Invisible

Joy tied off the bow and grabbed her check cover, swallowing panic. No one should be able to see Inq except her. No one without the Sight...

“Don’t forget your ice water,” Neil said as he went to fold napkins.

Watching Neil out of the corner of her eye, Joy stopped at the fill station and scooped some ice cubes onto a saucer, placing a teaspoon on it for good measure. The freezer wasn’t the reason chills swept over her body as she marched to Table Four.

The wily Scribe twinkled and waved her fingers.

“Hi, Joy!”

Joy didn’t know whether to put down the saucer or not, as if leaving evidence would confirm that she was certifiably crazy to the rest of the staff. Fortunately, it was still early, and the café was all but empty.

“What are you doing here?” Joy said under her breath.

“I thought I’d come visit you at work,” Inq chirped. “Make sure that you were okay. I heard pillow talk that you had a bit of excitement yesterday, and Ink asked me to check on you.” She eyed the smeared black apron. “Nice digs.”

Joy held her temper, knowing she had to choose her words carefully when speaking to invisible people, especially Inq.

“This is not a good time,” Joy whispered, trying to think of some reason she could give for standing in the middle of the restaurant talking to an empty table with a saucerful of ice in her hand. Did Neil realize that Table Four looked empty? Did he have the Sight? Had Joy put him in danger by leading Inq here? Had she exposed herself by admitting that she could see Inq, too? Joy was one of the rare people born with the Sight who had managed to keep her eyes from being cut out. Joy’s mind drifted to the four-leaf clover in her bag.

“Yes, well, that’s the trouble with mortality, isn’t it?” Inq said smoothly, opening her menu. “So much to do, so little time.” She smiled again. “I hear Antoine’s makes a passable frittata.” Joy was about to snatch the trifold menu out of her hands when Neil walked by. Inq turned to him boldly. “Excuse me,” she said. Joy froze. “Could I trouble you for a new napkin?”

Neil handed one of his freshly rolled cloth napkins to Inq and gave Joy a conciliatory “What can you do?” shrug before continuing on to Table Ten. Joy stared at Inq, who dabbed demurely at the corner of her lips.

“He can see you,” Joy said under her breath. “How can he see you? Does he have the Sight?”

Inq blinked her innocent all-black eyes. “Do you recommend the frittata?”

“Inq!” Joy placed the saucer of melting ice in front of Inq and crossed her arms as if she could hold in her heart attack. “What, exactly, does he see?”

“He sees me, of course,” Inq said with a grin. “But it’s not him—it’s me. I’m wearing a glamour. I look exactly like me, sans spooky eyes. It makes things easier when I want to buy something pretty or eat out on the town. Otherwise, it looks like some sort of ghost is haunting the place with stuff floating all around. So cliché.” She shut her menu primly. “I’d like the frittata, a side salad and a large glass of fresh orange juice, please.”

Joy flipped open her notebook and started writing to cover her racing thoughts.

“A glamour?” Joy said over her pen.

“Mmm-hmm.”

A way for the Folk to be seen—in this world!—and look like normal, everyday people? The possibilities blossomed like flowers in her brain.

“You knew,” Joy said.

“I suspected,” Inq said. “It doesn’t take a genius. Sooner or later you’d want a way to show off my brother, even if only to prove that you’re not crazy.” She tapped the table. “I’ve had more than one lehman, remember? I know how humans think.”

Joy finished writing with a flourish. “Can you tell me where to get one?”

“I’ll do better than that,” Inq said. “After brunch, I’ll show you.” She handed back the menu. “Extra croutons on the salad, please.”

* * *

After lunch, Joy stepped out of the ripples onto a familiar stretch of sidewalk. The reality check pushed her completely off balance. Inq caught her elbow.

“I thought we were going to see a man about a glamour,” Joy said.

Inq grinned. “We are.”

“Are we stopping by my house first?” Joy pointed back up the path that wound toward her condo. “We’re right between my place and the mini-mart.”

Inq started walking with a skip to her step. “Really? Do tell.”

“Wait,” Joy said while jogging to keep up. She had been nervous about being outside despite wearing the futhark pendant and having Inq as her guide. She was pretty sure Ink wouldn’t approve of the outing, but now Joy was curious, excited and confused. “Are you trying to tell me that you can buy glamours at the C&P?”

“Don’t be silly,” Inq said. “You buy glamours from a wizard. And, because this is the Glen—the original one—there’s all sorts of magic still around! You just have to know where to look.” She spoke while almost dancing around Joy in her excitement to share a new secret of the Twixt. “You’re not the only special snowflake in the neighborhood.”

Joy felt a grin tug at her lips. “So we’re really off to see the wizard?”

Inq nudged Joy. “You’re not in Kansas anymore, Dorothy!” she said. “This is Glendale, once known as the Glen, one of the access doors to Under the Hill, and still chock-full of magic! Can’t you feel it?” They were coming up to the mini-mart with its giant signs for the ATM, blue-raspberry slushies and state lottery tickets. They’d had a five-thousand-dollar winner. Joy blinked, trying to use her Sight to see what was hiding beneath the familiar building, but she didn’t see anything unusual. In fact, everything looked deceptively normal.

Inq laughed and threw her arms out. “Here we are!”

“Wait, I thought you said that you couldn’t buy them at the C&P?”

“I said you buy them from a wizard,” Inq said. “But the wizard happens to work at the C&P.”

Joy pushed open the door with its friendly two-tone hello. The smell was the same weird mix of air freshener and hot dogs. People milled about the aisles of snack bags and candy bars. Joy took a few steps inside and hugged her purse under her armpit. She was nervous about having so many humans as potential witnesses to Inq’s antics, and she still had no idea what was going on. The familiar and unfamiliar started square-dancing in her head.

Inq pretended to check out the covers of magazines while Joy debated snagging a fruit-and-nut bar to eat on her lunch break. At the café she could stave off the worst of her hypoglycemia by grabbing a roll here and there, but the carbs gave her a slow, weighty feeling that she never really enjoyed. Her lean, mean days of gymnastics training had given her a taste for chalky protein shakes, energy bars and aspartame.

“Watch,” Inq whispered to Joy as someone approached the counter. Joy’s stomach clenched. Mr. Vinh, the old proprietor, picked out the numbers on his cash register as he rang up a bag of nacho chips, a half liter of Coke, a pack of peanut M&M’s and a packet of gum. Mr. Vinh totaled the bill, and the customer paid cash. Before giving change, Mr. Vinh placed everything into a bag, including two small packets wrapped in leaves and tied with brown string. He hit Return on the register and counted out change, turning to address the next person in line. Joy kept her eyes on the young man who left—he looked Puerto Rican, but when he turned to shoulder the door, Joy saw that his throat was laced with pink gills and his feet in flip-flops had pale pink webs. The door closed behind him with its two-tone goodbye.

“You can’t be serious...” Joy whispered, disbelieving.

Inq smirked. “Meet Mr. Wizard.”

Joy shook her head. “It can’t be,” she said. “I’ve come here for years.”

“Of course you have,” Inq said, moving down the aisle. “But how often since your Sight’s been active? And did you buy any gum?”

“Gum?” Joy said, wondering when was the last time she’d chewed gum.

“It’s a code,” Inq said and waggled a slim red-and-black packet. “Nobody buys things like clove-flavored gum anymore. And buying certain snacks in combination is really a request for...other things.” Inq shrugged and pointed up. “Security cameras still work, so it’s important to keep up appearances. No one wants to run our supplier out of business. And, hey—” she waved a Kit Kat “—chocolate!” She winked. “Food of the gods.”

Joy stared as Inq stuffed a careful selection of things into her arms and pushed her forward. “Here,” she said impishly. “Go introduce yourself!”

Joy stared at her haul in dismay. She didn’t even like Gummi Worms...

Mr. Vinh glanced up at Joy as she spilled her armload onto the counter.

“Hello, busy girl,” he said in greeting.

“Hi, Mr. Vinh,” Joy whispered. He picked up the packet of spice-flavored gum.

“No sugarless mint?” he asked. It had been Joy’s favorite when she’d been in training, covering the sour smell of stomach acid in her mouth—the same sort of taste that was in her mouth now, all fear and nerves and reflux. She couldn’t believe that he remembered. “Maybe you want some wintergreen instead?”

Inq peeked over Joy’s shoulder. “How about a dermal, fourth-circle glamour with a subvocal charm?”

Mr. Vinh’s eyes lowered under his deep epicanthic folds, but he kept speaking to Joy as if he hadn’t heard Inq. “You are together?” he asked.

Joy nodded as Inq squeezed her shoulders. Mr. Vinh rang up the total for the lot.

“Eight dollars and seventeen cents,” he said. Joy handed over a crisp twenty. Mr. Vinh rubbed it between his fingers and held it up to the fluorescent light, all but rendered moot by the bright summer sun. Joy twisted her fingers. She felt like she was being carded. He finally nodded and made change, punching a number into the nearby phone. He spoke in rapid-fire something-ese, then hung up.

“My son will be here shortly,” he said. “Please wait over there.” He pointed to the lonely stack of morning papers in their thin wire display. Joy took her plastic bag, which sported a yellow smiley face and Have a Nice Day!, and stepped to the side. Inq grabbed a paper and flipped to the entertainment section.

“What are we doing?” Joy whispered as Inq turned pages.

“Waiting,” she said. “It’s a power thing. The Bailiwick does it all the time.” Inq flipped to the back of the paper and sighed. “Men!”

A tall man in his mid-twenties wearing a blue button-up over a black tee and jeans opened a back door and loped to the counter, exchanging a few words with Mr. Vinh before taking his place at the register. He nodded to the next customer with a smile and said in English, “Next person, please.”

Mr. Vinh shuffled out from behind the counter, feet scraping against the floor in black socks and worn Birkenstocks. He led the way to a sign marked Storage: Employees Only and pulled back the heavy door. Clicking on the light, he gestured for Inq and Joy to follow.

The storage closet was packed with flats of juice drinks, boxes of snacks and plastic-wrapped rolls of paper towels. A lunar calendar was tacked up on the wall above a small electric-lit altar propped with photos of dour-looking people and tiny bowls of seeds and sweets. Mr. Vinh brushed past them and ran his hand along the back of one of the shelving units, his arm disappearing up to the shoulder as the back of the closet swung open with a click.

“Less magic,” he said matter-of-factly. “More secure. Come in.”

He pushed the hidden door wider and beckoned them inside. Wondering what she’d gotten herself into, Joy stepped forward. Inq strolled after them, nearly skipping into the dark.

“What did the nix want?” Inq asked conversationally.

“Bah,” Mr. Vinh grunted. “Modern maladies. Drink this to wake up. Drink this to go to sleep. Eat this to get fat. Eat this to get thin.” He turned on a light. “It’s like doing business in a Lewis Carroll novel.”

Joy tiptoed into the small room lined with bamboo slats. There was an enormous armoire composed of rows of tiny drawers, each one labeled with dark red paint. Bundles of dried herbs and wrinkled things were stuffed in heavy glass jars, ceramic jugs and urns, and a large, tinted-glass mirror hung on the wall in a chunky wooden frame. A glass cabinet full of strange instruments glinted in the light of oddly twisted bulbs that hung from the ceiling. Overlapping grass mats covered the floor, shushing underfoot and swallowing sound.

Mr. Vinh shrugged on a long black robe, the edge of it catching on his C&P name tag. He tugged it loose and buttoned it closed under his left armpit. After placing a simple flat cap on his head, he drew out a long stylus, dipped it in a small bowl of water and swirled it with quick strokes into a pot of black paste. He spoke offhandedly while he worked the bristles in. “You don’t really want a glamour, do you?”

“Of course not.” Inq spoke first. Joy frowned at her but kept silent. “What would she do with one? She’s human.”

Mr. Vinh stopped swishing the brush and said nothing. He smoothed the soft bristles against the edge of the pot, creating a fine point. “Well then,” he said. “How may I be of service?”

“She asked me about glamours,” Inq said. “So I brought her to you.”

“I don’t do tutorials, demonstrations or free samples,” said Mr. Vinh crisply.

“How about a sales pitch?” Inq said.

Joy stood to one side, trying to be as polite as possible. This was a different Mr. Vinh from the one she knew from the C&P. He was brisk, efficient, a little bit perturbed and a little bit scary. He was clearly in his element here in the secret wizard’s back room, a place very different from the fluorescent-bulbed store.

Mr. Vinh painted himself a note in liquid script, his pen dancing in quick, soaring strokes on a roll of ecru paper. “Why are you here?” he asked.

Joy swallowed. “I’m...”

“She’s lehman to Indelible Ink.”

Joy and Mr. Vinh both glanced at Inq. She held their stares. Joy frowned. Was she? Did Mr. Vinh know what that meant? Joy felt a blush light her cheeks and twisted her fingers around her purse strap. Mr. Vinh laid his brush gently on the pot lid, balancing its length across the lip, and crossed the room to the cabinet. He withdrew a small apparatus made up of many lenses; some were tiny microscope circles and some were giant magnifiers, others were milky half domes or tinted glass or bowed optics framed in twists of wire and wood. There was even a smooth stone with a hole in its center tied to the rim with copper wire. Mr. Vinh lifted the thing like opera glasses and made some adjustments with a rotating dial.

“Remove your glamour, please.”

Inq made a motion with her hand and...nothing changed. At least, not as far as Joy could see. Inq looked exactly the same.

“Thank you,” Mr. Vinh said crisply. He lowered the apparatus, squinted in Inq’s direction, then fitted the lenses back over his eyes. Joy got that he couldn’t see Inq without them. He made a few more adjustments in silence.

“Please reinstate the glamour,” he said. Inq swirled her hand again, and the wizard gave a grunt of satisfaction. He turned the multilensed thing at Joy. “Now you.”

“I’m not wearing a glamour,” she said.

“Of course not,” he said, tweaking a lens into place. “But I cannot see their handiwork without assistance. Hold still please.”

Joy tried not to squirm under the scrutiny. One of the lenses tilted. Another clicked into place.

“I am fascinated by the marriage of magic and technology,” he explained as he squinted through the rock with a hole. “How it overlaps, where it repels and attracts, like two polarized magnets. It’s a hobby of mine.” He lowered the device and frowned. “She hasn’t the Scribe’s signatura,” Mr. Vinh said. “She is no lehman.” He shook his chin at Joy. “You have no part in this.”

“But she did,” Inq lilted.

“Did?” Mr. Vinh shut the thing back in its cabinet. “Nonsense. She is not what you claim. She is not a lehman. End of story.”

“Well, I was,” Joy said quietly. “But I guess now I’m just his girlfriend.”

Mr. Vinh paused as he stepped behind his desk, staring at her for a long moment. Then he took up his stylus, holding his sleeve away from the wet page. “No,” he said and began painting furiously. “No, no. That cannot be.” He pointed his brush at Joy. “Listen to me. I do not know what this one—” he pointed to Inq “—has been telling you. But I know them. Yes, I do. I have known for many years. Them and you. And I am telling you that if you had been taken by one of the tien, there would be a mark on you—one that you could not see—”

“A signatura,” Joy said. “I know.”

Mr. Vinh stopped. “How do you know?”

“She has the Sight,” Inq explained. Joy nodded.

Mr. Vinh’s voice softened, as did his face. “You have the Sight?” he echoed and stopped to think. “Your family does not know?” Joy shook her head. Mr. Vinh drummed his fingers on the edge of the table and wiped the corners of his lips as if smoothing them closed. He spoke slowly. “You have the Sight and you are in love with a Scribe,” he said. “Yes. Perhaps I have heard of you.”

“You have?” Joy squeaked.

“Rumors, of course,” Mr. Vinh dismissed. “Everyone comes with rumors. Rumors and requests and cash.” He smiled, revealing tobacco-stained teeth. “So, yes, perhaps you exist. Strange that we have met so often and neither of us has known...but, then again, that’s the way of things nowadays—rush, rush, rush. So many people so close together and yet too busy to notice one another.” He shrugged and made a last careful note. “So maybe I can tell you something about glamours, after all. It is good for you to know these things. But before we get down to business, I have a question for you, busy girl, and I will tell you what I know if you would be so kind as to answer it.”

Joy glanced at Inq, who nodded. “Okay.”

“Good. Very good,” Mr. Vinh said and came around to sit on the mats. Joy and Inq joined him on the floor. He folded to a sitting position with ease.

“So what can I tell you?” Mr. Vinh said, placing his hands on his knees. “I am a wizard, which means that I provide services for humans and tien. Most often spells and most often for money, although I sometimes will take trade for hard-to-find things.” He opened his hands; one thumb was smudged in black paint. “My family was from a province near the Mekong River, before we came to America and brought our magic here. I make poultices and charms and small, everyday sort of spells, but glamours are my big magic—taught to me from my grandfather from his father and his father before him and so on, back centuries. It is an old craft and one that relies heavily on both art and discretion.” He smiled wryly. “My art at my discretion, you understand. It is the most common way that the tien may pass among humans.” He gestured with one hand. “You have the Sight—you understand why that is. You’ve seen what they look like without the veil.”

Joy shifted on the mats. “What veil?”

The wizard bowed toward Inq. “The veil is the natural aura of the tien that lets them slip past our eyes like oiled paper—” he drew his hands quickly past his face “—without notice. It is what has kept them alive in our world for centuries. Camouflage is an effective survival strategy.”

He rested his hands on his knees and continued. “The simplest glamour is not about creating something new, but dampening the individual veil, allowing humans to perceive them normally,” Mr. Vinh said. “This is not an option for many, as to see tien in their true form, unfiltered, would likely cause alarm, breaking pacts between our worlds, so minor modifications can be made to normalize their appearance or create an entire new facade,” he said. “It is a major undertaking and very expensive. Of course, in order to pass close inspection, there are additional changes necessary for masking horns, wings, tails, extra body mass.” He glanced at Inq. “Or unusual eyes.”

She winked.

Joy’s head spun. “But...how?”

Mr. Vinh grinned. “My son is a gifted animator,” he said with pride. “CAD modeling has greatly improved the quality of our glamours. We’ve been developing the technique since the early eighties.”

“No,” Joy said. “I mean, how is that possible?” She looked around the tiny room. “Spells. Glamours. Wizards. How is any of this possible?”

“A better question might be how are you possible, busy girl?” Mr. Vinh asked. “I cannot tell you how I make my magic, but perhaps you can tell me how you make yours.” He leaned forward slightly at the waist in interest. “So, my question—I have heard that you managed to remove your signatura, freeing yourself from your Master and unraveling the segulah’s curse.” Joy stared. Mr. Vinh was well-informed. She didn’t expect to hear these words from another human being. “Tell me,” he said. “How did this happen?”

“Oh,” Joy said trying to catch a cue from Inq, but she was busy inspecting the cabinet shelves. “It was an accident,” she said, choosing her words carefully. “Ink threw his scalpel to me after he’d stabbed Aniseed so that it could pass through her ward. I used it to free myself.” She and Ink had agreed to place the explanation for her escape and the magic of unmaking on the blade itself and not attribute it in any way to Joy, avoiding the truth that they had discovered while marking a man in a prison cell: that she could somehow erase marks that were supposed to be permanent, removing the True Names that linked the Folk to the last bits of magic in the world. “I had no idea what would happen,” she said honestly. “I was just trying to get out.”

“And so you did,” Mr. Vinh said as he rubbed his palms against his trousers. “This is a powerful thing. A valuable thing.” His eyes flicked to her. “You are full of valuable things.” Inq turned her head, almost frowning. Joy wasn’t sure what he meant, but she found that she’d been twisting her fingers in her lap. She flattened her palms against the mats. He pushed himself to a stand. “Like information,” he clarified as he straightened. “I value information because I value facts. Facts are the difference between real magic and trickery. It is very important to know all of the facts,” he said. “Here’s a fact—you do not need a glamour, so I do not know what I can offer you, but if you have need of a wizard, now you know where to look.” He fiddled with the frog buttons and placed his robe back on its hook. “I can offer you spells and remedies, and my son has a side business as a courier, should you wish to send something into the Twixt, but no discounts on store items. I still have to report to the IRS.”

Joy gave a small laugh. “Understood.”

He pushed open the Employees Only door back into the pool of glaring light and garish shelves of junk food. “Thank you for an enlightening lunch break,” he said. Joy’s stomach grumbled. This had been her lunch break, too. She needed to eat. He closed the door and shuffled back up the aisle. “If you need anything, drop by. Twenty-four hours. Someone is always available.” He smiled. “Busy girl is not the only one who’s busy around here.”

Joy rooted around her bag for something quick and edible. There wasn’t much. She was considering the worms. “Thanks, Mr. Vinh.”

“Anytime, busy girl,” he said cheerily. To Inq, he said, “Come back later. I’ll adjust the pupils. They’re not tracking as well as I’d like.”

“Artists!” Inq said and pushed through the door, ignoring its parting bing-bong. “Such perfectionists.”

Joy said nothing, knowing that humans noticed the details; it was how she’d known that something was wrong with Ink and Inq when she’d first seen them with their impossibly smooth skin and penetrating all-black eyes. The Folk seemed to bother only with surface impressions, which explained how the Scribes had gone so long without bothering to add little things like belly buttons or fingernails. It made sense that they would need a human to make convincing glamours for them.

She remembered the last time she’d sat with Ink, carving the perfect muscles of his neck and chest using a human figure drawing book as a guide. They’d laughed together as they molded a little innie in his long, rippled stomach. Her fingertips tingled with the memory. Or maybe it was low blood sugar. She popped a Gummi Worm into her mouth. It squished as she bit down. Ew.