Nightmare Ink (2 page)

Waiting amidst the shouting, the swearing, and, at one point, the football toss going on over the tops of far too many heads, Isa sat beside Steve’s desk. The state patrol had closed both floating bridges. The storm had dropped a foot of snow in the past three hours and turned the Seattle Police Department’s North Precinct into a three ring circus of police officers who couldn’t patrol the city.

Steve had propped her bandaged, throbbing left leg on a board laid across the top of a trash can and then gone in search of coffee. She doubted he’d find any worth drinking.

She leaned in and picked up the photo of Steve’s smiling parents and doe-eyed sister. Running a fingertip down the raised knot work on the frame, she smiled back. She liked Steve’s desk. It was peaceful. Something about it, either his penchant for tidiness or more likely the man himself, erected a wall of serenity.

She envied him the evidence of family, of connection. As much as Isa valued the peace Steve seemed to impart, however, she didn’t want to spend the day camped beside his desk.

Replacing the photo carefully, she sat back. She closed her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose hard. The headache that had settled in behind her eyes refused to subside.

The desolation she’d picked up from the dragon lingered behind her sternum, hunched and uncomfortable. It resolved into homesickness.

Definitely not hers.

It had to have come either from the dragon or from the man it had killed, Mr. Kelli Solvang. She doubted a dead man could suffer homesickness. That left the dragon.

Why hadn’t it killed her?

She should be out there with Steve’s trackers searching for it. While the dragon wouldn’t be interested in people without magic, anyone with enough power to see the rogue Ink would be vulnerable once the thing got hungry for another dose of blood and magic.

Approaching footsteps alerted her to Steve’s return, hopefully with the coffee he’d promised.

“Isa. What happened?”

The fluid, warm baritone jolted awareness straight through her core. Her eyes flew open. She jerked upright. The move pulled over the trash can. Her left foot hit the floor. Pain stabbed through her leg, wringing a squeak of protest from her throat.

Not Steve.

Tall, dark, and lithe Daniel Alvarez stood before her, his expensive-looking black suit crisp and perfect. Not a spot of lint. No beaded moisture to hint that he’d come in from the storm. No flakes of melting snow lingered in his gleaming black hair.

Graceless, pulse hammering in her ears, she struggled to her feet and rubbed suddenly damp palms on the sweat pants she’d managed to pull on over the thick bandage after the paramedics had cut her jeans from her wounded leg.

“Daniel.”

He smiled, crinkling the corners of his pale blue eyes.

“What are you doing here?”

“Detective Corvane called and left a convoluted message about prisoners and Live Ink. Are you going to answer my question?”

“What happened?” Isa repeated, trying to ignore feeling like a grubby five-year-old next to his polished good looks. “The police brought me a guy strung out on his Ink.”

“They waited too long and his tattoo killed him?” Daniel finished.

“The Ink escaped,” she said. “You needed to know.”

He stared at her, disbelief in the furrows between his brows. “Escaped?”

Hot blood rushed to her face. She could have prevented the escape.
Should
have.

Daniel took her by the shoulders.

Sparks showered through her blood.

“It tore through your circle?” Pity stretched his frown and strained his rich voice thin.

Poor little Isa, scraping the bottom of the magic barrel. Maybe she deserved his pity. She should have erected a circle before assessing the prisoner. She just wasn’t certain it would have changed anything if she had. The Ink had gone critical so fast.

Daniel’s power seeped into her. It took a very long time for his jagged, yellow and red energy to hit bottom inside.

“Either you’re spent or we’re mellowing,” he noted, meeting her gaze, humor in his own.

Isa’s breath caught. How she wished she could believe they’d become compatible. “Spent. The dragon attacked me . . .”

“You’re injured,” he said in the same instant, his voice sharpening. His grip tightened.

“It’s minor,” she protested.

“Magical attacks are never what they seem, Isa. Even you know that,” he snapped.

Maybe she wasn’t spent after all. At his words and the tone that suggested she might be an idiot, her own power, warm and golden, boiled up along with anger.

Where her power connected with his, the energies flared and ignited, draining them both. He released her and stepped back, his face impassive.

“Stop this and come work for me,” he said, smoothing out his voice with easy charm. “I care what happens to you.”

“Work for you?” she echoed in shock. Sure. Since they’d been students together at Weird Ink before their mentor, Triple J, had retired, Daniel had talked about the two of them having a place together. That had been before they’d become lovers and discovered that their respective powers were incompatible. Destructive, even. If he’d forgotten, the stinging sparks they’d just thrown at one another should have kicked him right in the memory.

How did that translate into working for him?

“I have more business than I can handle,” he said. His soothing tone suggested she was being unreasonable. “You have a unique and valuable skill set.”

“We can’t work together, Daniel,” Isa retorted. “My magic. Your magic. They don’t play well together, remember?”

“We worked together as apprentices.”

They hadn’t. Not really. He’d reveled in being in the spotlight, soaking up praise and attention. She’d lurked in the shadows. She still did.

“I have a shop, thanks.”

“One that barely makes enough money for you to eat,” he snapped. “In a filthy, run-down part of town that’s likely to collapse the next time a cement truck rumbles past.”

“I do fine.”

He raised an eyebrow. In a low voice, pitched only for her, he said, “How is it fine that you destroy what other artists create, Isa? It can’t be all you’re good for.”

“It saves lives.”

As if she hadn’t said a thing, he said, “How long would you ‘do fine’ if it became common knowledge that you don’t have a single tattoo? No one wants ink of any kind from someone who doesn’t have it.”

Her hands curled into fists. “You have no idea whether I have ink—”

“You forget I’ve seen and possessed every inch of that sweet body,” he interrupted.

Activity around them had quieted and slowed. Cops and their instincts? Or had their voices risen enough to be overheard?

“It’s been five years since you’ve seen anything other than my middle finger, Alvarez,” she said. “You have no idea what kind of ink I have.”

His jaw bunched. He closed his right hand around her biceps tight enough to bruise. “You will be mine. One way. Or another.”

“What?” Isa flinched and caught a faint whiff of sulfur. Ice tumbled down her innards as she stared at him. Someone—or something—else glared out at her from Daniel’s eyes.

“Mr. Alvarez,” Steve hailed in an easy-going, defuse-the-tension-at-all-costs tone of voice.

Every last hint of that something else in Daniel’s demeanor vanished. His grip loosened. His expression turned from cold stone to a warm, affable smile.

Confusion rocked her. Had she imagined that glimpse of—what? What had she seen? Could she trust her senses after watching a man’s Ink kill him on the table in her basement?

“We hadn’t meant to drag you out in this weather,” Steve went on, striding in behind her and plunking a paper cup filled with coffee on his desk.

A woman with her blond hair cut in a short bob, clad in a charcoal business suit and no nonsense black pumps, accompanied him, eying Daniel and then Isa.

“Since you’re here,” Steve said, filling the silence, “would you mind having a look at a few photographs for us? Do you know this man?”

Daniel released Isa to accept the printed photo Steve held out to him and then shook his head before handing the photo back. “No. I don’t. Do you have a photograph of his artwork from before this incident?”

The woman gave him a smaller photo.

“I’d need a better shot of the artwork before I could say anything about who might have done the work,” Daniel said. He shrugged and pasted a smile on his face.

To anyone else, it would look genuine. Isa knew better. Though the corners of his eyes crinkled as if the smile were real, his cool blue eyes didn’t warm the way they would if he’d meant it. The way they used to after the two of them had spent the night together.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t be more help,” he said. “Come on, Isa. Let me get your coat. I’ll take you home.”

“I’m sorry, Ms. Romanchzyk.” Steve laid on the “public relations” voice. “We need that statement. This is Anne Macquarie from the local branch of the Acts of Magic Bureau of Investigations office. She’ll be leading the joint task force investigating Mr. Solvang’s death.”

Isa nodded.

“Where’s your lawyer, Isa?” Daniel inquired.

“I’m a witness,” she countered. “Not a suspect.”

“That’s right,” Anne Macquarie responded, so quickly that it tripped Isa’s internal alarms.

She raised an eyebrow at Steve.

He wouldn’t meet her eye.

“I have a few questions for Ms. Romanchzyk,” the agent said. “Then I guarantee the department will see her home. We have a vested interest in her safety.”

Still uncertain about what she’d sensed in Daniel, Isa had no intention of getting into a car with him. She’d rather answer AMBI questions. Not that she’d let him know that. She needed the scraps of flat ink business he sometimes tossed her.

“I appreciate you coming in, Daniel,” Isa said. “I need to hunt down that dragon and find a way to contain it. If you have suggestions or if you hear anything . . .”

“I will contact you immediately,” he said, taking her hand. He lifted it to his lips in a gesture so old-fashioned she had to suppress a snort.

Isa didn’t like the anticipation that fluttered through her lower belly at the contact.

He released her and strode away without a backward glance.

Abruptly exhausted, she sank into her chair. She wrapped her arms around her ribs. It didn’t help. Nothing changed.

A man was still dead.

His tattoo had escaped her so-called containment studio.

Daniel still walked away.

The ache in her leg and in her head redoubled. “Got any whiskey for that coffee?”

“Not unless I raid the evidence room. You all right?” Steve asked.

Isa shot a look between the two of them. The detective and the AMBI agent. “You tell me.”

The agent planted her palms on Steve’s desk and leaned in. “Ms. Romanchzyk . . .” She stumbled over the name and paused.

“Romanchzyk,” Steve said, “rhymes with romantic.”

Isa rubbed her forehead.

“We keep an eye on Live Ink artists,” she said. “And it hasn’t escaped our notice that you seem to have contact with some interesting people. Gangs members. Criminals. Organized crime.”

“Precious few of the last,” Isa acknowledged, picking up her coffee and gulping a huge mouthful of the steaming liquid. After a close encounter with Daniel Alvarez, she needed the fortification. “Organized crime types don’t go to hacks for Live Ink. They can afford someone who knows what they’re doing. Ink rarely goes bad on those guys.”

“Not to mention the accountability of being the artist whose Live Ink tried to kill a mobster?” Steve interjected.

“Not to mention I serve the people who come through my door, no questions asked because I bind Live Ink,” Isa said. “That makes me neutral territory. Anyone who comes to see me while wearing Live Ink comes in knowing they’re losing control of what amounts to a loaded weapon.”

“I don’t question the service you provide, Ms. Romanchzyk,” Anne Macquarie said. “I question whether it puts you in contact with someone who might have paid you to delay saving a material witness in a federal organized crime case.”

Isa sat bolt upright and nearly spilled her coffee. “I didn’t know anything about your witness until he showed up bleeding in my studio. Hell, I was halfway across the room trying to get my gear when he died.”

“Why don’t we take care of your statement? We can address specific questions from there,” Steve said. He pulled out his chair, sat down, signed into his computer, and called up the forms. “Go ahead, Isa. Whenever you’re ready.”

She swallowed another swig of bitter coffee. The headache seemed to appreciate the influx of caffeine. She sketched the sequence of events.

Anne Macquarie stood behind Steve’s desk, frowning over Isa’s point-by-point recitation, until Isa crossed her arms and sat back in her chair.

“Do you know Nikolai Vladimirovich Vasilyev?” the agent demanded.

“The real estate guy who’s buying up vacant lots in Seattle?” Isa clarified, and then shrugged. “I know of him. From the news.”

“From the news,” Anne echoed.

Scowling, Isa waited for a follow-up question or accusation.

It didn’t come.

“If you’re suggesting that Mr. Solvang was turning against Vasilyev, I’ll ask if the whole Russian mob thing isn’t a little trite by now,” Isa said. She turned a frown on Steve. “Are we done here? I’d like to go home.”

“Any further questions?” Steve prompted the agent at his shoulder.

“Not at the moment,” Anne replied. Her tone implied something different. “Wait. Yes. Why do people get Living Tattoos? Criminals, specifically?”

Isa rose, gritting her teeth at the stabs of fire in her injured thigh. “Live Ink makes you more than you were. Your talents and your skills are augmented. You live longer.”

“How much longer?”

“We don’t know yet. The first people who received Living Tattoos fifty, sixty years ago are still alive. Two or three have died, but those were major car accidents,” Isa said. “Not only are the first Ink hosts not dying of old age, they’re aging really slowly.”

Steve got up and came around his desk to offer her an arm. His eyebrows climbed when she accepted the support.