Invisible

by Dawn Metcalf

  Joy gulped for breath, but her stance didn’t change. The trembling had become something hot-cold-numb. After another long moment, Briarhook mounted the stairs, his flabby bulk swaying, bristles clicking and clacking as he went. She had the crazy notion to stab him in his fat tail, but she couldn’t seem to move. She was frozen in the grip of horror and flashback and questions.

  Briarhook shook himself in the doorway, backlit by a blue sky. He traced a claw tip against the wall, then pointed it at her.

  “I, client, I, ’til my heart mine,” he said and shuffled out of the mill.

  * * *

  Joy pulled into her parking spot and shut off her music. She squeezed the steering wheel in both hands and took a deep breath. She’d driven fast and furious. Now she was home. Safe. It was over. It was all behind her. Her purse was heavy and rattled with strange things, the seeds from Briarhook pushed into her pocket. She didn’t trust them but hadn’t known what to do with them. She couldn’t leave them in the cache office in case they wrecked the place, sprouting from the floor. She didn’t want to bring them home, but where could she leave them? She debated hiding them behind the plant urn by the stairs. Her phone buzzed. Text message.

  Things r NOT going well!

  Joy frowned in sympathy, momentarily distracted from her own worries, and typed back to Monica: *hugs*

  The next words were long in coming: This is the 1st first fight that I DON’T want to be the last. How do I do this???

  Joy sighed. Keep talking, she typed. Should I call?

  Not now. Later. When less sobby.

  The idea of Monica sobbing was disturbing. Joy had trouble imagining it.

  Joy quick-typed another *hugshugshugs* and tossed her phone into her purse. She rolled up the windows and flipped her keys over in a fistful of metal and plastic grocery tags. She got out and shut the door with her hip, her sneakers sucking the hot asphalt, the sticky-squelching sounds mocking her steps as her mind wandered to Monica, Gordon, Briarhook, Ink and air-conditioning, not necessarily in that order.

  A clang of sound and light slammed her forward. She flew into the hedge and felt something break under her shirt. Dazed, she spun around to see a pointed, red helmet cocked to one side—the knight’s weapons had been thrown clear, a pair of narrow swords stuck winking in the grass. Empty hands fisted with the heavy scrape of armor. The disarmed knight faltered in that moment of surprise.

  Joy ran.

  She burst into the courtyard. Bolting for the steps, hooking her fingers against the handrail and propelling herself upward. The clanking behind her forced her feet to move faster. She pounded up the steps knowing she had to get through her front door, had to get there first and quickly—Ink’s wards were the only protection she had against the red-colored knight. There wasn’t time to grab the scalpel. There wasn’t time to think. There was barely time to breathe. Air dried her teeth as she gasped, climbing higher, faster, eyes locked on her goal.

  She hit the second-floor landing and kicked a floor plant down the stairs. It bumped and bounced, coughing up dirt and broken pottery. She kept running. The knight was close, faster than she remembered; she could hear the long pulls of breath echoing in his helmet.

  Joy vaulted the next steps by twos. She heard the crashing on the stairs behind her, heard the thump-thump-thump as armored footsteps hit the carpeted hall. She grabbed the next landing’s floor plant with both hands and threw, showering herself in dirt and smacking the knight square in the chest. She needed distance. She needed room. She grabbed the satchel in her pocket, and the cloth burst in her hand. She flung it at the knight.

  Seeds hit dirt. Brambles exploded, instantly clogging the stairwell in thick knots of branches with wicked black thorns. The knight slammed to a halt, trapped at the edge of the thicket. He began hacking with both swords, bits of briar flying. With a fresh wave of panic, Joy ran down the hall.

  Fumbling with her keys, she struggled to fit one in the lock. It wouldn’t go! She couldn’t get the door open! Her hands wouldn’t work! A high, thin whimper clawed in the back of her throat. She had to get inside! Get inside! NOW! Keys jostled in her fingers; metal scraped the keyhole, the doorknob, her skin. A flash of red burst around the corner. She dropped the keys, stumbling in the bits of dirt. A searing jolt shot through her limbs like pain or fear.

  The knight appeared, holding twin swords, and charged.

  Joy kicked the door. Hard. It snapped at the jamb. Throwing herself at it, she dropped inside, falling face-first into the foyer as the security alarm screamed. A gold ward shimmered to life behind her, washing the doorway in fairy light.

  Sprawled on the floor, Joy gaped up at the knight. He stood in the hall, shoulders heaving, a sword in each hand, the thin eye slit fixated on her. Joy scrambled backward, the tile slippery under her palms. The knight glared through the sheen of Ink’s ward as the security alarm wailed. The phone rang. Joy lay on the floor. Everything was shrill and bright and numb.

  “He killed you,” she heard herself say. “He killed you.”

  The knight raised its swords, the voice beneath the faceplate booming under the din.

  “It cannot be done,” he said.

  A splice in the overhead lights, and Ink landed, crouched over Joy with an outstretched arm. He held the obsidian arrowhead in his fist and growled like a wolf. She felt everything from fear to relief to delight through a haze of tingling shock.

  The knight crossed his swords and retreated slowly, three steps, out of sight. They heard his footsteps echo in the hall and on the stairs.

  Uncurling, Joy stared at the broken door. It took a second for the pins and needles to fade from her fingertips and legs. Ink stood in the doorway, checking the wards, swinging the black blade back and forth in mute frustration, trailing a deep gray smudge of power behind him like charcoal smoke. He smacked the arrowhead against the keypad. The alarm stopped.

  Joy ran for her room, pressing a hand to her stomach. She felt ill—not queasy, but something deeper. She was too aware of her insides still being on the inside and her mouth somehow tasted how very close she’d come to death. Two swords loomed in the back of her mind while she knew that the knight was probably lurking somewhere just outside. Waiting.

  “Joy,” said Ink, appearing in her doorway.

  “You felt the wards?”

  “I felt the wards,” he confirmed.

  “Is he still there?”

  “Perhaps. But he cannot come in.”

  “I don’t think...” Joy swooned, and she caught herself on the back of her desk chair. She wobbled on her feet as the room darkened at its edges.

  Ink crossed the room swiftly. “Are you hurt?”

  She blinked. “Yes,” she said. Then, “No.” Her eyes focused on his. “Ink?”

  “Yes?”

  “You didn’t kill him”

  “Yes, I did,” he said and held up his wrist. “Inq marked me, and there was no mistake. I murdered a member of the Twixt, as per Grimson’s auspice.” He shook his head. “This knight bears the same mark, the same signatura as the one I killed, but everything else—his height and bearing, his skill, his weapons—have changed. I cannot explain it. To have the same True Name...” Concern laced his voice. “It makes no sense. But you are safe.” He brushed her hair from the side of her neck. She glanced up at his touch as his fingers slid along the chain at her neck and withdrew the tiny pendant from beneath her collar. Only half the rune was there—broken, snapped in half, a ragged edge bisected the glyph. The rest of the shattered pendant was grit against her skin.

  “I am glad you had this,” he said.

  The first blow had not killed her. The futhark had served its purpose. It had saved her life.

  “I...I didn’t see anything,” she said. “I never saw it coming. He was... He must have...” She shut her eyes, a quick erasure of what
might have been. Her body heaved with a sudden, sickly jolt, but she held herself still. “He attacked me from behind,” she said, swallowing bile. “I would’ve... He could’ve...”

  And Ink did something that surprised her: he gathered her into his arms, held her tightly to his chest and stroked her hair. She closed her arms around him and tucked her head into his shoulder, two puzzle pieces sliding together until they fit. He was warm and strong and smelled like summer rain. She wondered who had told him that this was the precise right thing to do, and then realized that he had probably learned it from her, watching her. Her heart swelled, then contracted to the size of a pin.

  Cupping her hair, he lifted her face and kissed her mouth with reverent sweetness as if she were something precious, as if she could break. He stroked her lips with his mouth, barely touching her. His eyes squeezed shut. His fingers stilled against the side of her throat, and when he breathed, it was a slow, shuddering breath.

  She kissed him back, winding her fists in his shirt and pulling him closer. He leaned her against the wall and held her face by the tips of his fingers, cradling the sides of her jaw. Joy’s mouth opened. The next kiss drew him deeper. Her hands kneaded his shoulders through the silk of his shirt.

  Ink’s hand traced her arm, her ribs, her hip. Joy squirmed. His fingers tentatively followed the thin line of bare skin between her shirt and her jeans. Joy arched her back. She was drinking breaths in the gaps between kisses, eyes closed, head full of sparks. She tugged at his shirt, aching to touch his skin. He paused, stilling her scrabbling, hungry fingers. Joy moved to pull away—ashamed, afraid—but his hands held hers, his eyes searching her face, swollen-lipped and gasping.

  Ducking his chin, Ink peeled his shirt over his head. The muscles moved catlike over his body, hints of ribs and chest and sculpted abs. He’d matched his body to his face, lean and strong and boyish. Dimples appeared along his smile as he tossed his shirt aside. Joy caught a hint of the dark scales of his signatura that wound a dragon-circle tattoo across his back.

  He returned to kissing her. The scent of summer rain filled the room like a squall; she could feel the crackles like lightning raising the tiny hairs on her face and skin. She touched his chest, fingers slipping into the furrow they’d created, her thumbs sliding between the unnaturally smooth muscles of his pecs before they were off exploring on their own. He felt like silk, like polished stone, strong and ageless. She moaned into his mouth and slid a little as her legs loosened, drawing them down onto the floor, onto her purse. She made a small sound of protest. Ink stilled.

  “Wait,” he said, voice slicing and urgent, eyes wide. His body stiffened against hers, arms locked at rigid angles. “I am...” Ink blinked with effort. “I have not yet...” The look on his face was almost comical, but it was a painful confession. Joy understood. How far had he gone to make himself look human?

  Joy licked her lips, sweaty and embarrassed; her want was far too big for her too-tight skin. His eyes were so wide that she could see stars. Joy inched aside slowly, pulling her purse out from under the small of her back, feeling the seams of her jeans stretch and pull as she moved. Ink sat up, the play of muscles over his chest and shoulders a languid shudder. His whole body shifted as he sat on his haunches, lithe and longing. He tore his hungry gaze away from her with an effort.

  “I should go,” Ink said.

  “No,” Joy said. “Stay with me.” More than wanting him, she knew that if he hadn’t killed the knight, keeping him close would help keep it that way. She did not want him to kill. Again? “We’re safe here, right? He can’t come in?”

  He shook his head, struggling to compose his breathing. “No.”

  “Then stay with me,” she said. “Please.”

  Ink dropped his arms and heaved a sigh. “All right,” he said. “I will stay here, with you, until I must go.” He pushed a hand through his hair, running lines through the black thatch.

  She crossed her legs and squeezed them together, still trying to fend off the hot, pulsing energy that strained against her clothes. It didn’t help that he sat shirtless on her floor, his arms sculpted with long, lean muscle, his chest chiseled and slender and narrowed into hard abs. He’d added a belly button and deep creases at the pelvic bone that disappeared beneath the waistband of his jeans. His long black bangs shielded his eyes, and his boyish face was tense. He was so beautiful it was easy to believe he wasn’t human. But all the subtle changes he’d been adding were making him more and more familiar, more humanlike, enough that she sometimes forgot.

  Propping herself against the wall and trying to distract him from murderous thoughts, she said, “Exactly how far have you gotten?”

  Ink hesitated as if debating how to answer.

  “Feet,” he said finally, his voice soft and low. “They are proving difficult.”

  Joy scooted back, creating distance and cooler air between them. She flipped her ponytail from the back of her neck, sticky with sweat, and smiled.

  “Show me.”

  Glancing at Joy through lowered lashes, Ink tugged off one black boot and then the other, dropping them to the floor. His silver wallet chain snaked into a puddle on the carpet. His eyes watched her watching him.

  His feet were new, masculine and perfect; clearly the most complex thing he’d done yet. Joy crossed her legs and placed both his feet in her lap, examining his toes, from biggest to smallest, secretly liking that he’d chosen to make a full-scale version of his littlest toe instead of a tiny apostrophe like hers. It was almost as if her tiniest toe was an added afterthought. He had used another model, and she was secretly glad; she’d never liked her feet, damaged after years of gymnastics abuse. With two bent and broken toes, chapped heels and split nails, they were her least favorite part of her body. Hence why she wore crazy socks—it deflected attention from what lay underneath.

  Joy looked at the pair of feet in her lap, trying to recognize them but couldn’t. So whose feet are they?

  Ink leaned on one arm, angling his right foot, then his left, watching the bones slide around the axis of his ankles and flexing his arches back. “Not half as useful as hands, less flexible, less precise, but require exacting balance and kinetic harmony for a bipedal gait in order to work properly,” he said, turning his knee to one side. “I used a number of models. What do you think?”

  “They’re perfect,” Joy said, which was true: his feet were smooth, uncalloused, impossible—a podiatrist’s dream feet. “Except the nails,” she was forced to add. He hadn’t finished making the toenails yet, just outlines drawn on the nubs themselves. For a long time, neither Ink nor Inq had had fingernails; it was the first detail she’d noticed that made them truly inhuman. That and their fathomless, all-black eyes.

  “Well...” Ink shifted his chain to the side and drew out the leaf-tipped wand. “We should work on that, then.”

  Joy took the scalpel from its inside pocket, ready to erase anything that Ink didn’t like. It reminded her of the first time she’d held the naked blade and they’d discovered, quite by accident, that she could remove whatever he’d drawn. In the case of signatura, it was an awesome power—one forbidden and feared—but with Ink, she had removed scars, closed wounds and even straightened crooked nail beds for her boyfriend, the perfectionist.

  She smiled to herself, hearing Inq’s voice, Artists!

  Maybe Ink would understand her new role in the Twixt? But while she had the urge to tell him everything, she didn’t want to break this moment. Not yet.

  He bent over his knees, and she crouched by his head, getting lost in the details as he drew his feet into living human shapes. They sat molding and erasing and rebuilding them like children making sand castles at the beach. Ink convinced Joy to remove her shoes, and they compared the shapes of their toes and bent knuckles, widening the small hollows of skin between digits, debating whether the second toe should be longer or shorter th
an the first and how much nail the baby toe should have. Ink discovered Joy was ticklish when he traced the inner swell of her arch. She kicked and squealed and grabbed his ankle, but he was unsurprisingly immune.

  “No fair!” Joy said. “You aren’t ticklish!”

  “No,” he said, smiling. “I do not know what that feels like.”

  “It’s...” Joy stumbled, trying to think how to describe it. “It’s sort of an uncomfortable squiggling that makes you laugh. Like a silly little itch that prickles.”

  Ink’s lip quirked. “Sounds delightful.”

  “Try it,” Joy said. She put a finger on the arch of his foot. “You can feel that, can’t you?” She drew a line from toe to heel.

  “Yes,” he said, concentrating where her finger started and stopped. Joy knew he was rearranging his senses, something that Inq had once told her allowed them to feel hot and cold, become hard or soft and taste the difference between chalk dust and chocolate. He flexed his foot and moved it closer in her lap.

  “Okay.” She made her touch featherlight. “Can you still feel that?”

  “Yes.”

  “And this?” Lighter still.

  “Yes.”

  His voice blurred, soft as down. Ink was staring at her without blinking. She’d only just noticed. And now that she’d noticed, she couldn’t look away. He didn’t say anything. It was as if his eyes had grown deeper, darker, cavernous. She remembered first falling into those eyes, reflecting bits of glow sticks and carnival lights.

  “Does it tickle?” she whispered.

  He shook his head very slightly. Only the very tips of his hair moved.

  “No.”

  Her fingers played over his skin and found the rough edge of his jeans. It was as if she couldn’t stop touching him. As if she couldn’t help herself for what happened next.