His voice rumbled ominously. “You do not have cause to thank me yet, Miss Malone.”
* * *
Joy ran out of the brownstone and down the stairs, looking for the chocolate-caramel Bentley and its nougat-colored wheels. Instead, she saw a young man with sea-colored eyes standing on the edge of the walk glaring up at her through his snowy hair as if she’d done something stupid.
“Are you?” he asked.
Joy wasn’t certain if she should grab her scalpel, bang on the door to get back in or run as fast as she could. Instead she said, “Am I what?”
“Are you truly one of us?” the young aide asked. “One of the Folk? A descendant of mixed blood born with the Sight?”
Joy sighed a tight exhale and adjusted her bag. “Yes,” she said, slightly annoyed. “I am. You were there in the Hall when it happened. You saw.”
The young man nodded, his eyes hooded, suspicious. His cloak of feathers rippled gently in the wind. He glanced up at the brownstone. “I am supposed to follow you,” he said. “And report your actions to my master.”
Joy arched her eyebrows as the Bentley rounded the corner. “Oh?”
He nodded stiffly. “Yes,” he said. “But I do not think it right nor fair to spy on our own, so while I will not disobey a direct order or dishonor my position, I wanted to inform you of it.” His lips thinned as the car slowed. “You deserve to know.”
“Really?” Joy said, mildly curious now that she was fairly certain that he wasn’t about to attack her here on the sidewalk. “Why?”
He stepped away from the curb as the Bentley slid to a stop. “Because if you are one of us, then all Folk are welcome within the Twixt,” he said. “No matter what their origin or circumstance.”
The Bailiwick’s driver stepped out, adjusted his uniform jacket and opened the door for Joy. She took the last steps and paused before getting in, her stomach queasy, her senses alert.
“Why tell me this?” she asked. “I thought you worked for the Tide.”
The tiniest flush colored his face, a creeping pink tingeing his neck and cheeks. “The Tide stands for all of its citizens. It is Sol Leander who wants you to fail,” he said. “He will use any means to achieve that end, and the gala presents him with the perfect opportunity.”
Joy hesitated. “What would happen if I ‘failed’?”
The courtier placed his hand firmly on the door like a wall between them. Joy settled herself on the leather seat and he shut the door with a slam. She heard his last words muffled through the glass. “Mark my words, Joy Malone—do not fail.”
JOY SKETCHED OUT a plan in her head as she sorted her pre-packing laundry. The first thing she had to do was to find out how everyone in the Twixt had managed to forget about the King and Queen—not just “not remember.” Inq said that they were actually unable to recall something that should have been impossible to forget. If Joy could figure out what had happened, then she’d be one step closer to finding the culprit and one step closer to finding the door. Joy was fairly certain Graus Claude would help her petition for a slight change in the rules as a reward. One thing she knew for certain: the Bailiwick was very, very good at negotiations and always came out ahead.
She scratched the back of her hand, the skin pink, scaly and raw. It was probably her allergies, seasonal eczema, but she couldn’t stop imagining her body changing somehow. Was there something hiding below her skin? Feathers? Fur? Scales?
Joy emptied her basket and fled the room.
Normally she might be worried that if Inq and Kurt hadn’t come up with a way to solve this mystery by now, she never could, but Joy had learned that being human gave her a fresh perspective—like the way she’d seen Aniseed’s signatura on all of the Scribes’ clientele while they’d been oblivious—and now Joy had a few advantages that they did not. Not only could she erase signaturae should it come down to it, but she also knew something about magic. She knew that there was a difference between glyph magic and spell magic; what the Folk considered magic and what humans considered magic was as different as 80% Lindt was from Cadbury milk.
If it had been spell magic, it was unknown to the Folk—a carefully guarded secret among wizards—but Joy just so happened to have a man on the inside.
“Sounds like a blanket spell,” Stef said as he stuffed more shirts into his duffel bag. “In order to spread an effect without requiring line-of-sight on all intended targets, you’d have to define the boundaries based on geographical parameters, or in this case, magical ones.” He spoke over his elbow as he cleaned out another drawer. “A spell that affects everyone in the Twixt? One that no one knows about? That would have to be a Class Ten, at least. Way beyond anything I know, or anyone I know would know, for that matter.” He sniffed a sweatshirt at the pits. “Why do you ask?”
Joy couldn’t say “Nothing,” but she couldn’t lie, either. It wasn’t like she had a school report on spell classifications due anytime soon.
“Something happened, Stef, and it’s affecting everyone except Ink and Inq. I know you don’t like it, but that world’s a part of me now.” And it’s a part of you, too. This was the perfect time to say it. Here. Now. Right now. Stef, people with the Sight are part of the Twixt. We are descended from Folk. We have a drop of faerie blood in our veins. But she didn’t want to say it. He wasn’t like her; he didn’t have someone like Ink. He didn’t love the Folk—he hated them. She didn’t want him to hate that part of himself, any part of himself. It was weird trying to protect her older brother when he’d always been the one protecting her.
“I have an obligation,” she said instead.
“No, you don’t,” he said, rolling pants into logs. “It sounds like Other Than politics to me. Best to stay out of it.”
“Stef, we could help...”
“‘We?’ No. I’m not getting involved,” he said. “And neither should you. Do you remember the last time you got mixed up in one of their plots?”
“Um, I stopped a magical disease from killing off most of humanity?”
“No. You almost got killed when an assassin tried to drown you in your car!”
“Oh,” Joy said. “You mean the last last time.”
Stef paused, adjusting his glasses. “Wait. What was that first thing you said?”
Joy blanched. “Never mind.”
“No! Not ‘never mind,’” her brother said angrily. “Exactly what’s going on?”
Joy shook her head. “Please, Stef, you don’t understand.” She had to say something. Something! Now! Say it! “It...has to do with the rules of the Twixt,” she blurted out. Joy twisted her thumb in her shirt. “Do you know about the rules?”
Stef glared at her through his rectangular lenses, knowing she was editing herself. “I know about the Accords, the written agreements between the Council and our world, I know about the Edict that protects us, I know about having the Sight, and I know more than a little bit about wizardry and spellwork—proper magic, not glyph magic, that’s for Folk and druids,” he said, fiddling with his red thread bracelet. He tossed another shirt into the bag. “That’s more than enough rules for me.”
“Yeah, well, someone’s messing with the rules that created the Twixt, and that