both hands, hiking somewhere in the rain forests, riding a camel through the desert, snorkeling in the Great Barrier Reef and haloed against a gorgeous sunrise at the top of Machu Picchu—Enrique’s life had been one amazing adventure after the next. It was hard to believe that he was dead.
People milled about in black dresses and crisp suits, talking in low voices and hugging one another in tissue-soft arms. Joy could hear the whispers between them, words like aneurysm, what a shame and really knew how to live. Joy inhaled the sweet scent of lilies. The flowers crowded the reception tables and flanked the heavy-looking urn. Inq welcomed guests, looking glamorous in a little black dress and a choker of pearls. She smiled and nodded and thanked them all for coming. Luiz had saved Joy a seat with the rest of the Cabana Boys, who looked unusually somber in the front row. Joy remembered that Enrique had said that he had no family, so she figured that these were his friends, his business colleagues and a few dozen invisible people.
Joy sat down gingerly, self-conscious about joining the row of beautiful men who had known Enrique best, but she didn’t know anyone else here. The murmurings and gentle noises slid around her, not touching, not comforting, barely real. Unlike Inq, she didn’t know what to say, and the silence felt as black as her dress. Beside her, Ilhami took her hand and squeezed. She squeezed back. With all that was unsaid between them, they understood each other perfectly.
“Sorry, Cabana Girl,” he whispered. “No booby doll today.”
He’d surprised a smile out of her. “That’s okay.”
He shrugged, looking uncomfortable in his expensive suit. “Where’s Ink?”
“In some hospital in Darfur,” Joy said. “He said he’d be here soon.”
Ilhami tugged his cuffs over his tattoos. “Better save him a seat.”
She placed her purse on the empty seat to her right and tried to remember the sound of Enrique’s voice, the way his eyes twinkled when he was being clever, or her first impression of him—a South American James Bond. She tried to hold on to the things that he’d told her, that family was important and that they were both very lucky and how sorry he was for bringing her deeper into their world of danger and politics. He’d tucked her into a coat and kissed her forehead and given her coffee before he’d sent her into a drug lord’s den on the edge of the Twixt in order to rescue Ilhami. Later he’d driven the getaway car at high speeds and ensured she’d made it back home in one piece. A tightness welled in her throat, and Tuan offered her a box of tissues. She took one and twisted it around her fingertip.
She didn’t remember calling in to work. She didn’t remember what excuses she’d given. She had told her father that she was going to the funeral of her boyfriend’s sister’s boyfriend, which was close enough to the truth that it hadn’t hurt to say it except for the usual hurt of having to say such things aloud.
That morning, Nikolai had picked her up in Enrique’s customized Ferrari and handed her a cup of coffee as they’d driven together in silence. His full lips had pinched as he’d hit the hidden switch, slipping them instantly through time and space to arrive just south of the funeral home.
Joy glanced out the window. She had no idea where they were—probably New York City, which was where Enrique had worked when he was in the States. It was green and leafy outside, unfamiliar, with an open, airy sky that didn’t feel like New York, but they could be anywhere. It didn’t really matter. Enrique, the eldest Cabana Boy, was gone, leaving behind friends and tears and photos and ashes. Joy stroked the inside of her palm, tracing the damp lifeline.
This was where all adventures ended. This was what it meant to be mortal.
Even with Folk blood in her veins and her own signatura, Joy Malone was not immortal.
The service washed over her in a buzz of condolences, Bible quotes and expensive cologne. Words wafted through her ears, unremarkable and unimportant. Joy fixed her gaze on the dark metal container in the center of the dais. She had a hard time reconciling how anything so small could possibly contain Enrique, who had lived so large. It was too small, too ordinary, too quiet to be him. Without seeing a body, Joy found it hard to believe that he was dead.
He could be faking it—staging his own death. Living under the radar, off the grid, leaving his old life behind in order to live in the Twixt. Maybe Inq helps him do it. Maybe he’s older than he looked and has to make a new life somewhere every sixty years to throw people off the scent. There are movies like that, right? It makes sense. It could happen. It could be a bluff...
But she knew, in her heart, it wasn’t.
It had taken Inq several tries to convince Joy that her lehman’s death had been due to natural causes, a sudden burst in the brain, and not some kind of mistake, and even more convincing to assure her that he hadn’t been a victim of Ladybird or Briarhook, Sol Leander or any one of their other enemies in the Twixt. Enrique’s death hadn’t been murder or revenge—it had just been time.
“He was mortal,” Inq had said. “Mortals die.”
It had happened. It was real. And there was nothing Joy could do. Humans were mortal. There were some things not even her magical scalpel could erase.
Sometimes there are no mistakes.
Joy shuddered and pulled her shrug closer.
She didn’t have a lot of experience with death, having been six or seven when her last grandparent died. She didn’t know how her Folk blood might affect how long she’d live and what would happen to her afterward. She knew what she was supposed to believe, but her brief stint in Sunday School had never prepared her for being part-Twixt. Did Folk go to Heaven? Did their half-human descendants, those with the Sight? Or did they go somewhere else? Where was Great-Grandmother Caroline now? Had she died young, for one of the Folk, or had she been old for a human? Joy glanced at Inq, dry-eyed and poised, knowing few could see the pale glyphs flying over her skin in silent fury.
A dark, long-haired woman offered Inq a tissue, which she politely refused. Joy stared at the Scribe. Would Ink be this calm when Joy was the one in a box?
The scent of lilies became cloying, and Joy pressed the tissue to her face.
When her eyes cleared, Ink was beside her.
She didn’t know when he had arrived, whether he’d walked through the door or if he had appeared out of thin air, but she quickly took his hand in hers, twining their fingers together. He’s here. We’re both alive. We’re together. I love you.
Ink was handsome in his black suit; only the silver wallet chain hanging by his leg looked slightly out of place. She leaned closer, breathing in the fresh rain scent of him. He sat comfortably, open-faced, listening to the speeches, taking cues from her and those around him, immersing himself in what it meant to be mortal, to experience loss, to be part of her world, even as his sister walked up to the podium to say a few words.
She ignored the microphone and stood straight in her heels. “Thank you for coming,” she said in her crisp, clear voice. She didn’t need an amplifier—even her whispers sliced through sound. “I loved Enrique, as did all of you.” She tipped her head to the side. “Well, maybe I loved him a little bit more.” There were some appreciative chuckles, Joy’s among them. Ink ran his thumb gently over her wrist. “And while I loved his beautiful body—” a few eyebrows rose, Joy’s included “—I mostly loved his soul—his funny, warm, incredibly generous, fiercely competitive, adventurous, wondrous
