Invisible

THIRTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)

FOURTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)

FIFTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)

SIXTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)

SEVENTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)

EIGHTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)

NINETEEN (#litres_trial_promo)

EPILOGUE (#litres_trial_promo)

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS (#litres_trial_promo)

Extract (#litres_trial_promo)

Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)

ONE (#ulink_6bfe9149-a560-5104-943d-01d4914719ec)

JOY STOPPED ON the sidewalk at the sound of creaking wood. It was a wintry sound, both ominous and familiar. Despite the July heat, she shivered. She was just leaving work, exhausted and perfumed in garlic, cooking oil and sweat. Joy glanced around the back lot behind Antoine’s Café, adjusted her black apron over her arm and walked a little faster.

Fishing inside her purse, Joy skipped over her keys and her phone and went straight for the scalpel she kept hidden in the side pocket. She stumbled on a crack in the cement and cursed her decision to wear chunky heels to work. Clomping down the concrete, her footsteps obscured the sound of whatever followed. A prickle at her neck brought back icy memories and a half-remembered twinge in one eye. Should she shuck off her shoes or was she being totally paranoid? After all, it could just be the wind.

Right.

Contrary to the four-leaf clover in her wallet, it would be just her luck to be harassed by one of the Twixt on her way home from work.

She crossed beneath the overpass, echoes of her shoes bouncing over themselves in her haste to leave the busy downtown area. The Folk were notorious busybodies, but they could also be dangerous to humans. Curious as cats, they’d been peeking out at her from between buildings or through broken windows or from under birds’ nests, wanting to catch a glimpse of either the ex-lehman who’d escaped her bonds to the Master Scribe or the infamous girl with the Sight who’d somehow managed to keep both her freedom and her eyes. Joy wasn’t sure why she’d suddenly become more interesting over the past month, but the strange, inhuman paparazzi were getting bolder.

Those who had first appeared had been harmless, if unnerving, and Graus Claude had said the attention would pass once the novelty wore off. Then, last week, two dryads had whispered warnings to stay out of their world. Three days ago, a short, furry-haired creature had said that she should watch her back. Yesterday, a sprite wearing a floppy red cap had stood on the corner, smiling serenely while picking his fingernails with a serrated knife. The Folk were growing more menacing by the day.

Another scrape. Closer this time.

Joy’s heart thudded in her ears. She’d been preparing for this.

When the shadow moved, Joy lifted the scalpel, a thin stroke of silver that identified her in the otherworld. Knees bent, she readied herself for what she might see.

An armored knight, the color of old blood, emerged from behind a large fir tree. He held a longsword at attention, sunlight streaming down its length. Joy stared at the blood-colored knight, frozen in a foggy trance of disbelief.

His foot hit the pavement, a gritty scratch of metal on stone. The sound snapped her awake.

“I’m under the Edict,” she said quickly, the words tumbling out of her mouth. “The Edict,” she said again with a bit more force. “As decreed by the Council of the Twixt.”

The knight stepped forward. Joy stepped back.

“Duei nis da Counsallierai en dictie uellaris emonim oun,” she tried again.

He took another step toward her.

She shook the blade in her hand. “I bear Ink’s scalpel...”

The knight lifted the massive sword above his head.

Somehow she knew that wouldn’t work.

The sword scythed through the air, carving a parting whoosh in its wake. Joy’s brain stalled as the armored knight lunged. She gripped the scalpel. Her voice cracked.

“Stop!”

Ignoring her, the knight swung down at a wide angle. Joy stumbled off the sidewalk. The moment felt slow-motion surreal; she could see the sword tip passing her cheek—it was nicked and spotted with brown.

Out of the corner of her eye, Joy saw a woman push a double stroller across the street.

Screw the shoes. Joy kicked off her clogs and threw her purse. And the apron. It billowed like a cape, catching the sword and tangling it. She ran barefoot on the grass, adrenaline crackling and popping under her heels in manic bursts as she vaulted the manicured hedge into the wilder wood beyond. A steady banging followed.

Joy pounded over the uneven surface, her feet slamming into sticks and pebbles as she dived between the trees. There was a golden heat to running that soared up her limbs, shooting lightning from her soles up her spine. She had the advantage of being light and fast, but the knight charged after her, chugging like a train. She could hear his panting breath behind the metal faceplate.

Joy dodged around a tree and headed deeper into Mother Nature, avoiding broken glass bottles and bright-colored trash. She wove through the woods, putting as many trees, stumps and bracken between herself and her pursuer as possible. She cut to the north, inhaling deeply, tasting pollen and pine.

Tripping over a root, she grunted as pain exploded in her big toe and shot up her leg. Joy pushed through the injury and kept running, leaving the yellow-hot spark of agony somewhere far behind. Later, she would deal with it. Right now, she needed speed.

She broke through a small clearing, a patch of sun and weeds. She felt like leaping over the ferns and punching out a series of handsprings, but that was muscle memory talking. Her brain still equated running with gymnastics, but after her past few months as part of the Twixt, she knew that running equaled evading certain death.

The knight barreled through the woods, snapping fallen branches and lumbering up the incline. Energy frothed inside her, a flush of heat tickling over her arms and neck, filling her with a lightness, a clarity in speed. There was a heady rush to running for her life through the green grass. Joy felt like laughing. Perhaps she’d finally cracked? How else could she explain getting attacked by a medieval knight on a Thursday evening?

Whipping her tiny blade sideways, she wished that she could slice through worlds like Ink and cursed, not for the first time, that she no longer bore his signatura so he could not feel her panic or hear her call his name through the wind. Her skin was clean of True Names given form, so if she screamed, there’d be no one to hear.

Joy ran.

The land dipped and broke. A shelf of ragged earth loomed above a shallow crevice where the ground fell away. Joy scrabbled over the old streambed, using the smooth rocks as stepping-stones, tearing the seam of her capris as she jumped the ridge—long legs splayed out in a perfect one-eighty—stuck the landing on the other side and kept going. The clang and sweep of metal plates crashed somewhere far below. Joy wished again for the flash of light, the spark of connection that had bound her to Ink, now severed. Gone.

She knew it wouldn’t work, but she couldn’t help it.

“Ink! Ink! Ink!” Joy chanted as she ran, willing him to hear her. The trees ahead began to thin, and she heard the distant roar of cars.

There was a sudden explosion accompanied by a shriek of birds. The force pushed her forward, and she shielded her eyes from several fat splinters that bit into her skin. Something slammed into her shoulder, spinning her around.

Ears ringing, Joy squinted at the dark red sword stuck halfway through a ruined tree. The trunk’s shredded innards burst out in a jagged fluff of destruction. Bits and pieces of pulp peppered her entire body and most of the surrounding green. Pitter-patters of falling debris joined the snap of shattered wood. Through the ringing in her head, she could still hear the determined clomp-clomp of armored boots.

She blinked. The world slowly tilted. There was a deep, resonant crack as the massive tree began to list, groans and tiny clicks ricocheting off the surrounding forest as the trunk came crashing down. A gust of wind smacked Joy full in the face, blasting clouds of dirt and mulch. The knight had cut down a tree by throwing his sword and was now crossing the riverbed, headed toward her. Her hands tingled as terror splashed through her veins.

Joy squeezed the scalpel and spat wood chips off her lips. She tried to believe what Ink had said, what Graus Claude had said, tried to remember Inq’s advice, but as the rust-crusted helmet cleared the ridge, all Joy could feel was the quiet knowledge that she was about to die in the woods in bare feet while holding a pathetic metal weapon no bigger than a pencil. She pointed the tip toward her attacker.

“Leave me alone!” she said.