Nightmare Ink (4 page)

The woman glared for several seconds before turning on her heel and stomping out of the apartment.

Isa expected her to slam the door.

It closed with a civilized, pointed
click
.

Isa let the still grumbling dog go.

Gus eased out from under the table, hackles raised.

Steve blew out a noisy breath. “You sure are a people person, aren’t you, Ice? Could you answer her questions without baiting her?”

“That woman gets on every last nerve I have,” Isa said. Thing is, she couldn’t put a finger on why. Did the agent’s bad attitude and loaded questions justify Isa’s snide responses?

“I gathered. She’s going to retaliate, you know. Hey, Gus. How are you, mutt?” Steve leaned over to scratch Augustus’s back when the dog, nose to the floor as if tracking Anne, wandered into range.

Gus’s tail and ears came up. He grinned at Steve.

Isa looked at him. “Retaliate how?”

“Search warrant on your customer files.”

She sat bolt upright and squeaked, “Based on what? She can’t take my computers, can she?”

“It’s common practice, Ice. Where are you going?” he demanded as she levered herself out of her chair.

“To hex my boxes.”

“Isa . . .”

“Those computers run my business, Steve,” she shrilled. “And there’s not a thing in them related to her case. If she takes them, she doesn’t get to keep her eyebrows.”

He nodded as if she’d confirmed his worst fears. “You did not just say that to the head of the Acts of Magic investigative unit.”

She sighed, subsided into the chair, and pinched the bridge of her nose. “You know who comes through the doors of Nightmare Ink. It’s not all soccer moms and sailors.”

Steve drew in a slow breath that drew him up straighter. “You’re worried about the gangs.”

“And all of the other people in the shadows who make rare use of my services. If the AMBI takes my computers, the people we least want wandering the city with Ink going bad will avoid me,” she said. “They’ll go to the hacks.”

“And if the AMBI examines your files on-site, it’s clear that it’s just a fishing expedition,” Steve surmised. “All right. I’m making a phone call, but I can’t guarantee anything.”

“Not asking you to.”

“No booby traps?”

She shook her head.

“Good. It ruined my day to put you in jail when you were seventeen. I don’t ever want to have to do it again.” He walked away.

Pausing in the doorway, he looked over his shoulder. “I care what happens to you, Isa, but if Agent Macquarie realizes I do, I can’t guarantee she’d replace me with someone who understands what you do.”

She groaned. “Agency versus department politics? I don’t know how to play those kinds of games, Steve.”

“It’s reassuring you know the line we’re walking.” His taut expression eased. “It has been a rough couple of days. Are you okay?”

“I think so.” It wasn’t a complete lie. What blood had oozed earlier had begun drying into an itchy crust on her leg. That counted as okay, right?

“You take care of your mom,” he said to the dog. Then he met her gaze. “Take it easy.”

He left.

She rubbed her temples, hoping it would ease the certainty that she was a complete screwup, even if she couldn’t quite identify how.

Opening the computer, Isa returned to digging through the Live Ink Association’s library. She found plenty of information about Live Ink—getting tattoos, the laws regarding tattoos, the usual cautions about going to certified and registered Live Ink artists, even a few mentions of the more lurid deaths associated with Live Ink going bad in the old days before the Acts of Magic laws. She saw nothing at all on capturing rogue Ink. Very little mention of rogue Ink, in fact.

While Isa rubbed her eyes and contemplated the wisdom of giving up, Nathalie knocked and let herself in without waiting for an answer. “Thanks for leaving the door unlocked for me,” Nathalie said as she entered. “Given anymore thought to giving me a copy of your key so I can help take care of the critters?”

“No need.”

Gus bounded out of his bed at Isa’s feet and tried to bowl Nathalie over with his greeting.

“Hey, Gus,” Nathalie said, rubbing the dog’s ears. She scowled. “Ice. When I first joined Nightmare Ink, you spotted me two month’s rent until I got up and running. You hosted that baby supply party for Cheri and Troy when they ran short of cash.”

When Troy and Isa had signed the lease a year ago, she’d had no idea that she’d gotten the muscular, soft-spoken man’s shiny-eyed, artist wife, Cheri, in the bargain. Until she’d gone into labor with their son, Cheri had spent hours at Nightmare Ink’s reception desk, sketching when she wasn’t chatting up customers or writing about the shop on an art blog she hosted.

Isa’s flat ink business had doubled.

“We want to help,” Nathalie said. “Why won’t you let us?”

Isa gaped at her. It hadn’t occurred to her that anyone wanted to help or even could. “My keys are in my coat pocket. Where are you going to go to get copies in this winter wonderland?”

“Bitter about the snow much?” Nathalie said, grinning as she fished for the keys. “Troy drove his POS truck. I have no idea how he got off Queen Anne in this mess, and I have no intention of asking. He said he’d hit a hardware place after he finishes the tattoo he’s working on. He’s going to drop me at my apartment on his way home so I don’t have to take the bus back up to Capitol Hill. In the meantime, however, I’m running to the grocery store for him. I guess Cheri’s got a yen for sauerkraut.”

Isa grimaced. “I thought I’d gotten used to keeping rum raisin ice cream in the shop freezer while she was pregnant, but sauerkraut? Has anyone told her she had the baby?”

“I guess nursing takes its toll,” Nathalie said. “’Cause I’m also buying a six-pack of porter.”

“Sauerkraut and porter? Remind me to never reproduce.”

“Amen, sister. I thought I’d take Gus out for his walk while I go. Want anything?”

“I’m so grossed out by beer and pickled cabbage that any appetite I had is dead,” she groused. “No. Wait. Ibuprofen. Research is giving me a headache.” Not to mention Daniel and Agent Anne Macquarie.

“How’s that going?”

“Badly.”

“I thought you could find anything on the Internet.”

“Common misconception. Maybe this is what I get for not going to college.”

“Yeah?” Nathalie frowned and came to glance at the screen. “What are you searching for?”

“How to capture rogue Ink. The problem is that Live Ink is new enough we haven’t had to deal with hosts dying from old age. The Ink deaths I’m finding are all failures to assimilate.”

“Both Ink and host die, then, right, unless you bind the tattoo?” she asked, leaning in to peer at the screen. “Whoa. Over two million hits? That sucks. But you’re searching the ‘history of Live Ink.’”

“All of which is wild conjecture and bullshit,” Isa said. She typed in a new parameter. “Here. My original search on ‘capturing rogue Ink.’”

“A mere half million hits?”

“All about the early days of Live Ink going bad in public.”

“Oh, yeah. Terrorists using it as a suicide bomb until their sacrificial teenagers turned out to have the magic cojones to handle the Ink,” Nathalie said. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but don’t you already know all this stuff? You’re SPD’s Live Ink expert because you’re the best, right?”

Isa sank lower in her chair. “Hardly. I’m the one they can afford.”

Nathalie flushed. “Wow. Sorry.”

She snagged Isa’s cell phone from the far side of the table and handed it to her. “Look. If you get stuck, call the research desk at the Seattle Public Library. If there’s anything to be found, the research librarians will know where to look. I’ve never stumped them. Come on, Gus. Let’s go for a walk in the snow.”

The dog bounced between Isa’s chair and Nathalie going for his leash in the entryway, the nylon of her parka rustling.

Isa frowned at Nathalie’s back. “What are you researching that you know this?”

“Song lyrics, man!” she said, clipping Gus into his halter and leash. “Poetry is hard work.”

Isa’s skinny, spiky-haired piercing artist led a not-so-secret rock ’n’ roll life on the side. She wrote songs and played lead guitar for her band, Rage of the Raptors.

Nat and Gus jingled out the door. “Back with the keys and the mutt in a little while!”

With nothing to lose, Isa called the library. It wasn’t as if she could be more mired in crappy search results.

The research librarians taught her a few search parameter tricks, but they came up dry, too. After twenty minutes on the phone, the woman said she had other customers to assist. “From what I found,” she said in parting, “I see the first Living Tattoo was created in Japan about sixty years ago.”

“That’s the theory.”

“I’d recommend checking the Live Tattoo organizations in Japan. Sorry we couldn’t help. Good luck.”

Japan. Why hadn’t that occurred to her? She hung up and did another search. Sure enough, three separate Live Ink organizations had their libraries online. In Japanese.

On impulse, Isa dialed another number.

“Okari Sushi. How may I help you?” Oki said in that absent, working-and-don’t-want-to-be voice she might have been born with.

“How’s your written Japanese?”

“Hey, Ice. Reading or writing?”

“Translating a website. I’m trying to find information on how to capture or destroy rogue Ink.”

Silence.

“Am I supposed to know you need to know how to capture or destroy rogue Ink?” she finally asked.

“Nope.”

“Okay. Shoot me the URL. I’ll take a look and call you.”

“Thanks, Oki.”

“It beats slinging sushi.”

***

In the morning, Anne produced her search warrant and a small army of geeks in suits. She stalked up on Isa blending and bottling ink in the basement of Nightmare Ink.

“Are you taking my boxes or doing an on-site search?” Isa asked before the agent could do more than slap the warrant on the workbench.

“On-site,” she gritted.

Isa bit back a grin. Bless Steve’s as-a-friend phone call. She waved an ink-stained gloved hand in a shooing motion, enjoying every dismissive wave. The scent of sage and sweetgrass hung so heavy in the room she could almost see the pressure waves moving through the air. “Have fun.”

She imagined she could hear the woman grinding her teeth as she turned tail and retreated.

Anne must have come up empty-handed. To Isa’s disappointment, Agent Macquarie didn’t melt down in the shop. Nor did she follow up with a subpoena. She merely retired to the basement to help wrap the site investigation.

Isa chafed at her slow healing leg and at Steve’s refusal to let her join the hunt for the escaped tattoo. Was that some misguided protective impulse on his part? Or AMBI orders?

Each of the two nights after the dragon’s escape, as she’d dropped into sleep, she’d experienced the swell of desolation Kelli Solvang’s Ink had thrust at her. Was the dragon alive? Where was it? Could she destroy it even if she found it? Did she have that right?

The third day after Kelli Solvang’s death, clouds promising rain blew in on a sweet-smelling wind out of the south. The snow turned to filthy slush.

Oki still hadn’t called. So Isa spent a few hours putting a flat ink memorial tattoo on a woman from Detroit who’d come to town for her father’s funeral.

Troy had a thick-set, eighteen-year-old man in his chair. The pair had their heads bent together. From the stray words Isa caught, she gathered they were discussing the client’s ink ambitions versus his budget.

The investigation wrapped in the basement. Steve came upstairs, promising to have his cleaning team through before end of business tomorrow.

Isa forgot to ask whose end of business.

Leaving Troy and Nathalie to mind the shop, she bundled into her coat and braved the four-block walk to Okari Sushi.

“Konbanwa, Isa-san,”
Oki’s father said from behind the sushi counter, bowing as she came through the door.

“Konbanwa, Hiro-san,”
she replied before Oki came grinning to take her to a table.

“Hey, what’s with the limp?” Oki asked.

“The stuff you’re not supposed to know?”

“Yeah?”

“Might have something to do with the limp.”

Oki frowned. “I didn’t realize what a big deal this was. The stuff you sent me? All log-in pages for the member’s only library archives. If you want in, you’ll have to join.”

“I’ll need your help filling out the applications.”

She nodded. “Mom’s out sick tonight. It’s just me and Dad. I’m trapped. Can I come by tomorrow before we open?”

“That would be great.”

“It’ll be good to get out,” she said, pulling a pencil from the bun she’d tied her shiny black hair into. “California roll?”

Full of Dungeness crab, rice, nori, and green tea, Isa walked back to the shop, reveling in the fact that she could now go wherever she wanted in her shop without having cops yelling.

“Hey, pretty lady. You look lonely,” a smooth, musical voice said as she strode toward her shop door.

She glanced at the striking young man reclining against the back of the bus shelter that stood in front of the kitchen wares store two doors down. In the glare of the streetlights, the young man, dressed in skintight dark Levi’s, a shirt that outlined every defined muscle, and a beat-up leather jacket, raked Isa with a hungry glance.

Had to be one of Patty’s “projects” if he was working her territory.

“A couple of Ria’s gang tagged that shelter this morning,” Isa said, trusting he’d been on the streets long enough to know which gang claimed this part of Ballard Avenue. “Smear it and they’ll tag you.”

He jerked upright, swearing.

She smiled and reached for the door of Nightmare Ink.

“Aw,
chica
,” he said. “You don’t want to go in there. The owner, she’s a
bruja
. A witch. People say she’s got a secret room down in the basement. You go in there and part of you dies.”

Her arm froze in pulling the door open. An accurate summation of the services she performed in the basement studio. But witchcraft? That was new. Was it because of the man who’d died down there? She swung back to study him in the light cast by the street and shop lights.