“I feel like a leftover,” she joked, her mood instantly becoming lighter than air.
“Keep it covered until tomorrow. Don’t sleep on your back, and wash it carefully with unscented soap for the next few weeks. Also, no matter how badly it itches, don’t scratch it.”
I closed my eyes as I helped her pull her button-up shirt on and then escorted her to the front room, where Trixie was already working on a client. She hadn’t bothered to come back for any ingredients, so it seemed safe to assume that it was a regular old tattoo with nothing special added. I collected my fee and followed Tera to the door where she gripped me in a tight hug before she left the parlor.
I wanted to say something hopeful or happy or encouraging, but there were no words that I could push past my parted lips. She was one of the few clients who I knew without a doubt I would never see again.
Chapter 6
The squeak of the front door opening and closing accompanied by the door chime echoing above the sound of Marilyn Manson on the speakers caught my attention, but I couldn’t hear any footsteps. The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. I didn’t let myself look up from the client I was working on until Bronx said my name. The troll was staring at the TV, which was showing the security-camera view of the lobby. No one was on the screen. Fucking vampires. I truly doubted that this was a pleasure visit. They rarely got tattoos and were never in a good mood when it came to dealing with anything remotely human. I guess it was simply a bad idea to get too friendly with something you viewed as food.
“Trixie, can you finish this tattoo for me?” I asked, dragging my gaze over to where she was sitting on the counter. “I need to take care of this.” She nodded and hopped down from her spot. The man I was working on didn’t seem to mind, as a smile crossed his lips when Trixie took the stool I had just vacated. I glanced over at Bronx, who was intently watching me. “Hang back for me.”
I pulled off the soiled latex gloves as I started to walk toward the front of the parlor. Dropping the gloves into a trash can near the entrance to the lobby, I forced an easygoing smile on my face as I stepped up to the glass counter. A pair of men were strolling around the room in black trench coats. One had bright red hair that hung down his back in a thick braid, while the second had shoulder-length brown hair that curled at the ends—both shades looking darker against their ultrapale skin. Their thin lips were pulled down into frowns as they looked over the small shop. I couldn’t make out their murmurs, but I had no doubt that they were critical and highly desultory. Asylum had never been designed for their type. There were a couple of high-end tattoo parlors around the city that a vampire might deign to visit, but I had my doubts as to whether they were actually turning a profit. This wasn’t a business built for exclusivity.
“What can I do for you, gentlemen?” I asked, struggling to keep my smile in place.
The dark-haired vampire stepped forward and pulled what looked to be a leather wallet from the pocket of his coat. Flipping it open, he revealed a little gold badge that made my blood run cold. There was nothing I could do to keep the smile on my face. They were representatives from the Tattoo Artists & Potion Stirrers Society (TAPSS), and they could make my life hell. All tattoo artists had to pass a series of tests set forth by TAPSS that covered both tattooing skills as well as potion stirring before you were given a license to tattoo. In addition, a parlor had to maintain a separate license that promised to uphold a certain level of quality and cleanliness.
Unclenching my teeth, I forced out the question I had to ask, but I already knew the answer. “What have I done to warrant this unexpected visit?”
“I’m sure that you already know why we’re here, Mr. Powell,” purred the red-haired vampire, as if he was trying to use his voice to get inside my head. Neither of them was attempting to glamour me and a part of me prayed they wouldn’t try to. The other part of me really wished they would.
“Look, Vlad, all my transactions and work have been on the up and up. You can look at my records if you want to,” I offered, throwing up my hands. They both laughed at me as we all knew that records were frequently falsified to hide the true nature of a tattoo or the identity of a client. It was normal operating procedure in the business. Any tattooist worth his salt knew how to protect his clients.
“No one would trust your records.”
I replied with a shrug of one shoulder, as if his opinion didn’t matter to me. “No one has time to run background checks on every client. You have to trust them to tell the truth when they fill out their paperwork.”
“Regardless, we’ve had an extremely dark complaint from one of your former clients.”
“You’ll have to be a little more specific. We do a lot of business every night.”
“Russell Dalton,” the vampire replied, and it was all I could do to not react to the name. I had a feeling this man was going to haunt me until he finally put a bullet in the back of my head, or worse. “I believe you personally gave him a tattoo of a four-leaf clover on the heel of his left foot with a potion earmarked for good luck. Recall him now?”
“Rings a bell,” I sneered. “I believe he told me that he had a complaint about the tattoo while he was waving a gun in my face the other day. I would have offered then to make any reparations he might have requested, but I found myself reluctant to cave to the ravings of an idiot when he was pointing the muzzle of a handgun in my face.”
“Gun or not, you should have fixed the tattoo,” the dark-haired vampire chided.
“Of course, the tattoo and potion that you mixed were basic and there shouldn’t have been a problem to begin with,” the other vampire added as he seemed to glide silently across the floor until he was standing on the other side of the glass counter.
“I would drop this case, gentlemen,” I warned them softly through clenched teeth. “Russell Dalton is a worthless piece of slime who crawled in here one night with fifty dollars to his name, wanting a tattoo that would give his wife an uncontrollable desire to give him a blow job every time he gave her a little pat on the back of the head. I talked him down to a good luck charm and sent him on his way, hoping he would never cross my doorstep again.”
“His potential depravity and initial desires have no bearing on this case. You should have done the tattoo correctly after you agreed upon it,” the vampire closest to me said.
“I did do it correctly, Dracula. It was simple. I used leprechaun hair, which is well within the bounds of use for a good luck charm. It was only after I spoke with Dalton yesterday that I discovered the hair had gone bad. I had had the supply for less than a week. By the standards set by TAPSS, that is still considered a viable resource.”
“Then you should have fixed the problem when it was brought to your attention.”
“Like I said, Lestat, I don’t bow to the whims of idiots waving guns in my face,” I replied in a low growl.
“Let me rephrase it for you,” said the red-haired vampire, drawing my gaze back to his pale blue eyes. “You will fix—” He didn’t even get the chance to finish the sentence as a burst of power threw him across the room so that he crashed against the wall between the front door and the picture window at the front of the parlor. It was all I could do to keep the smile off my face. The other vampire simply stood stunned, his head bouncing from me to where his companion lay crumpled on the ground several feet away.
The antiglamour spell had kicked in. Trixie didn’t feel anything when she used her spell, because she used it on herself. The vamp, on the other hand, had tried to use a form of glamour compulsion on me, which was then thrown back in his face—hard.
“There’s no spellcasting in my shop,” I snapped in answer to the unspoken question of “How?” hanging in the air. “If you haven’t figured it out yet, I don’t like being forced into doing anything that I don’t want to do.”
The other vampire overcame his momentary shock and lunged at me with amazing speed. He grabbed me around the throat with one hand, nearly crushing my windpipe so tha
t I couldn’t draw a breath. His long white fangs were bared as he snarled at me. “As my companion was stating before he was rudely interrupted, you will clean up this mess you created.”
“I’m not touching Dalton again.”
The vampire squeezed harder and slammed me into the wall, causing white spots to dance before my eyes. As my vision cleared, I noticed that the second vampire had regained his feet and looked even more pissed than his companion. This was turning out to be a great night.
A part of me relaxed when I heard the heavy thud of Bronx’s footsteps as he approached the front of the parlor. I expected him to execute some wonderful violence as he beat these two assholes to bloody pulps. If anything, I was looking forward to him freeing me from the vampire who was currently clamped on my throat, causing my lungs to burn from a lack of air.
To my surprise, the troll stopped at the glass counter and reached under it to some of the hidden shelves where we kept paperwork, ink pens, and our MP3 players. The troll pulled out a large mason jar of buttons of different sizes and colors, and unscrewed the top. I had no idea that the container had been under there, but then the troll was always full of interesting surprises.
The eyes of both vampires locked on the jar, and they seemed to grow even paler. I thought I even heard one of them whisper “No” before Bronx poured a large handful of buttons into his massive palm and tossed them in the middle of the floor. The vampire holding my throat released me so fast that I slid down the wall to the floor. Dark curses were muttered from each as they knelt on the ground, gathering up the buttons. With lightning-fast hands, they sorted the buttons, stacking them according to size, color, and design so that a rainbow of buttons covered the worn carpet on the floor.
Rubbing my throat, I patted Bronx on the shoulder as I stood. Instead of risking his neck and mine, the troll had decided to go the wiser route and take advantage of a known obsessive-compulsive trait in vampires. Seeds, buttons, and even flower petals: if they could be sorted and organized, the vampire was compelled to stop whatever he was doing and complete the task.
When the two were finished, they carefully eased away from the buttons so that they wouldn’t be disturbed. They both looked frustrated and more than a little humiliated. They also looked eager to take that frustration out of my hide, but right now Bronx was still standing by the glass case with his hand on the top of the jar of buttons.
Reaching into my back pocket, I pulled out my wallet. I withdrew fifty dollars and threw it at the nearest vampire. “Here’s Dalton’s refund. Tell him to take his problem to another tattoo parlor and to never step into mine again. Case closed.”
“This case may be closed, but it’s not forgotten,” said the dark-haired vampire as he scooped up the money and stuffed it into his pocket. “Dalton told us what really happened in the alley yesterday. You’re going to attract their attention and bring them all down on our heads. We can’t afford that. We will stop you before we come to that crossroads. TAPSS is watching you.”
The two vampires glided out of the parlor while I fought the urge to throw a handful of fucking buttons at their backs. Bronx gave me a dark look but said nothing as he returned to the back room. I sighed as I grabbed the jar and walked into the middle of the room. I picked up the little piles of buttons and threw them back into the jar. At least I now knew it was there in case we had another vampire run-in. In most cases, such a tactic served as little more than a distraction. I was sure Bronx’s presence in the main room had also helped to deter the two vampires from trying to attack me again. OCD or not, they would have gotten to me eventually.
I sat down on the bench and rubbed my neck. I listened to Trixie finish up with the client who had been present to hear the entire altercation in the front room (fabulous), giving him proper tattoo care instructions while collecting her fee. It was only after he left the shop, the door banging closed behind him, that I dragged my sorry ass into the back room, where I was sure there were a few questions waiting for me and only so much that I was permitted to say.
“What happened in the alley?” Trixie immediately demanded, sitting on the side of one of the tattoo chairs.
“Nothing important. He attacked. I fought back and I won. You should be happy about that,” I teased, but I knew that it wasn’t going to get me anywhere with her. I refused to look over at Bronx. His perceptive eyes unnerved me in too many ways. He simply knew things without being told. He watched while others talked, and he remembered things that were better left forgotten.
“Are we going to lose our license?” Bronx asked.
“They aren’t going to touch your licenses. I was the tattooist. I’m the one they’re pissed at. You’re safe.”
“What about the parlor’s license?”
“I don’t think they would go to that extent yet. They just wanted to scare me a little bit.”
“I hope by the bruises on your neck, it worked,” Trixie grumbled.
“Who are they so afraid of?” Bronx demanded, getting to the real heart of the matter.
“Don’t worry about it,” I said with a shake of my head, hating the words as they left my mouth. I hated evading their questions and I hated even more that I was forced to lie to them. Trixie and Bronx were the closest I had to family in this world. My own family had been lost to me in an attempt to protect them from the Ivory Towers. My coworkers deserved the truth, but I couldn’t give it to them if I was going to keep them protected as much as I possibly could. Trixie had her secrets. Let me have mine so I could sleep at night. “I swear to you, if shit comes down, I will handle it.”
Bronx settled on one of the stools next to his tattoo chair, laying his beefy hands on his knees. “You know, it doesn’t have to be that way.”
I flashed him a smile that crumpled from my lips before it could fully form. “This time, it does.”
I had done the impossible and walked away from something that no one was allowed to turn their back on. I knew that it was going to haunt me until someone finally killed me over it, but I refused to drag my friends into my mess if I could help it. And for the moment, I thought the best way to protect them was to keep them as ignorant as possible. The less people knew about me, the better. When there’s a monster under your bed, sometimes it really is best not to look.
Chapter 7
There was an unexpected gift waiting for me when I came into the shop the next afternoon. I paused as I reached to turn on the overhead bank of lights in the main tattoo room and saw Trixie’s body outlined by the light seeping in through the shaded windows. She was stretched out in one of the tattoo chairs with one arm thrown over her eyes, her breathing even as she slept. In the stillness, her beauty seemed to have softened, as if I had just chanced upon Sleeping Beauty after scaling the castle walls to the tallest tower in the keep. Her long blond hair cascaded from the head of the chair in a golden waterfall, while her pale skin glowed in the dim afternoon light. Her beauty was nearly heart stopping.
When she was moving gracefully about the parlor, perpetually light on her toes, cracking jokes and intent on her work, it was easier to overlook or put aside her beauty and focus on the person. I could remember that she was just a friend and coworker. It was easier to put up that mental barrier against both the sexual attraction and the something more that ached in my chest when she smiled at me. But in the stillness of that vulnerable moment, it all came rushing back to me so that I could barely breathe.
There had been a few times during the past couple of years that Trixie, Bronx, and I had all gone out for drinks at the local bars. I cherished those few memories as I watched her out in public, not as her employer, but as her friend. She was a beam of bright light slicing through the darkness. She laughed, overflowing with joy. And then there were times when she watched you with such intensity you could almost be convinced you were the only person left on the planet. I could feel the compassion that flowed from her heart and it caused an ache in my own chest. She made the world a wonderful place even in the grimmest mom
ents.
But I couldn’t have her.
Clenching my teeth, I flipped on the overhead light, jerking her instantly awake so that I could finally escape her hold. While she was looking at me with a slightly confused and dazed expression, I was able to focus on the bigger question at hand: why was she sleeping in the tattoo parlor when she kept a comfortable apartment just a few miles away? It was time to pack away my sexual urges and simple desires for something else, because it was obvious that Trixie needed a friend.
“In a little early, aren’t you?” I asked with a smile as I tried to break the building tension.
A little smile tweaked the corners of her mouth, but never grew into anything more as she sat up fully and swung her legs around so that her feet touched the floor. She still looked exhausted, and she was having trouble meeting my direct gaze. I had a feeling that she hadn’t been asleep for long when I’d found her. Usually, she worked later into the night than I did and then probably didn’t settle into sleep until shortly before dawn each night. Of course, there was also the problem that had chased her out of her apartment in the first place.
“I thought you could use the help,” she volunteered, but there was a slight waver to her voice.
“Yeah, tell me another one.”
“I know this doesn’t look good. I just needed a place to crash and I didn’t have anywhere else to go . . .”
“That was safe,” I finished.
Trixie stared down at her fingers, entwined in her lap. “Yes.”
“What happened?”
She hesitated for a long time as she was probably debating telling me the truth or a somewhat believable lie. I frowned and shook my head at her. It was none of my business and I wasn’t going to force her into telling me something she didn’t want to talk about. I also didn’t get a feeling of urgency, which meant that explanations could wait for another time.
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