Insidious Page 11

  “Joy?” Ink said. She looked up. “I think you have the keys.”

  “You want me to drive?” she asked hopefully.

  “Are you kidding?” Mr. Malone said. “Mark, don’t let her drive. You have no idea what happened to the last poor vehicle she drove. I don’t think we salvaged so much as a cup holder from the wreck.”

  Joy spun around. “Dad!”

  Her father smirked. “Do you deny it?”

  There were so many reasons why she couldn’t. Speechless, Joy fumed.

  “Give him the keys,” her dad said. “Let the man drive his car.”

  Joy glanced at Ink, who looked impossibly innocent; his eyes held an almost imperceptible shrug. Almost.

  “Fine,” Joy said and placed the keys in Ink’s hand. She walked around to the passenger side and got in the car, slipping into the leather seat. She tucked her purse against her stomach, trying to smother the fluttering butterflies of doom.

  Ink dropped into the driver’s seat and closed the door, nodding to Mr. Malone through the window. Joy held her breath against the prickles crawling steadily up her spine. Nobody moved.

  “Put your hands on the wheel,” she muttered while pretending to glance at the side mirror.

  Ink placed both hands on the wheel, thankfully at ten and two.

  The keys fell on the floor.

  Bending to pick them up, Ink rose slowly, avoiding banging his head on the steering wheel.

  Joy lowered the sun visor and wiped at the eyeliner under her eyes.

  “Put the keys in the ignition,” she whispered behind her palm.

  Ink flipped the keys in his hand. “Which one?”

  “The one with the horse on it.”

  “Ah,” Ink said, picking the right one. “Filly would like this one.” He paused. Mr. Malone stared at them curiously through the driver’s-side window. Ink studied the shape of the thing in his hand.

  “Problem?” Joy squeaked.

  “Where is the ignition?”

  Joy couldn’t help it—she started laughing. Ink joined her, his strong shoulders bouncing with suppressed glee. His eyes sparkled with two dimples, grinning.

  “Here,” Joy said and leaned over Ink to wave at her dad, tapping the ignition with her left finger. Ink slid the key in and turned it. Joy pressed down on his knee, pushing the pedal. The engine roared.

  “Bye, Dad!” Joy called, waving out Ink’s window. Her father waved back.

  “Be back before one, okay?” he said. “We’re leaving day after tomorrow, and I want to go over the plan in the morning.”

  “Okay,” Joy said. Her heart was revving faster than the Ferrari. She’d hoped that her dad would start walking to his car, but it seemed he wanted to watch Ink take off. Joy slipped her hand over the button Ilhami had shown her. Short range auto-drive. Cruise Control for Dummies. Joy crossed her mental fingers and prayed.

  Ink sounded positively chipper. “Have a good night, Mr. Malone.”

  Her father stepped back as the engine gave another testosterone roar.

  Ink adjusted the mirror, hiding his mouth with his forearm. “Now what?”

  “Now drive,” Joy said and pushed the button. There was a tiny, high-pitched beeping sound like a baby bat on helium, and the car’s video cameras snapped on, giving a full-color, split-screen view out the car, front and back. The stick shift moved with a heavy ka-chunk, and the car began backing out of the driveway. Fast. Joy gripped the car door handle as they reversed into the street, stopping sharply. She glanced back. No traffic, thank God! Ink calmly kept his hands on the wheel.

  Ka-chunk-chunk.

  The Ferrari 458 Italia growled and shot down the road. They waved as they drove off, Joy’s hand flat against Ink’s to keep at least one on the wheel. The car accelerated steadily as they turned off Wilkes onto Main, taking the corner with a sharp, g-force nudge. She could see their plotted course on the GPS. The Ferrari clearly had its own ideas about speed limits, and, knowing Enrique’s driving habits, they were probably on manual override.

  Ink was experimenting with the various pedals, wheels and dials as the car zoomed down the open lane on its own. “Acceleration, deceleration, direction, speed...” He flipped a dial. The stereo blasted. “Music!” he said, smiling.

  Joy cringed, keeping a sharp eye out for the nearest stop sign before they hit the highway. This was too far, too fast and too reckless for her tastes, and neither of them could afford to get pulled over.

  “Turn here!” she said and pulled on the wheel. Either Ink or the autopilot or her reflexes obeyed because they peeled neatly on to the side street, slick as a whip. There was a brown squirrel bouncing across the road. Joy screamed, “Stop!”

  The car stopped on a dime, rumbling like a panther in place. Ink grinned, both dimples.

  “I like this car,” he said.

  Joy turned the keys, killing the engine.

  “Get out,” she said, her voice tight and loud in her ears. “I’ll drive.”

  * * *

  Packed in a crowded club of strangers, Joy felt safer than she had all day. In the hot, sweet, sweaty dampness, she finally felt like she could breathe. Tucked close together, Ink, Monica, Gordon and Joy pushed their way into the familiar chaos of the Carousel on the Green—the hottest indoor/outdoor club scene in Glendale, not that there was much competition.

  A wide aisle ran along the edge of the refurbished carousel, thick with people and thumping music. The circular floor rotated slowly, gold-painted columns reflecting the mirrored undercarriage and the spinning, glow-stick colors on the overhead fans. People writhed and bumped and twisted and sang beneath the huge canopy rimmed in twinkling carnival lights. Joy watched the brass ring pass—the last, original piece of the massive six-row carousel that once housed hand-painted horses and jewel-encrusted sleighs. That was where she’d been dancing when she’d first seen Ink across a crowded room—this crowded room—seeing what no human was meant to see.

  Then again, she hadn’t known that she wasn’t fully human.

  Monica stumbled as someone pushed past her bearing drinks. “What is up?” she said, miffed. “Is everybody in Glendale out dancing tonight?”

  Joy looked around. It was unusually crowded for a weekday night at nine.

  “Must be something in the air,” Joy said. “Last fling of summer?”

  Gordon lifted his head above the crowd and sniffed. “More like cigarettes and beer.”

  “There could be echoes of il Palio,” Ink said in his crisp, clear voice. “The Glen was once considered a contrade on its own. It was a great honor to run the horses, but that was many years ago.” Joy stared at him. Ink shrugged. “It means something very different now,” he amended.

  Gordon tapped a hand on his chest in time to the beat. “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” the buzzed-blond rugby player shouted happily over the noise. “But if we’re going to go in, we’d better have an attack plan.”

  Luckily, Joy did.

  “Follow me,” she said and tugged Ink in front of her. When they got to the edge of the Carousel floor, she gestured to her boyfriend. “After you.”

  He shot her a mischievous grin, a sharp splice of white in the dark. “You are taking advantage of me, Joy Malone.”

  She grinned back. “Maybe later.”

  Ink smiled and put a foot on the shivering baseboards, pulling Joy up behind him, followed closely by their friends. The crowd parted, unconsciously making way for Ink as he walked unencumbered into the heart of the club. He raised a hand to one side as if parting curtains, making space for Monica and Gordon. Joy slid close against him as the crowd filtered back around them. She flung her arms over his shoulders and gave him a quick kiss.

  “My hero,” she said.

  He cupped the edge of her ear with his finger
s and slid them down her jaw. “You are easily impressed.”

  She took Ink’s hands, moving to the rhythm, keeping him close. As much as Joy fought to keep her mind on her plan, she couldn’t help getting swept away in the spinning energy of the Carousel. Through the glamour, she stared into his eyes, as dark as the night, sparkling with pink-and-purple stars. She felt herself falling like she had so long ago, but this time, his arms were there to catch her and press her against him. His skin was smooth under her fingers. His hair tickled her face. The silver chain links caught the club colors and flash-flashed them on the edge of her Sight.

  Joy draped her hands against Ink’s sides, leading with her body, letting Ink feel the way the music ebbed and flowed. Ink learned quickly and knew how Joy danced, mirroring her motions, complementing her moves. Rolling forward and back, his hand slid up her side, gently caressing the outside of her arm. He breathed near her ear, his legs twined in hers. Joy smiled as she inched back and back and back, forcing him backward until he slipped to one side, supporting her back bend over his arm. She unfolded upright slowly and gave him a spunky kiss on the nose.

  He smiled. “Show-off.”

  “Show-off?” she said in mock offense. “Watch this.”

  Joy stepped wide and tapped her heels to the backbeat, splaying her fingers on her hips and catching Monica’s eye. Her best friend grinned, white teeth purple under the black lights, a sharp, crescent moon in her midnight face. Monica and Joy synchronized their moves, step for step, Monica taking the lead as she pivoted and ground down into the soles of her shoes. They popped their shoulders and their hips in unison, inching in increments up from their knees, extending their hands above their heads and rotating their wrists to the melody. Slamming back and forth, back and forth, pumping rhythm with their palms and their chins, the two of them did not so much dance as be.

  The music switched tracks, and they were right on top of it, in it, drilling deep, punching through it. Twining their fingers, they circled each other, laughing, to the appreciative hoots of lookers-on. Joy and Monica loved to dance and had danced together for years. It was the closest thing Joy had to being with her team back on the mats, synched and psyched in harmony with her sisters, and the feeling bubbled up inside her, a pounding high—like the bonfire revel without the pain of loss.

  Thump-THUMP! Thump-THUMP!

  Her pulse drummed thick in her ears, far too big and far too loud for it to be hers. It was a lion’s heart, a dragon’s heart—it drowned out all the noise in the room. Joy didn’t know how no one else could hear it, how no one else was turning around and staring at her. It felt like... It looked like...

  The funeral. Enrique. Fire. Color. Light.

  Thump-THUMP! Thump-THUMP! Thump-THU—!

  The hot flare, when it came, raced along her limbs. Joy gasped, the energy skittering like quicksilver up her nervous system, then slipping, fading, draining into the floor, leaving her twitchy and weak. She stared at the carousel floorboards, the scratchy surface dark with shadow and refracted light. She was afraid to look up. She couldn’t see—she couldn’t tell—had she changed? She stared at her hands, which looked normal under the flashing carousel lights.

  “Joy?” Ink said. “Are you hurt?”

  Joy touched her arms, her face, her stomach. She shook her head. It didn’t hurt. It didn’t...anything. But she’d felt it, remembered that feeling of deep, driving light. It didn’t show. It hadn’t changed her on the outside. Not yet.

  A lightbulb flash went off inside her brain, and she suddenly realized that the last time she’d felt this way, they had been dancing in this spot Under the Hill—this hill—somewhere under the Carousel around the funeral pyres on the edge of the Wild. It had happened right here, deep underground.

  What is happening? What am I becoming? How long before I’m no longer human?

  Monica tapped her shoulder. Joy barely felt it.

  “You okay?” she asked.

  “Just dizzy,” Joy said and hooked Ink’s elbow. “I’m going to grab some water.” She mimed drinking, and Monica nodded, going back to static-clinging Mr. Wide.

  The whole episode was a splash reminder of why she was really here. Even as she felt the press of bodies grow bolder and the music thump wilder, Joy felt the entire Carousel recede into a low hum, a shadowy blur, unimportant and unfamiliar as the faces in the crowd.

  Joy spun around, keeping an eye on the central pillar. Backlit and covered with band stickers, the hollowed-out DJ booth was a tangle of electronic equipment and old turntables. The DJ held court—an iPod silhouette, a dance avatar in reverse. The stacked speakers blasted out a deep, driving bass. She tried to get a good look at who manned the tables as they spun slowly past. It looked like a woman with her hand on the keys. Damn.

  “He has to be here,” Joy muttered, looking around. “He’s got to be here...”

  Ink tapped her hip. “Who?”

  “The DJ,” she said. Joy craned her neck, still moving as her mind and the floor continued turning. He was the only local Folk she knew on this side of the Twixt, guarding the Glen entrance Under the Hill, the one beneath the Carousel. She berated herself for not having called first to see if he’d be spinning the tables tonight, but what could she have said? She didn’t even know his name, or his human alias, and doubted she could ask for the guy with the goat legs. Joy let herself rotate along with the rest of the world, distracted, off-kilter and confused.

  That was when she saw the eyes.

  They glowed or scintillated or had slits for pupils. Joy stared. There were Folk—dozens of Folk—dancing in the crowd, their secret identities revealed in her Sight: a mane of feathers, a sheen of silvery wings, a round-bottomed girl with a third, glowing eye. Joy kept turning, seeing more of them, as more of them saw her. The Folk stared back, beautiful and deadly, laughing and writhing alongside their clueless mortal partners, teeth and tails tucked under glamours or glyphs. Joy faltered as several faces looked up, several pairs of eyes locking on both her and the Scribe. Several lips grinned. Terror thickened her tongue. The whole scene went off, like bruised fruit.

  Joy had a flash-moment panic that she’d somehow changed, sprouting horns or pointed ears or spots. A sudden wash of goose bumps skittered over her body like bees. She wanted to wipe them off, she wanted to scream—run!—but Ink’s arms were around her, grounding her, rooting her here.

  She took a long, shaky breath and tried to focus.

  There were Folk dancing in the Carousel.

  They’d started a trend.

  The music slowed to a crawl, tinny and wrong, like broken music boxes thrown down the stairs. Joy shook her head, swallowing against the pressure in her ears, staring at them under the flash and stutter of lights. What were they doing here? The Folk hated humans! Feared them. Many, like the Tide, wanted her and her kind wiped out. She watched their signaturae flash in the black light, trying to make sense of it. Why would they risk being discovered, being ousted, hunted or shackled by their True Names? Wasn’t that what the Scribes and signaturae were for—to shield them from humans? Act as a buffer between worlds? Yet here they were dancing with teenagers in the Carousel!

  “Ink...?” she whispered, eyes locked on a reptilian figure whose scales sparkled under the fairy lights. His smile was serpentine-wide, and the girl in his arms ground against him, eyes closed. Nictitating membranes blinked as his pupils yawned wider. He slid the back of one hand down her body as if taking a long lick.

  Ink’s hand automatically went to his wallet, but Joy’s hand closed over his, and she hooked her thumb in his pocket to hold him there.

  “Wait,” she said, trembling with déjà vu. Sharp objects and rave music had clashed in the Carousel once before, and Joy didn’t want a repeat performance tonight. None of the Folk were closing in or looked more than curious. The humans looked obscenely young and fragile next to the Folk’s
alien immortality. The residents of the Twixt didn’t look afraid—they looked defiant.

  Joy’s pulse jumped, thrumming double-time to the dance track hammering on her bones. It was as if each bark of laughter, each slit-eyed stare, each claw fondling a breast was aimed at her—an unspoken threat, a school of sharks swarming, circling at arm’s length, threatening her and her people. She held on to Ink as his expression hardened, his shoulders becoming solid, face stony and grim.

  “Come on,” she urged. She moved past the crowd of human and not. “There!” Joy said, going up on her toes. She saw the DJs switching shifts, the woman handing a Post-it to a guy wearing massive earphones like a Viking helmet. Joy grabbed Ink by the hand and pointed. He stepped into the dancers, who shifted aside under his invisible hand.

  They crossed the dance floor easily. Joy pushed up next to the central pillar and tapped on the wall. The DJ didn’t even look up as he arranged the next set.

  “You got a request? I can put it in queue.”

  “Yeah,” Joy shouted. “How about something for my boyfriend, Ink?”

  The DJ looked up, his fingers still on the screens. He glanced between Ink and Joy before he wagged his curly chin hairs at the woman disentangling herself from the nest of power cords on the floor.

  “Hey, Sticks,” he called out. “Mind spotting me for a sec?”

  “Just got off,” she said, discreetly lighting up a hand-rolled cigarette.

  The DJ shot her a winning smile. “I’ll help you with that, too, if you like,” he leered. “But can you spin me for five? I gotta hit the cave.”

  The lady DJ smirked, tossed a box of matches back under the keyboard, pinching her cigarette, and took back the playlist. “Five. And you owe me.”

  “Big-time, just like me,” he said, slipping past her and ducking under the cutaway. He snapped his wrist in the air. “Follow me.”

  He plunged into the thick of things outside the booth. Ink forged ahead, cleaving a line, allowing Joy and the DJ to walk in his wake. The guy acted not at all impressed, but grabbed a few fists and clapped shoulders with some of the regulars as he passed, a minor celebrity in his element, a kingdom of noise. Joy wondered how none of them realized he was a satyr—his only disguise was a thick head of hair and a pair of baggy jeans. His glamour barely covered his horns, for Pete’s sake!