Nightmare Ink (5 page)

Glossy black hair, stylishly tousled. Olive complexion and bottomless black eyes. A lean, taut body. He was beautiful save for the hint of sly derision at the corners of his eyes and slightly effeminate mouth that twitched as if her perusal amused him.

A pale hand clapped over that mouth.

Patty.

Isa recognized the thick knuckles and the candy cane–striped fake fingernails as well as her broad shoulders, massive breasts, and thick waist clothed in skintight black velvet.

“Ice, I’m sorry,” Patty grated in her pack-a-day, gravelly baritone. “Pay Bishop no mind. He’s a superstitious moron.”

Rage fired in the glittering black eyes showing above Patty’s hand.

Isa didn’t know what alerted her, but suspicion sank through her gut. She frowned and let go of the door to approach Patty and her whore apprentice. The dirty slush beneath Isa’s boots
skritch
ed.

She shook her head. “No, he isn’t a moron.”

Bishop jerked in Patty’s grasp, but the bricklayer-turned–drag queen held him tight.

Isa peeled off a glove and touched Bishop’s bare hand. Something—another sense—reared up within her in recognition as another personality, elusive and predatory, stirred at the goad of contact. She nodded.

“He’s a spy.” She nudged a shot of power through Bishop’s skin.

He stiffened and squeaked in shock.

Isa met his eye. “Have you told Patty about your tattoo? The one living wrapped around your waist? Surely you’ve told her who you really work for.”

She let go and noticed that Patty’s grip on Bishop had tightened. The skin beneath Patty’s hand looked pale.

“Careful, Patty,” Isa said. “You’re marring the goods.”

“Son of a bitch.” Patty jerked the hand away and screeched, “Bishop, you little whore. Who sent you?”

Bishop shot Isa a look of pure loathing.
“Bruja.”

She lifted an eyebrow. “That is an interesting accusation from someone who sewed a second soul to his hide. If you figure out who he’s spying for, Patty, will you let me know?”

Patty wrapped a fist in Bishop’s collar and settled a grim look upon Isa.

“When,” she corrected. “Yes. Thanks for letting me know. Should have known he was too pretty to be true.”

Bishop jerked against Patty’s hold. He might as well have been fighting a mountain.

Turning on her heel, Isa stomped across the cracked and heaved sidewalk, went inside Nightmare Ink, spun, flicked on the
OPEN
light, and shut the door as Patty dragged Bishop down the wet cobbled street. No mean feat, considering Patty’s three-inch red stilettos, black lace thigh-high stockings, and the explosion of red and black tulle that made up her very short skirt. Not a practical outfit for the dirty snow.

“Hey, Isa,” Nathalie poked her head up from behind the reception desk. At least she looked the part. Metal gleamed from her ears, nose, lips and eyebrows. No one wanted a piercing from someone who didn’t have any herself. “You look like you’re feeling better.”

Isa could get away with being a tattoo artist who didn’t have tattoos, especially with her preference for full-coverage clothing. But those who dabbled in Live Ink had a reputation for being odd. Until tonight,
odd
hadn’t included accusations of witchcraft.

She ignored her twitching left quadriceps.

“Good supper?” Nat asked. “How’s Oki? Handling the new jewelry okay?”

“She’s fine,” Isa said, shrugging out of her coat and rounding the counter to hang it up. “Yunna-san was home with a cold. Oki’s father was trapped in the kitchen. Oki flashed me long enough to let me make sure the piercings were healing well. She’s following instructions. They look good. Nice placement.”

Nathalie’s shoulders relaxed. She ran her fingers through her spiky black and purple-tipped hair as if that could erase the fact that she cared how her work had turned out. “Good. Thanks.”

She backed up to give Isa access to the computer.

“Sure,” Isa said as she plunked her butt in the chair and brought up the empty schedule.

“I see you met Patty’s new eye candy.”

“Patty’s new eye candy is a spy,” Isa said, looking over her shoulder at Nathalie. “He’s wearing a Live Tat and an enormous attitude. I don’t know whether to assume he’s from the AMBI, one of the crime families, a new gang, or somewhere else entirely.”

Nathalie froze, her kohl-lined hazel eyes wide. “Isa Romanchzyk, that’s not funny. He could be working for Daniel. He’s dangerous. You know it, even if you don’t want to admit it. I know it. I’m willing to bet he knows we know it.”

At hearing Steve’s warning coming from Nathalie, too, Isa flinched.

“Daniel’s arrogant because he’s the best. He’s brilliant,” she said. Her voice shook. “Not dangerous. Besides. I’ve never bound one of his pieces. He’d have no reason to mess with me.”

But he had already, hadn’t he, if he’d been Anne’s “source”? Still looking at Nathalie, she caught the glimmer of fear in her eyes. “What?”

“You’re wrong. Just before you got back, Zoog Fairbanks showed up,” Nathalie said. “He’s in a bad way. I put him downstairs.”

Isa stared at her, her mouth hanging open. Not again. “You waited until now to tell me I had a client?”

Nathalie flicked the titanium ring in her silver-painted lip and shook her head. “Damn it, Isa. I get that you think Zoog had potential. When he was tagging, I used to see something really compelling in his art. So did Troy. But Zoog flushed that talent, Ice. You tried to get him into art school, but he’s so afraid of facing the dark inside of himself, he left small-time crime and went to Daniel for Live Ink that would turn him into a real thug. How many times in the four years you’ve known him have you talked Zoog out of getting Live Ink?”

Isa closed her eyes. “A lot.”

“A lot. Well, here he is in trouble with Ink and in your containment studio.”

Opening her eyes again, Isa shook her head.

“He’s strung out on the Ink, Ice!” Nathalie said. “I know the signs. You’ve made sure I know them. He could hurt you. Really hurt you.”

“Maybe. But if he has Ink and I don’t do something about it, he’ll end up hurting someone else. At least he’s isolated in a steel and basalt rock box if anything goes wrong,” Isa said. A shimmer of disquiet tugged at her. She glanced out the front window to where Patty and Bishop had been. “Did Patty and Bishop see Zoog come in?”

Nat shrugged. “Patty’s a fixture. I don’t know when she opened shop or when lover boy showed up to decorate the sidewalk. Look, Ice. You made Daniel’s muscle. Don’t you think you better call the cops?”

She contemplated the suggestion as she rose. She could call Steve, but what was she going to say? “My competition may be watching me, and it’s wigging out my tough-as-nails piercing gal. Would you come on down and bust his glorious ass?”

“I’d better check on Zoog,” she said as Nathalie’s gaze slid to the computer screen. “Can you stand by to dial the paramedics if he’s—”

Isa broke off as Nat blanched and pointed.

The hair at the back of Isa’s neck rose. She swung round. A chat window had popped up on the computer screen.

“Do not interfere,” it said.

Fear shivered down Isa’s spine. She hadn’t installed chat software on the shop computer.

Someone had a line into her box.

“Pull the plug on the Internet!” she yelped, diving for the mouse. She closed the window, half expecting it to open again as she shut down the machine.

Her cell beeped. Text message. She didn’t need to be a brain surgeon to know what it said. Without bothering to check the screen, she powered the phone off. Anger thrummed through her in time with her pulse.

Straightening, cell clenched in one fist, she glared at Nathalie. “Go home.”

“Hell, no!” Nat countered. “I am not leaving you here alone with one of Daniel’s people downstairs and someone we can’t ID outside. This is a setup, Ice. I don’t know what kind, but it is.”

It was starting to feel that way. Isa nodded and slid her cell to the desktop. The center of her palms tingled in response to magic stirring in the basement. The studio door downstairs must still be open. She had to get down there.

“Thanks. I may need you to stand by to call nine-one-one if Zoog is in the trouble I think he is. Tell you what. Close us down. Lock the door. No answering the phone,” she commanded, making a beeline for the stairs.

The landline on the desk went off as if on cue.

Nathalie hugged her arms tight around her body as she stared at the ringing phone. “Voice mail for the win.”

Isa clattered down the concrete stairs to the basement, annoyance burning a hole in her sternum. She wanted to slam open the door to the studio, but big, thick, nonreactive metal doors on industrial hinges only move so fast.

Malevolent intent pulsed out through the doorway. The energy slithered up her body and twined around her throat. She mustered a surge of power that burned the hateful thread seeking access to her life force right off her body.

“Damn it, Zoog,” she muttered as she stepped into the containment studio and sealed the door behind her.

Did she imagine the serpent’s hiss in response?

Zoog Fairbanks slumped in the chair in the middle of the room. His scalp shone through his normally thick, flawless brown hair. If Isa had to guess, she’d say he’d been pulling his hair out in clumps. Or someone else had. He looked gray, and he drew breath as if each were an effort. He’d traded his street thug jeans and hoodies for navy suit trousers, a white button-down, and a jacket straight from an old-fashioned TV cop show.

“Hey, Ice,” he wheezed, offering her a weak smile. “You’re looking good as always, babe, though I hear they make clothes in colors other than black these days. Ole Zoog was beginning to think you wouldn’t show.”

“I don’t want any crap, Zoog. What the hell is going on?” Isa demanded. “Someone’s put a guy on my front door, a line into my computer, and then somehow divined my unlisted cell number. Who do you suppose did all that? There’s a message being delivered. Care to guess what it is?”

She didn’t think Zoog had the circulatory capacity to pale, but his face turned an even nastier shade of pasty gray.

Another surge of malignant energy skittered around the circle of the room. She thought she could hear the scrabble of claws on stone.

Zoog sucked a shuddering breath in between the gap in his front teeth. Fear stood out in the gesture and in the oily sweat gathering on his forehead. He licked crusted lips.

“He doesn’t want you to help me,” he croaked. His voice broke. “Should have known he could reach this far. I told him you couldn’t be corrupted. Not like me.”

“Daniel?’ she whispered. Surprise and confusion rocked her. The first tendril of fear snaked through her blood. She heard Steve’s warning echoing through her head again.

She shook it off.

She knew Daniel. Or had at one time. He’d always been driven and brilliant, but not mean. Not evil.

What the hell was going on?

Zoog drew a shuddering breath.

Isa frowned. Sympathy tugged at her. She subsided. “Read a certain way, this could look like the grandmother of all setups, Zoog. Look me in the eye and tell me it isn’t.”

“I don’t know, Ice. If it is, I’m not in on it, honest,” he groaned as she hesitated. “I’m in big trouble, babe. I didn’t know where else to go.”

He wasn’t lying there. He was in more trouble than he knew. If she didn’t do something within the next hour, Zoog wouldn’t survive the night. She refused to lose another one.

What did it mean that she usually went months without seeing someone’s Ink going bad and she’d had two within the past week?

“All right,” she said. “Lose the jacket. I’ll need access to the Ink.”

While Zoog struggled out of his sport coat, Isa closed her eyes and focused on the pillar of energy lighting her core. She had time this go-around. She’d do it right. She slowed her breath and called up power.

A breeze smelling of sun-warmed sage and pinyon brushed her face in answer. Heat shimmered in her blood. The atmosphere crackled. Static popped in her hair, running in prickles over her scalp.

Ill will skittering along the walls shrilled a protest she registered with far more than her ears. It retreated from contact with her magic.

Zoog choked back what sounded like a sob.

Isa opened her eyes and began the ritual that would contain the damage should Zoog’s Live Ink go nuclear before she managed to bind it.

He shifted as she finished lighting the candles and cleared his throat. “Ice, if it’s all the same to you, I’m not comfortable with all this hocus-pocus stuff.”

Her lips twitched. “You do want me to bind a Living Tattoo that went wrong, right?”

“Goddamned thing is killing me,” he said by way of agreement.

“Then this ‘hocus-pocus stuff’ will save your life,” she said, sketching a final ward over the closed and locked door. She turned back to face her client and paused for a moment to gather more power into her core.

“Show me.” The command rang through the black stone room.

Zoog unbuttoned his sleeve and folded back the blood-spotted fabric. He left off his nervous tic of sucking air through the gap between his two front teeth.

He revealed the tattoo one fold of his sleeve at a time.

Isa edged closer, hands behind her back. Monochromatic. She’d have said it was a hippogriff, but the talons were too large for the depiction and the hind end of the creature tapered to a snake’s tail that wound up and around Zoog’s arm.

“How high does it go?” she asked.

He started and sucked a breath between his teeth. “Ends at my heart.”

It was a jagged, ugly piece of art. Like Zoog with his two-bit hoodlum wannabe scars, piercings, and flat ink. She’d never expected him to score Live Ink. He didn’t have the money for it.

“Who did this?”

“Daniel. Who else?”

Why had he drawn something so hideous? “Why didn’t you go back to him? It’s his Ink. He needs to know there’s a problem.”

“I did. He—uh—said everything was going fine.”

Meaning Daniel had tossed Zoog out into the night with Live Ink going bad? She scowled at the ragged scribble. What had possessed Daniel to treat a client and the Living Tattoo he’d drawn so callously? Some kind of thug rite of passage?