by Dawn Metcalf
“I might have exaggerated slightly for the benefit of our audience,” the Bailiwick said. “Although it has never come up before the Council as a point of address since, as I’ve stated previously, no one has ever demonstrated the ability to negate what was designed to be permanent.” He smoothed his collar with a single hand. “Signaturae are our True Names given form, an elegant solution to the danger of humans shackling Folk to their will by speaking their Names.”
“But isn’t that exactly what Henri did to Ysabel?” Joy said. “Bound her by a True Name? There doesn’t seem to be much of a difference, and you asked me to undo that.”
Graus Claude said nothing for a long moment, rotating the white teapot on its trivet with a tiny scraping sound.
“An astute observation, Miss Malone,” the Bailiwick said as he made minute adjustments to a small arrangement of cacti in a glazed bowl. “As the intercessor between worlds, I value maintaining the balance above all things—keeping the Twixt and its inhabitants alive, safely ensconced amidst the greater human world, is paramount—and, given that priority, it requires that I allow a certain...leniency for absolutes, which requires a delicate hand as well as an iron fist, when necessary.” His icy eyes sought hers. “I cannot, myself, bend or break the rules that govern my world, as I am a part of it—more so than most—but there are those who can smooth over the gaps and the cracks that occur under the normal stressors of time and politics. It is a treacherous dance, I’ll admit, but by no means one born of treachery or treason—merely a necessity when keeping an eye on the greater picture.” He cleared his cavernous throat with a polite cough. “I understand you have met with the Wizard Vinh.”
Joy swallowed. “Did Inq tell you?”
“No. Your purse reeks of his malodorous incense.”
Joy flipped the shoulder strap. “I did meet him—well, I knew him already, but this was the first time I met him knowing that he was a wizard.”
Graus Claude nodded. “Mr. Vinh is a person such as I, serving both worlds with magery and craft and exchange,” he said. “Again, I might have exaggerated that no one can successfully split their existence between worlds. I would amend that statement to specifically discourage lehman from the attempt. Love with a foot in two bedrooms has very few happy endings.”
“But I could find work—is that it?” Joy said. “If I could do something that served both my world and the Twixt, then the Council would get off my back?”
“Such a life has its own hazards, but, essentially, yes.”
“So...there’s another option.” Joy leaned back on the white couch, the leather popping and groaning as she moved. “Maybe I could remove marks for a fee?”
“Certainly not!” Graus Claude snapped and ran a warty olive hand over his face. “Goodness blessed, what a ghastly mess that would be! You still fail to understand the purpose of signaturae. This is exactly the sort of talk that whips the Tide into a froth!” He shook his head and lifted his many chins. “What I meant to suggest was that perhaps you might offer yourself as a courier for Mr. Vinh, disguised as a cashier or stock girl or the like, not to become...” His voice rumbled like distant thunder. “The mere suggestion of such an enterprise...” The Bailiwick trailed off again, clenching his hands slowly; then he shook his great head as if coming to his senses. “No. Absolutely not. If the Council learned of such a thing, your life wouldn’t be worth a holly leaf!”
“But then why let me try it now?” Joy said.
Graus Claude sighed again, heavy and reluctant. “You presume that this was my will, Miss Malone, but I assure you that the entire situation was outside my control.” Joy found it hard to imagine anything the high-ranked amphibian didn’t control. He seemed to sense her thoughts and gave a rueful grin full of shark’s teeth. “Though I am the Bailiwick—a role I accepted both willingly and with favor—I am also one of the Twixt, bound to my Name and to my auspice as much as any other.” His smile was almost wistful. “When fortune smiles or frowns or looks askance, I must be there with open arms to answer it.” He pointed one manicured claw at Joy. “You came to me twice asking for counsel on this matter, both times on the heels of Mademoiselle Lacombe. It is a pattern that I recognized at once for what it was—you would both continue to circle one another, spiraling tighter and with greater consequence, until I permitted your paths to cross and forge their own conclusion. Once addressed, the tensions dissipate, conflicts resolve, the coincidences cease and you each may continue on your separate journeys. Thereby balance is restored.”
“Wait, what?” Joy’s mind spun. “You’re saying that I had to be given a chance to remove her mark? That it was fate?”
Graus Claude chewed a celery stalk thoughtfully. “An oversimplification, I assure you, but for our intents and purposes, that is correct. And I always reap the rewards following good fortune.” He shifted his feet and added reluctantly, “I will, of course, forward you a percentage of Mademoiselle Lacombe’s fee, once the particulars have been settled, and we will speak no more of it.”
Joy let the implications sink in. “So...that was a job?” Joy said.
“No,” Graus Claude said. “It was merely fortuitous chance.”
Joy waved a hand between them. “No, no, no. If I’ve learned anything about the Folk and the Twixt, it’s that there are no mistakes,” she said. “By your own logic, my coming up with this idea had to be something I would think of after I first tried it on Ysabel. I’d successfully remove her mark and then come up with the idea of doing so for a fee, a job, as a solution to my problem with the Council—something I have now come to you twice about—and it sounds like I will keep coming back to it over and over again until it’s resolved, right?”
“That is not,” Graus Claude said darkly, “at all the case.” He picked up the photo book, snapped it shut and slid it into its place on the shelf. “Do not look for fate as an excuse for folly, young lady, for you will then soon find it, whether it is there or no.” He sounded disgusted. “Free will always trumps fate if one demonstrates sufficient will, which, I admit, is not often the case with humans.” He gazed at her sternly, but to Joy it sounded as if he was trying to convince himself more than her.
She sensed weakness despite his words as the mighty politician flailed his four arms with uncharacteristic dismay. “Given your ability to fabricate, justify or otherwise convince yourself that your own desires are, in fact, destined outcomes by a power greater than yourself and that you are entirely powerless is not only foolish, but dangerous,” he said. “This is why Master Ink wished you to remain unmarked, to exercise your free will. Like a muscle, it needs to develop reliably with practice. Humans take their freedoms for granted.” He sighed. “Alas, all for naught, but still...” he added somewhat more gently. “You should leave such matters to the experts.”
Joy sat on the pristine couch in the secret chamber of the giant toad’s residence and considered what the Bailiwick had said and not said. After years with her mom and dad quietly not saying the most important things in her life, she’d learned to listen to the weight in between words. She remembered the eagerness in Mr. Vinh’s eyes as he’d studied the scalpel and the look on Graus Claude’s face as he’d studiously ignored it.
“Well,” she said. “Since I am currently speaking with the resident expert, I wonder what he might say if I offered to work for him, removing unwanted signaturae from a select number of clients, prescreened at his discretion, for a percentage of the fee?” Joy looked up at him with careful neutrality. “Theoretically speaking, of course.”
The Bailiwick crossed his many arms. The air became still. There was the soft chuckle of water off slate.
“You must know that such a proposition isn’t strictly legal.”
Joy smiled her Olympic-class smile. “What I notice is that you didn’t say no.”
Graus Claude’s browridge quirked. He took four strides across the room. “It wo
uld be a delicate business,” he said, adjusting a bowl of cacti. “One that could be neither discussed nor discovered, done strictly off the record, disavowed and unknowable. It treads dangerously close to crossing the Council’s decree.”
Joy brushed her ponytail over the back of the couch. “I notice you’re still not saying no.”
The Bailiwick stopped spraying the succulents and turned fully to Joy.
“Indeed,” he said. “I accept.”
* * *
Joy exited the Bentley and walked into Antoine’s in a daze. She’d been fully awake for the last few steps, her mind whirling with all that Graus Claude had said. She’d stared at his widescreen computer at the amount of her first deposit check made to an offshore account. The number still bobbed behind her eyes as she opened the door and was enveloped in the smell of hot garlic oil.
She’d have her own workspace, set her hours—Monday through Friday, noon to four—and had the right to refuse any client, for any reason. It was the freedom she’d always craved at a price she could hardly believe. Graus Claude had explained his system for exchange rates, automatic deposits and the necessary tax exemptions, adding that, in the Twixt, it was customary to expect tips, which she could keep. Kurt would contact her when the arrangements were complete.
The line of zeroes still danced in her head.
She hung up her jacket and picked up her pen. She had to play it cool—not do anything rash. Joy was still employed at the café until she could find a reasonable excuse to leave. This was still something on her résumé and it wouldn’t be good to burn bridges. Her parents’ career advice had been a one-liner that still rang in her head—“If you can’t be a yes-man, be indispensable”—meaning that she should be good, be loyal, don’t make waves, be agreeable, be quiet and work extra hard.
But look how well that worked out for them.
Meandering up the aisle, Joy took her place among the clustered waitstaff jockeying for position as the manager finished writing the evening’s specials on the board.
“Joy, nice of you to join us,” the floor manager said, not looking up. “Don’t ask me about nights again for at least two weeks.”
Nearby, Neil’s face pinked in sympathy. Joy turned her head with infinite slowness. Neil kept his eyes down as he typed with his thumbs. Everyone else seemed to avoid her gaze, too, as if her bad luck was contagious.
Little did they know she had a John Melton’s boon.
“Actually,” Joy said loud and clear, “I quit.”
The look on all their faces was worth every lost tip.
SEVEN
JOY THREW HER keys in the dish and dropped her purse on the kitchen table, then celebrated her last day at Antoine’s with a Lindt chocolate truffle. She popped it in her mouth and savored the mouth melt of buttery milk chocolate. So much for two weeks’ notice!
Neil had given her his number and told her to keep in touch, which was nice but unlikely. Her world was so much bigger now! Joy plugged her new phone into its charger and checked the mail for anything Cabana Boy related. Now maybe she could make that party in Moscow. Or meet Tuan in Acapulco? The possibilities were endless.
She smeared the smooth, greasy buttercream around her mouth as she dialed the house phone, tucking it into her shoulder as she walked around the kitchen. Like Inq, Joy appreciated the difference between chalk dust and chocolate. And as soon as she earned enough to buy one of Mr. Vinh’s glamours, she and Ink could enjoy Lindt chocolate truffles together along with all her family and friends. The idea was as dizzying as the sugar rush and made her smile.
Monica finally picked up on the third ring. “Hello.”
“How are you?”
Monica sighed. “I had a fight with my boyfriend.”
Joy swallowed the last of the chocolate. “I just quit my job.”
Monica groaned. “Jeez, Joy! So much for No Stupid,” she said. “Does your father know?”
“He and Shelley called from the road earlier,” Joy said, flopping onto the sofa. “But I might have forgotten to mention it.”
“So, what? You have three weeks to find a new job?”
“I’ve got it covered,” she said, hoping that she’d come up with some sort of excuse before her father came home. Again, it amazed her how her mother had managed to keep her affair with Doug a secret for so long. Joy had a hard time telling lies. “How about you?” she said, kicking off her shoes. “You talk to your folks about Gordon yet?”
“No,” Monica said. Joy could hear the sound of flipping channels. “They figured out that I’m upset over someone. They know the signs—I get a sudden craving for Twizzlers and Emily Dickinson.”
Stef entered the kitchen in torn jeans and an inside-out shirt and mimed a phone by his ear, mouthing the word, Dinner?
“Emily Dickinson?” she said to Monica while nodding to Stef. “Really?”
“Hey, the woman knows pain,” Monica said as Stef flipped through the file folder of delivery menus. He held up a Sushi Ocean and a Curry Hut. Joy pointed to the second.
“You’re scaring me, Mon,” she said.
“I’m scaring myself,” she confessed, and there was the whooshing sound of the phone switching ears. “This is my breakup routine. I know this dance—I can feel it. But, the truth is, I don’t want to break up with him. I like Gordon.”
Stef waved the menus to get Joy’s attention. Joy turned her back on him, concentrating on Monica. “You like Gordon?” she said sarcastically.
“Okay! I love him. I love Gordon,” Monica said, her voice sounding stuffy. It hurt Joy to hear Monica hurting. Her best friend’s voice cracked as she started crying. “I love him a lot.”
“Then you know what you have to do, don’t you?” Joy said, batting away the papers thwacking against her head. Stef loomed over the back of the couch, wielding rolled-up menus with dire intent.
“I’m hungry,” he whine-whispered.
“Shhh!” Joy hissed.
“What?” Monica snuffled.
“Don’t break up with him,” Joy said, glaring a warning at Stef. “You love him, you don’t want to break up, so don’t. It’s that simple.”
Monica sighed. “It isn’t that simple.”
“Yes, it is,” Joy said, remembering how easy it was to discount Graus Claude’s suggestion that she could simply abandon Ink. That was never going to happen. She loved him, he loved her, end of story. “It really, really is.” She tried to grab the menus, but Stef waggled them out of reach. She strained to snatch one. He bapped her on the nose. Joy snarled into the phone, “Can I call you right back?”
“Okay,” Monica said. “I’ll be here reading Miss E.D.’s Collected Works.”
“Sorry, Monica!” Stef called as he ducked Joy’s wild swing with a couch pillow. “Guys suck!”
Joy spat a quick, “Later,” and hung up, launching off the couch and chasing Stef around the kitchen counter. He dived around corners and sidestepped with small feints and bursts. Joy swung the pillow wildly as he swerved out of the way, laughing. She threw the pillow, which soared overhead, knocking into the lamp above the sink.
Joy froze.
The kitchen light swung erratically, tossing broken, dancing shadows, reminding her of icy nightmares, shattered glass and a monstrous tongue. Stef rose from his crouch and glanced behind him.
“Whoa,” he said. “Nice shot, William Tell. Good thing you didn’t break anything or Dad would’ve...” He turned around and stopped talking. “Hey. You okay?”
“I’m fine,” Joy said, smoothing down the hairs on her arms. She felt a cold, dizzy déjà vu. She blinked her eyes expecting a Flash! Flash! but there was nothing. No one was at the window. Nothing strange was there. She pulled off her hair band and rewound her ponytail, wishing Ink was with her now. He’d described some secret society initiation in Belgrad
e that “might take some time.” Considering his work took a moment, if that, this was not an encouraging sign.
Stef reached up and stilled the light. The frayed red bracelet on his wrist looked like it was on its last threads, sawing against the edge of his archaic wristwatch that Dad had gotten him for graduation. She’d teased him about it mercilessly. He’d laughed and said that’s why it was called a Fossil. She wished her brother would laugh like that now, but he looked too serious, his eyes half shades of worry.
She wanted to ask him about it, but he just as pointedly looked like he really didn’t want her to ask him, so she didn’t. The Malones were the champions of things unsaid. Still, it prickled like static between them.
“You want Curry Hut?” he asked, smoothing the menus flat with his hands.
“Sure,” she said. “Chicken curry sounds fine.”
He nodded as he dialed. “So? Still trouble in paradise?” he asked as he waited for someone to pick up. “Monica and Gordon didn’t look too good when I left.”
Joy wanted to ask him what he’d seen or heard, but he started ordering green and red chicken curries, medium-hot, a Buddhist Delight, two orders of roti, two mango lassis and an extra side of sticky rice. It was only while stewing in her forced silence that she remembered where he’d been.
“You went to the C&P,” she said as he hung up. “To get the car wax?”
“Yeah,” he said. “So?”
“Do you know the owner? Mr. Vinh?”
Stef took out some plates and snagged a few napkins, folding them into proper triangles.
“Hard not to,” he said with a shrug. “Seems like the guy knows everybody in the neighborhood.” He gave her a look. “Why?”
“I don’t know,” she hedged. “He’s kind of weird.”
Her cell phone buzzed in its charger. Joy hurried to pick it up, feeling guilty that she hadn’t called Monica right back and expecting to see some angry emoticons, but it wasn’t a text from Monica. It was from Kurt.
