Invincible (36 page)

He coughed politely into one hand as a second withdrew his pocket kerchief, a third patting gently at his chest. “The one thing in our favor is that she must accomplish these things before the Royal Majesties cross the threshold back into our world. After that, the Folk will once again be bound by loyalty to our King and Queen, Aniseed's rebellion will end and she will once again be held accountable for her crimes.” The Bailiwick's gaze shifted, touching each of them in turn. “Know that all that stands between these two outcomes is Joy's ability to provide the proof that they require, to show our Majesties that it is, in fact, safe to Return to this world. Thus, we must find a way to coax them back, restoring magic and order and balance once more.”

“Is that all?” Tuan asked. Nikolai punched him in the arm.

“Not quite,” Graus Claude admitted. “Our best option is to buy Joy time and keep her safe until she achieves her task, yet good strategy indicates that nullifying the greatest obstacle might clear the field entirely—removing the immediate threat to her safety would grant us the greatest chance of success.”

“Kill Aniseed,” Raina translated.

Graus Claude reluctantly nodded. Ink glanced at Kurt, who said nothing.

“It would behoove us to draw her out, alone, and with every appearance of having the advantage, wherein we take her by surprise, contain her and condemn her,” the Bailiwick said slowly. “With witnesses, if at all possible.”

Silence strung from glance to glance.

Ink edged closer to Joy. She grabbed his hand and squeezed against the cold, hard weight of her fear.
Aniseed.
Ink stared at a spot on the carpet, as if remembering his defeat and his death at her claws. Joy kissed his knuckles. He did not respond.

“I'll do it,” Filly said.

Graus Claude rumbled, “No offense,
valkyrja
, but this time it will take more than you.”

Filly shrugged with casual arrogance. “I have no delusions of mortality, old frog,” she said. “It is my auspice to escort warriors from their final battle, so if Aniseed dares to take up arms against you, I am sure to be there as well.” She smiled lazily, like a cat, stretching the blue spot below her lower lip. Her eyes danced in anticipation. She was more than a little frightening just then.

“I must ensure that it is final,” Kurt said, arms crossed. He seemed to take the return of his nemesis as a personal affront. Joy couldn't blame him; he'd lived a dozen lifetimes in training and servitude for the chance to kill her. The butler-bodyguard turned to his employer. “You may deny me many things, but you cannot deny me my fate.”

Graus Claude lowered his gaze, but said nothing.

“Well, then,” Inq said, crossing her feet. “We need to lure Aniseed to a remote location with something powerful enough and personal enough to make her forget to be cautious, then contain her, distract her and let Kurt kill her.” She snapped her fingers. “Simple enough. Any suggestions?”

“Yes,” Joy said, surprising herself. She glanced at Graus Claude. They knew how to do this. “We use bait.” She nodded to Ink. “And we cheat.”

TWENTY-NINE

JOY STOOD IN
the sun,
out in the open, on the clean, even turf with the smell of mowed grass thick in
her nose. Her feet, wrapped in Idmona's repaired soft, padded boots, itched to
run, to leap, fly, flip and soar, but that was part of the reason she'd come
here; even though the temptation to touch the Earth was terrible, she'd never
felt more capable, strong, unbeatable or alive than right here at Abbot's
Field.

“This is a strategically poor location,” Graus Claude
grumbled.

“You said I should choose a place that I knew best,” Joy said.
“Well, outside my home, this is it.”

“Was it too much to hope that you felt safe within, say, a
military compound? Or perhaps an abandoned underground nuclear power plant?”

She patted his third shoulder. “Too late now. Everyone is
already in position. Now it's only a matter of waiting.”

“I know,” the great toad murmured, squinting under the blaze of
the sun. “That is what I find most disconcerting.”

“Has anyone ever said that you're kind of a control freak?”

Graus Claude slid his gaze sideways. “Not in my presence.”

Joy knew she should have been worried, anxious, nervous,
nauseous, but the truth was that she felt great. She craved this
feeling—anticipation—like a drug. This was how she weighed her own growth and
progress, measuring herself against a skilled opponent, moments before the big
event. Without it, she'd been floundering, wondering, waiting to be judged, but
she'd always been her harshest critic as well as her greatest coach. She didn't
need someone to tell her that she could do this. She already knew, deep in her
missing heart, that they'd already won.

Joy just had to get everyone else to see it, too.

“By the Swells,” the Bailiwick complained under his breath. He
mopped his sweaty brow with a monogrammed kerchief. The
eelet
translated his growing unease.

“Is everybody ready?” Joy asked Inq. The Scribe spread her
fingers, scanning the field and forest, and nodded.

“Your furry friends have all arrived,” she confirmed.

Ysabel's werewolf pack had been all too willing to be their
scouts and formal witnesses to the oncoming clash. Joy had pulled in every favor
and friend she had on this side of the Twixt.

“Sound off,” Raina said into her earpiece.

The Cabana Boys and all of her friends answered in curt bursts
like gunfire at a range. It made the quiet seem quieter after they'd finished.
There was only the lonely crunch and skitter of leaves across the gravel
drive.

“May I ask what those are for?” Graus Claude indicated the
clump of oak leaves by her feet.

“Backup plan,” Joy said. “From the Glendale Oak. In case this
doesn't work.”

The Bailiwick groaned, his palsy quiver more pronounced. “Let
us pretend that I did not hear that and that you did not, under any
circumstances,
intentionally damage
the Glendale
Oak, which, aside from alerting every Forest born within a hundred leagues,
would no doubt insult the King and Queen, who happen to be the ones that
planted it there
!” The last words were hissed between
rows of shark teeth. Joy inched away from the offending twig. Graus Claude
grimaced. “Exactly who was it that suggested this brilliant idea?”

Joy twisted her fingers. “Um, Avery.”

“Who received his information from—?”

Joy swallowed. “The Tide.”

“Who, I might add, take their orders from—?”

“Sol Leander,” Joy whispered. “No! Aniseed.”

The great amphibian nodded. “You are learning.”

“Great,” she said weakly. “So much for Plan Z.”

“I wouldn't concern yourself overmuch,” the Bailiwick sighed.
“If this doesn't work, I'm afraid we won't be around to try anything else.”

Joy wrapped her finger around the thin gold chain at her neck.
“I get the sense that you're less than enthusiastic about our current plan.”

“Forgive me. I find myself quite anxious at the prospect of
confronting my ex-lover and political rival as well as my mentor, all of my
clients and professional colleagues while completely exposed on all sides
standing in the middle of an empty football field!”

Joy rocked on her heels. “If it makes you feel any better, it's
a soccer field.”

The Bailiwick's eyes narrowed dangerously. He huffed.
“Americans.”

Monica walked over to Joy and whispered in her ear. “What's
with Mr. Toad?”

“He's feeling a little nervous,” Joy said.

“
He's
feeling nervous?” Monica
said. “What about me? I thought Goth Girl Friday said I'd be safer with you, but
this feels one hundred and eighty degrees south of safe.”

Joy eyed Graus Claude, who glared at Monica with calculated
interest. “Well, in a sense, you are much safer here.” She hesitated to add the
truth that tingled on her tongue. “And, in another sense, you're also bait.”

Monica's glare narrowed to a squint. “Say that again?”

“Incoming,” Ink said. Everyone tensed like a fist.

This is it.
Joy knew she should
feel her heart hammering, but it wasn't there. There was only the hollowness and
the one question:
Who would be first?

A moment of nothing and then there he was—starlight cloak
blazing, eyes furious.

“What manner of idiocy have you orchestrated this time?” Sol
Leander growled as he stepped closer to the ring of combatants. The deposed
representative ignored the weapons as well as those who held them, glaring
directly at Joy and Graus Claude. Joy hesitated to answer. She honestly couldn't
tell which of them he was talking to. “I am expected elsewhere, as I am certain
you know, and have therefore come to collect my charge.” He reached a hand
toward Monica. “Miss Reid, if you please.”

Joy turned to Monica. “You could go with him, you know,” she
said. “He is sworn to keep you safe.”

But Monica planted her Jimmy Choos firmly in the grass.

“Forget it,” Monica said. “I'm staying.”

Joy felt a little bit proud and very, very guilty, but Joy
needed all the help that she could get, and this was one way to get it. Joy felt
horrible and triumphant that her best friend had accepted her role as part of
the plan. Joy told herself that she was being honest and cautious, manipulative
and sneaky, underhanded and conniving and no-holds-barred-cruel, but it was
ultimately for the good of both worlds.

It still made her feel Other Than.

“Disobedience is not an option,” Sol Leander said.

Monica cocked a hip. “I'm not going with you.”

Sol Leander strode forward. Several guns shifted to train on
him.

“You
must
leave!” he said through
clenched teeth.

Ink appeared next to Monica with his straight razor. “Why?”

“Because,” Avery said, materializing in a swirl of feathers and
coattails. “If his charge will not withdraw from the danger, then my master will
be obligated to remain at her side.” The pale courtier sounded positively
delighted by the prospect. “And then I, of course, would be thus obligated,
too.” He bowed. “In deference to my master.”

Joy and Graus Claude shared identical smiles full of teeth.

“You are welcome to join us,” the Bailiwick said, “provided you
agree to allying with our cause, adhering to the wishes of your charge that she
remain, and to provide aid toward her purpose, namely, protecting Miss Malone,
defeating Aniseed and bearing witness to the Imminent Return.”

Sol Leander shivered, a ripple of disgust shuddered under his
cloak. He calmed himself with visible effort, his hands wrung into fists. He
glared at Monica, who matched him, stare for stare. The
signatura
through her left eyebrow wrinkled as it raised in
question.

“I swear it,” he said hotly. “By the sun and the stars and the
infinite skies.” He snapped his cloak and tucked his hands neatly into his
sleeves. “May I join your doomed company?”

“Indeed,” Graus Claude said graciously. Raina whistled a sharp
noise through her teeth and the guns lowered to let him pass. Avery took a
similar oath and stepped into the circle of Folk and humans.

“Doomed, you say?” Luiz piped from his post. “That doesn't
sound promising.”

Sol Leander primly straightened his cloak. “She will crush you,
all of you, if the Tide doesn't get here first.”

“We're kind of counting on it,” Joy said. Sol Leander
scowled.

“I warned you what would happen if you placed your friend in
danger.”

“She didn't,” Monica said. “I volunteered.”

Joy reached out and squeezed Monica's hand, a chocolate-vanilla
swirl.

Ink stood by the two of them. “That is everyone.”

“Okay, then,” Joy said. “Ready?”

There was a chorus of “ready”s punctuated by popping clips,
clicks and snaps, and a low, buzzing drone.

Joy fished inside her pocket. It had taken a lot of searching,
but she had found what she wanted on the pavement at school: a single, tiny
seed. She pinched her fingers around it, picked a direction and threw.

The seed landed outside the circle, hitting the dirt. It
erupted into a thick bush of wicked black thorns, marring the smooth perfection
of Abbot's Field—something Joy felt like a punch to the gut.

Sol Leander sneered. “I fail to see the purpose of these
theatrics.”

“It's a message,” Joy said, carefully. “To let them know where
we are.”

She glanced back at the trees surrounding the parking lot and
lining the edge of the field. If they came through the forest, it would be from
that direction. If they came through Earth, she would feel it underfoot. If they
came by Air, they had a clear view of the sky. If by Water, both she and Graus
Claude would hear them come.

One way or another, Joy doubted they'd be waiting long.

The thorn bush shuddered, branches rattling, dark spikes
morphing into quills as something manifested, taking shape, uncurling, rolling
backward and out, standing up suddenly on bulky, clawed feet. A snout poked out
from the furry flesh. A rat's tail flopped. Piggy eyes blinked. Briarhook still
wore the remnants of his disguise from Under the Hill, stained, muddy, bloody
and torn—it was as if the giant hedgehog
preferred
to wear rags and reek of half-dead meat. Tuan pulled his shirt collar over his
nose. Briarhook smiled with rotten teeth.

“Waiting for you, I,” her tormentor said in broken English.
“Long for this. End this. Promised you, I!”

“You did,” Joy said past the lump in her throat. “We have an
arrangement.” Kurt wordlessly lifted the iron box. It contained the last of
Briarhook's heart. “Consider it insurance to stay just where you are.”

He scratched at the scabs around the metal plate in his chest
and chuckled with the sound of rusty saws.

“Maybe let
segulah
tear pieces,
you,” he said. “Rip skin, chew flesh, crack bones, you, eh?” His long quills
bristled, claws digging into the earth. “What think, you?”

There was a yelping snap behind them.

“A fine idea,” Aniseed said, flowing out of the woods. She
dropped the body of a broken wolf like a discarded shawl.

Several weapons swung to face her. She was easily eleven or
twelve feet tall. It was impossible to believe that those without the Sight
could miss her—she was a towering presence, gleaming and glorious. An enormous
gown of forest green velvet hung from her shoulders, its edges lined in gold and
copious orange fur. A generation of vixen tails curled around her neck and her
dark wooden eyes whirled as she smiled. She ignored the growls of the circling
pack as they melted out of the woods, lips curled, teeth bared.

“I see you've made this easy for me,” Aniseed purred, stroking
a hand down her stole. “Or perhaps this isn't what it seems—could it be a trap?”
The dryad's face contorted into a frown, and even that was beautiful. “Oh dear,
I expected more from you, Graus Claude. Administrational duties have dulled your
edge.”

“You speak with false knowledge and a tongue that isn't yours,”
he said mildly. “Neither it, nor you, are as sharp as you think.” He wore his
samurai suit of armor and carried a weapon in each hand—two ancient polearms, a
sword and an automatic rifle. He squatted, holding them at cardinal points.
“Your thoughts are secondhand, your parent's goal, a sham.” He sighed. “Aniseed
was intelligent, passionate, gifted beyond peer—I knew her well.” His icy gaze
pierced. “You are nothing more than her shadow made flesh.”