Invincible (10 page)

“Ink!” Joy screamed as shock turned to terror. He swept forward
again, blade flashing, eyes flat, face tight. He looked like a thing
possessed—an angel of death.

Fear punched her breath. Her brain shrieked.
Ink, no!

A buckler knocked them apart, crashing into Ink's face.

His head snapped back. Joy stumbled aside. Filly laughed as Ink
spat at the ground and shook his head. Oily wetness stained his teeth. The
straight razor danced a whirling, flaring loop like a shield between them.
Snorting, Filly advanced, dodging the blade and landing two kicks and a solid
punch to his gut. Ink buckled, but kept his weapon raised high as if trying to
keep it out of reach. His elbow locked. His muscles quivered in effort. He
glared at Filly, looking annoyed.

“Here!” He slapped his left breast. “Hit me here!”

“What?” Joy cried. “No!”

Ink's arm sliced down, guillotine-straight at Filly's leg, but
she danced a quick fade, and sprang upward under his guard, landing a deep
rabbit punch right on target. Something clicked and Ink crumpled, eyes open,
mouth slack.

Horrified, Joy screamed.

“INK!”

Filly glanced back at Joy, a grin smeared across her lips. The
thin tattoo lines on her eyelids curled in a wink. “Don't worry—he's
fine
.”

NINE

JOY STUMBLED OVER
the
threshold at the C&P, triggering its two-tone
hello
chime. She knew the security cameras would see her, but not
the invisible warrior woman with the unconscious Scribe slung over her back. Joy
held the door open behind her as Filly stepped to one side and rested her load
on a squat freezer full of ice cream sandwiches and frozen Dove bars.

The owner's son, Hai, sat behind the counter. He didn't bother
looking up.

“He's in the back,” he said, and flipped a page in his
textbook.

Joy nodded wearily, heading toward the Employees Only door. She
glanced back. Filly strode behind her, nose wrinkling against the stale smell of
air freshener and old coffee. Ink hung like a limp sack over her back.

“This is either an excellent illusion or a terrible wizard's
lair,” she complained.

Joy was glad the aisles were empty. “How many wizard's lairs
have you been to?”

“Oh, a few,” Filly said. “More than my fair share, truth be
told, and less than I ought!” Laughing, she hoisted Ink higher on her shoulder.
His arm knocked cans of salted peanuts off a shelf. Joy stopped and picked them
up, getting a close-up look at Filly's buckskin boots. The toes and heels were
spattered with grass stains and blood. Joy's skin prickled with equal parts fear
and guilt.

“Come on,” she said quickly. “Let's go see the wizard.”

She knocked on the storage room door. It opened. Mr. Vinh was
checking his inventory against a thick sheaf of spreadsheets. Stacks of juice
flats, power bars, toilet paper and candy filled the shelving units nearly to
the ceiling. A lunar calendar tacked to the wall hung next to the mandatory
Employee Rights posters and an altar decorated with faded photographs and tiny
bowls of sweets. Joy turned a close circle. It was a tight squeeze, and she was
conscious of Filly and Ink standing invisibly behind her.

“Hello, busy girl,” the wizard said while ticking off a column
of boxes. “I hear you've been
very
busy lately.”

“Yeah,” she said. “Tell me about it.”

He flipped the sheaf closed and tapped its corner to his
forehead. “I was about to ask you to do that very thing.” He reached behind the
shelving unit to pull the lever that Joy knew would spring a hidden door to his
back office, but he hesitated. “Do you wish your friends to come with you?” he
asked casually.

Joy paused. “Yeah. Can you see them?”

“No,” he said. “I just wanted to make sure you knew that you
were being followed.” He pulled the lever, and the secret door cracked open.
“The
tien
are not allowed to bother you here—it is
against my magic and their Accords. My shop is considered neutral territory so
that I may conduct business without interference.” He tapped a small gong with
his fingernail, which gave a tiny
ping.
“Always best
to announce yourselves before entering someone's place of business,” he said to
the open air.

Filly raised her eyebrows, stretching the blue tattooed lines
in question. Joy said nothing as the wizard pushed the door open wider, allowing
them to enter as he flicked on the lights.

The back room was lined with bamboo slats. Bundles of dried
herbs and wrinkled things hung from the ceiling among oddly twisted lightbulbs
that gave off a golden glow. A large painting table dominated the room, strewn
with scrolls of paper, inkwells, brushes and wax stamps. A dark red armoire with
rows of tiny drawers stood beside a glass case filled with all sorts of strange
equipment made of lenses, dials and twists of wire, rock and brass and bone. The
shelves were lined with pickle jars and ceramic jugs, each crammed full with
unidentifiable things. A dark mirror hung on the opposite wall, reflecting
everything in shades of gray.

“I'd think you'd be able to brew up something to give yourself
the Sight,” Joy said, stepping onto the tatami mat floor. “It might be useful in
your line of work.”

Mr. Vinh shook his head as he fastened the frog buttons on his
long, black robe, his official wizard gear. “No,” he scoffed. “Why buy my
glamours if customers know that I can See them? Depletes my own market value.
Supply and demand!” He grabbed a flat, black cap from a hook and placed it on
his head. “Besides, the Sight is more trouble than it's worth.” Mr. Vinh leaned
forward, dark eyes sparkling. “Tell me I'm wrong.”

Joy said nothing. He nodded knowingly.

“You can't,” he said, swirling a long stylus in a pot of paint.
“Because it's true. And you cannot tell a lie.”

Joy was conscious of her many changes since last they'd met.
“You know, then.”

“I do.”

Changeling. Part-Folk. Destroyer of
Worlds.
Joy swallowed. “And Stef?”

His brush stilled. He held his long sleeve out of the way of
the ledger and took a deep breath. “Yes,” he said sadly. Joy was not the only
one worried about her brother. His master clearly knew something about his
apprentice and the
tien
. The Wizard Vinh made a few,
last sweeping notes with his brush and set it aside, balanced perfectly across
the pot. He opened the cabinet and picked up a small instrument with many
lenses, twisting a half dome of milky crystal with a thoughtful expression. “May
I see the company you keep?”

Joy glanced at Filly, who shrugged and dropped Ink on the mats
with a muted
thump.
The horsewoman grinned at Joy's
pained expression. Joy didn't know whether to go to him, to touch him, or not.
The push-and-pull of imagining Ink as her love or her enemy was torture.

“They're there,” she said, and pointed Vinh in their general
direction.

The store manager held the apparatus up to his eyes, adjusting
a small magnifying lens and a rock with a rough hole so that they became
eyeholes. He twisted the knobs to gain focus and fiddled with a dial above the
grip.

Filly draped her cape of finger bones back over one shoulder as
she stood over Ink's body, spread out like a rug. She saluted the wizard with
one fist. “Hoy!”

Mr. Vinh's lips pressed in a thin, professional slash. “I do
not perform healings, amputations, surgeries or disposals.”

Filly tossed her head. Joy's stomach sloshed sideways.

“No one's asking you to,” Joy said. “He's—” She glanced at
Filly, who arched her eyebrows. Joy finished her sentence with a resigned sigh
“—fine.”

“Fine?” Mr. Vinh said with mild surprise. Filly snorted a
laugh. He lifted the strange spectacles from his eyes. “Very well, then. Why
come to me?”

“I need...something,” Joy said, twisting her thumb in her
shirt, feeling Filly's eyes like sunburn on her skin. She had to be careful. The
Valkyrie was far too sharp and much too curious. Joy handed over the scroll that
Avery had given her. “It's a potion, an elixir—something that maybe can slow the
change, if it can't be stopped altogether. I don't know if it will work, but I
thought you could take a look.” She glanced at Filly, who was listening with an
eager, obvious hunger, drinking fresh gossip like wine. Joy mumbled, “It's
really
important.”

“Mmm.” He grunted as he scanned the scroll. “Do you know what
you are changing into?”

She couldn't answer. Not with Filly there. The Valkyrie might
have sworn her oaths, but if she learned the truth—the whole truth—Joy doubted
that she could stop the Norse warrior from trying to destroy her for the sake of
the Twixt. She looked at Ink in a heap on the floor. She wanted to brush his
hair away from his blank, pooling eyes, but didn't dare.

“Something...inhuman.” Joy swallowed.
True
enough.

Mr. Vinh circled her slowly. Filly's gaze followed his path.
“But that is the price you paid for this.” He tapped her back lightly with the
tip of the stylus, right where her
signatura
burned.
“You sold your humanity when you traded your life to the
tien
.” He sounded stern and unforgiving.

“No,” Joy said, the word wrenched from her gut. She didn't know
if it was denial or revulsion. “That's not true. My ancestor wasn't human, so
I've always been this way—potentially, in any case—I just didn't know it yet.”
She turned her head, watching him circle her curiously. Joy knew she was
speaking for Stef as well as herself. “When Ink marked me, it ignited the magic
in my blood. I needed to accept my True Name so that none of them could control
me. It was too dangerous, and I was vulnerable without one.” She caught Filly's
eye. “I wasn't forced into anything, but that's because I didn't
want
to be forced to do anything against my will.”
Filly nodded. She'd been the one to tell Joy and give her the choice. “No one
wants to be used as a slave.”

Mr. Vinh fastened the oculus around his head with an elastic
band. His face was impassive. “My ancestors were survivors of Hốa Lò, a POW prison camp. I am a child of refugees.
I know something of that which you speak.” His voice was rough. He turned on his
heel and walked to his alchemist cabinet, opening and closing its tiny drawers.
“This cannot cure you, nor halt the progress of your transformation,” he said
over his shoulder. “But I believe I can adjust this formula to slow it down
until I know more.” He tapped bits of leaves and scraps into a small scale and
used the stylus to tap the counterweight. “It will not be perfect,” he warned
softly. “But it will be better than giving up.”

Joy ignored his warning, homing in on the hope. “But it can
slow it down?” She just needed more time. Time to get the King and Queen out of
Faeland. Time to ask them to change the rules. Time to remain human and not
become an Elemental. Time to avoid becoming the Destroyer of Worlds.

Mr. Vinh made another noncommittal noise as he ground the herbs
and twigs into a chunky powder that he poured into a Ziploc bag. “Steep one
tablespoon for two minutes in boiled water. Drink hot, once a day.” He placed
the baggie in her palm. “Brush teeth thoroughly afterward. The taste will be
unpleasant.”

Joy closed her fingers around her stay of execution. “Thank
you.” She felt the grit through the plastic. “What do I owe you?”

Mr. Vinh was writing in his ledger, holding his sleeve away
from the wet calligraphy. “We will discuss payment when my research is
complete,” he said stiffly. “The final formula must be up to my standards, which
carries my personal guarantee. I have a reputation to uphold.” Joy wasn't sure
whether to be grateful or terrified, but she had no room to bargain. He lifted
his head, the wrinkles deepening behind the strange lenses. “You will use the
dowsing rod and follow your brother's
mana
—his
magical energy—and you will bring Stefan to me,” he said. “We can do the same
for him.”

Joy didn't care to explain that Stef wasn't changing—that even
if he now realized that he wasn't wholly human, the process of becoming whatever
they were hadn't happened to him yet. Whether it was because he hadn't been
marked by one of the Folk, or been a
lehman
, or
crossed through the Twixt as often as she had, Stefan had not changed after he'd
discovered he had the Sight back when he was five. Did it have something to do
with his apprenticeship in wizardry, with Great-Grandma Caroline, or something
else entirely? Thinking of her brother brought a fresh wash of worry. She'd last
seen him at her gala in the final moments before chaos had broken out Under the
Hill. She hoped he and Dmitri had gotten out okay. He
had
to be okay.

Mr. Vinh pointed his stylus at the wall. “What about your
friend there?”

She glanced at Ink's body. “He's...fine.” Filly smirked and
nudged his hip with her boot. He flopped lifelessly. Joy winced, thinking about
the last time he'd been shut off. He'd faked it then, pretending to collapse
when Sol Leander had struck him, humiliating Ink and undermining Joy at her own
Welcome Gala. It wasn't until later that she learned that Ink had fooled them
all, that he'd built an internal block over the trigger, swearing that no one
would ever shut him down again. And then he'd all but ordered Filly to do it. It
didn't look like he was faking it now.

As if hearing her thoughts, Filly clucked her tongue to get
Joy's attention. “Ink told me what to do,” she said, looking around the room.
“But it will be messy. We should move him elsewhere in the lair.”

Joy went from uncomfortable to alarmed.

“Um,” she mumbled. “May we use your bathroom?”

“The key is on the counter up front,” he said, raising the
multispectacles again. “Do not take offense if I walk you out.”