Amazon Ink

by Lori Devoti

  But if not that, what?

  My mind flicked to Bubbe, the squirming rabbit grasped in her fist, the soccer mom’s wide eyes on me when I stormed in on them. I glanced from his badge to him. “Milwaukee?”

  “Yes.” His gaze shot to the cluster of employees behind me. A frown lowering his brow, he shoved his ID back into his pocket. “Is there somewhere we can talk?”

  Some ancient part of me reacted to his discomfort, made me want to refuse and force him to state his purpose there in the open. But the more modern, smart me realized there was no benefit to that track. Besides, careful as I had been, there was still the chance someone had reported something “odd” about me or my family to the police. If so, I didn’t really want it broadcast to the entire staff. With a nod, I turned and led him into my office.

  Once the door was closed, he straightened, walking around the room with a relaxed nonchalance that told me he was cataloging the contents. Back to being the confident cop, a man in charge. I bit back a flare of annoyance. “So what brings you to Madison, Detective?” With my arms folded over my chest, I slid into my chair.

  “Strange place for a tattoo shop.” He placed a finger into the metal blinds that covered the window overlooking the old school grounds and separate gym/lunchroom.

  “It serves our purposes.”

  “Tattooing…and…?” He turned until he faced me.

  I smiled and leaned back against the hard wood of my chair. “Why are you here, Detective? Not to get a tattoo, I’m guessing.”

  “How long have you been tattooing, Ms. Saka?”

  “Long enough.”

  “Ever tattoo someone under eighteen?”

  I arched a brow. “That’s illegal in Wisconsin.”

  “And you’d never break the law?” He strolled closer to my desk, slipping into a chair with misleading disinterest.

  “If you’re looking to bust me for tattooing someone underage, you wasted a lot of gas, Detective.”

  He gave me a look that was hard to read, then slipped his hand back into his jacket. This time to retrieve a stack of photos. He slid one across the desk to me. “This look familiar?”

  Something in my gut tightened. Keeping my face blank, I looked down.

  My worst fear rushed up and smacked me in the face. The photo showed the tattoo on the small of a woman’s back-a bear, paws outstretched and teeth flashing.

  My first early morning gift.

  “Nice work,” I commented, my throat dry, but my tone noncommittal.

  He slid a second photo toward me.

  I didn’t really have to look, but I did-the leopard. I picked it up, stared at it for a second. Anxiety sliced through me. I lowered my hand to rest on my desktop, the photo still pinched between my fingers.

  Keeping my eyes cast down until I was sure I was under control, I dropped the picture, then looked up. “Also nice. Is there a point here? You going to tell me why you’re bringing these pictures to me?”

  He made no move to pick up the photos, just snapped the ones still in his hand against the edge of my desk. “We took them to some artists in Milwaukee. Consensus was, they look like your work.”

  That startled me. Every artist has a signature style, something that even when they are copying another’s work shines through. But to me, neither of the tattoos looked anything like mine. I picked up the second one, the leopard, and tried to look at it dispassionately, as just a tattoo, not a piece of a once-living girl.

  “Are there more?” I nodded to the pictures still in his hand. There were twelve main tribes, each with a totem. He’d only shown me two. I’d only found and deposited two bodies. Were there more? Had the killer left bodies on someone else’s doorstep?

  He gave his head an almost imperceptible shake. “Just dupes.”

  I accepted his words with solemn resolve-not that I wanted there to be more dead girls, but if there had been others, not left on my doorstep…I shook the thought from my head. There hadn’t been. I was the target.

  I could feel his gaze on me. I looked up, meeting his eyes. “Where’d you say you got these?” I asked, not that I didn’t know, but it seemed like the logical question.

  He tapped the photos in his hand another time. “Is it your work?”

  “I already said it wasn’t.”

  “Did you?” An emotion glimmered in his eyes, determined, dangerous. Like the glint of steel before you see the actual knife slicing toward you.

  “If it were my work, I’d tell you.”

  “Would you?” His expression said he didn’t believe me.

  Smart guy.

  I shrugged. “Okay, maybe I wouldn’t, if I had a reason not to, but I didn’t lie. The work isn’t mine.”

  This time he nodded in quiet acceptance. “There’s something, though. You know who did it?”

  “No idea.”

  A short laugh escaped his lips. “And just when I thought we were becoming friends.” Leaning forward, he placed both palms flat on the top of my desk. He was so close I could smell his toothpaste-cinnamon.

  “This is serious. This isn’t about slapping a fine on someone for underage tattooing. Whoever did these”-he glanced down at the photos-“knows something. Something I need to know.”

  I could feel the intensity rolling off him like heat off pavement. I wanted to help him. Wanted him to find the killer. But what could I tell him that wouldn’t lead back to me?

  “They’re the same,” I blurted.

  He blinked, maybe startled that I replied-I know I was. “What?”

  “These tattoos.” I regretted the words as soon as they were spoken. None of this mattered, wouldn’t help him find his killer because I wasn’t going to tell him what else I knew about these tattoos-that they were done by an Amazon. However, my mind committed, I continued on, let myself get lost in discussing something I loved. I flipped the pictures back up to face us. “They’re done by the same person. Look at the bear. See the thinness here.” I pointed to the delicate stroking around the animal’s muzzle. “The slight upward curve at the end of each line? Now, look at the leopard. The shading, the variation in line width? It’s the same. Whoever did these tats wasn’t just cranking them out. He-” I chose the pronoun carefully, wondering briefly if Detective Reynolds noticed-“put time and dedication into them, blood, sweat, and tears. Good tattooing is more than simple art. More than a drunken lark. It’s ritual, beauty, strength, and power. That’s what you have here-mixed into ink and sketched into some girl’s skin. Whoever did this is good.” All Amazons entrusted with the art were.

  His blue eyes grew hard. “A girl? How’d you know these were both girls?”

  I pulled back, startled out of my reverie. How’d I know the pictures were of girls? Because I’d seen them firsthand, held their lifeless bodies in my arms. But I couldn’t exactly tell him that, now could I?

  “The position. The lower back. Only women get tattoos there, and you already said it was someone underage-has to be a girl.” I tilted my chin upward, daring him to call me on the statement. It was true, lower back was a female-preferred spot. There was no way he could prove there was any other reason for me to know the pictures were of girls.

  I watched as he rolled this around for a few seconds. Something battled within him, but eventually he seemed to accept what I said, kind of.

  “That’s all you can give me?” He suddenly looked tired, like he’d used up his energy on his last explosion.

  I nodded, guilt gnawing at my gut. He was one of the good guys, abrasive as I found him. But I couldn’t tell him what he wanted to know.

  He started to turn, then stopped. His hand going again into his jacket, he pulled out a business card. “You call me if you decide you can tell me more.”

  His way of letting me know he didn’t believe my story completely.

  My fingers reached for the card, but he didn’t quite release it. “How about the breast? That a popular place for girls to get tattoos?”

  This time I couldn’t stop the s
light tremble in my fingers any more than I could stop the lurch of my heart. “The breast?” I repeated.

  “Yes, the breast. A lot of young girls get tattoos there?” He lay his hand over his right pectoral muscle. “Right here. Not big. Probably under a few inches in diameter.”

  Breathing through my nose, I slowed my heart rate, willed my mind not to think about the patch of missing skin, the raw flesh underneath. “More women than men. Why?”

  “No reason,” he replied. “No reason at all.”

  Chapter Six

  I couldn’t leave it alone. I’d thought about it all day, tried to convince myself that the police seeking me out was a good thing-that it showed they were seriously working the case. I’d tried reminding myself they were also more qualified to find a killer. Who was I? I was a mother. I owned a tattoo shop. Sure I was an Amazon-but so what? How would that help me to find the killer?

  But I couldn’t let it go. The girls, the police, my own guilt-they all ganged up on me and forced my hand.

  I had to do something to stop this killer. Another midnight trek. This time to my basement…and Bubbe’s shop. I’d stolen the bear and leopard totems from Bubbe’s workspace when she’d been only a few feet away-out in the main basement area talking with a client.

  But now I needed the others, and Bubbe’s shop was locked up tight. I had a key. But my grandmother didn’t just lock up her office. Right after she claimed the space as her own, she’d set a ward on the door.

  I’d made fun of her at the time. What, she thought one of her suburban housewife clients or maybe a New Age college student was going to discover an undying need for a bag of bark or a stone carving?

  Of course, she’d basically ignored me and wove the spell anyway.

  Now, I had to get past it and any other little booby traps my wily grandmother had decided to put in place since then.

  I laced my fingers together and pushed my hands out, palms forward in front of me, in my best knuckle-popping, let’s-get-down-to-work safecracker mode. Warmed up, I closed my eyes and let my mind drift, opened myself to feel the hum of magic, to hear the buzz only a destructive ward can emit.

  First pass there was nothing-no hum, no buzz, nothing. I gritted my teeth. There was a ward there. I’d seen Bubbe work on it and there was no way she didn’t activate it every night.

  Why she’d taken the time to build one so subtle I was having trouble detecting it was beyond me. If she was worried about only stopping a petty thief, she could have slapped any protective spell on here. But this…I opened my eyes, narrowed them as I studied the closed door…this was drawn to deceive, to keep another practitioner from realizing the door was even warded.

  Which meant that after I got past the first ward, I’d find something else inside-something scary.

  A prickle of unease crept up the back of my neck. Scary for Bubbe? Artemis only knew what that meant.

  But I didn’t turn away. If anything, the increased challenge spurred me forward. I needed the totems tucked away inside Bubbe’s workspace, and I wanted to prove I could get to them, could beat my unbeatable grandmother.

  This time I didn’t close my eyes; instead, I concentrated on losing focus-on seeing past reality into the magic realm my grandmother had created. Tears began to stream down my cheeks. I resisted the urge to rub away the tired burn that was growing in my eyes. Lines began to weave in front of me, twist and turn. At first I thought it was just exhaustion taking over, but slowly the curving slices of color began to meld, forming a solid, clearly visible shape-a serpent, its tail wrapped around the doorknob, its head hovering a foot above mine as if resting on some invisible branch, stared down at me.

  A serpent can bring with it many powers. It can kill silently or warn its victim off with a hiss or rattle. This one just hung there against the door, watching, waiting.

  Of the twelve Amazon totems, the serpent was the one I trusted the least.

  I bit back a hiss of my own.

  In a different circumstance I might have tried to battle my way past the serpent, cut through the ward with brute force, but my grandmother wove this spell. The odds I could shove my way past it were slim, and with her sleeping only two stories above me, I’d have zero chance for escape.

  I didn’t want to battle my grandmother’s magic tonight, but I wanted to battle her even less.

  I really had no choice. If you can’t kill the serpent outright, you either let it devour you, or you play mongoose-charm it.

  I settled onto my heels and forced away all thoughts of how what I was about to do would look, how idiotic I would look weaving back and forth making eye contact with a serpent no one but me could see. And how likely it was that I’d goof the whole thing, set off the ward, and bring my grandmother and whatever host of surprises she had waiting behind the door down on my head.

  Then I stared the serpent in the eyes and let my body begin to shift side to side. As I did, I made up my own chant and tried to channel every meerkat I’d seen perform the dance, compliments of Animal Planet.

  Spells compliments of cable. Definitely something my grandmother wouldn’t plan a defense against-or so I hoped.

  The serpent’s slitted gaze held mine. A shiver danced over my skin, but I kept up the movement, continued my chant encouraging the snake to give up his vigil, slither off to a dark corner of my basement and snack on a mouse.

  My back began to ache and my mouth to dry. The snake didn’t waver.

  I heard a noise outside, a rattle. I ignored it, just like I ignored the now relentless need to blink, to drop my gaze. I’d never tried to outstare a snake before. In retrospect, a stupid thing to try with a creature that couldn’t blink.

  As my mind whirled, grasping for another solution, the snake suddenly lifted his head and opened his mouth wide, revealing fangs and a chasm of a throat that seemed to grow and grow until I was sure I’d figured out my grandmother’s plan-for the ward to gulp me down whole. He loomed large above me, cutting off all light, until all I could see was his open mouth about to snap down on top of me, swallow me like he thought I was the promised field mouse. I raised my hands, forced my lips to move to sputter out a spell for a shield-weak and ineffectual as I knew it would be. I hadn’t been prepared, hadn’t realized how much unwinding Bubbe’s ward would take out of me. Then, just as I thought his jaws were about to slip over my head and down my body, the snake snapped his mouth shut and slithered off the door.

  My hands were shaking and a cold sweat covered my body. I could feel the snake undulating between my feet as he went in search of some prey. How I’d get him back on the door, spiraled precisely as my grandmother had left him, I had no idea.

  A small problem I hadn’t considered before taking on her ward. But I couldn’t undo what was done. Might as well move on with my plan. I waited for the sensation of the snake’s weight traveling past my ankle to cease, then moved forward.

  My hand was on the knob when I heard the second rattle. I glanced at my watch. One A.M. Dead girl delivery time.

  My shoulders squared at the morose thought, but I twisted toward the door that led outside anyway. Maybe I didn’t need to call on Artemis tonight. Maybe she’d delivered the killer to me.

  I grabbed one of Mother’s training staffs-a six-foot-long pole of hardwood, and headed outside. I left behind whatever other traps Bubbe had laid in her office, and moved toward something that might prove to be even more horrifying.

  It was lighter tonight. The full moon was almost upon us. I could see the outline of the banister that surrounded the basement stairwell. Running perpendicular to the steps was a sidewalk. On the other side of it was the old clapboard cafeteria and gym.

  I could hear footsteps now, light and pacing back and forth, like someone was waiting for someone or something.

  Me?

  Only one way to find out. I crept to the top of the steps and peered out. A figure, six feet or so and female, stood with her back to me. In her hand was a staff much like the one I carried.


  An Amazon. A blonde, not my mother and certainly not Bubbe or Harmony.

  Adrenaline pumped through me. I leapt onto the sidewalk, bent to the side, and swung the staff, aiming it at the Amazon encroacher’s head.

  She spun, her staff meeting mine, and for the space of two heartbeats I stared directly into her golden eyes. It was too dark to see their color, but I knew it, knew the face. Zery. My once best friend. The Amazon Queen. The queen who stood by her tribe instead of me.

  She must have seen the shock on my face. There was no way for me to hide it. No matter how angry I was with her for supporting my son’s killer over me, I would never have believed her capable of killing an innocent Amazon girl.

  “Why?” I murmured.

  “Were you expecting me?” she asked at the same time, then laughed. Not the rippling, happy sound I remembered, but a hard, cold noise that curled inside me, made me want to strike out, knock some of my frustration with her betrayal out of my system for good.

  We were at a standoff. Each pushing against her staff with all her strength, mine increased by my ten-year-old anger. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have stood two seconds against her, never mind the minutes that seemed to have ticked by.

  “Been keeping in shape, Mel? What else have you been doing?” Her foot moved toward my knee. An old trick-one I used to use on her, when tricks were my only defense against her superior strength.

  I hopped to the side, managing to keep my staff up and shoved against hers as I did. But my advantage of surprise and personal rage was lost; I could feel her pushing forward, knew she’d soon have the upper hand. My body angled awkwardly. A muscle in my back screamed. The grain of the wooden staff dug into the skin on my unconditioned palms and fingers. Mother could have held onto that staff for hours, her callused hands never tiring. And Zery could too. Not that she would have to; depending solely on warrior skills, I’d fall before Zery even got winded.

  A memory of the snake jumping from the door, slithering off, gave me strength. I had other skills to call on.