Invincible (30 page)

“Congratulations,” he said with his sincerest smile. “I am happy for you both.”

Her mother's face broke, tears blurring her mascara. “Really, Jack?”

“Really,” he said. “I don't know if I can make it to the wedding, but I'd appreciate a plus one on the invite.”

“Of course.” Joy's mother sounded flustered.

Joy came out from behind the counter. She left the whisk in the sink.

“Congratulations,” she said weakly and accepted another hug. It was surreal. She squeezed her mother tighter, trying to convince herself that this was real even though a part of her prayed for it to be an illusion, a Folk trick, a prank. It
felt
real, it looked real, it smelled real, but it sounded thick and swimmy, fluttering like a tiny, beating heart and that couldn't be real...

Unless.

Joy pushed away from her mother.

Unless.

She pressed a palm flat against her chest. No. Nothing. It wasn't her.

Joy dropped her hand and gawped at her mom. “You're
pregnant
?”

Her mother jerked back. “What? How—?” She glanced worriedly at Joy's father, who sat down heavily in his chair. “It's only been ten weeks. And it's a high-risk pregnancy, so we weren't really sure if, well...” She trailed off and touched her waist. “Does it show?”

“Mom!”
Joy shrieked, and then she was laughing. Mom was laughing. Dad was getting out glasses. Joy had reached her limit—she'd gone all the way from impossible to terrified to ridiculous and back out again.
This is real!
She could hear the baby's heartbeat through the
eelet
and knew that life would never be the same.

But, maybe, it could be better.

* * *

They talked into the night over white wine and brownies. Her mother even showed Joy how to bake them using parchment paper so that the edges still crisped but didn't stick to the pan. It was as if something broken had healed and then broke again to let go, because while her parents would never be together again, maybe at least they could be friends, and if not that, then perhaps live in the same universe with less painful memories between them. Joy tried to believe that might be true for everyone in the Twixt because, despite everything, they were all family.

Somewhere past midnight, Mom called a cab and Joy hugged her at the door. Her father joined her at the kitchen window and waved down into the lot as the taillights faded around the bend. Joy leaned over the sink, trying to catch a last glimpse. Her mother had a red-eye scheduled to get back to LA, her fiancé and her new life 2.0.

“Well,” Mr. Malone said, placing the glasses in the sink. “That was exciting.”

“Yeah.” Joy leaned against his shoulder. “You okay?”

“I'm okay,” he said. “But I think I might need to call my girlfriend so I don't feel like a
complete
loser.”

Joy mock-punched him. “Dad—”

“Now, now, save the pity party. I'm just suffering sugar crash.” He smiled and patted his stomach. “I don't think I've had that much chocolate in the past six months.” He pinched the bridge of his nose and rubbed his tired eyes. “Oh, Shelley's going to
love
this.”

“My advice? Drink lots of water,” Joy said, reaching up to the cabinet to get the Advil. “You're going to get a headache.”

“Going to?” he scoffed. “What do you think
that
was?” He laughed a little as he shook a couple of pills into his hand. “Oh, your mother—she sure knows how to make an entrance. But it's over.” He swallowed them with a glug of water. “It's finally over. Whew!” He glanced at his daughter, and Joy tried to smile. “And that's good, really, because now I feel like I can
finally
start living my life without waiting for the next shoe to drop.” He tucked one arm around her shoulders. “There's a few good years left in your ol' Dad—let's see what he can make of 'em!” He grinned and Joy laughed.

“I love you, Dad.”

“Yes, I know,” Dad sighed. “Which is why I waited until your mother left the building to bring this up. The super called yesterday.”

Joy stopped. She twisted her fingers in her shirt. “Oh?”

“Mmm-hmm. He wanted to know what happened,” her father continued patiently. “I said, ‘about what?' He said ‘to the wall.' And I said, ‘What wall?' And he said, ‘Exactly.'”

Joy's stomach slid south with a cold, wet feeling. “Oh,” she said.

“‘Oh'?” he repeated. “That's all you have to say? ‘Oh'?” Her father leaned against the cabinet, stress underlining his voice. “Mind telling me what happened to
the wall
, Joy?”

The wall. Her brother's wall. The one with the giant hole.

“Um—”

He brushed past her, reaching for Stef's door. Joy jogged forward, trying to get a step ahead, but the hallway was too narrow and she was too late.

“What wall, you may ask?” he said. “
This
wall, Joy!” He wrenched the door open. Joy saw the gaping hole, the stretched plastic, the blue painter's tape. “I had to have the entire window removed so the contractors could replace the struts.”

The window was gone. The windowsill. The sigil. The ward...

And that's when Joy saw what crouched inside.

“DAD!”

Joy shoved her father out the doorway. The smiling faces were full of teeth and claws and glowing eyes, and there were at least four of them backlit by open air and streetlights. She slammed the door on a tentacle. Something inhuman shrieked. The door buckled with scrabbly noises and screams.

“Joy?”

“Dad, go to your room!”

Grabbing a can of Lysol from the hall closet, she popped the top and sprayed it into the crack under the door. There was a high whistle-whine. She stomped on another appendage snaking up through the carpet. There was a huge
THUD!
The doorjamb cracked.

“Joy! What is it?”

She toed off her flip-flops and wedged them under the door, kicking them tight for good measure. “Dad, go! Just go!” She pushed her father back. As she ran into her room, Stef's door splintered, exploding out into the hall. Joy grabbed her lamp and a snow globe, diving back into the hall, standing between the creatures and her father. They were blocked from the kitchen and the scalpel in her purse. She lifted her two projectiles and stared down the scaly gargoyle in the lead. A lizard thing made of rope coils hissed and scaled the wall while conjoined twin stick-figures wafted forward on ghostly tendrils, dragging strips of dangling cloth.

Behind her, her father stared right through the Folk at Stef's ruined door.

“Joy—?”

Joy spoke quickly.
“Duei nis da Counsallierai en dictie uellaris emonim oun!”
As the courier, she should still be under the Council's protection, but it might not be enough to give the monsters pause. The gargoyle dipped its head, its tail curling up and over like a scorpion. The lizard hissed and shied back.

“Dad! Duck!”

Joy dropped to the floor, flattening against her father, pushing them into the wall and down. A volley of spikes buried themselves in the framed photograph above their heads. Glass shattered, forcing them to shield their eyes. Joy threw the snow globe blind, hitting the gargoyle in the face. The globe broke against his temple, spraying stale water and glitter across the floor. The lizard crushed the plastic base beneath its slipknot foot. The coils of its leg unspooled and slithered toward her. Joy felt one loop tie around her ankle and pull. She dropped her weight and shifted as it spun up her calf.

Her father huddled on the floor, staring up at the wreckage, struggling to understand.

“Joy!” he barked. “What's happening?”

The lizard opened its mouth and its tongue shot out, snagging her upper arm like a lasso. Clenching her teeth, she fought against being dragged forward toward the eerie masked pair. Her father shouted something. The air hissed with noise. The walls cracked, the carpet tore, the ceiling crumbled, raining bits of plaster and paint. Joy wrapped her hand around the lizard's tongue, slick with spittle, and sank her nails in. Taking a launch step, she pivoted, driving her knee into the gargoyle and her fist down the lizard's throat. Kicking off the nearest jamb, she gained a few inches and brought the lamp slamming down, smashing the twin leering faces, pulping the porcelain into dust.

The gargoyle grunted. The lizard gagged. The twin floating bodies collapsed in a heap. Joy grabbed the lizard's tongue in the back of its throat and whipped his head hard against the gargoyle's back. The animated twine slackened. Joy quickly wrapped their limbs together. She anchored her bare foot on the gargoyle's hip and straightened, straining, pulling them taut. Both monsters struggled in desperate knots, clawing and snapping as Joy tried to pry her wrist free, but she was too tangled up.

The three of them slammed against walls as they ricocheted down the hall. Joy fought to free one hand, to grab something in the kitchen, but a scaled claw grabbed her shoulder, digging deep, as another sought her eye. Joy grunted, bent her knees, shifted her feet and pushed, bending back as far as she could go, arcing into a deep C. Her head banged against the corner. The lizard scrambled under the gargoyle's hooked feet.

“Joy!”

Stef's shattered door opened, cutting off her view of her father's shocked face.

Ladybird's crimson greatcoat flared behind him as he strode into the hallway, giving a slow golf clap. His hands sparkled with gaudy rings.

“Very impressive,” he purred. “Well met, indeed!” He smiled his chitinous grin. “I said we'd meet again, Nightingale. And—lo!—here we are—” he gestured around him “—in your most charming abode!” The small, black spots dotting his hairline and jaw shifted as he spoke. “I confess I felt quite slighted when you could not join me earlier, but this is much cozier.” He glanced around the littered hall. “I love what you've done with the place! A little rough around the back entrance, perhaps.” He gestured over his shoulder at Stef's room and shrugged. “It's so hard to find good help these days.”

His feet kicked up a jig, an unexpected burst of merry madness. The buckles of his boots flashed as a skein of rope looped over her jaw, yanking against her chin. Ladybird swooped so close that she could smell the gritty sharpness of the drugs on his breath. “You'll never guess why I'm here,” he leered. “Tick-tock-tick-tock. Ding ding ding! Time's up!” He giggled. “The ante's gone up, my dear, and there are ever so many Folks who want to get their hands and paws and claws on
you
.” His golden eyes narrowed menacingly as his lip curled. “And this time there will be no escape.”

He punched her cheekbone hard. Her head snapped back, exploding in a shock of pain and light. Her grunt was muffled under the rope. Her nose streamed. Her eyes ran. The gargoyle laughed—a dry, chalky sound. Its claws dripped a viscous yellow fluid that smelled sharp and hot. Another coil slipped over her throat. Joy redoubled her efforts, straining against her constraints. She could feel the fury building like the ringing echo where he'd struck her in one ear. Her breath hissed through her teeth as Ladybird's gloved fingers peeled the ropes off her lips, scraping her gums, and gently gathered her hair into his fist.

“Come now, pretty bird, before we fly away—let me hear you
scream
.”

An implosion filled the hallway with scarlet smoke. Warding lines shot like lasers, piercing the smog and spraying broken, fractal patterns over the ceiling and floor. There were bellows and shouts, hisses and screams. Joy's head jerked back and her eyes watered as the jagged, ragged pictograms collapsed into a black-white hole on the floor. The viscous smog suctioned to a pinpoint, pulling at her hair and the rope and the red coattails, vacuuming up color and sound, whipping past her face until it disappeared with a pop.

Joy hit the floor. Bits of wood and glass fell around her, bouncing off the carpeting and tinkling against the tiles. She sat up slowly, blinking around the condo and the broken thing on the floor. It might have been a Christmas ornament, full of strange writing and painted swirls, but the blast pattern beneath it was a starburst of soot. A faint crackling green fire licked its shattered, broken edges.

“Joy? Are you all right?” Her father was next to her, helping her up, wide-eyed. “Joy? Did I get it? Did it work?”

She found her footing, but not her train of thought. She stumbled. “What?”

Dad shook her slightly. “Look! Did I get them all?”

Joy's legs buckled, but he was holding her, steadying her, his arms tight and strong.

“Joy?” Her father sounded anxious and angry and unsure.

“Yeah,” she whispered, staring around. “Yeah, Dad. You got them all.”

He nodded. “Okay. Okay, then. Sit down.” Her father placed her on a chair in the kitchen and hurried back to an old tin lunch box, which was now upturned on the floor. He pulled out a large baggie of coarse salt shot with black flakes and poured out a thick line in front of Stef's ruined door. He grabbed an extra handful and threw it into the room. His hands shook as he wiped them on his pants. His shirt collar was stained with sweat.

“That should hold them off,” he said, as if it were part of a script, something he'd been told to say. “That's rock salt and ash from a pauper's grave.” He looked at Joy for confirmation. “Think that will keep them out?”

Joy gaped at him. “You
knew
?”

Dad coughed into his hand. “Of course I knew!” he said. “I was married to your mother for fifteen years and we dated another three before that so, yes, I knew!” He cursed and wiped his eyes. “She told me years ago. And her mother confirmed it. Heck, her
grandmother
was locked away because of them. The Other Thans. The Fair Folk. Whatever they're calling them these days.” He raked all ten fingers through his hair as he staggered into the kitchen. “It's like the McDermott family legend!” he shouted, disbelief and shock adding volume that rang in her ears. “Your grandmother gave me all this crap after the wedding in case we ever needed it, in case they ever came poking around.” He shook his head. “I thought she was as crazy as her mother—as crazy as
your
mother—” He paused and gave an exasperated sigh, glancing back at the door. “Your
mother
...” Dad shook his head. “She left, but I kept it. Just in case. Good thing I did.” He sat down heavily and wiped salt crystals from his palms. They bounced off the countertop, rolling like knucklebones.