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She’d tried not to think about the look on Ink’s face in the back lot, or the armored body that had disappeared along with Ink and Inq when she’d been brave enough to check. It was as if they had never been, as if she’d imagined the whole thing, everything from the moment Inq had appeared at work to the moment when she’d walked past Neil with the scalpel still in her hand. It had been easy not to think about it while she’d rushed mindlessly between tables, but now it all came back to her in a crazy montage: ice cubes melting in a saucer, blood spouting over gravel, Mr. Vinh in a black robe behind a secret door at the C&P.
The rainy day world was as foggy as a dream.
“Need a ride?”
Neil appeared next to her, staring out at the rain.
“No,” Joy said. “Thanks. I’m waiting for a friend.”
Neil nodded and tapped his cheat pad. “Friend-friend or more-than-a-friend?” Joy turned and noticed him smile. “Just asking.”
Ink appeared just outside the door, slipping between one flap of reality and the next. Joy watched him unzip a doorway along a parking sign and check the sidewalks and streets, heedless of the rain wetting his clothes. He raised a hand, inviting her to join him.
“I have to go,” she said.
Neil frowned. “But there’s no one—”
“Bye.” Joy pushed out the door, hugging her purse close to her body. Ink had his straight razor in his hand and led the way past the window
“Are you all right?” she asked into her collar.
“Let’s get you home,” Ink said, slipping into rare contractions and walking quickly around the corner, out into the rain. Cool pinpricks tapped her arms and scalp as she walked beside him. Joy blinked through the rain on her lashes. On Ink’s face, they looked like tears.
He stopped in the middle of the sidewalk and stared at her. The rain matted her hair and slid a wet finger down her back. She glanced around awkwardly and felt drops trace down her cheeks.
“What is it?” she asked.
Ink blinked in surprise.
“The water is cold,” he said as a shudder passed over his body, muscles quivering under the silk shirt plastered against him. She’d forgotten how he still needed to concentrate to feel things.
“It’s not really,” Joy said, but Ink still looked amazed. He placed a hand against his chest. The shiver came again, shaking raindrops from the tips of his hair.
“It is cold. I can feel it,” Ink said, pressing his palm flat. “I am alive.” He said the words as if he’d never thought them before, as if their very meaning had changed. His eyes lifted and saw her with wonder. “I am alive,” he said again in his crisp, slicing voice. “And you are beautiful.”
Joy wiped the wet bangs from her eyes and stepped forward.
First she tasted the rain, which tasted like him—cool droplets on his mouth that melted against her tongue. The lightness bloomed into something warmer. He pulled her closer, and Joy forgot the touch of raindrops. Her arms felt heavy in her wet clothes, her fingers tangling in his hair.
He pushed her back.
“No!”
Joy stopped, confused at the sudden space between them. Her hands were empty and open, the rain running through her fingertips like a question.
Ink did not look at her as he flicked the blade with an expert motion, sliced a door and, grabbing her hand, quickly stepped through.
They spun into her bedroom with the scent of limes, the cleansing breach cocooning them between one space and the next. Her white blouse clung to her body, ripples of white cotton outlining the wet patches. She shivered. It was cold in her room. The AC was on.
Ink let go of her hand, the last bit of his warmth leaving her as he strode the perimeter, checking that his wards were still in place. His silvery shirt hung off him like a limp sail, and the spikes of his hair dripped rainwater on the carpet. He moved with a feral grace, anxious and fervent. Joy watched him circle, feeling less and less secure.
“Ink?”
“The wards,” he mumbled. “The wards are whole,” he said, pacing. “Your room is sealed, as is the building. I even strengthened them to repel you from danger outside your door.” He was speaking quickly, almost babbling, which was unlike him. Joy had never seen him so unsettled. His nervousness crawled in her stomach, curdling her fears. “I met with Graus Claude and he said that he should have answers for us soon—”
“Ink.”
“—Inq delivered the sword to Kurt—no one knows weapons better than he—though he says he cannot be certain that this is a singular act, but any formal declaration would have had to pass through the Council—”
“Ink!” Joy shouted, and it stopped him in his place. She dropped her purse and the scalpel on her nightstand and flipped wet bangs out of her eyes. “What’s the matter?”
He looked up.
In three quick strides, he was kissing her. Their bodies pressed against the wall. He held on to her desperately, feverishly, a sudden heat washing over him that Joy could feel where they touched. She kissed him back harder, plastering her wet body against his. The fabric of their shirts slid between them, slick and wet against their skin. He held her hips, pulling her impossibly closer, matching her growing intensity with nips of teeth and tongue. She grabbed his arms to steady herself or pull him closer or hang on. He kissed the wet curls of hair at her neck.
“I cannot lose you,” he said. “Not yet.”
“Ink,” she whispered, still uncertain of this mood, and wrapped her hands in his hair. He held her waist, and she bunched the silk of his shirt. He pulled back and lifted it like a curtain over his head, slapping it to the floor and pressing his bare chest against hers. She felt the skin of his back, imagining his signatura spinning there. She was spinning, too. Clenching. Burning. Wanting. As they clung to one another, Joy felt like they were climbing the walls. Her feet kicked against the baseboard. They had nowhere else to go.
Ink slid his lips into the hollow space between her neck and shoulder. Joy leaned her head back and groaned. He lifted her easily, twisting them onto her bed. She held on to his hips with her knees, taking the weight of him as they landed. He kissed her again—her face, her eyes, her throat—pushing pillows out of the way, knocking over everything in their path as they climbed higher across the mattress, their breath filling each other’s mouths. There was bumping, crashing, thumping, breaking—but none of that mattered. There was only the want. Joy could feel his kisses all over her body. Her leg snaked behind his knee, pulling him closer, tighter. He pressed against her, flattening the ripples of her shirt. She ran her hands along his ribs, sliding from his chest to his back to his shoulders. He kissed the side of her neck, her collarbone, her breastbone, her throat. He shook the dampness from his hair.
Joy squirmed. She couldn’t seem to get enough air to breathe. Her clothes felt uncomfortable, stuck to her skin. She pulled at her blouse, wanting more than anything to feel his bare skin against hers, lifting the hem in bunched fists. As he kissed her cheek, she turned her head and saw the pale, glowing slash on his wrist. It hit her like ice water.
“What...?”
Ink froze. He didn’t need to ask what she’d seen.
He gasped quietly into her hair, the sound of it deep in her ear, before he lifted himself up, turning his left hand over. The signatura looked like a jagged crescent moon.
“It’s a mark,” he said. Catching his breath, he swallowed. “Grimson’s mark.” He kissed her temple once, as if saying goodbye to the moment. “He lays claim on those who have murdered someone of the Twixt.”
Joy twisted beneath him, no longer burning with need. “Did Inq put it there?”
“It is her job,” Ink said. “It was my doing.”
“But...” She struggled to understand. “I thought marks were meant for humans? I didn’t think the Folk marked one another!”
Ink sat up, the muscles of his chest bunched and taut as if he were expecting a blow. He hung his head, ashamed. “You have seen Inq,” he said. “She is covered in marks, proof of her experiences. I think she likes to collect them like trinkets or boys, as if they might somehow tie her tighter to the world.” Ink touched the spot on his wrist as if he could feel its foreignness, someone else’s signatura on his skin. “That is what marks are for, of course—tying our two worlds together, keeping the magic that binds us alive with so much string.”
Joy traced the edge of his pinkie finger, not daring to touch the sigil. “I don’t understand,” she said finally. “I know you and Inq mark humans for the Folk, but not why the Folk need to mark things in the first place.”
Ink turned his hand over, breaking her touch, and threaded his fingers together over his knee with a sigh.
“Imagine a dirigible,” he said.
“A what?”
He paused. “A hot air balloon,” he amended.
“Oh,” she said, tugging her plastered shirt away from her skin and leaning back on her pillow. “Okay.”
“The lines tether the balloon to the basket, or to the ship cabin. Without the ropes, the craft cannot steer or fly and the balloon will drift away, without direction. Both parts need to be bound to the other in order to sail the skies. Without strong tethers, each is lost.” He leaned back, pulling his arms taut and squeezing his knee. “So, signaturae are what tether us, binding our worlds together and us to one another. Sever the bonds or fail to have enough of them secured, and the Council fears our worlds will fly apart. We offer our True Names as a promise to uphold our auspice and keep the world’s magic alive.”
Joy hesitated, uneasy and uncertain. “A promise to who?”
Ink shrugged, a play of muscles and limbs. “To those who now exist beyond our reach,” he said. “And you know the Folk do not take promises lightly.” He sighed, and the mattress shifted beneath him. “In the beginning, the Folk claimed the land and a few mortal bloodlines as theirs, but since much of the land has been lost or damaged, the Folk needed to mark more humans—those who possess a bit of magic or fall under someone’s auspice.” Ink shrugged. “If someone survives a plane crash, that person can be claimed by whoever watches over survivors of the sky. If someone is lost in the woods—” he glanced at Joy, who swallowed back the bitter memory of wet leaves and burning flesh “—then that person might be claimed by the creature that rules there. And if someone intentionally kills one of the Twixt...” Ink’s voice hardened. “Then he shall bear Grimson’s mark forever.”
Joy stared at Ink. She barely breathed. This maudlin streak was unlike him, just as unfamiliar as his passionate crawl across her bed. It was as if his feelings had boiled to the surface, raw and unfamiliar, fresh and overwhelming, as if he’d never felt them before. And, she realized, he hadn’t—he hadn’t ever—not before he’d met Joy.
He had never taken a life or had another’s sigil mar his skin. He had told her as much when he’d gone after Briarhook. Inq had told Joy that she would be his very first kiss. His first lehman. His first love. His first heartbreak. Everything was firsts with Ink. Life was new—wonderful, disappointing, joyous, crushing—and he was feeling it all because of Joy. He’d once told her that he’d been proud of his purpose to safeguard his people; it was the reason that he and Inq had been created, after all. He could be counted on to protect the lives of the Folk—that was why they’d had to pretend to be lovers, to disguise the fact that he had made a mistake in marking Joy, because the Scribes had to be infallible, reliable, always. Their world, the world of the Twixt, depended on it. That integrity was his rock, the one thing he knew about himself, and now it was gone.
He stood up and crossed the room. Joy struggled to sit up. Her skin tingled. Her legs ached. The space on the bed was fast cooling and damp.
“I have always wanted to do good work,” he said, sliding the wallet chain through his fingers. “Yet I have also wanted to be more, and that was my failing.” Ink finally lifted his fathomless eyes to Joy—the hurt and confusion there was childlike and torn. “There is no greater loss than the loss of one of our kind, if only because we are so few.” His breath was coming shallow and fast. Joy felt she should do something, but didn’t know what. “As a Scribe, I was created to keep the Folk from harm—from human harm!—and now this.” His hands were open, helpless, exposing the stain on his wrist.
“Is this what it means to be more human, Joy?” His crisp, clean voice had a slicing edge. “I ended a universe of possibilities to save another universe of possibilities because I valued those more. Because that future was yours. Because you mean more to me than the life of someone I have never met who meant to do you harm.” He struggled with it, almost pleading; his chest heaved with the need to get the words out. He touched the space over his heart with hooked fingers, indenting the skin as if he could tear the feelings from his body.
“Do you understand?” he asked desperately. “I killed.”
The words fell like stones from the aether, heavy and burning. Even when she’d thought he’d murdered Briarhook for kidnapping her and burning his brand onto her arm, Ink had not killed him—he’d taken the giant hedgehog’s heart and placed it in an iron box. She’d seen Briarhook afterward with her own eyes, fighting in the battle against Aniseed with a metal plate welded to his chest—hideous, but alive.
But the blood-colored knight was dead.
She sat, stunned silent. She didn’t know what to do or say. She knew she could offer to erase Grimson’s mark but that Ink would hate it if she did. There were some things that could not be undone. She watched Ink’s hands cup his shoulders, his forearms crossing to hide his face; his every motion was filled with revulsion and shame. He had become something he didn’t recognize, all for the love of her. Joy twisted her fingers miserably.
“I killed him,” he said to the wall, to the floor. “Because he would have killed you—because I believed he would have killed you—because I believed he would have harmed you, although I had no proof.”
“He was going to kill me,” Joy said at last. “And he said that he’d kill you, too.”
Ink bumped the back of his head against the wall and dropped his arms. “I asked him to yield,” he lamented. “Why would he not yield?”
Joy shivered from more than the cold. She hugged her arms. “It was self-defense. Or in my defense,” she said. “You didn’t mean to kill him.”
“I did,” Ink said, still not looking at her. He placed his hands against the wall, studying his fingers, the lines of knuckle and cuticle and tendon they’d drawn together. The hands that he’d fashioned based on hers. The hands he’d used to take a life in her name. “I wanted to kill him and anyone who would harm you in any way.” He all but growled. Joy held her breath. “And when it happened, it happened so quickly, all I could think was that it was over too fast. That I was not done with him yet,” Ink said. “And then he was dead and I could not believe such a thought had ever existed inside me.”
Bared to the waist, he shivered. Rain still wet his skin. A few drops ran down the ridges of his ribs—the ones that they had sculpted together, the ones that heaved in fright. He glanced at her suddenly, pinning her fast.
“I disgust you.”
Joy gasped, “No!”
“I should,” he said. “I disgust me.” He ran clawed fingers through his hair, throwing water to the wind. “I have never understood war or killing or death. To protect, one can wound or warn or disable. But death? Death is final.” Ink rested his hands back on his hips; the chain on his left swung violently against his leg. He turned aside, rubbing his face in his hands. The sign of the ouroboros, a giant dragon swallowing its own tail, spun lazily between his shoulder blades. The scales flashed like reverse splashes of light.
“Is this what it means to love, Joy? To be loved?” he asked with bitter laughter. “To be willing to destroy anything and anyone else in your name?” He dropped his arms and looked back at her, broken, lost. It bruised something inside her. “Because, if I am honest, I would do it all again. Willingly, gladly. I would damn myself and call it love if I knew it would keep you safe.”
Joy crossed the room and took his hands. “No,” she said quickly. “No. It was a choice in a moment. You made a tough choice. You killed him and you saved me.” She stroked the inside of his palm where they’d drawn a life line together. He placed his hands over hers, squeezing them, and closed his eyes. Joy shivered now with more than the cold. These feelings that she’d given him were crushing him. “It sounds strange to say ‘I’m sorry,’ because I didn’t want to die and I’m glad that you stopped him, but I am sorry for what it’s done to you. For what I’ve done to you,” she whispered. “Even if I didn’t mean to.” She folded his fingers over her own. She wanted to hold him closer but felt she shouldn’t dare. His pain was creating a strange wall around him as unyielding as stone. Tears threatened. Her breathing grew stuffy. How could she explain? She was responsible; she had to make him understand. She squeezed harder. “That’s not love, Ink. But this is.” She lifted their hands together so he could see them. “This.”
His eyes stayed on their joined hands, fingers threaded together, like the first time.
“I love you, Ink,” she said and kissed his fingers, pressing her lips gently against each knuckle. Ink swallowed, the motion flickering in his throat. His eyes slipped closed and he took a deep breath. His thick lashes parted, revealing eyes like starless night.
“I love you, Joy,” he said. “No matter what, I will always love you.” His fingers tightened over hers. “But it frightens me more than I thought it would.”
“Me, too,” she said, trying to soothe the person she’d taught to feel. They held one another in the dark. “Me, too.”
FIVE (#ulink_027b6b35-f24d-5cd9-936e-6b18be734cf0)
STEF’S WELCOME HOME dinner featured a variety of his favorite takeout, including fried shrimp, cold sesame noodles, pulled-pork sandwiches, spicy hot wings, Greek salad, jambalaya and gooey potatoes au gratin. Stef was always hungry and Joy was hypoglycemic, but Shelley looked more than slightly alarmed at the amount of food the Malone family could put away.
“I don’t understand how you can stay so thin,” she said. “It’s inhuman.”
Joy snorted a laugh but managed to cover it with a sip of lemon seltzer.
“Dad used to say I made a pact with the devil.” Stef grinned.
“No, I said you were a devil,” Dad said. “I remember this one time Stef wanted to see if he could do stunts on his Big Wheel trike. But did he make a ramp out of a piece of wood and a brick like a normal kid? Oh no! I’m out raking the lawn and turn around to see my only son rolling down the porch banister on his Big Wheel and launch, soaring through the air with the biggest, toothiest grin on his face, and there I was—rake in hand, ten feet away, nothing I could do—and that smug little brat lands right in the middle of my pile of leaves. Stuff everywhere and not a scratch on him. I nearly had a heart attack.”
Everyone at the table laughed, even though there was a tug of pain as Joy remembered the old house with its homey smells of Murphy Oil Soap, old books and slow-brewed coffee. She could imagine the back porch with its peeling white paint and the taste of real lemonade that Mom would make with slices of rind. That was before everything changed—before Doug, before Shelley, before quitting gymnastics and Dad’s black depression. Before the move. Before the Carousel. Before Indelible Ink.
Stef saw the change in Joy’s face and switched the subject quickly.
“So have you two decided how long you’ll take off?” he asked.
Dad put his hand on Shelley’s. “We’re thinking two weeks.”
Joy stopped chewing her spring roll. “Two weeks what?”
Dad tried avoiding her gaze, but Shelley held his hand firmly. If nothing else, Joy appreciated that his girlfriend didn’t let him dodge his way out of confrontation. Another way that she wasn’t like Mom.
“You didn’t tell her?” Shelley asked.
“I did,” her dad said. “Or at least tried to. She wouldn’t stop typing on her phone.”
Joy swallowed. “Tell me what?”
“Shelley and I are planning to spend some time alone this summer, and I’ll be back at the end of August so we can still have some family time with Stef,” he said. “Any of this sounding familiar?”
Unfortunately, it did. Joy stared back, speechless.
“I had to check the dates with work,” Shelley said, taking on some of the blame. “We really didn’t know anything until yesterday morning.”
Joy swallowed her embarrassment along with a forkful of salad. It wasn’t Shelley’s fault. Joy didn’t blame her for wanting some time alone with her boyfriend. And, on the bright side, maybe now she could have more time with her boyfriend. The knight’s death and Grimson’s mark had affected him a lot. She played with her fork as she collected her thoughts.
“So where are you going?” Joy asked with a conciliatory grin.
“To the shore,” her dad said. “We’ve rented a place and a car and we’ll drive around exploring. No phones, no computers, total radio silence and some lovely peace and quiet.” He took Shelley’s hand. “Shelley’s been researching spots online and I have a tour map from triple A.”
“Did you check out that Dare to Tread book I told you about?” Stef asked. “It’s got a lot of great places that are off the beaten path.”
