoyed it. Her full lips framed furry mandibles, and her teeth were fanged and sharp. She bit through the thread neatly as she sewed.
“Gooood,” Idmona said approvingly and went back to adding crystals to the trim. Raina and she had discussed adding more color—“a little more sparkle, just a touch”—to the already impossible gown. Joy was swathed in layers of aquamarine organza and buttery gold silk, rich and delicate with thousands of crystals spilling down her latticed bodice, flaring out into scintillating “wings” that trailed along either side of the skirt, brushing the floor in a small train, gathered into waterfall layers in the back. Her sleeves were tight-fitting and laced with ribbons, like fingerless gloves attached by thin gold chains. Joy had shown them the jewelry box, which necessitated the last-minute adjustments. Both Raina and Idmona had admired the pieces in the velvet sheath.
“A seeeecond strand?” Idmona observed casually, draping the enormously long double string of pearls between three of her legs. A fourth brought Maia’s hair comb up to the light. “Aaaaaaand this?”
“For my hair,” Joy said. The tailor turned it over gently between two of her footpads as if spinning a cocoon. The spider woman smiled, her mandibles spreading.
“Of couuuuuuurse.”
Joy turned her back to the large mirrors, the one in front of her having been moved to make room for the large rack of trims, crystals and beads that Idmona had wheeled in from one of the many other doors. There were eight doors from the solarium, each leading in different directions—other showrooms, other clients, closets, storerooms; a virtual hive of activity hummed behind the wal
ls. Joy was a little vague about where, exactly, they were, but Raina explained that the card had been specifically linked to this room at five o’clock, Eastern Standard Time.
One was never late for an appointment with Idmona.
Joy tried to squeeze herself smaller. The lady spider was constantly moving, mandibles, arms and legs skittering with virtuoso skill, transforming the piece of clothing into a wearable work of art. But Joy kept staring at the many mirror reflections that made it seem as if she were surrounded by an army of hairy, wriggling things. It was excellent motivation for standing still.
“We ought to fashion a matching boutonniere or pocket kerchief for Ink,” Raina said, ignoring the blinking Bluetooth in her ear. “Appearances are everything.”
Idmona scuttled around the edges of the dress and conversation. “Not quiiiiiiite everyyyyyyyything,” she said with a knowing twitch of her lips.
Joy fingered the pearls nervously, remembering Graus Claude’s advice, but Graus Claude was in jail, awaiting trial for a crime he hadn’t really committed, and she hadn’t heard back from the others yet. At the gala, she would be a symbol of his patronage and carry a piece of his good name. Joy had to make a good impression. She had to keep up appearances—for the sake of his reputation, as well as hers. The Council might be swayed by her performance if she did well. Immortals had long memories, and Graus Claude had given her every advantage. She had to go through with this now—it might be her only leverage. This ridiculous charade was stealing precious time and giving it to Aniseed, but Joy would not fail the Bailiwick. The Folk needed her to succeed.
Raina tugged the damselfly wings into place. “These will complement Ink’s tailcoat nicely.”
“You’ve seen Ink’s costume?” Joy asked tightly. She pretended it was the bodice’s fault.
“I was there for his fitting.”
“Really?” Joy said. Was he naked? Had she seen more than Joy?
Raina grinned. “He wanted my opinion,” she said simply.