She threw the washcloth into the sink. Balling her fists, she screamed. Shaking, wet, horrified, she screamed again. She yanked out her hair tie, tears pouring out of her eyes as she trembled and kicked the cabinet in helpless rage.
Joy ran to the kitchen. The new sheet of glass reflected the pelting darkness. She threw out her arms.
“STOP IT!” she screamed. “LEAVE ME ALONE!” Joy shrieked her throat raw. “I don’t know what you’re talking about! I don’t know who you’re talking about! I don’t know anyone named Ink and I have no idea what the HELL is going on!”
“That was an aether sprite,” said a voice behind her. Joy spun around to stare into a pair of all-black eyes. The boy gave a bored shrug from just inside the front door. “And he was looking for me.”
“You!” she shouted. It was the psycho from the dance floor. In her house. Joy blinked in half-remembered pain. “You’re Ink?”
“I am Indelible Ink,” he said. “My sister is Invisible Inq.” He pronounced her name with a clipped “q” as he pushed off the doorframe. “Personally, I call her Impossible Inq.” He gave a humorless smile. Joy didn’t know what to do. Panic lodged in her throat.
Ink stepped forward.
“Don’t,” she said.
He stopped.
“What would you do?” he asked. “Kill me?” Joy stared at him—at his whiteless eyes—without saying a word. She weighed her options and snatched the phone from its stand.
“Get out,” she said. “Get out or I’ll call the police!”
Flash! Flash!
Ink was gone in the blink of light.
“Yes, well, what good would that do?” he asked from behind her, frighteningly close. Joy choked and stumbled sideways as she turned around. Tilting his head, Ink calmly took a seat at the kitchen table. Joy watched him move, sinuous and serious. His boyish face looked harsh in the overhead light. “No one can see me,” he said. “No one but you.”
Impossible. It was all impossible.
“I came to talk,” he said.
“About what?” she asked cautiously. Joy held the phone in her hand but didn’t want to make any sudden, telling moves.
“About that night at the Carousel.”
She glared at him. “You mean the night when you stabbed me in the eye?”
“About what has been happening since that night,” he amended.
“The messages?” She swallowed, wetting her voice. “Those were for you?”
His voice was as expressionless as his eyes. “Yes, but they should never have come to you. That was a mistake. My mistake,” he said bitterly. “One of many mistakes.”
Joy gave a little laugh and gestured with the phone.
“Aren’t you going to say you’re sorry?”
Ink leaned into the back of the chair. “My only regret is that I did not take your eyes. Blind of the Sight, you might have been spared all this.”
Joy gaped, mind blank. This stranger had just admitted that he’d tried to blind her with a knife! And he’d said it so casually. As if he could do it anytime.
“You’re being perfectly awful, you know that?” a new voice said from the bedroom hall. His Goth sister walked quietly into the kitchen. She hadn’t come through the door. Her eyes and long lashes were as black as Ink’s, but her smile held a kindness. “Look,” she said. “You’re scaring her.”
Light moved strangely around Inq. Slithering calligraphy swarmed over her skin. Strange designs moved like living watermarks, like pale worms, writhing. It made Joy queasy to watch.
Inq smiled wider, crinkling her wide, fathomless eyes. “Sorry. This is his own fault—and he knows it—so it’s making him surly.”
“Stop,” Ink warned her.
“You see?” Inq said. “Surly.”
Inq stared at Joy, running her fingers over the edge of the counter as if caressing Joy’s arm. “Still, now that we’re stuck with each other, I suggest we make the most of it.”
Joy slammed the phone onto the counter and quit considering the steak knives as potential weapons. It sounded like the sister could be reasoned with. And, besides, now the odds were two to one.
“Will one of you tell me what the hell is going on?” Joy asked as she ticked off her fingers. “Who are you? What are you doing here? And what do you want with me?”
“It isn’t really about you,” Inq started to say.
“Oh, but it is!” her brother interrupted. He turned his accusation to Joy. “You saw us at the Carousel.”
“I didn’t see anything—”
“He means you saw us,” Inq explained.
Joy frowned. “What? I’m not allowed to look at you?”
“Wrong question.” Inq scooped Joy’s phone off the kitchen counter and flipped it playfully. Before Joy could protest, Inq held it up and gave Joy an impish grin.
“If it makes you feel any better...” Inq flashed a huge smile and snapped a picture of herself. Glancing at the phone, she handed it back to Joy. “Here. See for yourself.” Joy did. There was nothing on the screen but the auto-flash bouncing off the wall, catching the corner of a picture frame directly behind where Inq stood.
“Is this some sort of trick?” Joy asked. “And that somehow gives you permission to cut out my eye?”
“Technically, yes and no,” Inq admitted, leaning against the breakfast bar. She had the same spiky hair and liquid eyes as her twin, but she wore a corset of gunmetal gray and layers and layers of black, lacy clothes. She looked like an upscale street kid or somebody terribly, tragically hip. “There’s no trick. Simply put, very few people like you can see people like us, and there’s an old rule that says if someone like us ever comes across someone like you, we should remove your Sight, one way or another.” Inq shrugged. “True Sight is rare, but often runs in families, sometimes skipping a generation or two. Sound familiar?” Joy’s stomach lurched. Great-Grandma Caroline might have actually seen things that were all too real. And she’d been locked away for life. “My brother might have gone to extremes, but he’s right—you might have thanked him in the long run.”
“Thanked him?” Joy shouted. “Screw him! And screw you!” Terror had a taste in the back of her throat. “Get out of my house!”
“You cannot banish us,” Ink said softly. “The fact that you are even able to see us puts all of us, including you, at risk. Removing the Sight might have let you live a normal life.”
“Minus eyes!” Joy spat.
Ink tilted his head. “A more normal life,” he amended. “More normal than the one you will have now.”
“That’s all in the past,” Inq said. “No mas. Capice? Ink didn’t blind you—he missed. Instead of taking your eyes, he accidentally marked you.” She lifted her small hand up to one midnight eye. Her hands were perfect and perfectly smooth. No knuckles. No fingernails. Like a doll’s. She gazed at Joy through the space between her fingers. “You wear it on your face.”
Joy touched her cheek. A trick of light caught her eye. Flash! Flash! Was that what she’d seen in the mirror?
“You’ve been touched by a Scribe,” Inq continued, “and since no one ordered that you be marked, you’ve been imprinted as his. As belonging to Ink.” She turned and regarded her brother sitting at the kitchen table. “He’s