Invincible (16 page)

Behold the Destroyer of Worlds.

She drank her vile, bitter tea.

Stef stretched. She heard a dull pop. “Okay,” he sighed. “I'm going back to bed.”

“What?” Joy said, suddenly left at the helm. “You've been sleeping all morning!”

“I've been
in bed
all morning,” he said. “There is a difference. And I'm tired.”

Dmitri appeared at his side, twirling his beard around his finger with a wide grin. “Sorry, sis, things to see, people to do.” He slid his hand into Stef's back pocket.

Stef pulled away grumbling as they disappeared down the hall. “You're impossible.”

Dmitri laughed, “You know it.”

Joy downed the rest of her juice.

Ink sidled up to Joy. Even the nearness of his body brought an electric rush to her skin. It was as if she'd had the first taste of a drug she didn't know she craved and she envied her brother for seizing the moment first.

Monica fished out her phone for the nth time. “You know, this used to be cute, but my boy can be—” She stopped, eyes widening in alarm. Grabbing her purse, she killed her screen and tossed her cup in the sink. It bounced around, clattering, shattering the mood. She locked eyes with Joy. “I gotta go.”

Joy snagged her friend's arm. “What's wrong?”

“I thought...it was Gordon,” she stammered. “I thought he kept calling me, but it's Mom.” Fear tinted her words. Hysteria nudged her pitch higher. “It's the family code for 911.” She yanked back her arm and fumbled for her keys. “I have to go!” She dropped the keys, cursing, and tripped over her feet.

Joy signaled Ink. “Forget the car,” she said. “We can get you there faster.”

Ink leaned closer, his voice a crisp whisper. “I have not been there,” he said.

“I have,” Joy said. “And so has the
eelet
in my ear so there's a path, right? One you can follow?”

Ink looked impressed, an expression mirrored in faces around the room. “Yes,” he said. “That should work.”

“Okay,” she said. “Party's over.” Joy glanced around at everyone who had come to help her, to warn her, to protect her. She wouldn't forget that, but these two people were her closest friends in the world. “Thank you,” she said sincerely to Inq and Kurt.

“You should not go,” Kurt said.

Ink took Joy's hand. “They'll be safe with me.”

Monica held on to Ink and Ink held Joy as they stepped forward through a sudden breach with the sharp scent of limes.

FOURTEEN

MONICA LIVED IN A
neat blue Colonial on a street with other neat Colonials of varying neutral colors lined with young trees and trim little shrubs. Normally, it was hard to tell the houses apart, but today it was easy—Monica's was the one with the police cars in front.

The three of them appeared at the edge of the driveway where the mailbox was obscured by plumes of decorative grass. Monica exhaled like a cough, letting go of Joy's hand as she bolted toward the house. Joy moved to follow, but Ink caught her arm.

“Glamour or no?” he asked.

Joy hesitated, watching Monica dive through the open front door.

“No,” she said. “Stay close and keep an eye out.” Joy frowned at the long, empty road. “It's going to be tough to explain how we got here. We should've taken the car.” She wasn't eager to get back in the Ferrari; it felt too much like the need to escape. The upholstery still smelled like Enrique, a reminder that she was fragile, mortal and out of her league.

Ink considered this. “We can go get it,” he said. “It'll only take a moment.”

Joy grinned. “If that.”

“Joy?”

Joy spun around, surprised to hear Mrs. Reid's voice. Monica's mother stood in the doorway, looking pinched and worried, neck craning to spy Joy through the shaggy decorative grass. Joy felt the same guilty, scared hesitation tightening her insides whenever Mrs. Reid was nearby. Ever since she'd caught Joy in the hospital with the scalpel poised over Monica's face, she'd been politely not-seeing Joy, erasing her as effectively as if she had a magic scalpel of her own. Hearing Mrs. Reid speak her name while looking right at her pinned her like a deer in headlights.

Joy swallowed. “Yeah?”

“Please come in,” Mrs. Reid said. “Monica needs you.”

Joy nodded. “Of course.” What else could she do? She started walking up the driveway toward the house. Ink followed invisibly at her heels.

“I can get the car,” he said.

Mrs. Reid was watching. Joy pretended to sneeze. “You can't drive.”

“I can drive,” Ink insisted. “But I do not like leaving you. Even for a moment.”

Joy climbed the steps as the reality of the situation sank in: she was entering Monica's house and there were police in the living room and yellow tape across the doorways and Mrs. Reid looked grim. There had been an emergency. Joy needed to be here now.

“Thank you for coming,” Mrs. Reid said, and gathered Joy to her in a one-armed hug. Joy sank against her suit jacket, feeling more grateful than she had since she'd busted out of the golem's stone cage. She'd earned a hug! She felt like she could finally
breathe
. “There was a break-in,” Mrs. Reid said. That was when it finally registered that the place had been tossed—furniture moved, drawers emptied, their contents spilled across the hardwood floors. It was unsettling, like a natural disaster confined inside the house. “The alarms didn't go off. It must have happened when we left this morning. I came home after my meeting and found it like this.” Mrs. Reid shook her head. “I sent Monica upstairs to see if there's anything missing.”

Ink hovered in the doorway, straight razor in hand, senses alert.

“Should I stay?” he asked, unheard by Mrs. Reid.

Joy stopped in the foyer and chose her words carefully. “Go ahead,” she said. “I'll find Monica.”

Mrs. Reid nodded and walked slowly toward the two officers talking in the kitchen. Ink nodded, sliced a doorway, stepped backward and disappeared.

Joy made her way upstairs, snatches of conversation following her up the stairwell. “Sweeping for prints,” “Nothing taken?” and “Looks like a professional job.” The words urged her upward and around the corner into Monica's room.

The place was a disaster. The mattress had been ripped open, propped against the far wall where the dresser drawers had all been emptied, clothing strewn across every surface and puffs of synthetic pillow fibers were scattered everywhere like dandelion fluff. Every shelf in her room had been swept clean, their contents on the floor. The closet was empty, shoes tossed in a pile and boots turned inside out. Her makeup mirror was buried in upended bags. Her picture frames had all of their backs torn out. The bed frame slats were broken. Her flat iron had been split in two. Monica stood in the middle of it all, ankle-deep in broken trash, with an eviscerated doll in one hand and an oversize calculator in the other, her whole being asking,
Why?

“Oh, Mon—”

“Look at this!” Monica said. “My Cabbage Patch? My clothes? My
bed
?” She waved her arms helplessly at the room, overwhelmed. “I mean, what
is
this? I get drops in my eyes, and two days later my house is tossed? Coincidence, much?” Monica crossed the room, tripping over a small mountain of books to hiss in Joy's face. “I thought you said I was protected by this almighty Edict thing!”

Joy didn't say what Ink would have said.
No one was injured. It was a threat, nothing more.
She knew that, while true, it was less than comforting and no help at all. While her best friend had been protected under the Edict that cloaked Joy and her family and friends, she did not have any wards on her house protecting it from invasion. The Folk could do what they pleased. Joy had known this and, just as stupidly, had forgotten to ask Ink to help protect the ones she loved the most.

Monica was right. It wasn't a coincidence—and it was Joy's fault. Again.

“I'm sorry,” Joy said. “Let me help—”

Monica raised both hands and shut her eyes. “No. Don't. Just—don't.” She exhaled through her nose and opened her eyes. “I can do this.” She tossed the doll and the calculator onto her ruined bed. “The good news is, no one was hurt,” she said aloud, sounding like Ink. “And at least they didn't take this.” She picked up a compact pink plastic tote whose zippers had been opened and pulled out a long, white shape. She handed it to Joy. Joy frowned, turning the thing over until it suddenly made sense.

There was a vague shape of a head and breasts and a waist in the long, slippery tube of wax. A knot of brown tangles had been plastered on top of its head and two cloves stuck where the eyes should be. A small, red dot trailed smears of dye from deep inside the thing's chest. Joy could feel the slight give of the wax and the tiny ripples left by Monica's fingerprints.

“I made it from a candle and some hair from your hairbrush,” Monica said apologetically. Joy stared at her. “I read about it on the internet. I figure if Aunt Meredith was onto something and all this magic stuff is real, maybe I could do something to help.” She tapped the blot of red in its chest. “I didn't know what to use, since ‘missing heart' wasn't on the drop down menu, so I put in a Bleeding Heart seed and a Red Hots candy from my Valentine's stash.” She sounded uncharacteristically quiet and shy. “I think,” she said, breathing softly, “I think the
intention's
the thing.”

“You—” Joy could barely believe it. She blinked back sudden tears. “You're trying to help me grow a heart?”

Monica nodded, but didn't look Joy in the eye. “I don't believe in witchcraft, okay? But I believe in God and forgiveness and fixing mistakes.” She ran a finger over the little red bump. “I don't know if it will work—I mean, I have absolutely
no
idea what I'm doing—but I figured I had to try.” She said it almost in a whisper. “You're my best friend.”

Joy wrapped her arms around Monica, squeezing her in a hug until the tears that had been threatening to come spilled over. The two of them clung to one another for one, long happy-sad cry, breaking apart slowly as their feet crunched down on things in the carpet.

Sniffling, Joy tried to hand the wax doll back, but Monica shook her head. “Oh no—it's yours. Mom will freak out if she finds it.” She glanced around her room with a sigh. “If she could find anything at all in this mess.”

Joy held the doll gently, pressing its heart against hers. “When did you do this?”

“I started researching right after you left Sunday night,” Monica said, peeling her pillowcase inside out and filling it with unbroken things. It was Tuesday. Had it only been two days? “I got the hairs at your place yesterday and then scrounged through Mom's gardening stuff for the seeds and the pantry for the cinnamon candies from last February.” Monica considered a torn book and tossed it in the trash. “It was a mix of a healing spell and a love spell, so I wasn't sure if it would do what I wanted. The text was pretty vague on the details, but I finished it last night.”

“Um,
last
night?” Joy said.

Monica paused. Joy blushed. Monica clapped a hand over her mouth. “Was last night when you and Ink—?” She sounded horrified. “I mean, don't tell me that I—”

“I don't think so,” Joy said, coughing on a laugh. “But let's keep that little theory from Ink—just in case.”

They both paused and then burst out laughing, the flipside of their earlier cry. It was ridiculous and a relief a release of the tension they were both under, but they could share it honestly—a knowing between friends.

There was a pounding of shoes up the stairs outside the door.

“Monica!” Monica's boyfriend, Gordon, filled the doorway, his wide shoulders pressed against the jamb, his face a mask of panic and relief. He stopped at the mess on the floor, shearing his fingers through his crew cut. “You okay? What happened?”

Monica flung herself into his enormous embrace. “Vandals? Burglary? Haters? Who knows?” She sighed against his chest as he murmured into her hair. Her shoulders shuddered for an instant. “They didn't take anything. No one was hurt.” She sniffed and looked back at her room. “Maybe the fashion police finally caught up with me, huh?”

Gordon didn't look amused. His eyes were stormy and scared. “I texted you. I called you like a million times. Your mom called, but you didn't answer—”

“Sorry.” She cut him off with another strong hug. “I should have. I've just been—” She glanced sideways at Joy and shook her head. “Things have been crazy. But I don't think I knew what that word meant before now. I mean, seriously, look at this!”

Gordon unfolded slightly, swaying her gently in his arms. “It's just stuff,” he said as his gaze swept over the room. “I'm just glad you're okay.”

“I'm okay,” Monica said. “Pissed off and freaked out, but okay.”

He nodded. “I thought, at first...but then I heard what happened, and Mark said—”

“Mark?” Joy echoed.

“We brought coffee,” Ink said from inside the doorway. He held a recyclable four-cup tray awkwardly in two hands. His eyebrows raised below his long, black bangs. “Gordon said it might help.”

Monica grabbed one gratefully. “Yes! Thank you. You are a god.”

Ink smiled, one dimple. “It has been said before.”

Gordon took the next cup, one arm still wrapped around Monica. “Ah, how fickle godhood, how fleeting fame.” He took a large swallow and plonked it down on the dresser. “C'mon—let me help you pick up your clothes. At least you know I can do that well.”

* * *

They helped clean for the rest of the day, taking orders and hauling trash, making lists for the insurance company and lending willing shoulders, hands and ears. Joy sat on the floor sticking labels on plastic bins while Ink discreetly set wards around the house. It wasn't much, but it was something—members of the Twixt could no longer claim ignorance of the Edict that protected the Reids; it would be written in glyphs, undeniable evidence. Just as
signaturae
warned the Folk about who was marked under someone else's auspice, anyone approaching Monica's home would know that both Ink and Joy were watching.

Where is Sol Leander?
Joy thought angrily, stuffing a black garbage bag into the bin. Wasn't he supposed to protect Monica? She was under his auspice, after all.

As the survivor of an unprovoked attack, Monica had walked away with a scar through her eyebrow and the mark of the Tide's representative on her face. If she had to endure the pain, she ought to get the benefits, too. Where was he, if he wasn't on the job?

“No one was hurt,” Ink reminded her as she passed him in the hall. Joy nodded. He was right. Sol Leander wasn't a house alarm, but she couldn't help thinking that maybe he'd let it happen.
Maybe he did it out of spite. Maybe he did it to hurt me. Maybe this is all my fault.
Joy ripped the masking tape. And even if it wasn't Sol Leander, it could have been any one of her enemies sending a message through her friend, as surely as the Bailiwick's clients had once sent messages meant for Ink through her. This could be a warning from anyone—any one of the Folk who wished to do her harm—the Tide, Briarhook, Hasp, Ladybird, even Aniseed herself, wrinkled and malformed on her stump in the Glen. Any one of them had the means and the motive to do something like this.