by Dawn Metcalf
She stepped into the shower, got dressed and grabbed a cereal bar as she slowly forced herself out of the house. She tried not to think about anything between soaping, shampooing and toweling off to snapping her hair into a ponytail and stepping into clothes. She always wore mismatched socks so being semiconscious wasn’t a problem. Joy hummed loudly when errant thoughts got too close to the surface.
It was something like gymnastics training and something like mourning and too much like everything was going to hell.
Joy drove to the hospital on autopilot with the music off.
For the third time, Joy gave her name at the visitor’s desk. For the second time, she’d brought a book to try to read. For the first time, she was stopped at the nurses’ station when she asked for room 218. The woman’s face caught her attention. It looked pinched.
“I’m sorry,” the woman said, looking up from her clipboard. “Someone should have called. Were you family?”
Joy froze hearing the past tense.
“Monica Reid?” Joy repeated it like a question. She felt hot then cold then sick.
“Hold on,” the nurse said. “Let me check.”
But Joy had already begun walking down the horribly familiar hall, past the green exit sign and the open doors and the odd knot of red-faced strangers holding balloons, crowding the door, faces blotchy with tears. Joy pushed past a woman holding a vase of Gerbera daisies, bouncing off a man in a rumpled suit and tie. The sunshine-yellow curtain was highlighted by the window’s sun. The room felt cold. The first bed was empty.
The first bed. Empty. With clean white sheets.
Joy stumbled past the partition to the second bed, where Monica lay sleeping. Her facial bandages had been removed, the ugly half scar mocking, but she was here. Alive. Monica was alive.
Joy sat down hard, leaving the other girl’s family and friends to their grief. She was grateful and sorry and guilty all at once, stealing all her polite nothings-to-say. The strangers quietly gathered the last of their things and left in a miserable hush.
She was too shocked for prayers or relief or tears. Joy stared at her friend’s face, puffy with shadows under her eyes, grateful. Her heart slammed as if petulant at having to stop beating back there. Too close. What if...? Joy hugged her purse between her elbow and ribs, knowing that, for the third day in a row, the scalpel lay inside, unused. It felt like she had been too late. Too late to make things better, to make things right, to undo the damage made by her mistakes. Even though Joy knew that she could remove the rest of the scar at any time, sever her ties to the Twixt and the possibility of Ink’s forgiveness, she hadn’t prepared herself for the possibility of Monica not being here. Alive. Safe.
Joy started hyperventilating, a thin squeeze of breath.
Every day since the accident, Joy had forced herself to come, to suffer the same awful temptation, to make the same choice, again and again. Every day she left wondering if she’d made the right choice—the brave choice or the coward’s choice. Joy berated herself: what else did she have to lose? Ink hadn’t contacted her in three days. Three days! His hurt was made clear. His hurt was now hers. But each time, Joy left the hospital with her scalpel still in her bag and Monica’s head still full of stitches, and the doctors powered up expensive lasers and wrote data on charts, trying to re-create that initial bout of flawless healing.
The Reids called it a miracle. The doctors told them that Monica was responding well to the laser treatments with unprecedented results. The shallowest part of the scar had completely disappeared, as well as the area over most of the nasal cavity, and they hoped to repair the deeper tissue damage. Joy knew it was only because she’d started erasing the scar and hadn’t finished.
She could finish it. She could erase it completely and they would never know.
But I would know.
Each night she was almost sure she would change her mind the next day. And the next day she would go through it all over again: Should she? Shouldn’t she?
Ink had stopped her, but Ink was gone. He was gone and it was over and he wasn’t coming back. She had clung to the idea that he would forgive her—that he could forgive her—and that there was a chance that he’d come back and see things her way and Joy could have everything be perfect once again. But beneath that, she knew—if she was being honest with herself—that he was right. She had started to do something without thinking, something that had risked Ink and Inq and two worlds attached to one another by tenuous strings.
That was it, really, beneath everything: she was wrong. Joy knew that by using the scalpel to erase Ink’s mark, she’d stepped over the line; willfully placing everything and everyone he cared about in danger was not something he could forgive, not after all they’d been through to keep one another safe. Everything they’d done had been in order to maintain the illusion that the Scribes were flawless and that Joy was not a threat and that their worlds were still safe, and she had almost screwed that up. By beginning to erase one legitimate mark that bound their worlds together, Joy had proven—irrevocably—how irresponsible she could be. It didn’t even matter that she’d stopped; she couldn’t undo what she had done, couldn’t take it back. As a human, she could not be trusted. As a human with the Sight, she was also dangerous. And as a human with the Sight and the ability to erase signaturae, she was something that couldn’t be tolerated to exist without chains. That was what the Tide had been saying all along.
Ink had tried to tell her that back in the cache, Graus Claude had tried to tell her that back in the brownstone, but she hadn’t listened—she hadn’t understood. Now she knew: Ink loved his sibling and Joy loved Monica and that was stronger than loving one another enough to forgive and that was that.
She wished she could feel more sorry, somehow. He was right; she’d made her choice and he’d made his. It was over between them. She had to face facts. It was time for her to cut the last cords that bound her to that otherworld, the Twixt, the Council and Ink. She still hadn’t managed to get rid of the knight’s tagger mark on her back, but she could do this for Monica. Joy could do this for her. There was no reason to let Monica suffer. If she was going to pay the price, why not do the deed? There was no one who could stop her now.
Now was her chance.
The puckered line that had once gouged Monica’s pretty face, dividing her sloping cheekbone and her wide nose, had skipped over her right eye to cleave through the eyebrow and into her hairline, where a patch had been shaved away during surgery. Joy had made herself look at it every day, staring until she’d memorized every stitch and wink of pink that stood out on Monica’s ebony skin. And there, still burning with fairy light, was the slicing, spearlike arrow that she’d left half-undone. Joy wondered what happened when a signatura was left unfinished—was the person still claimed? Was the owner somehow affected? Alerted? She was pretty sure that neither Ink nor Inq had ever left a job half-done, and she would likely never have the chance to ask them.
Joy hadn’t much time before someone else came in.
The beeping monitor counted out a constant rhythm, like the ticking of a clock counting down. She couldn’t pretend she didn’t know what she’d be doing this time; she was aware of the consequences. Ink had repudiated her. Even the DJ knew it. She was free to do as she liked. She was free to be human and make human mistakes for her human friends. If the Twixt was not part of her life anymore, then this was: Monica, the Reids, Gordon, her family. Enrique was right—these were the people that mattered most. But it would mean purposefully undoing Ink’s work, unmaking his client’s mark, choosing to place him and Inq in danger by reneging on an assignment. Risking possible obsolescence. Possible death.
Joy sat back.
She couldn’t do it. Even if they weren’t part of her life anymore, she didn’t want to hurt them. And yet, she didn’t want Monica to suffer, either. Every time she saw the look in Gordon’s eyes o
r the hitch in Mrs. Reid’s smile, she wanted to die. It was worse when they hugged her or thanked her for coming, for saving their daughter, for being such a good friend.
It was the worst when they trusted her enough to cry.
Joy clenched her teeth and opened her purse. She felt the cool steel of the surgical instrument, the texture of its handle against her fingertips. She knew the blade with her eyes closed; it was almost like a part of her now. She squeezed it, feeling the tiny crosshatches dig in her skin. Joy knew that she could do this, and that she shouldn’t and that she wanted it more than she’d wanted to draw the signatura that had stopped Aniseed from infecting the world. She hadn’t known, then, what she could do. She hadn’t known, then, what it felt like to be invincible, to change the rules, to unmake mistakes. But she knew, now, what it felt like to lose.
The room had gone quiet, or perhaps she had stopped listening. The world shrank down to Monica’s sleeping face on the pillow and the sunlight on her bed. The mattress crinkled under Joy’s hip, metal things pinging and clinking as she shifted her weight. Joy rubbed the scalpel against her thumb, examining where she’d left off at the side of Monica’s nose, now taped over, and where it bisected her eyebrow. Joy exhaled a deep breath. Her hand shook.
I’m sorry, she thought to her friend. I can’t do it.
“Joy!”
Joy wrenched around, saw Mrs. Reid’s face—the whites of her eyes great Os of shock. Her whole body stood rigid. She wasn’t looking at Joy—she was looking at the scalpel in Joy’s hand. Joy lowered it, feeling sick, her heart thundering.
“I—”
“Get away!” Mrs. Reid shrieked and lifted her e-reader over her head like a mallet. “Get away from her right now!”
Mrs. Reid lunged forward. Joy fell back, off the bed, into the corner, slamming into something against the wall. Pieces of plastic rained down. She raised her hands, her left elbow caught in her purse strap, her right hand still holding the surgical blade as she cowered on the floor. Mrs. Reid hadn’t hit her yet, but it trembled in her arms. A mother’s heart warred with her eyes as she loomed over Joy. She screamed again.
“Don’t you touch her, Joy! DON’T YOU TOUCH HER!”
“I wouldn’t!” Joy said, a pain in her back blossoming. She inched across the wall. They both spoke through tears. The way Mrs. Reid looked at her... Joy shrank, sobbing. “Please!”
Mrs. Reid’s teeth were white against her brown lipstick, her eyes still wild and livid with tears. She shrieked something wordless and smacked Joy as she jumped to her feet and ducked past, making broken sounds as if she’d hurt herself more than Joy. Mrs. Reid threw herself across Monica’s body, shielding her with her arms, choking on her pleas.
“Go away! Lord, Jesus, protect us. Get away from my girl!”
Joy tripped over the wooden chair and caught her shoe on the curtain, pushing off the wall, under the TV mounts and past the vacant bed, all white sheets and emptiness as she ran into the hall, chased by the echo of Mrs. Reid’s sobs. Joy pushed the scalpel into her purse and bolted outside, face flaming, ears burning, head ringing, unable to think of anything as she made for her car in the parking lot nearest the river walk in her usual section B. She ran to the car and dived inside.
Slamming the door, Joy sat back hard. She pressed her hands over her face and screamed. The scream echoed off her palms, wet, hot and sticky, smelling of hand sanitizer and metal and guilt. She pushed her knuckles into her eyes as if she could blot out the look on Mrs. Reid’s face the moment she’d seen Joy with the scalpel in her hand. Joy knew what she must have thought—knew what had to come next—and didn’t know whether she should call Gordon or Stef or Mr. Reid or the hospital and somehow explain, or if it was all pointless and the cops would come soon. She should go. No! Stay or you’ll look guilty. But she was guilty. Yet she wasn’t. She ought to stay here. She had an obligation, a responsibility.
Joy crawled her fingers through her hair. She deserved this for waiting. For trying. For thinking that she could get away with any of it. She sobbed into her hands and grabbed a series of tissues from the box in the back, wiping her face and pressing them against her eyes.
The police would find the scalpel. And the stuff on her phone. The Twixt would find out. The Tide would win.
No. She had to go. Had to get out of here. She pulled the parking stub tucked under the sun visor, balling up tissues and looking for somewhere to put them. Febreze stung her eyes, its smell not quite able to cover the stale odor of old food ground into the carpet. Joy threw her purse into the passenger’s seat, buckled her belt and wiped her face with shaking fingers. She turned to look over her shoulder before backing out.
The roof smashed inward with a sudden crash.
Joy screamed and hunched down, enveloped in a sudden haze of yellow-gold sparks. Another crash, and the roof caved in at a sharp angle. The windshield fragmented, a sudden wall of spiderwebs. A third blow, and it shattered in a hailstorm of jagged glass.
Joy threw her arms over her face and saw the Red Knight, carrying an enormous hammer, stride past the broken frame. He strutted around the car slowly, the clank of armor gritty against the asphalt. Lifting the enormous weapon, he brought it down again on the hood. Joy jolted in her seat, bouncing off the collapsed ceiling. Her glyph-armor glowed, the light reflecting off chips of glass. They rattled against the floor as the Kia bounced on its shocks.
Tucking her knees, Joy yanked her feet away from the pedals just as another hammer blow smashed in the engine. Joy groaned as the steering wheel slammed into her side. She tried to open the door behind her, but it was wedged, buckled inward. She tried the lock. It wouldn’t move. Joy scrambled on her elbows, pushing her hands and feet against both doors, trying to free the latches. Desperate wheezing sounds whistled through her teeth. The Red Knight drew closer with an eerie satisfaction; the helmet’s eye slit fixed on Joy’s struggles as he swung the hammer around, then down.
The impact forced Joy flat over the gearshift. The armor protected her from the roof, now crushed into the headrest, but couldn’t help her escape out the crumpled doors. The Red Knight struck again. The car shuddered. Metal squealed. He was taking his time, carefully aiming his blows. Joy was being slowly crushed inside the car, the thin metal warping around her like foil. She kicked at the window, whimpering in her throat. The remaining glass was thick, toothy shards, and terror made her miss. She was lying prone. She was at the wrong angle. She could barely move. She was trapped.
The Red Knight circled the wreckage. She could almost feel him sizing up the angle, calculating the kill. She pounded her hands against the splintered plastic, against the twisted metal and the foam near her head. He raised the square war hammer high over his shoulders. Joy shot her left palm forward and pushed!
The passenger window exploded, shoving the knight back. He stumbled against the incline, thrown off balance, the hammer’s weight pulling him back, his armored feet slipping on soft earth. Joy struggled to drag her purse across the car, up onto her belly, but the strap caught on a belt buckle and the zipper pull was out of reach. She needed the scalpel. She needed to get him! Get the knight! Get out! He was so close! She yanked the leather in desperation and tried not to cry.
Her head whipped sideways as the car slammed backward. The impact of the hammer caved in the front of the car, spinning it slightly on its wheels, adding to her panic and vertigo. A wave of nausea rolled through her, and she smelled hot rubber. Joy gritted her teeth and turned on her side, reaching to open the purse with her left hand. The car slammed forward, struck from the back. Joy’s body flew sideways, protected from impact but not momentum. The backseat had crumpled; the seats snapped in half. Joy gasped, coughing dry filaments that powdered the air, feeling the closeness of the metal and the molding and glass. She was being violently crushed by degrees.
Another slam flattened the roof, pressing the ceiling flush
against Joy’s chest, stopped only by the armor: a hairsbreadth of golden light. The glyphs on her skin pulsed, swirling over limbs caught in awkward angles, still fumbling for the scalpel hidden somewhere in her purse. Her fingers struggled to obey the ragged tendrils of her last cohesive thought: that she needed to get the knight and hurt him and get out!
The steering wheel pinned her head against the seat cushion. She could feel her fingers move, feel the zipper catch and pull, feel the air blowing in from the open windshield. She held her breath and tried to stretch a little more—she could almost feel the handle—not enough! She wanted to scream, but her jaw was pressed flat and there was no one to call. She couldn’t even imagine grabbing Filly’s pouch of vellum notes and then lighting a tiny fire.
Joy’s fingers closed inside the purse. Grabbed her phone instead. She nearly cried.
“Ink,” she whimpered, trying to concentrate on locating the scalpel and not on the Red Knight, who was somewhere just outside.
There was a groaning shift and Joy felt gravity yank her forward. She would have tumbled off the seat cushions if she hadn’t been pinned. Her feet scrabbled for purchase, heels catching on the armrest. The car tilted up at a dangerous angle, the fender shrieking and grinding against the cement. The Red Knight power-lifted the back of the ruined car and was pushing it forward with a scream of metal and asphalt.
Toward the edge of the lot. Over the incline. Into the river.
The Red Knight wasn’t going to bother breaking her armor; she was going to drown.
Joy flattened her palm against the roof and mentally pushed and pushed—wind whipped at her hair and face, flapping her cheeks, but the metal was too strong and she was too scared. The world jerked upward and Joy screamed as keys and loose change and CDs slid over her face. One foot dangled out the broken window.
There was a moment of sickening weightlessness and then the car slammed down on four wheels.
Her head lit up like fireworks, limbs jostling around her torso pinned in the metal pinch. Joy realized that she was still on land, although she felt the front wheels teeter. She could see it in her mind’s eye: the slippery grass fell quickly over the sharp incline to the rocky riverbed below. Water lapped at the reeds where it dipped deeper offshore, full of buzzing dragonflies and burping frogs. There was more than enough room for the car to sink, and she was hanging on the precipice.
