Invincible Read online

  Joy glanced at her sideways. “Why? Were you expecting something else?”

  “I always expect something to happen around you, Joy Malone.” Filly tossed her head, snickering. “And I am rarely disappointed.” She snapped an arm across Joy’s chest, stopping her flat. “Wait,” she whispered, smiling, expectant. “Wait for it—there!”

  The air tore sideways and Ink appeared, silver-shirted, razor drawn and wallet chain swinging. Joy couldn’t help but feel excited to see him—beautiful and here—but it was followed quickly by a wave of wariness and guilty shame. She was afraid to look at him.

  “Ah! There you are!” Filly barked. “You’re late.”

  Joy reached for him. “Ink—”

  “Stop!” he reared back, black eyes wide. Joy froze.

  His arm rose at the shoulder, snaking out in a short burst of speed...

  She was back in the Carousel, back against the Red Knight, back standing between Ink and Maia’s door. Joy stumbled backward, scalpel held high. Their blades met in a burst of black-on-white sparks that pinwheeled in a firework cloud. Ink jerked back, stung.

  “Ink!” Joy screamed as shock turned to terror. He swept forward again, blade flashing, eyes flat, face tight. He looked like a thing possessed—an angel of death.

  Fear punched her breath. Her brain shrieked. Ink, no!

  A buckler knocked them apart, crashing into Ink’s face.

  His head snapped back. Joy stumbled aside. Filly laughed as Ink spat at the ground and shook his head. Oily wetness stained his teeth. The straight razor danced a whirling, flaring loop like a shield between them. Snorting, Filly advanced, dodging the blade and landing two kicks and a solid punch to his gut. Ink buckled, but kept his weapon raised high as if trying to keep it out of reach. His elbow locked. His muscles quivered in effort. He glared at Filly, looking annoyed.

  “Here!” He slapped his left breast. “Hit me here!”

  “What?” Joy cried. “No!”

  Ink’s arm sliced down, guillotine-straight at Filly’s leg, but she danced a quick fade, and sprang upward under his guard, landing a deep rabbit punch right on target. Something clicked and Ink crumpled, eyes open, mouth slack.

  Horrified, Joy screamed.

  “INK!”

  Filly glanced back at Joy, a grin smeared across her lips. The thin tattoo lines on her eyelids curled in a wink. “Don’t worry—he’s fine.”

  NINE

  JOY STUMBLED OVER the threshold at the C&P, triggering its two-tone hello chime. She knew the security cameras would see her, but not the invisible warrior woman with the unconscious Scribe slung over her back. Joy held the door open behind her as Filly stepped to one side and rested her load on a squat freezer full of ice cream sandwiches and frozen Dove bars.

  The owner’s son, Hai, sat behind the counter. He didn’t bother looking up.

  “He’s in the back,” he said, and flipped a page in his textbook.

  Joy nodded wearily, heading toward the Employees Only door. She glanced back. Filly strode behind her, nose wrinkling against the stale smell of air freshener and old coffee. Ink hung like a limp sack over her back.

  “This is either an excellent illusion or a terrible wizard’s lair,” she complained.

  Joy was glad the aisles were empty. “How many wizard’s lairs have you been to?”

  “Oh, a few,” Filly said. “More than my fair share, truth be told, and less than I ought!” Laughing, she hoisted Ink higher on her shoulder. His arm knocked cans of salted peanuts off a shelf. Joy stopped and picked them up, getting a close-up look at Filly’s buckskin boots. The toes and heels were spattered with grass stains and blood. Joy’s skin prickled with equal parts fear and guilt.

  “Come on,” she said quickly. “Let’s go see the wizard.”

  She knocked on the storage room door. It opened. Mr. Vinh was checking his inventory against a thick sheaf of spreadsheets. Stacks of juice flats, power bars, toilet paper and candy filled the shelving units nearly to the ceiling. A lunar calendar tacked to the wall hung next to the mandatory Employee Rights posters and an altar decorated with faded photographs and tiny bowls of sweets. Joy turned a close circle. It was a tight squeeze, and she was conscious of Filly and Ink standing invisibly behind her.

  “Hello, busy girl,” the wizard said while ticking off a column of boxes. “I hear you’ve been very busy lately.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “Tell me about it.”

  He flipped the sheaf closed and tapped its corner to his forehead. “I was about to ask you to do that very thing.” He reached behind the shelving unit to pull the lever that Joy knew would spring a hidden door to his back office, but he hesitated. “Do you wish your friends to come with you?” he asked casually.

  Joy paused. “Yeah. Can you see them?”

  “No,” he said. “I just wanted to make sure you knew that you were being followed.” He pulled the lever, and the secret door cracked open. “The tien are not allowed to bother you here—it is against my magic and their Accords. My shop is considered neutral territory so that I may conduct business without interference.” He tapped a small gong with his fingernail, which gave a tiny ping. “Always best to announce yourselves before entering someone’s place of business,” he said to the open air.

  Filly raised her eyebrows, stretching the blue tattooed lines in question. Joy said nothing as the wizard pushed the door open wider, allowing them to enter as he flicked on the lights.

  The back room was lined with bamboo slats. Bundles of dried herbs and wrinkled things hung from the ceiling among oddly twisted lightbulbs that gave off a golden glow. A large painting table dominated the room, strewn with scrolls of paper, inkwells, brushes and wax stamps. A dark red armoire with rows of tiny drawers stood beside a glass case filled with all sorts of strange equipment made of lenses, dials and twists of wire, rock and brass and bone. The shelves were lined with pickle jars and ceramic jugs, each crammed full with unidentifiable things. A dark mirror hung on the opposite wall, reflecting everything in shades of gray.

  “I’d think you’d be able to brew up something to give yourself the Sight,” Joy said, stepping onto the tatami mat floor. “It might be useful in your line of work.”

  Mr. Vinh shook his head as he fastened the frog buttons on his long, black robe, his official wizard gear. “No,” he scoffed. “Why buy my glamours if customers know that I can See them? Depletes my own market value. Supply and demand!” He grabbed a flat, black cap from a hook and placed it on his head. “Besides, the Sight is more trouble than it’s worth.” Mr. Vinh leaned forward, dark eyes sparkling. “Tell me I’m wrong.”

  Joy said nothing. He nodded knowingly.

  “You can’t,” he said, swirling a long stylus in a pot of paint. “Because it’s true. And you cannot tell a lie.”

  Joy was conscious of her many changes since last they’d met. “You know, then.”

  “I do.”

  Changeling. Part-Folk. Destroyer of Worlds. Joy swallowed. “And Stef?”

  His brush stilled. He held his long sleeve out of the way of the ledger and took a deep breath. “Yes,” he said sadly. Joy was not the only one worried about her brother. His master clearly knew something about his apprentice and the tien. The Wizard Vinh made a few, last sweeping notes with his brush and set it aside, balanced perfectly across the pot. He opened the cabinet and picked up a small instrument with many lenses, twisting a half dome of milky crystal with a thoughtful expression. “May I s
ee the company you keep?”

  Joy glanced at Filly, who shrugged and dropped Ink on the mats with a muted thump. The horsewoman grinned at Joy’s pained expression. Joy didn’t know whether to go to him, to touch him, or not. The push-and-pull of imagining Ink as her love or her enemy was torture.

  “They’re there,” she said, and pointed Vinh in their general direction.

  The store manager held the apparatus up to his eyes, adjusting a small magnifying lens and a rock with a rough hole so that they became eyeholes. He twisted the knobs to gain focus and fiddled with a dial above the grip.

  Filly draped her cape of finger bones back over one shoulder as she stood over Ink’s body, spread out like a rug. She saluted the wizard with one fist. “Hoy!”

  Mr. Vinh’s lips pressed in a thin, professional slash. “I do not perform healings, amputations, surgeries or disposals.”

  Filly tossed her head. Joy’s stomach sloshed sideways.

  “No one’s asking you to,” Joy said. “He’s—” She glanced at Filly, who arched her eyebrows. Joy finished her sentence with a resigned sigh “—fine.”

  “Fine?” Mr. Vinh said with mild surprise. Filly snorted a laugh. He lifted the strange spectacles from his eyes. “Very well, then. Why come to me?”

  “I need...something,” Joy said, twisting her thumb in her shirt, feeling Filly’s eyes like sunburn on her skin. She had to be careful. The Valkyrie was far too sharp and much too curious. Joy handed over the scroll that Avery had given her. “It’s a potion, an elixir—something that maybe can slow the change, if it can’t be stopped altogether. I don’t know if it will work, but I thought you could take a look.” She glanced at Filly, who was listening with an eager, obvious hunger, drinking fresh gossip like wine. Joy mumbled, “It’s really important.”

  “Mmm.” He grunted as he scanned the scroll. “Do you know what you are changing into?”

  She couldn’t answer. Not with Filly there. The Valkyrie might have sworn her oaths, but if she learned the truth—the whole truth—Joy doubted that she could stop the Norse warrior from trying to destroy her for the sake of the Twixt. She looked at Ink in a heap on the floor. She wanted to brush his hair away from his blank, pooling eyes, but didn’t dare.

  “Something...inhuman.” Joy swallowed. True enough.

  Mr. Vinh circled her slowly. Filly’s gaze followed his path. “But that is the price you paid for this.” He tapped her back lightly with the tip of the stylus, right where her signatura burned. “You sold your humanity when you traded your life to the tien.” He sounded stern and unforgiving.

  “No,” Joy said, the word wrenched from her gut. She didn’t know if it was denial or revulsion. “That’s not true. My ancestor wasn’t human, so I’ve always been this way—potentially, in any case—I just didn’t know it yet.” She turned her head, watching him circle her curiously. Joy knew she was speaking for Stef as well as herself. “When Ink marked me, it ignited the magic in my blood. I needed to accept my True Name so that none of them could control me. It was too dangerous, and I was vulnerable without one.” She caught Filly’s eye. “I wasn’t forced into anything, but that’s because I didn’t want to be forced to do anything against my will.” Filly nodded. She’d been the one to tell Joy and give her the choice. “No one wants to be used as a slave.”

  Mr. Vinh fastened the oculus around his head with an elastic band. His face was impassive. “My ancestors were survivors of Hốa Lò, a POW prison camp. I am a child of refugees. I know something of that which you speak.” His voice was rough. He turned on his heel and walked to his alchemist cabinet, opening and closing its tiny drawers. “This cannot cure you, nor halt the progress of your transformation,” he said over his shoulder. “But I believe I can adjust this formula to slow it down until I know more.” He tapped bits of leaves and scraps into a small scale and used the stylus to tap the counterweight. “It will not be perfect,” he warned softly. “But it will be better than giving up.”

  Joy ignored his warning, homing in on the hope. “But it can slow it down?” She just needed more time. Time to get the King and Queen out of Faeland. Time to ask them to change the rules. Time to remain human and not become an Elemental. Time to avoid becoming the Destroyer of Worlds.

  Mr. Vinh made another noncommittal noise as he ground the herbs and twigs into a chunky powder that he poured into a Ziploc bag. “Steep one tablespoon for two minutes in boiled water. Drink hot, once a day.” He placed the baggie in her palm. “Brush teeth thoroughly afterward. The taste will be unpleasant.”

  Joy closed her fingers around her stay of execution. “Thank you.” She felt the grit through the plastic. “What do I owe you?”

  Mr. Vinh was writing in his ledger, holding his sleeve away from the wet calligraphy. “We will discuss payment when my research is complete,” he said stiffly. “The final formula must be up to my standards, which carries my personal guarantee. I have a reputation to uphold.” Joy wasn’t sure whether to be grateful or terrified, but she had no room to bargain. He lifted his head, the wrinkles deepening behind the strange lenses. “You will use the dowsing rod and follow your brother’s mana—his magical energy—and you will bring Stefan to me,” he said. “We can do the same for him.”

  Joy didn’t care to explain that Stef wasn’t changing—that even if he now realized that he wasn’t wholly human, the process of becoming whatever they were hadn’t happened to him yet. Whether it was because he hadn’t been marked by one of the Folk, or been a lehman, or crossed through the Twixt as often as she had, Stefan had not changed after he’d discovered he had the Sight back when he was five. Did it have something to do with his apprenticeship in wizardry, with Great-Grandma Caroline, or something else entirely? Thinking of her brother brought a fresh wash of worry. She’d last seen him at her gala in the final moments before chaos had broken out Under the Hill. She hoped he and Dmitri had gotten out okay. He had to be okay.

  Mr. Vinh pointed his stylus at the wall. “What about your friend there?”

  She glanced at Ink’s body. “He’s...fine.” Filly smirked and nudged his hip with her boot. He flopped lifelessly. Joy winced, thinking about the last time he’d been shut off. He’d faked it then, pretending to collapse when Sol Leander had struck him, humiliating Ink and undermining Joy at her own Welcome Gala. It wasn’t until later that she learned that Ink had fooled them all, that he’d built an internal block over the trigger, swearing that no one would ever shut him down again. And then he’d all but ordered Filly to do it. It didn’t look like he was faking it now.

  As if hearing her thoughts, Filly clucked her tongue to get Joy’s attention. “Ink told me what to do,” she said, looking around the room. “But it will be messy. We should move him elsewhere in the lair.”

  Joy went from uncomfortable to alarmed.

  “Um,” she mumbled. “May we use your bathroom?”

  “The key is on the counter up front,” he said, raising the multispectacles again. “Do not take offense if I walk you out.”

  Filly lifted Ink by one arm and bent forward, hauling him over her back and then tugging him into place. “A wise precaution,” she said, approvingly. “Good tactics. I like this magician of yours!” She nodded in the wizard’s direction as she followed Joy out the door. His eyes were magnified into strange shapes as he watched their passing. Filly hesitated in the doorway.

  “Can you ask if he—?”

  “You want to do business?” Mr. Vinh said. “Buy glamour first.”

 
The Wizard Vinh wasn’t born with the Sight so could only see the Folk with his invented oculars, but Joy wondered whether the old man could read lips.

  Filly shut her mouth as the storage room door opened into the multicolored aisles of candy bars and salty snacks. Joy walked uncertainly to the front of the store as Filly waited by the chips.

  “Need a bag?” Hai offered as Joy came closer.

  She nodded. “Thanks,” she said, dropping the baggie into the Have A Nice Day bag and paying for a bottle of Gatorade to wash it down. “And can I have the key to the ladies’ room?”

  He picked up a short dowel painted pink with a key dangling off the end. “Around the corner to the left.”

  Joy took it and the bag. “Thanks again.”

  * * *

  Joy pushed the bathroom door open and let Filly in first. Fortunately, it was a single large bathroom with handicap access. Joy shut and locked the door.

  “Did you two plan this?” Joy asked.

  “Oh, aye,” Filly said, lowering Ink onto the tile floor. “This was it, the grand plan!” She poked him with the toe of her boot. “At least Ink had his priorities in order—first free the Bailiwick, then try to kill you.” She grinned as she arranged his loose limbs. “Ink and I used to plan stunts like this all the time for fun—makes a dull workday brighter. Although most often, I’d be bait.” She elbowed Joy. “Remember when we met? I’d been priming a brash young bull at the bar? Ink needed him knocked senseless in order to mark him and asked me to egg him on. What a lark! Wasn’t hard, truth be told. All it takes is a long sigh and a short skirt.” Filly whistled through her teeth and punched herself in the leather-plated breast. “But that boy was fighter through and through! A good catch!”

  Joy thought back on it. “So you already have a glamour?”

  “No,” Filly said with a smile. “I borrowed Hildr’s. She never missed it!”