Insidious

Joy frowned. “But that’s a good thing, isn’t it?”

Inq looked at Joy as if she were an idiot. “There was no coup because suddenly no one remembered the King and Queen—or that there ever was a King and Queen—or nine princesses, or the rest of their people, or a hidden door between worlds. It was as if they’d forgotten everything but the Council!” Her voice hinted at old frustrations and anger. “And, worse than having forgotten, they could not remember. They could not be convinced that the King and Queen had ever existed. I could not convince the Bailiwick of his function, I could not find anyone who remembered the royal family or that there were thousands of our people sequestered somewhere else, in secret. Worst of all, if the traitor had forgotten about it as well, the crime would be wiped as clean as their memory—the conflict was neatly ended.” She glared at Joy with her startling eyes. “I could not risk anyone finding out that I still retained my memories, in case the traitor was still out there.” She looked at her mother. “I am her only eyes and ears outside of this alcove, out in the world. We have been searching for this traitor since before the Dark Ages. The crime itself has been long forgotten, we have no allies and the trail is cold.” Inq stepped closer to Joy. “Now you understand why I cannot risk being silenced or made obsolete or killed for making mistakes.” Her voice was a whisper. “She depends on me.”

Joy thought back to how all of this started—her being labeled a lehman, Ink’s chosen mortal lover, to cover up the fact that Ink had made a mistake in failing to blind her; that they had to keep up the pretense that the Scribes were infallible, able to be relied on to deliver signaturae without flaw or question, so that neither of them would be considered defective and in need of being replaced. Everything Joy had experienced in the Twixt during the past six months was with the single purpose of keeping the three of them alive. Joy looked again at the princess of the Twixt. Not just the three of us—four. As well as thousands more lost behind a forgotten door.

Her head spun with implications.

“Okay, wait, I understand that someone wanted to overthrow the King and Queen after they left with most of the Folk, and that you worried that they might go after your—” Joy gestured at the princess and struggled to use the word “—mom, and then everyone else seemed to have forgotten all about it and can’t be forced to remember. With you so far,” Joy said and took a deep breath. “But I don’t understand how come you weren’t affected or why you’re telling me.”

The princess rose to her feet. “Inq and Ink were not affected because they are not Folk,” she said. “I made them with my own hands, my own magic, my own words—I am a Maker, like my family. My words have power. Everything you see here, every whorl of wood, every stone, every leaf, every drop of water and each grain of sand I have made while I have been imprisoned here.” Joy’s eyes drank in the whole of the pocket world, trying to imagine every detail created by hand. She tried to step off the grass that curled underfoot as if she were accidentally crushing someone’s art.

“Whatever affected the entirety of the Folk left the Scribes untouched.” The princess considered Joy with interest. “Humans were not affected, either—you’ve retained your memories, unlike the rest of the Folk.” She paused, then amended, “Although I imagine that that is also true of those who escaped—the treachery was limited to the confines of this world, the world of the Twixt. It is why we can have this conversation at all,” she added. “Inq said that, being part-human, you would be able to remember.”

Joy frowned. “I don’t know anything about any King and Queen,” she said. “Or any lost Folk, for that matter. This is the first I’ve ever heard of it.”

“Not you,” Inq said. “Your stories—your myths and legends and literature passed down through the ages. I’ve read them. I know that they’re there.” She counted on her flawless fingers, “Genesis, Exodus, Homer, Shakespeare, Spenser, Chaucer, Yeats, Grimm, Oberon and Titania, Zeus and the Titans, Persephone and Hades, Enki and Ereshkigal, Osiris and Isis, Yul-ryeo and Mago, Inti and Mama Kilya, Dagda and Lugh.” She gasped for more breath. “Tam Lin, Olorun, King Arthur and Gwenhwyfar, Seelie and Unseelie fae, the fairy courts, the Snow Queen, Queen Mab, Morgan le Fey—any of this sound familiar?” Inq gestured at the expanse created by the Maker-Princess in her caged closet world. “Humans remember the past in a way the rest of the Folk cannot. It lives in your stories, which means it lives in you. That means that you can help me, you can do something.”

Joy knew exactly what Inq wanted her to do.

“You want me to help you find the traitors,” she said quietly. “And kill them.”

“If it comes to that,” Inq admitted. “Of course, I suggested simply killing everyone on the Council years ago and forcing the door to open,” she said with a smile. “But it’s hidden down here from all but the Council, and we don’t know where it is. Besides,” she added, “Mother didn’t like it.”

“I do not approve of killing innocents, no,” the princess said. “Even if there is a wickedness among them. It was the reason I chose to stay behind in the first place—too many innocents had suffered death on both sides.” She glanced at Joy. “I understand that you and I share this respect for both worlds.” She knelt and drew her hands through the brook, cupping them together, merging twin handfuls of water. “Once our peoples were one—that, too, has been forgotten. This was our world, a shared world.” She let go with a splash. The liquid clung to her fingers and fell like real water, the light sliding and splashing as she shook droplets from her nails. But the next moment, her hands were instantly dry. It was eerie and somehow horribly sad, how unreal and imaginary it all was. “I would like it best if we could identify the traitors, force them to undo that which they wrought, and thereby locate the door to our King and Queen so that the rest of our people can come home.” She opened her hand to Inq, and they linked their fingers together. “I would like to reunite my family, to see my mother and father and sisters again.”

Joy squirmed around the all-too-familiar fantasy, the tug-of-war, love-and-hate dream of her mother and father getting back together, forgiving and forgetting and becoming a family again. Hers could never really be like that, but she understood the longing. But did someone have to die to make it happen? Worse than death—erased from existence as though they’d never been? Joy winced at the memory of falling into the hollow briar patch and realizing what she had done to the Red Knight.

“Why not forget about ousting the traitors and seeking revenge and concentrate on finding and opening this door?” Joy asked. “It’s got to be somewhere in here, right?”

“The courier alone knew its location,” the princess said. “And no one but the Head of the Council knows the courier’s identity, which was chosen in secret in order to protect and balance the Twixt’s many fractal loyalties. Whoever it was abandoned that task or forgot about it long ago. No one aside from myself and Inq has been here since.”

Joy sighed. “But if you could find the door, you could open it.”

The princess shook her head. “The door cannot open until either the Council members unanimously agree to open it—decreeing that it is safe for the others to return—or it will open automatically when all those on the Council have perished, allowing those on the other side to return to have their revenge.”

“Return?” Joy said. “You mean like the Imminent Return?”

The princess smiled. “It is one of the few memories that remain,” she said. “The old saying may have lost all meaning, but the words cannot be undone. Our traditions are endemic and still contain hints of the truth. Whatever happened to erase their memories, it could not undo it all. In our hearts, we know that our King and Queen will come back to us someday.”

“Returning to Earth from somewhere behind a locked, lost door,” Joy said.

The princess touched the glyphs at her breast. “Those are the rules.”

The words made Joy’s blood pound. She was sick of rules! “Whose rules?”

“Theirs—the King’s and Queen’s,” the woman said. “They created the Twixt by making the rules.”

A cold splash shivered down Joy’s spine, her mind suddenly clear. “The King and Queen made the rules?” she asked. “They were the ones who made the rules of the Twixt?”

The princess nodded sagely. “Yes,” she said. “Of course. That is why they are our King and Queen, the greatest Makers, and why all the Twixt must abide by their rules.” She gestured with a graceful hand. “We surmised that the only way the traitors could have conspired a coup was to somehow negate the First Edict, to forget their loyalty to the King and Queen—you cannot be loyal to that which you do not know exists.”

“So find the traitors, find the door, open the door,” Inq said, counting them out on her fingers. “Presto! Instant Imminent Return.”

“But if no one remembers them...” Joy began, then stopped at the expression on the tall woman’s face. It was a look of pain and loss and hope and despair that she remembered during her own Year of Hell, reflected a hundredfold. A wrenching war of What if? and What then? A prickle crawled over her skin, peppery and uncomfortable.

“They will be able to set things right,” the princess said. “They can revise the rules once they return. Only, we must find the way to bring them back.”

But Joy was no longer listening, her attention riveted by that one sentence: They can revise the rules. Hope blossomed, fierce and fiery, blotting out everything else. She wouldn’t have to change. She could keep her body. She could get out of whatever Sol Leander had in store for her, whatever the Twixt was doing to her, whatever was brewing in her veins—it could stop.

If she could find the King and Queen, then they could change the rules.

“Okay,” Joy said softly before she knew it. “I’ll help.” She turned to Inq. “But on two conditions. First, no assassinations.” She couldn’t say “no killing” because even Joy knew not to bind Inq that much. The female Scribe nodded, and the princess looked on with approval. “And second, you have to tell Ink.”

Inq’s face crumpled. “What?”

“You have to tell Ink everything,” Joy insisted. “Tell him everything you’ve told me. No secrets. No loopholes. You have to introduce him to his mother. You have to bring him here and let him see the truth.”

“No,” Inq said, watermarks flying over her skin. “No, Joy—you don’t know what you’re asking.” She looked to her mother with desperate, wide eyes. “He doesn’t know. He’s never known. It’s kept him safe...”

“It’s kept him out,” Joy said. “It’s kept him alone.”

Inq’s face flushed, a swimming montage of watermark glyphs. “No,” she said, looking close to tears. “That’s not true. He’s had me...”

Joy shook her head, adamant. “That’s not enough,” she said. “It’s not enough and you know it. Not when she’s here, now, and he doesn’t know. “

Inq spun angrily away, her hands curled tight into fists. Joy guessed that perhaps this was one of the few things Inq had kept for herself—the identity of their creator, their mother, who depended solely on her daughter to be her one confidante, her link to the larger world. Inq had kept the secret for her mother’s safety, but also for herself, something precious that made her unique, individual, different from Ink. But that was no excuse.

“I mean it, Inq,” Joy said, pushing the point. She thrust out her hand. “Everything. Do we have a deal?”

Inq scrunched up her face, petulant, stubborn. “I get to say how,” she said. “And I get to say when.”

“But it will be soon,” Joy said.

“Soon is a relative term,” Inq said. “But it will be before the Imminent Return.”

It sounded as if that had always been Inq’s intent, but she’d never dared to think it could be this close. Joy mutely shook her outstretched hand. Inq finally took it. “Deal,” she said, giving Joy’s knuckles an extra squeeze, and then she suddenly brightened and beamed at her mother—the transformation was startling. “See? I told you she would agree,” Inq chirped, winking at Joy. “You’re so refreshingly simple.” She smiled and skipped toward the stairs with a spring in her step. “Now come along. Let’s get you up to speed before the Bailiwick’s tongue dries out.”

It was a long moment before Joy figured out she’d been played.

“We’ll return with news,” Inq said to her mother. “And some new company.”

The princess smiled. “I look forward to it. Go, and be safe, both of you.” Inq and Joy left her standing at the edge of the stair as they climbed.

Joy welcomed the familiar burn in her muscles as she followed the sound of Inq’s footsteps, catlike in the dark.

“So you’re blackmailing me to help you find and kill an unknown traitor in order to free your mother, the princess, and reunite the Folk with their King and Queen,” Joy said aloud and shrugged. “You could have just asked.”

Inq laughed, bell-like and genuine. “Now you know why I was so upset that you undid all my hard work when you took on your True Name,” she said. “That glyph armor I made for you was a great piece of work and your best protection against the rest of the Folk, including whoever is the traitor. Now my greatest weapon is both unprepared and unprotected, sworn to abstain from wearing any armor at all—brilliant. We could be up against just about anyone in the Twixt.”

Joy refused to feel badly about the choice she’d made; the sacrifice of her magical armor was a small one compared to giving up Ink or her eyes. “Do you have a list of suspects?” she asked.

“Kurt and I have some theories.”

Joy paused. “Kurt knows?”

“He’s originally human, remember,” Inq said matter-of-factly. “Now he’s mostly human-with-benefits, but, yes, he does remember. And he’s twice as cautious as me.”

Joy snorted. “Only twice?” she said. Inq smirked. “Why don’t you have him kill whoever it is? He’d do anything for you, and you know it.”

“Everything except go against the Council,” Inq said. “It is part of his contractual servitude to the Bailiwick, else he would have killed Aniseed years ago. Besides, we’re not talking about killing someone—you can erase them. I figure that’s got to be the best way to make sure that whatever was done is undone as completely as possible...if they don’t agree to undo it themselves, of course.” Inq said, acknowledging their terms of agreement. “No killing unless strictly necessary.” Joy felt a small pat on her arm. “Thank you for helping us, Joy.”

Inq was haloed in the light at the end of Graus Claude’s tunnel, giving her a strangely benevolent glow. She looked unlike herself, something holy, divine. Joy averted her eyes.

“You were threatening to blab my secret,” Joy muttered. “What choice did I have?” Joy didn’t like having the fact that she’d erased the Red Knight hanging like a Sword of Damocles over her head.

Inq smiled knowingly. “You always have a choice,” she said. “But, knowing what you know, you would’ve said yes, anyway.”

“Yeah,” Joy said, continuing to climb. “Probably.”

Of course, Inq didn’t know that Joy had her own reason for agreeing to find the King and Queen and open their secret door as soon as possible.

Joy was about to change the rules.

Inq stepped gingerly over the edge of Graus Claude’s teeth. Joy followed close behind, carefully keeping her hands away from the walls. She tried to ignore the creepy, freakish feeling as she stepped off of the deep stone stairwell onto the fleshy lower lip. Another ruby-red line of fire zipped past her feet. She shuddered as she hurried out onto the rug—the safe, normal, perfectly ordinary rug. Joy had never been so thankful to stand on a rug in her life.

Kurt stood rigidly at his post like a soldier.

“Take a seat, Joy. Breathe a little,” Inq said. “What is it my brother always says? ‘It only takes a moment?’ Time does funny things when you fold it over twice.”

Inq walked with a self-satisfied strut that carried her across the room, where she stopped briefly to press a hand to Kurt’s cheek. Only his eyes moved, but they spoke volumes as she smiled.

“Be sure she gets out okay,” Inq said. Dropping her hand, she spoke over her shoulder. “I formally withdraw from the Bailiwick.”

Graus Claude’s mighty jaw trembled and began to contract. His tongue detached from the roof and slid like a pink python over his teeth. Kurt crossed the room in swift strides and took Joy by the arm, setting her quickly in her chair. He tapped the tablet, waking the screen, adjusted the keyboard, set the jeweler’s loupe in one set of his master’s slack fingers and strode back to the doorway, grasping both door handles in his hands. Before Joy had a chance to collect her thoughts or speak, he was gone.

The jaw reset with a click. Graus Claude’s eyes faded from milk to ice-blue. He blinked like a yawn and set the eyepiece back near his face. Joy jumped in her seat as Kurt swung the doors open as if in midmotion. Graus Claude rolled a pearl between his fingers and palmed it as Kurt gave a perfunctory bow.

“Yes, Kurt?” Graus Claude said without looking up.

“Apologies for the interruption, sir, but the hour grows late,” he said in his surprisingly soft tenor. “Miss Malone said that she had an appointment this evening.”

Joy nearly dropped her tablet. Her brain scrambled, trying to sort out what was real. Then she remembered: Kurt was human. He knew everything. And he could lie.

“Oh, very well,” Graus Claude said with a huff and set down his jeweler’s loupe. “Ready the car. Miss Malone, I expect that you will commit your notes to memory as I will endeavor to commit my memories to these.” He gestured at the piles with two hands. “Pearls of Wisdom,” he said slyly. “Let them be not before swine.”

“Excuse me?” Joy stammered, still collecting her swirling thoughts.

“Matthew 7:6,” he said with a sigh. “I wonder whether I should abandon all literary references not pertaining to the funny pages.”

Joy stood up quickly, stuffing the tablet and keyboard into her purse. Her fingers shook. She couldn’t even look at Graus Claude without imagining what lay under his tongue. And who. She forced a smile. “When you start quoting Harry Potter, then I’ll be impressed.”

“J.K. Rowling is a visionary of her era,” he said primly.

“Now you’re talking. Gotta go!” She shouldered her purse and nearly ran for the door, but stopped at the threshold. Respect him. Always. “Thank you, Graus Claude.”

His voice rumbled ominously. “You do not have cause to thank me yet, Miss Malone.”

* * *

Joy ran out of the brownstone and down the stairs, looking for the chocolate-caramel Bentley and its nougat-colored wheels. Instead, she saw a young man with sea-colored eyes standing on the edge of the walk glaring up at her through his snowy hair as if she’d done something stupid.

“Are you?” he asked.

Joy wasn’t certain if she should grab her scalpel, bang on the door to get back in or run as fast as she could. Instead she said, “Am I what?”

“Are you truly one of us?” the young aide asked. “One of the Folk? A descendant of mixed blood born with the Sight?”

Joy sighed a tight exhale and adjusted her bag. “Yes,” she said, slightly annoyed. “I am. You were there in the Hall when it happened. You saw.”

The young man nodded, his eyes hooded, suspicious. His cloak of feathers rippled gently in the wind. He glanced up at the brownstone. “I am supposed to follow you,” he said. “And report your actions to my master.”

Joy arched her eyebrows as the Bentley rounded the corner. “Oh?”

He nodded stiffly. “Yes,” he said. “But I do not think it right nor fair to spy on our own, so while I will not disobey a direct order or dishonor my position, I wanted to inform you of it.” His lips thinned as the car slowed. “You deserve to know.”

“Really?” Joy said, mildly curious now that she was fairly certain that he wasn’t about to attack her here on the sidewalk. “Why?”

He stepped away from the curb as the Bentley slid to a stop. “Because if you are one of us, then all Folk are welcome within the Twixt,” he said. “No matter what their origin or circumstance.”

The Bailiwick’s driver stepped out, adjusted his uniform jacket and opened the door for Joy. She took the last steps and paused before getting in, her stomach queasy, her senses alert.

“Why tell me this?” she asked. “I thought you worked for the Tide.”

The tiniest flush colored his face, a creeping pink tingeing his neck and cheeks. “The Tide stands for all of its citizens. It is Sol Leander who wants you to fail,” he said. “He will use any means to achieve that end, and the gala presents him with the perfect opportunity.”

Joy hesitated. “What would happen if I ‘failed’?”

The courtier placed his hand firmly on the door like a wall between them. Joy settled herself on the leather seat and he shut the door with a slam. She heard his last words muffled through the glass. “Mark my words, Joy Malone—do not fail.”

SEVEN

JOY SKETCHED OUT a plan in her head as she sorted her pre-packing laundry. The first thing she had to do was to find out how everyone in the Twixt had managed to forget about the King and Queen—not just “not remember.” Inq said that they were actually unable to recall something that should have been impossible to forget. If Joy could figure out what had happened, then she’d be one step closer to finding the culprit and one step closer to finding the door. Joy was fairly certain Graus Claude would help her petition for a slight change in the rules as a reward. One thing she knew for certain: the Bailiwick was very, very good at negotiations and always came out ahead.

She scratched the back of her hand, the skin pink, scaly and raw. It was probably her allergies, seasonal eczema, but she couldn’t stop imagining her body changing somehow. Was there something hiding below her skin? Feathers? Fur? Scales?

Joy emptied her basket and fled the room.

Normally she might be worried that if Inq and Kurt hadn’t come up with a way to solve this mystery by now, she never could, but Joy had learned that being human gave her a fresh perspective—like the way she’d seen Aniseed’s signatura on all of the Scribes’ clientele while they’d been oblivious—and now Joy had a few advantages that they did not. Not only could she erase signaturae should it come down to it, but she also knew something about magic. She knew that there was a difference between glyph magic and spell magic; what the Folk considered magic and what humans considered magic was as different as 80% Lindt was from Cadbury milk.

If it had been spell magic, it was unknown to the Folk—a carefully guarded secret among wizards—but Joy just so happened to have a man on the inside.

“Sounds like a blanket spell,” Stef said as he stuffed more shirts into his duffel bag. “In order to spread an effect without requiring line-of-sight on all intended targets, you’d have to define the boundaries based on geographical parameters, or in this case, magical ones.” He spoke over his elbow as he cleaned out another drawer. “A spell that affects everyone in the Twixt? One that no one knows about? That would have to be a Class Ten, at least. Way beyond anything I know, or anyone I know would know, for that matter.” He sniffed a sweatshirt at the pits. “Why do you ask?”

Joy couldn’t say “Nothing,” but she couldn’t lie, either. It wasn’t like she had a school report on spell classifications due anytime soon.

“Something happened, Stef, and it’s affecting everyone except Ink and Inq. I know you don’t like it, but that world’s a part of me now.” And it’s a part of you, too. This was the perfect time to say it. Here. Now. Right now. Stef, people with the Sight are part of the Twixt. We are descended from Folk. We have a drop of faerie blood in our veins. But she didn’t want to say it. He wasn’t like her; he didn’t have someone like Ink. He didn’t love the Folk—he hated them. She didn’t want him to hate that part of himself, any part of himself. It was weird trying to protect her older brother when he’d always been the one protecting her.