LITMIR.BIZ

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into the room, lifting her hand to her eye as the four-armed toad glanced up, brow furrowing in confusion. She spoke before he did, crisp and sharp.

      “I demand entrance to the Bailiwick of the Twixt.”

      Graus Claude froze. His icy blue eyes glazed over, growing milky like cataracts, his wide mouth open in midbellow. His great jaw yawned with the weight of gravity, unhinging with a tiny clack and opening impossibly wider, lips peeling back from the rows of sharp, pointy teeth. Joy watched in fascinated horror as the giant amphibian’s tongue curled back upon itself, pale pink and gleaming, and adhered to the roof of his mouth.

      Beneath the Bailiwick’s tongue were stairs, going down.

      “Guard the door,” Inq said without looking at Kurt. He moved to obey. She placed one boot on the edge of the bottom lip and gestured to Joy. “Follow me.”

      Joy gaped, attempting to make sense of what was happening, what she was seeing. She knew her eyes, at least, could be liars.

      “Are you kidding me?” she asked, looking at Inq, then Kurt. “I mean, are you freaking kidding me?” The Bailiwick showed no awareness of any of them, or, for that matter, anything at all. He didn’t look alive any longer—it was as if he’d become a statue, a piece of furniture, like a wardrobe with its doors thrown open, exposing his insides to the world. Joy waved at his maw. “What did you do to him?”

      “I’ve invoked his raison d’être,” Inq said simply. “And I’m entering the Bailiwick, as are you. I want to show you something.”

      Joy looked to Kurt. “Is this normal?”

      The muscular bodyguard did not so much as twitch. “He is the Bailiwick,” Kurt said, as if that explained everything. Which it didn’t.

      Joy pointed behind her. “There is a stairway under his tongue!”

      Inq smiled slyly. “Precisely,” she said. “Follow me.”

      And she stepped over his bottom lip, which zipped a line of blue fire just behind his teeth.

      “Don’t worry,” she said. “It always does that.” Inq winked. “Watch your step!”

      And she marched down, down, down into the Bailiwick’s throat.

      Joy looked desperately around the room. Kurt stood in front of the office doors, staring ahead, politely averting his eyes. She wondered if Kurt was there to keep people from coming in or to keep her from running out. She edged closer to the gaping maw—widened to the full height of a man—and tentatively placed a foot on the first step. It was solid stone, worn slightly smooth in the center, and was the first of many going down into darkness.

      Joy hesitantly shifted her weight, trying not to think too much about her head passing under the frog’s upper lip, stepping into his mouth, under his tongue. The line of blue fire zipped by her feet, changing to ruby red as it passed. Joy stumbled and nearly tripped on the stair. Her hand shot out to steady herself. Her fingers gave under the moist inner cheek.

      “Ew,” she muttered and wiped her hand against her jeans.

      “Come on,” Inq’s voice coaxed from somewhere down below. “It’s safe.” Inq’s words rose up, unseen. “In fact, it’s probably the safest place in the world.”

      “Small comfort,” Joy muttered as she swallowed her fear and took the next step down.

      The stairs descended into a dark tunnel with a yellow, misty light at the end. It didn’t smell like a dungeon and didn’t feel like a trap, but the stairway itself felt very old and the air was very still. The passageway brightened as she continued down the steps, growing slightly warmer, friendlier and smelling faintly of grass.

      Joy blinked as she walked into a verdant green meadow that spread out to the horizon under a soft, sunny sky. She and Inq stood on the edge of an ancient wood, shaded by towering trees and twisting, leafy vines. The ground smelled loamy and rich and brown. A clear, sparkling brook chuckled over smooth stones. There was a hushed whisper as a breeze tickled the grass and clapped the leaves, but Joy could not feel the air on her skin. Despite what her eyes were telling her, everything felt like a held breath.

      Inq squatted next to a patch of periwinkle flowers. She looked truly happy for the first time...ever. It was the look on her face that made Joy feel that it was okay to take those last, few steps into the impossible grove. She crossed the last riser and blinked up at the hazy suggestion of a sun.

      “Where are we?” Joy asked. “And don’t say ‘inside the Bailiwick.’ That doesn’t explain any of this.”

      “Doesn’t it?” Inq chirped, rising to stand. “The Bailiwick isn’t a title like a bailiff or a duke—it’s a place. The Bailiwick is the comptroller of the space between worlds. Specifically, this space.” She ran her flawless fingers over the tops of the grass. “Imagine this is a pocket sewn inside the Twixt. A little pocket universe, a tiny closet in space and time.”

      Joy turned around in a circle. The base of the stair floated behind them with meadow fading out in all directions into an indistinct blur. The horizon was the exact color of the sunlight overhead. It was as if the whole world bowed at the edges and slipped under itself like tucked-in sheets. The slippery perspective made Joy’s head swim. She squeezed her eyes shut momentarily. She could only manage one word:

      “Why?”

      Inq’s face grew serious. The pink-and-green sparks in her eyes flickered like flames. “To protect a door,” she said. “A door built between worlds—and shortly afterward, we had to use it to protect something else.”

      Her eyes flicked over Joy’s shoulder. Joy turned and saw a tall woman standing by a tree. She was dressed in a long, flowing gown belted low on her hips, and her arms were covered in purple-black glyphs, her hair long and black and shining. Her eyes were as old as centuries. And when she smiled, two dimples appeared over a tiny, button chin.

      “Hello, Joy,” she said. “My daughter has told me so much about you.”

       SIX

      JOY STARED AT the tall woman standing on the edge of a forest inside the belly of Graus Claude. Many things slid into place, but too many others slipped away, defying reason and sanity.

      “You’re...” Joy began, but wasn’t sure how to finish. “Ink and Inq,” she tried again. “You made them?”

      The woman drew her fingers down the bark of a tree. Calligraphy shimmered under her touch. “Yes, but they are their own persons now. Just as I designed them to be.” She gestured to Inq, who hurried forward and tucked herself into the crook of her mother’s arm, resting her heart-shaped face against her shoulder. The family resemblance—if that was what Joy could call it—was unmistakable.

      “You’re their mother,” Joy whispered. Inq and Ink shaped themselves to look like her. Joy glanced at Inq. No, she remembered, Inq was the one who shaped them both. She was older. She’d been first. She’d known all along.

      Joy swallowed, heart hammering. “Does Ink know?”

      Inq shook her head. “No.”

      The words echoed in her ears, boring into her brain.

      “What do you mean, ‘No’?” Joy snapped. “You can’t tell me you’re hiding Ink’s mother in a pocket universe for his own good!”

      “Of course not,” Inq said. “She’s hiding here to save her life.”

      Joy found herself strangely unwilling to take another step. She was trapped along the edge of this world in a secret corner of the Twixt, all but feeling her skin bubbling with nerves. She felt lost,

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