Matt’s mouth gave a small, cynical twist. “Fortitude, I’m not the one who has secrets in this room.”
“This one isn’t a secret.” I refused to look away from his eyes. “This is just about Gage.”
Matt looked away first, letting out a gusty breath and shaking his head. Whatever decision he’d come to and whatever he’d seen in me in that long moment, some of the tension leaked out of the room. “Okay, Fort. Okay,” he said, rubbing one hand hard against the back of his head. He pulled a folder off of the top of the pile littering his desk and passed me an oversized eight-by-ten-inch photo from it. I recognized the floor of my apartment first, then registered that I was looking at a picture of Gage’s bare arm. There were his band tattoos, with their intricately repeated pattern of Celtic knots, and at the bottom of the picture was the grim sight of his bare, empty wrist. I swallowed hard and paid attention as Matt spoke. “Now, this is from one of the pictures that were taken at the crime scene. He had these bands tattooed around both wrists and biceps, right?” I nodded. When he’d first gotten them, I’d teased him for days about one set being just slightly higher than the other. “Take a look at this.” Matt pulled a second picture out of the folder and laid it down on the first. This was a blowup of a guy around my age, standing in the middle of an apartment I’d never seen. He was smiling widely, a beer in one hand, wearing a sleeveless shirt. Immediately I realized that he had a set of tattoos that were identical to Gage’s—Celtic bands at biceps and wrists, with the same interlocked black knots.
“Same tats, right?” Matt asked, clearly already knowing the answer.
“Yeah, that’s the same. Who is this?”
“This is Rian Orbon. He went missing one night in February, but the police never found any evidence to call it a homicide, so it was labeled a missing person and eventually dropped. Orbon’s parents hired me six months ago. I wasn’t able to find anything, but when I saw your roommate’s body the other night, something about it looked familiar.” Matt tapped the photo. “I knew I’d seen the tats before. Could’ve just been a coincidence, though, right?”
“Yeah, maybe . . .” I said, my brain weighing the new information and not liking the potential result one bit.
“Exactly. So I called up a connection I’ve got with the Providence PD. Asked him if there was any chance he could poke around the missing person’s sheets, see if there were any more with tats that match this description.” Matt handed me another photo, and I looked at it almost reluctantly. This was a younger guy, Asian, awkward and gangly in the way that a lot of guys are in the first few years of college. “Brent Jung was a sophomore at the Roger Williams University metro campus. Went missing back in April. He’d had a fight with his girlfriend earlier in the week and things were tense with the parents, so the investigating officer figured that he just hauled off and would trickle back eventually when his money ran out. You can’t see it in the picture here, but his RA mentioned that Jung had gotten tattooed just two weeks before he vanished—gave a pretty detailed description. I e-mailed him a copy of the Orbon photo last night, and he swears that Jung had an identical tat.”
I frowned. “But these guys disappeared, and Gage was killed.”
“Fort, I haven’t been able to get a copy of the coroner’s full report yet, but I talked with someone who works in the office. It wasn’t just his hands that were cut off; it was also his tongue and his genitals.” I could feel the color drain out of my face, and Matt nodded grimly. “My guy told me that there was also one long cut on his neck, but other than that there were no other injuries. To me, this suggests planning. I don’t think Gage is the first person who has died this way—it might just be that his is the first body that was found.”
“You think Rian Orbon and Brent Jung were both victims as well.” As I spoke, my mind was racing. Suzume and I had been assuming that this was a random supernatural attack, that Gage had been in the wrong place at the wrong time, and that his killer had probably left the area. But this suggested that not only was Gage not the sole victim and his killer had been in the area a long time, but that there had been some substantial planning and premeditation. Matching tattoos? Whatever was going on was now much bigger than just Gage’s death.
I hated that I even thought of it, but more bodies also meant that Gage’s death probably didn’t have anything to do with me, and I felt a small rush of relief. But that was quickly washed away when I looked back at the stack of photos. Something was very, very wrong here.
Matt began talking, interrupting my thoughts. “I think it’s a stretch to imagine it’s just a coincidence that we’ve got one body and two missing persons with the same tattoos. When did Gage get tattooed?”
“About a month ago.”
Matt nodded. “Orbon and Jung’s tats were both recent as well.”
“So we need to find out where they got these tattoos, because that’s the link.” When had Gage become singled out, I wondered. When he got his tattoo, or was it even before that? I tried to remember what Gage had said about the tattoos or where he’d gotten them, but all I could come up with was a blank. There had been too many weeks of minimal sleep and excessive training. It seemed like I’d come home one day and there had been Gage, sitting on the sofa with medical gauze wrapped around his arms and surfing his iPhone for tattoo aftercare instructions.
“I already did,” Matt said, and I snapped to attention, watching as he pulled another file off the desk. “I went to see Rian Orbon’s father this morning, and we spent the whole day going through everything he had in his room. We found this at the bottom of a drawer.” He pulled out a glossy advertisement card, the kind that usually arrived in my mailbox and went straight into the trash, and handed it to me.
Iron Needle Tattoos, it read. 20% discount.
I stared at the card—there was a picture on it of a black Chinese dragon tattooed on an anonymous man’s back. The longer I looked at it, somehow the more interesting it became. After a long minute I remembered that Matt was waiting for an answer. “Wow. This is just . . . I don’t know.” I shook my head, putting the card down on the pile of photos in front of me. It was hard to take my eyes off of it, and I wondered if all those hours of watching anime had finally ingrained some kind of Pavlovian response in me for Asian art. Good thing it hadn’t been a Sailor Moon tattoo. “So we know where Orbon got his tattoo. We should figure out if Gage and Jung got theirs there as well,” I finished lamely.
Matt eyed me. “Yeah, that’s the place to start. But that’s where you come in.”
That finally distracted me fully from the card. I’d heard those words before—usually before I had to pose as Matt’s accomplice. I didn’t begrudge him the difficulties in being a one-man private investigative unit, and I’d gone on more than one stakeout, but I’d never quite heard those words without a frisson of suspicion after the time he made me pose as his boyfriend to infiltrate a gay swingers’ club to catch a man’s husband in the act of cheating. And cheating. And cheating again. “Me?” I asked with no small amount of trepidation.
“These guys were all in their twenties. I know a certain guy who matches that description, and unfortunately it is no longer me.”
“You want to use me as bait?” I was having somewhat mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, this was a really good idea. On the other hand, I didn’t want to encounter whatever creature had been killing people with Matt as my tagalong. It would be like trying to maintain a secret identity while dating a journalist. And I didn’t care how good a show Moonlight had been or how much I liked Superman; it seemed like a terrible idea to me.
“Don’t worry. I’ll be backing you up,” Matt said soothingly, clearly assuming that my reticence was more from a fear of ending up without tongue, gonads, and hands. “You just go into the tattoo parlor with that card and see what the reaction is. See who talks to you, and especially see if you get nudged toward the design that your friend got.”
>
Now it was my turn to eye him suspiciously. “No tattoo, though,” I clarified. No matter how cool that Chinese dragon had looked, I was no fan of needles.
Matt threw his hands up, exasperated. “Yeah, Fort. Why don’t you go get a tattoo that will put you on the top of a serial killer’s wish list? Christ, kiddo. We’re just getting background here.”
That was the closest he’d sounded to my old, nonsuspicious Matt all night, and I smiled a little. “Okay. Are you coming in with me?”
“No, I’ll be staking the parlor out, though. I took a look at it today—it’s across from a coffee shop, so I’ll be parked in the front window, keeping an eye on you. Don’t worry.” And here he gave me one of those old, familiar, Uncle Mattie looks. “I’m not going to let anything happen to you.”
“I know that, Matt.” Knowing that he’d be across the street during my look around a potential monster den left me relieved, and I couldn’t help but poke him a little. “Even though you said that before the swinger party, yet I still had my ass pinched so many times that I had bruises.”
“Hazard of the job, Fort. It was important to stay in character.” Matt smiled, his shoulders relaxing as he thought back to our old halcyon days. Then a shadow crossed his face and he stiffened again, turning away and making a show of taking the photos from me and tucking them back in the folders, leaving me the discount flier. “Anyway,” he said gruffly. “Ten a.m. sharp, okay? When you’re done come over and buy a cup of coffee. There’s a booth in the back where we can talk and not be seen from the parlor.”
The moment of détente over, we said an awkward good-bye, and I left.
Back in my Fiesta, I paused for a moment before turning the ignition, reviewing all the information I’d just learned.
“Shit,” I muttered, and dug in my pocket for my phone, punching in Suzume’s number by rote. As soon as I heard her sleepy “Hello” I was off and running. “Suze, I know it’s after midnight, and I’m an asshole and I’m sorry, but I need you to come by my apartment tomorrow morning. Matt found something, and I don’t think that whatever killed Gage was just roaming through.”
There was a second while that clearly processed through her sleep-fogged brain. Then she made a small, frustrated sound.
“Forget tomorrow morning—I’ll be right over.”
• • •
The benefit of driving at that hour was that most of the traffic lights had been set to blinking yellow for the night, and I made great time back to my apartment, arriving before Suzume. Inside, I dumped my coat, toed off my work shoes, and put the glossy Iron Needle advertisement on the counter. A glance at the clock assured me that I had a few minutes before Suzume would arrive, and I took a quick shower to remove the worst of my work-related hair gel, having no desire to be subject to Suze’s arsenal of speakeasy jokes this late at night.
I finished up and threw on a pair of sweatpants and a shirt just as I heard Suzume’s familiar “Shave and a Haircut” knock at the door. As I went to let her in, the card on the counter caught my eye again, and for a second I wondered what kind of tattoo I’d get, assuming I ever got a tattoo. Not that I wanted a tattoo, of course, but I wondered how much it would cost to get a Tron ISO tattoo on my arm. Given how long my projected lifespan was, I would certainly get good use out of it.
Suzume had apparently saved time by not changing out of her pajamas, since I clearly remembered the pair of red argyle lounge pants that she was wearing when she walked in. Paired with an eye-searingly bright yellow hoodie, it should’ve looked bizarre. But as fiendishly clever as ever, Suze had put her hair into a set of pigtails, which somehow made the whole thing look intentional. I was starting to wonder if there was anything in the world she could wear that wouldn’t add a kick to my heart rate.
I took my mind off of Suze’s continued string of fashion triumphs by filling her in on what I’d learned. After I’d finished, she sat and absorbed it for a long second before delivering her thoughts, phrased with her usual grace and delicacy.
“Well, that certainly shits the bed on our working theory, doesn’t it?”
“Yeah, I—”
She glanced sharply away from me. “Is that the card you were talking about?” she asked, pointing to the advertisement.
“Yeah.” She got off her stool and went over to pick it up and studied it closely. When she didn’t respond, my mouth suddenly took on a life of its own and started filling the silence. “It’s something, right? Some graphic designer did a good job. I don’t know if it’s the font or the colors, but that is the best-designed circular I’ve ever seen in my life. I mean, I look at that thing and I actually start thinking that a tattoo is a good idea.” I paused, but she continued to mutely examine the flier, so I continued. “It wouldn’t necessarily be a bad idea, right? It would be like going really undercover. How do you think I’d look with a tattoo? Like, the crest of Hyrule on my right shoulder blade?” She finally stopped her examination and, with great deliberation, lifted her eyes to meet mine. Then, very slowly, she raised one terrible, feathery black eyebrow. I froze for a moment, then added, “If you don’t know what that looks like, hold on: I have it on a T-shirt.”
“I bet you do,” Suzume said, with volumes of subtext. “But it’s not the font. Or the tool with the dragon tattoo.”
“What do you mean?” I stole a glance at the flier. No, the dragon still looked badass, even better than I’d remembered.
Suze held it up. “This card is glamoured.”
It took a second for me to tear my mind away from visions of exactly how well I could pull off a tattoo to focus on what she’d just said, but once it started to penetrate the unusual fuzziness of my thoughts it cast a very harsh light on my recent monologue. “Glamour,” I said slowly, practically tasting the word. “Like what the elves use to hide their ears and look human?”
Suze nodded. “Exactly. I don’t know how many halfsies can do it, but I know that full elves can put glamours on objects to make them more attractive. Just like this.” She wiggled the card, and when I looked at it again I could now just see the hint of the heat shimmer I remembered from when Lilah had broken the glamour on her ear for me.
I shared a grim look with Suze. “Elves running the speed-dating event that Gage disappeared at. Now elf glamour on the promotional card. Starting to look like a pattern.”
“Sure looks that way, Fort. I’ll ride along with you tomorrow to Iron Needle.” That eyebrow went up again, and I knew with a sinking feeling that it would be a long time before I heard the last of my proposed crest of Hyrule tattoo. “With how you were reacting to that glamour, I’ll have to keep an eye on you. Otherwise the next time I see you, you’ll probably have a Doctor Who tramp stamp.”
For one awkward second, I realized that the only way Suzume could possibly look hotter to me was if she had a tattoo of the TARDIS on the middle of her lower back. I was profoundly grateful in that moment that the kitsune were unable to read minds.
• • •
After far too few hours of sleep, I rolled out of bed and picked Suzume up at her house, and the two of us drove over to the Iron Needle.
A lot of legends revolved around iron being the one weakness to elves and similar fairy folk. I’d asked Chivalry about it over the summer at one point, when we were driving up to Boston to deal with a nest of kobolds that had taken Madeline’s permission to eat stray dogs and cats and decided to apply it to people’s pets. After Chivalry had read an article about a sudden rash of dogs being snatched out of gated yards, he had thrown me into the car for a quick lesson in diplomacy, and the topic had come up in conversation. He’d told me that there actually wasn’t any true weakness to iron—the seriousness of the inbreeding and population crunch among the elves had become undeniable around the dawn of the Iron Age, and had reached truly critical mass just as the Industrial Revolution hit, resulting in a false correlation for the humans who came into
contact with elven offspring so disease ridden and diminished compared to their parents that the humans had credited their sudden ability to overcome them with the availability of iron weapons. Which, in all fairness, probably helped a bit as well. I’d asked Chivalry why none of the humans who were telling the stories had picked up on that. With a rather exhausted sigh, he’d pointed out to me that these were the same kind of thoughtful scientific minds that had embraced bloodletting and treatments involving cow dung.
The neighborhood we ended up at was one that was in a slow state of deterioration. Two grocery stores were empty and boasted large For Lease signs. The small shopping plaza I pulled into had old and cracked asphalt, the kind where people’s cars got stuck in the winter. Four businesses with grimy signs huddled together in one squat gray building that was crumbling at its edges. The Iron Needle was at the far right side, and its three neighbors made a perfect trifecta: a bail bondsman, a liquor store, and a check-cashing business.
“You take me to the nicest places,” Suzume said.
“I can’t believe Gage got his tattoo here.” I mused, trying to picture Gage choosing this of all places to get inked. The front window of the tattoo parlor was blacked out, and the neon sign displaying its name was failing to light up two n’s and an e. “This place looks like an invitation for hepatitis.”
“I’m feeling some begrudging admiration for whoever set that glamour.” Suze was frowning. “For elf magic, that was packing some heat to get anyone through that door.”
“You mean you weren’t feeling respect last night, when it totally made me its bitch?” I felt moderately insulted.
“Fort,” Suze gave me a very patient look. “Convincing you to get a dorky tattoo can’t be that hard.”
“What do you mean by that?” Trust Suze to refuse to leave me at moderately when she could take me all the way to completely insulted.
“Your ex-girlfriend convinced you to go vegetarian. And you’re still vegetarian, even after you dumped her for cheating on you.”
Iron Night Page 12
