Invisible

“Waiting,” she said. “It’s a power thing. The Bailiwick does it all the time.” Inq flipped to the back of the paper and sighed. “Men!”

A tall man in his mid-twenties wearing a blue button-up over a black tee and jeans opened a back door and loped to the counter, exchanging a few words with Mr. Vinh before taking his place at the register. He nodded to the next customer with a smile and said in English, “Next person, please.”

Mr. Vinh shuffled out from behind the counter, feet scraping against the floor in black socks and worn Birkenstocks. He led the way to a sign marked Storage: Employees Only and pulled back the heavy door. Clicking on the light, he gestured for Inq and Joy to follow.

The storage closet was packed with flats of juice drinks, boxes of snacks and plastic-wrapped rolls of paper towels. A lunar calendar was tacked up on the wall above a small electric-lit altar propped with photos of dour-looking people and tiny bowls of seeds and sweets. Mr. Vinh brushed past them and ran his hand along the back of one of the shelving units, his arm disappearing up to the shoulder as the back of the closet swung open with a click.

“Less magic,” he said matter-of-factly. “More secure. Come in.”

He pushed the hidden door wider and beckoned them inside. Wondering what she’d gotten herself into, Joy stepped forward. Inq strolled after them, nearly skipping into the dark.

“What did the nix want?” Inq asked conversationally.

“Bah,” Mr. Vinh grunted. “Modern maladies. Drink this to wake up. Drink this to go to sleep. Eat this to get fat. Eat this to get thin.” He turned on a light. “It’s like doing business in a Lewis Carroll novel.”

Joy tiptoed into the small room lined with bamboo slats. There was an enormous armoire composed of rows of tiny drawers, each one labeled with dark red paint. Bundles of dried herbs and wrinkled things were stuffed in heavy glass jars, ceramic jugs and urns, and a large, tinted-glass mirror hung on the wall in a chunky wooden frame. A glass cabinet full of strange instruments glinted in the light of oddly twisted bulbs that hung from the ceiling. Overlapping grass mats covered the floor, shushing underfoot and swallowing sound.

Mr. Vinh shrugged on a long black robe, the edge of it catching on his C&P name tag. He tugged it loose and buttoned it closed under his left armpit. After placing a simple flat cap on his head, he drew out a long stylus, dipped it in a small bowl of water and swirled it with quick strokes into a pot of black paste. He spoke offhandedly while he worked the bristles in. “You don’t really want a glamour, do you?”

“Of course not.” Inq spoke first. Joy frowned at her but kept silent. “What would she do with one? She’s human.”

Mr. Vinh stopped swishing the brush and said nothing. He smoothed the soft bristles against the edge of the pot, creating a fine point. “Well then,” he said. “How may I be of service?”

“She asked me about glamours,” Inq said. “So I brought her to you.”

“I don’t do tutorials, demonstrations or free samples,” said Mr. Vinh crisply.

“How about a sales pitch?” Inq said.

Joy stood to one side, trying to be as polite as possible. This was a different Mr. Vinh from the one she knew from the C&P. He was brisk, efficient, a little bit perturbed and a little bit scary. He was clearly in his element here in the secret wizard’s back room, a place very different from the fluorescent-bulbed store.

Mr. Vinh painted himself a note in liquid script, his pen dancing in quick, soaring strokes on a roll of ecru paper. “Why are you here?” he asked.

Joy swallowed. “I’m...”

“She’s lehman to Indelible Ink.”

Joy and Mr. Vinh both glanced at Inq. She held their stares. Joy frowned. Was she? Did Mr. Vinh know what that meant? Joy felt a blush light her cheeks and twisted her fingers around her purse strap. Mr. Vinh laid his brush gently on the pot lid, balancing its length across the lip, and crossed the room to the cabinet. He withdrew a small apparatus made up of many lenses; some were tiny microscope circles and some were giant magnifiers, others were milky half domes or tinted glass or bowed optics framed in twists of wire and wood. There was even a smooth stone with a hole in its center tied to the rim with copper wire. Mr. Vinh lifted the thing like opera glasses and made some adjustments with a rotating dial.

“Remove your glamour, please.”

Inq made a motion with her hand and...nothing changed. At least, not as far as Joy could see. Inq looked exactly the same.

“Thank you,” Mr. Vinh said crisply. He lowered the apparatus, squinted in Inq’s direction, then fitted the lenses back over his eyes. Joy got that he couldn’t see Inq without them. He made a few more adjustments in silence.

“Please reinstate the glamour,” he said. Inq swirled her hand again, and the wizard gave a grunt of satisfaction. He turned the multilensed thing at Joy. “Now you.”

“I’m not wearing a glamour,” she said.

“Of course not,” he said, tweaking a lens into place. “But I cannot see their handiwork without assistance. Hold still please.”

Joy tried not to squirm under the scrutiny. One of the lenses tilted. Another clicked into place.

“I am fascinated by the marriage of magic and technology,” he explained as he squinted through the rock with a hole. “How it overlaps, where it repels and attracts, like two polarized magnets. It’s a hobby of mine.” He lowered the device and frowned. “She hasn’t the Scribe’s signatura,” Mr. Vinh said. “She is no lehman.” He shook his chin at Joy. “You have no part in this.”

“But she did,” Inq lilted.

“Did?” Mr. Vinh shut the thing back in its cabinet. “Nonsense. She is not what you claim. She is not a lehman. End of story.”

“Well, I was,” Joy said quietly. “But I guess now I’m just his girlfriend.”

Mr. Vinh paused as he stepped behind his desk, staring at her for a long moment. Then he took up his stylus, holding his sleeve away from the wet page. “No,” he said and began painting furiously. “No, no. That cannot be.” He pointed his brush at Joy. “Listen to me. I do not know what this one—” he pointed to Inq “—has been telling you. But I know them. Yes, I do. I have known for many years. Them and you. And I am telling you that if you had been taken by one of the tien, there would be a mark on you—one that you could not see—”

“A signatura,” Joy said. “I know.”

Mr. Vinh stopped. “How do you know?”

“She has the Sight,” Inq explained. Joy nodded.

Mr. Vinh’s voice softened, as did his face. “You have the Sight?” he echoed and stopped to think. “Your family does not know?” Joy shook her head. Mr. Vinh drummed his fingers on the edge of the table and wiped the corners of his lips as if smoothing them closed. He spoke slowly. “You have the Sight and you are in love with a Scribe,” he said. “Yes. Perhaps I have heard of you.”

“You have?” Joy squeaked.

“Rumors, of course,” Mr. Vinh dismissed. “Everyone comes with rumors. Rumors and requests and cash.” He smiled, revealing tobacco-stained teeth. “So, yes, perhaps you exist. Strange that we have met so often and neither of us has known...but, then again, that’s the way of things nowadays—rush, rush, rush. So many people so close together and yet too busy to notice one another.” He shrugged and made a last careful note. “So maybe I can tell you something about glamours, after all. It is good for you to know these things. But before we get down to business, I have a question for you, busy girl, and I will tell you what I know if you would be so kind as to answer it.”

Joy glanced at Inq, who nodded. “Okay.”

“Good. Very good,” Mr. Vinh said and came around to sit on the mats. Joy and Inq joined him on the floor. He folded to a sitting position with ease.

“So what can I tell you?” Mr. Vinh said, placing his hands on his knees. “I am a wizard, which means that I provide services for humans and tien. Most often spells and most often for money, although I sometimes will take trade for hard-to-find things.” He opened his hands; one thumb was smudged in black paint. “My family was from a province near the Mekong River, before we came to America and brought our magic here. I make poultices and charms and small, everyday sort of spells, but glamours are my big magic—taught to me from my grandfather from his father and his father before him and so on, back centuries. It is an old craft and one that relies heavily on both art and discretion.” He smiled wryly. “My art at my discretion, you understand. It is the most common way that the tien may pass among humans.” He gestured with one hand. “You have the Sight—you understand why that is. You’ve seen what they look like without the veil.”

Joy shifted on the mats. “What veil?”

The wizard bowed toward Inq. “The veil is the natural aura of the tien that lets them slip past our eyes like oiled paper—” he drew his hands quickly past his face “—without notice. It is what has kept them alive in our world for centuries. Camouflage is an effective survival strategy.”

He rested his hands on his knees and continued. “The simplest glamour is not about creating something new, but dampening the individual veil, allowing humans to perceive them normally,” Mr. Vinh said. “This is not an option for many, as to see tien in their true form, unfiltered, would likely cause alarm, breaking pacts between our worlds, so minor modifications can be made to normalize their appearance or create an entire new facade,” he said. “It is a major undertaking and very expensive. Of course, in order to pass close inspection, there are additional changes necessary for masking horns, wings, tails, extra body mass.” He glanced at Inq. “Or unusual eyes.”

She winked.

Joy’s head spun. “But...how?”

Mr. Vinh grinned. “My son is a gifted animator,” he said with pride. “CAD modeling has greatly improved the quality of our glamours. We’ve been developing the technique since the early eighties.”

“No,” Joy said. “I mean, how is that possible?” She looked around the tiny room. “Spells. Glamours. Wizards. How is any of this possible?”

“A better question might be how are you possible, busy girl?” Mr. Vinh asked. “I cannot tell you how I make my magic, but perhaps you can tell me how you make yours.” He leaned forward slightly at the waist in interest. “So, my question—I have heard that you managed to remove your signatura, freeing yourself from your Master and unraveling the segulah’s curse.” Joy stared. Mr. Vinh was well-informed. She didn’t expect to hear these words from another human being. “Tell me,” he said. “How did this happen?”

“Oh,” Joy said trying to catch a cue from Inq, but she was busy inspecting the cabinet shelves. “It was an accident,” she said, choosing her words carefully. “Ink threw his scalpel to me after he’d stabbed Aniseed so that it could pass through her ward. I used it to free myself.” She and Ink had agreed to place the explanation for her escape and the magic of unmaking on the blade itself and not attribute it in any way to Joy, avoiding the truth that they had discovered while marking a man in a prison cell: that she could somehow erase marks that were supposed to be permanent, removing the True Names that linked the Folk to the last bits of magic in the world. “I had no idea what would happen,” she said honestly. “I was just trying to get out.”