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,” he said. “You, yourself, were the one who chose to exercise this option, and now you are having some difficulty accepting its outcome.” His gaze grew sharp. “Did you think this is an honor we bestow upon a mere human? Your choice—and here I must emphasize the word choice—was to join this world. And you have—or you will—when the change is complete.” He lifted an enormous, fluted glass filled with water in two hands. “Those are the rules, Miss Malone, not guidelines or suggestions—they are the very words that created this world. They are.”
“Rules can be changed,” she said. “Rules can be broken.”
“Not by you,” Graus Claude said dangerously. “And not by me. Nor by anyone on the Council or anyone in this world—and they would all tell you the same.” He huffed like a sneeze. “Human laws can be changed, Miss Malone, minds can be changed, fates may be altered, and fashions might fall out of favor, but the rules that created our world were the ones that cleaved order from chaos, light from darkness, and forged rational thought out of the wild abyss. They are absolute. They cannot be changed.” A contemplative quiet passed over his features, which faded as he set down his glass. “Even the human world recognizes the power of words that set the wheels of life into motion. Do not presume that you are an exception.”
“I’ve been one before,” she said, which earned her a darker glance. “Even you admit that my circumstances are unusual.”
The Bailiwick’s expression didn’t change in the slightest. “I can hardly contain my astonishment that the word unusual would be closely associated with your person, Miss Malone. In point of fact, during our brief association, I find that adjective to be most appropriate.” He sat back in his chair, which settled with its familiar, wooden groan. “But not this time. Despite circumstantial evidence, it would seem likely that you will follow the pattern woven into the very fabric of life in the Twixt. Best accept that inevitability as the choice you have made.”
Joy sputtered but couldn’t help remembering Ink’s advice when she’d first encountered the Bailiwick. Respect him. Always. She counted to ten in her head. Then upped it to twenty, clamping her fingers under her armpits to keep herself still. She could buy a glamour if she had to, right? She could look the same. But she would know the difference—she and all the Twixt. She couldn’t imagine looking into a mirror and seeing an unfamiliar face any more than she could imagine looking into a mirror and seeing nothing at all.
“What is going to happen?” Joy asked. “What about me is going to change?”
Graus Claude sat back, his ire abating as he wove his double set of fingers over his chest. “The changeling acclamation can affect any number of characteristics, depending on one’s genealogical source,” he said. “Once you adopted your signatura, you placed yourself within the magics that make up the Twixt, the last vestiges of magic on Earth. Just as you accepted the Twixt, now the Twixt must accept you.” He leaned forward slightly. “You must adjust yourself and your expectations to the rules that bind our world—the rules that will shape and govern the rest of your life—and that, I suspect, will be the thing that will change you the most.”
Joy tried to follow the implications of his pretty speech. “I’m becoming magic?”
Graus Claude looked askance. “You are magic, Miss Malone,” he said. “All humans and places who have a modicum of magic are the very people who are chosen by the Folk and thereby claimed under an auspice, subsequently marked by one of the Scribes. You were marked by Master Ink, therefore it is no wonder that you should have originally possessed some of that magic in the first place, having been one with the Sight, and now that magic has been activated, either instigated by his hand or by your own actions during your latest display in the Council Hall.” His browridge quirked. “Indeed, given your history, we should have expected something like this.”
Joy marveled at the ever-widening definition of something like this.
There was a knock at the door, and Kurt entered bearing a silver tray with a single calling card. The Bailiwick wiped each of his four hands on cloth napkins before taking it primly in his claws. Graus Claude squinted at the words, and two hands pushed against the arms of the chair as he heaved himself up, still staring at the piece of card stock. One hand folded the napkin over his plate as the fourth brushed crumbs from his suit.
“Let
