STEPPING OUT OF the void onto the asphalt behind Antoine’s back lot, Joy and Inq stopped laughing the instant Ink sprang up from the back steps and started toward them, worry and fury warring on his face.
“Where were you?” he said.
“Shopping,” Inq replied before Joy could breathe. While technically true, it wasn’t really the truth. Joy was amazed at how skillfully the Folk could twist words.
“Shopping?” Ink said. “You were gone and I thought...” He shook his head and turned to his sister, sounding strangely human. “It is dangerous for Joy to be out right now.” He gestured to the heavy back door. “I cannot ward a public place like this—there are too many people! And we have not heard back from the Bailiwick yet!”
“Better, then, that she was with me and not out on her own,” Inq said primly. “Isn’t it sweet how he worries about you?” She winked at Joy and made a big show of adjusting her corset. “You fret too much, Ink. Everything’s fine. You don’t have to wait on the Bailiwick to keep living your life. It’s not as if anyone’s foolish enough to try anything out here in the open in the middle of the day.”
Joy was about to say that this was exactly what had happened yesterday when she saw a rust-colored shape move from behind a parked car and the words died on her tongue.
The knight’s footsteps crunched on the pavement.
Joy backed away stumbling, knees jellied and mouth gaping open, tasting air.
Ink spun around. Inq’s hands blurred. The knight raised his weapon—a curved scimitar this time—and charged. Joy backpedaled against a nearby car and stumbled, the hot chrome bumper burning her leg. Ink stepped between them, straight razor raised. Inq’s right hand swept down, severing the knight’s blade from its hilt in a whine of sparks. The knight huffed and charged with the damaged half, a shard of razor-sharpness that caught the sun on its edge. Inq held her ground. Joy frantically fished for the scalpel, dropping the C&P bag, rooting around tubes of lip gloss and mascara. There was a dark blur of motion. Ink flashed past. The straight razor arced, but the knight swung, batting the blade from Ink’s hand. It clanged off a Dumpster and slid in the dirt.
Inq dived, humming fingers stabbing straight, but the knight dodged and wove beneath her arm. Gripping the end of his sword, he tried to drive the broken bit into Inq’s sternum. Joy grabbed her scalpel. Ink drew his black arrowhead. Inq’s hands stilled, fingers spread wide, the same moment that Joy lifted the scalpel and Ink punched through the armor, grabbing the knight’s elbow from behind. Joy stared as the metal mesh protecting the shoulder joint split, spitting broken links across the gravel in a gentle rain of rings. With a twist, Ink snapped the arm sideways, a sharp crack. The weapon dropped from the armored grip. His knees buckled. The knight heaved himself up and punched Ink in the throat. Ink’s face absorbed the blow and hardened like stone. Ink frowned and slashed the arrowhead down.
There was a splash of blood and a rough scream. Ink spat a word.
“Yield.”
Inq’s eyes widened, a wild smile on her lips. Joy backed away from the spatter of bright blood on cement.
The knight grunted and grabbed Ink’s shoulder with his good hand as if to tear it from the socket. Ink used both arms to trap the elbow and bend it back with a shriek of ruined metal. The knight’s arm pulsed another great gout of blood.
“Yield!” Ink said.
“I do not yield,” the knight grated from beneath his helmet.
Ink’s grip tightened. The armguard squealed.
“You will not touch her,” Ink said. “I swear it.”
“Then you, too, shall die.”
Rage lit Ink’s features, something pure and terrible; the hot neon light sparked like fire in his eyes. He shoved his knee forward, driving the arrowhead through the knight’s back. The knight crumpled, a sagging calm of junkyard noises as he sank to his knees. Armor hit ground in tumbling percussion as the body toppled over with a crash.
The sound broke something inside Joy—it was as if the world swam into sharp focus between one breath and the next. Ink stood over the body, barehanded and calm. Inq lifted her palms warily and took a step closer. The knight was a rumpled pile of red armor, its head wrenched sickeningly back. Joy couldn’t help staring where the helmet had lifted away from the neck. Pale skin peeked out from under the edge of the faceplate. No pulse beat there. It was very, very still.
Inq relaxed. “Well, that’s that.”
She touched her brother’s wrist. Something passed between them that snapped him out of his stillness. Ink flinched away with a dismissive gesture and looked back at Joy.
“Go inside,” Ink told her. “You are safe now. It is over.” The words fell like stones, flat and black. He sounded lost, tired and confused—she felt the same way. She couldn’t go to work, not now, not after this! As if he could read her thoughts, he shook his head gently. “Act normal. Otherwise, it will call attention to...” Ink stopped and sighed. “Please go. I will come back tonight and escort you home.”
Joy walked around the pool of blood, speckled with gravel and tiny links of chain, and hurried up the back stairs into Antoine’s low lighting and the smell of hot bread. The last thing she saw was Inq moving to touch her brother and Ink standing very, very still.
* * *
Joy waited by the restaurant’s front window twisting her apron strings around her knuckles, watching the raindrops fall in a smooth sheet beyond the awning. Main Street shone like a river stippled with tiny splashes. Cars drove by, shearing sheets of spray. People walked under umbrellas. A knot of teens passed, laughing as one tipped back his face, mouth opened wide to catch the droplets. It was a fresh, clean summer storm. To Joy, it smelled like Ink.
She trusted that the rain would wash away the blood.
She’d tried not to think about the look on Ink’s face in the back lot, or the armored body that had disappeared along with Ink and Inq when she’d been brave enough to check. It was as if they had never been, as if she’d imagined the whole thing, everything from the moment Inq had appeared at work to the moment when she’d walked past Neil with the scalpel still in her hand. It had been easy not to think about it while she’d rushed mindlessly between tables, but now it all came back to her in a crazy montage: ice cubes melting in a saucer, blood spouting over gravel, Mr. Vinh in a black robe behind a secret door at the C&P.
The rainy day world was as foggy as a dream.
“Need a ride?”
Neil appeared next to her, staring out at the rain.
“No,” Joy said. “Thanks. I’m waiting for a friend.”
Neil nodded and tapped his cheat pad. “Friend-friend or more-than-a-friend?” Joy turned and noticed him smile. “Just asking.”
Ink appeared just outside the door, slipping between one flap of reality and the next. Joy watched him unzip a doorway along a parking sign and check the sidewalks and streets, heedless of the rain wetting his clothes. He raised a hand, inviting her to join him.
“I have to go,” she said.
Neil frowned. “But there’s no one—”
“Bye.” Joy pushed out the door, hugging her purse close to her body. Ink had his straight razor in his hand and led the way past the window
“Are you all right?” she asked into her collar.
“Let’s get you home,” Ink said, slipping into rare contractions and walking quickly around the corner, out into the rain. Cool pinpricks tapped her arms and scalp as she walked beside him. Joy blinked through the rain on her lashes. On Ink’s face, they looked like tears.
He stopped in the middle of the sidewalk and stared at her. The rain matted her hair and slid a wet finger down her back. She glanced