Insidious. Dawn Metcalf
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painful,” Joy muttered as she typed.
Graus Claude stopped. “What was that?”
“Sorry,” Joy said and cracked her knuckles over the keyboard. “I know this is serious. I’m just getting punchy staring at the screen.”
“No.” The hunchbacked frog drew closer. “What did you say?”
Joy swallowed, wondering if she had already given some offense. Graus Claude hadn’t covered Folk swearing. “Um... I said, ‘Sounds painful’ having the swells.” She tucked her hands under her lap. “‘By the swells’? Get it?”
The Bailiwick examined her face, staring into one eye, then the next. “You should not have heard that,” he said, grimacing, eyes narrowing to icy slits. “He said you were not Water, but then how...?”
Joy was growing increasingly uncomfortable under his close scrutiny and the proximity of his many teeth. “Who said?”
Graus Claude made a sound like waves crashing together, driving flotsam into the undertow. Joy was surprised that she recognized it.
“The hippocamp?” Joy said. “Oh. He said I had an eelet.”
“An eelet?” Graus Claude said, surprised. “Where did you get an eelet?”
“From Dennis Thomas,” she said. “Before he turned me over to Aniseed, back when he’d asked me to deliver a message to Ink. He tipped me a seashell, which evidently had a thing inside it that went into my ear—” Even talking about it made Joy want to stick a finger in her ear and fish it out. “It lets me hear Water Folk.” She debated trying to pronounce the water horse’s name but quickly ditched the idea. “The hippocamp told me that this eelet was some royal, deep-water breed.”
Graus Claude rose up, nearing his full height, and stared down on her.
“You always bring me the most unusual surprises, Miss Malone,” he said. “As your sponsor, I imagine that I shall grow to expect them over the years.” Joy wasn’t certain if this was meant to be a compliment. He reached one claw out and tapped the tablet. “Keep typing.”
Joy’s hands were stiff and the pads of her fingers pink and swollen by the time Kurt entered with a rolling tea tray and a carafe of freshly squeezed orange juice. Joy inhaled a tall glass in several gulps. She had begun to feel the effects of going too long without food, but hadn’t wanted to risk annoying Graus Claude despite the growing headache and winking lights on the edge of her vision. Kurt was both aware of her blood sugar and possessed excellent timing.
She poured herself another glass. “If having the Sight means that I am part-Folk, then why haven’t any others been found out before now?” Joy asked her question while the Bailiwick sipped his tea so that she could not possibly be accused of interrupting him again. It was sneaky, but she was desperate for answers.
“Well,” Graus Claude said, warming to the topic, “I must admit that I do not know how many humans born with the Sight were ever marked, let alone had experienced prolonged involvement with the Twixt or were otherwise affected by such a wide variety of individuals from our community as have you.” He wiped his lips with several napkins.
Joy scoffed, “That’s because you blinded them first.”
“Which, logically, would place them under Sol Leander’s auspice,” Graus Claude mused. “They would be survivors of an unprovoked attack.”
“Ugh! I couldn’t stand being under his auspice,” Joy said and tried not to think too hard about how Monica, her best friend, had Sol Leander’s mark—a mark she’d all but put there and one that she could have erased...but hadn’t. Guilt still burned like a slow coal in her gut. The idea of Sol Leander watching over her made her ill.
“Fortunately, this was a fate you were spared by becoming lehman to Master Ink,” the giant toad said. “Still, if those with the Sight are, indeed, descendants of our bloodlines, then one would think that, as survivors of an unmitigated assault, they would have been claimed by Sol Leander and discovered for what they were. And, if not, why not?” He pursed his olive lips. “It would be a closed loop to both abide by the rules and yet refuse to acknowledge claims. Hmm. Perhaps the base theory is flawed...” The Bailiwick settled himself back into his chair. “There are a great number of Houses that account for all the denizens of the Courts, as well as old families, oath societies, political factions and formal alliances that make up the modern Accords. Any one of them might have records about a circumstance resembling yours, yet none have come forward.” He spread his four hands. “Therefore, it is all a matter of where you fit into the Twixt.”
“So where do I fit?” Joy asked. “What House do I belong to?”
Graus Claude placed his teacup in its saucer. “Usually that is a matter of the maternal or paternal progenitor stepping forward and acknowledging their claim,” he said. “However, since we have only recently entertained the possibility that those with the Sight share a common ancestry, I would not imagine the Malones have been registered as being under Folk scrutiny.”
“The McDermotts,” Joy said. “I inherited the Sight from my mother’s side, not my father’s.”
“Hmm. It is good to be aware of such things,” he said as he applied a pat of rich butter to his bread with even strokes. “The Folk take pains to keep track of their progeny, else the past has ways of catching up when it is least expected and most inconvenient.” Graus Claude lifted another one of his covered plate lids and began dicing a huge steak into pieces with the dance of four hands. “In any event, we can simply wait to witness your change,” he said casually. “Then your genealogy should become fairly evident.”
“Change?” Joy said. “What change?”
The Bailiwick lifted a polite finger to wait as he skewered four pieces of steak into his mouth. He swallowed. “Once you manifested your True Name and accepted your place within the Twixt, the change would have begun,” he said simply. “Hence why I described you as being betwixt categories, as it were—halfling and changeling.” He dabbed at his wide chin. “Essentially, after taking on your True Name, you will take on your true nature as one of the Folk.”
“What?”
Graus Claude blithely ignored her outburst as he stabbed more cubes of steak. “The change is already under way,” he said. “I suspect it began when Master Ink first marked you, alighting the magic in your blood.” He tapped one of his skewers against the side of the plate. “It is my theory that if those with the Sight are marked by one of the Folk, it ignites the latent, recessive genes into activity. The signatura ritual brings it to the surface, completing it. Or, perhaps, it is triggered by heightened physical response—panic, elation, fear, desire.” He gave a double shrug. “As this has never happened before, I can only hazard an educated guess, but you ought to be experiencing some of the effects by now.”
Like heat and light and a glow in her veins—the elation of dancing and the pain of grief. She’d felt...something. What happened at the funeral? Has it already begun? Joy hugged her arms to keep herself from shaking.
“But I don’t want to change!” Joy said with spiky terror, her mind racing through the myriad of misshapen creatures that she’d met inside the Twixt. “I don’t want to grow feathers or claws or whatever—” a horrific thought struck her “—I don’t want to be invisible to my parents!” Panic scrabbled inside her, roiling acid hot and squeezing her voice thin. “I want to go to college! I want to graduate and have kids someday! I want to be seen on TV!” Joy didn’t know where all the words were coming from; they were bubbling out of her mouth in a rush. She thought she might throw up. “I’m still human—part-human—and I want to keep that!” She pressed a hand to her chest. “I want to keep being me!”
Graus Claude gave one of his deep-chested sighs. “Miss Malone, I feel that we keep returning to this same conversation, ad infinitum,”