by Jenn Stark
She smiled. “You’d wondered if Viktor had been raised to the Council deliberately. He was. The merest mortal is more capable of human depravity than any Council member is ever allowed. Yet as dark as Viktor is, he’ll never agree to become mortal again, not for an instant. The aging process commences, and he is far too vain for that. He ascended when he was already a man in his fifties. To him, his youth has already withered away.” She shook her head. “But for Armaeus, the need to remain immortal isn’t born of vanity. There are things he is capable of as a mortal that he cannot allow himself to do, not anymore. The world is a smaller place. It could not sustain such magic.”
“Right.” I thought of Mim’s horn and the feeling of utter bliss on Armaeus’s face as he consumed the last of the wine from it. Had his eyes seemed darker afterward? He remained under the influence of the rush of Llyr’s magic, but was there something more to him, now? “Well, let’s hear it for immortality.”
“Yep.” Blue stubbed out her cigarette. “You wanted a map, you said. Only it’s not quite a map. It’s more a… I guess you’d call it more of a key. Each to its own location.” She extended her sleeved arm and regarded it with a rueful smile. “Better than stamps in a passport, I’ll give you that.”
I stared, mesmerized by the artwork on her skin. Now that I could see it more closely, I realized it was almost moving in the shifting light and smoke. “Those are—those are all keys? To places like Atlantis?”
“You’ve seen the energy waves, right? That image is also stuck in your mind—and it should be. Armaeus was right to show you. We’re all interconnected on this plane, but we’re also interconnected with other planes. Where there are connections, there can be travel. Where there is travel, there can be transformation.” She lifted one shoulder, dropped it. “And I happen to be in the business of transformation.” She nodded back toward the tattoo rooms. “Let’s get yours started.”
Breathing a little shallowly, I stood and trailed her into the main rooms. It was only a tattoo, I reasoned to myself. People got tattoos all the time. It wasn’t a big deal.
Instead of angling toward the open doors, however, Blue stopped at a door midway along the corridor, marked with the number 3. She lifted her hand, placing it on the smooth wood, and closed her eyes for a moment. The door clicked open and swung wide. The room was dark beyond.
“Um—I didn’t bring any cash with me or anything to get a tattoo,” I said, edging away until Blue pinned me with her glance. “I can come back later if that’s better?”
“Nah.” She smiled. It wasn’t a good smile. “First walk is free.” She winked. “It’s the second one that’ll cost you.”
Chapter Nine
“Ordinarily, I’d place this on your upper arm, where it couldn’t be seen if you didn’t want it to be. But Atlantis is a special place. It deserves better.”
As she spoke, Blue moved around the compact space. It looked like any other tattoo setup—a chair that would make a dentist drool, a table filled with tools, stacks of books and papers sitting around. But as soon as she flipped the overhead light on, the detritus evaporated—all of it illusion. Only the chair and the tools remained.
“Keeps people from getting nervous, to have all that crap here,” Blue said, though I hadn’t asked. She gestured to the chair. “Go ahead and lose the hoodie. It’s not going to hurt, you know.”
“Sure.” I shucked my hoodie and got in the chair, my tank top meager protection against the chill in the air. “If it makes you feel better, I’m this way with easy chairs too. I’m not a fan.”
“You’ll be fine. The skin is thin at your wrist, so you’ll feel it, but it won’t be like a usual tattoo. With these, the pain comes later.”
“Oh, good.” I looked around the completely barren room as she lined up her equipment. The whir of the needle in its gun made my stomach clench. “I don’t suppose you have a strap of leather or something I can bite down on?”
“Extend your hand.”
Obligingly, I straightened the fingers of my right hand, the left now gripping its armrest. Death released a lever and swung the right armrest out, positioning my forearm in a wide angle as she scooted her stool to my side. I couldn’t see my arm anymore over her hunched shoulder, and jumped as she swabbed the skin below my wrist with something wet and medicinal smelling. “Fingers out, Sara,” she murmured. “Like this.”
The cool touch of her palm against mine practically shocked me off my chair, the electrical pulse almost as intense as Armaeus’s.
“A little warning next time,” I gritted out as she pressed my fingers down.
“I can see I didn’t spend nearly enough time in your mind,” was her only reply. Then the whir of the needle started up again. “Touching here. This won’t hurt, but you’ll think it does.”
“What kind of—” Then the tip of the needle hit my skin, and I blacked out.
Lights rushed back toward me as quickly as they’d fled, and I surged, fighting the fear, the panic, the despair, the—
“It’s over, Sara. Relax.”
Blue’s voice sounded way too far away, and I blinked my eyes open, my gaze swiveling around the room. We were in the main tattoo parlor, and no longer alone. Jimmy stood with his own eyes shining and round, swiveling his attention between me and Blue. My right arm hurt like hell, and a gauze bandage had been loosely secured to the skin above my palm. “You said it wouldn’t hurt.”
“I lied. Chin up, though. If you ever decide to get a regular tattoo, you probably won’t pass out. And when you get your second key, you’ll know what to expect.” She gestured to the bandage. “You can take that off. I didn’t want it to get damaged while we moved you.”
“How long have I been out?”
Jimmy was at my side with a water bottle, and I jumped again as another whirring noise started. This time it was only the chair moving upright, and I eyed the bandage warily as I slugged down the water. When I pulled the bottle away, I was surprised. I’d drained the thing. “Is it going to bleed?”
“No,” Blue said, her certainty bordering on laughter. “Keys tend to have a cauterizing effect. One of their many benefits, once you have it on you.”
“Yeah.” I slid a nail under the gauze and peeled it up, expecting to see my skin blackened and charred. Instead there was a raised design that hadn’t been inked into my skin so much as burned there with ink frosting, though not forcefully enough to be a brand. It was a slender, sinuous curve that looped around on itself, at once reminding me of an ocean wave without the typical jagged peak. If pressed, I wouldn’t be able to say what it was supposed to mean. I glanced up at her. “You couldn’t have just given me Hello Kitty?”
“In time.” Blue was leaning back against the wall of books, and Jimmy had retaken his position at the door. I decided to ask the question he was dying to know the answer to.
“How long are you in town?”
“As long as I’m required. I’ll be making my appearance to the Council later this week.” She nodded to Jimmy. “He can see them too, if you’re wondering. Probably one of the more Connected people in Vegas, and I know that’s saying a lot.” She grinned, her eyes crinkling at the edges. “Armaeus’s little blast last week about fried his brains, though.”
“You sensed that?” I swiveled my gaze to Jimmy, who looked sheepish at the attention. “How did it affect you?”
He shrugged. “My sight’s screwy, if that’s what you mean.”
“And by screwy, he means fixed,” Blue put in. “Twenty-twenty vision without his contacts, and believe me, he was a mess before. His second sight is also improving.” She made a face. “Gonna make it hard to ink the typicals if he keeps it up.”
Now it was Jimmy’s turn to grimace. “Nothing worse than trying to talk someone out of a romantic tattoo when you know flat-out the feeling isn’t mutual.”
I held up my wrist to the light. “Um… Does this come with an instruction manual?”
“You need a tether point here—I’d pick Armaeus, since you trust
him the most.” She grinned again, as if at some private joke. “Usually. You’ve tranced out before, right? You’ll do the same with this.”
“Ah…okay. Then what?”
“Like I said, it’s a key. You pick the point where you want to go in your mind, and when a barrier kicks up, that symbol will get you through. No secret words, no map, no spells. This is more direct, trust me.”
“And coming back?”
“You’ll need to focus on whoever your tether point is. The tighter your connection the better. Blood is good, sex is good, even rage if you don’t have a physical bond.”
“Blood like family?” I wasn’t touching the sex idea with a ten-foot pole. “Because I’m fresh out of that.”
“Or blood brothers. There’s a reason for that old practice,” she said. “Whatever you think will be a strong enough tie to bring you back. That’s really the key. Coming back isn’t about being able to jump dimensions so much. It’s about reasons, belief. You have to know you’re wanted, and you have to be wanted enough that you’re pulled through, no matter what.”
I nodded, though my mind was churning. Had there ever been someone like that for me? Maybe Brody, a long time ago, before I’d run. Before I’d left him wondering if I were dead for ten years. Would he come looking for me now if I vanished again? Would anyone?
Blue’s gaze was steady on me, and I managed a shaky smile. “Sounds like a little bit more than a typical astral travel journey.”
“It’s—similar. But you will be traveling physically as well as psychically. Your body will be present in Atlantis, and you can be killed.”
“Oh. That’s…ah, good to know.”
She shrugged. “Life is change. You’ll get used to it.”
A bell rang at the front, and Jimmy jumped. “You can stay here as long as you want,” Blue said as I levered out of the chair. “Not like there’s going to be a rush on tattoos.”
“I don’t know, word gets out that Blue Ice is back in town, you might have a run on the place.”
She laughed easily, but her gaze never left me as I reached for my hoodie. “When you ink someone, blood’s spilled, you know. It can be a messy process. I’ve seen a lot of blood in my day.”
I winced. “If you’re telling me the walls back there are covered in arterial spray, sorry about that.”
“No, that’s not what I mean.” She shrugged off the wall and sauntered toward me. I held my ground, but I couldn’t deny the jacking of my heart rate, the sudden heat in my wrist. “I mean I see into someone’s blood. I can tell things by the mix and measure of it. Who lives, who dies. Who is strong, who is weak. More energy is contained in a single drop of blood than in the multistate power grids, if you know how to channel it. How to set it on fire.”
“Yeah?” I pulled on my hoodie, careful not to scrape the tender flesh of my inner wrist. It may have sealed up, but that didn’t mean it didn’t hurt. “Did my blood have anything to say?”
“It did.” She stopped in front of me and reached out with a lazy hand, catching my chin with her finger and tilting it up until I met her gaze. “It said you would be coming back to me. And soon.”
She held my gaze for a long moment, and I felt the essence of her words burn into me. Another bell rang, and Blue glanced toward the front of the shop, breaking the moment. I blinked myself back to the present.
“If that’s your sales pitch, it’s a damned good one.”
She nodded, allowing me the out. “I try.”
The heat of the day seemed somehow less oppressive when I walked out of Darkworks Ink. I squinted up at the dusky sky. I’d apparently been in Blue’s chair most of the day. It was nearing evening, and I felt out of sorts, off my game. Across the parking lot, Dixie’s was deserted. I couldn’t face the idea of an air-conditioned cab, though, so I set off on foot. My skin felt strangely chilled, and I was beginning to seriously consider the error of my ways by the time I got to the Strip. I blinked, looking at the skyline, then blinked again.
The Emperor’s keep no longer gleamed like a dull, empty husk. Instead, it punched out of the ground with almost a demanding presence, its surface electric, almost blue-black in the light from the setting sun. It wasn’t the only changed Tower either. Soaring above Treasure Island, the White Tower seemed bolder and fiercer too, suddenly as occupied as the Foolscap, Scandal, and, of course, Prime Luxe.
Was the Emperor already here? I could feel the crackle of energy in the air, riffling across my senses. If Viktor was on the Strip…
My phone rang. I clicked it on. “Sara,” I snapped, more harshly than I intended.
“Mademoiselle Wilde.” The voice stopped me dead in my tracks.
I’d worked for Mercault on only a few occasions, but they were memorable ones. Memorable and lucrative. Mercault had come to Vegas a few weeks ago just shy of body-bag status, however, and I hadn’t heard that he’d recovered.
“Good to hear your voice,” I said. It wasn’t a lie.
“Yours as well,” he assured me in his lilting French cadence. “And I suspect I will not get much of an opportunity to speak with you in private once it’s learned that I have embarked on the road to recovery. Can you meet me?”
“In the hospital?” I frowned. I hated hospitals. More importantly I had a transdimensional journey to embark on. But Mercault was a client, a client who paid me really well. A client prone to fits of vengeful petulance when he didn’t get what he wanted when he wanted. As badly as I yearned for Viktor’s head on an Atlantean pike, Mercault could be a font of useful information when he was so inclined. I needed to keep him inclined. “I mean, sure. I guess.”
“Mais non. I have taken a suite of rooms at the Bellagio. You know it, yes?”
My gaze shifted to the enormous casino and its bevy of dancing fountains, far up the Strip. Simon’s domain soared above it, but of all the members of the Council, Simon would have no problem with me roaming around his crib’s subbasement. “Well enough.”
“Magnifique. I will expect you within the half hour.”
I made it up the boulevard in good time, skirting the crowds and entering the gorgeous hotel at a relaxed pace. For all that I’d seen the Bellagio from the outside, I’d never actually been inside. It was every bit as opulent as I’d expected, however, and my enjoyment was not dampened one bit by the fact that two Frenchmen with guns fell into step beside me almost as soon as I’d entered the lobby.
“Mademoiselle Wilde?” one of them asked, though I suspected the fact that I was the only woman wearing a beat-up hoodie and jeans in the magnificent lobby was probably a dead giveaway to my identity. I nodded, and they kept their guns beneath their jackets like good little killers. I was elegantly marched over to an enormous bay of elevators, and I tried to look relaxed.
We boarded, and one of the muscle men slipped out a key to allow access to the penthouse floor. A penthouse floor in the Bellagio? Mercault never did anything halfway, I had to give him credit for that.
When I finally saw him face-to-face a few minutes later, my admiration only increased. He was looking surprisingly good for a dead man.
“Mademoiselle Wilde.” Mercault repeated his bodyguard’s greeting, but with much more flair. After suffering the European kiss, I stood back from him and eyed him critically.
“You seem…whole.”
“Remarkably so. My family, less so.” Mercault strolled to the ample bar against the wall and poured two balloons of cognac. “I have much to thank you for.”
I winced. He’d suffered much—more than most could endure. “I’m sorry for your loss,” I murmured, but Mercault waved off my words.
“This is not the important thing.” He handed a glass to me. “Grief comes later, in private, when I have rebuilt. Until then, it is a raw and open wound, meant only to help me focus.” He swirled the cognac in his glass, staring at the patterns it made. “I have a debt to repay, to you and your patron, I know. A patron who I suspect is going to exact his repayment from me via slow and rather torturo
us conversation.”
I shrugged. “Or you could give him permission to read your mind. Unless you have secrets to hide. He’ll probably find those out anyway, given enough time. But the upside is, you give him access to your thoughts, you won’t waste an afternoon, and he’ll be in your debt again. It’s not a bad position.”
Mercault surveyed me from beneath heavy-lidded eyes. “I see what you are saying, but this mind reading… Will he warn me of it?”
“Probably not.” I grinned. “So if you go in and offer it, it’ll catch him off guard. He’s too polite not to accept it as the gift it is.”
“Yes…yes. I want an alliance with your people.”
“Not my, uh, call,” I answered awkwardly. My instinct had been to disavow the Arcana Council as my people, but…they sort of were, I supposed. At least until I got the children back.
Mercault didn’t seem to notice my hesitation. He leaned forward, his eyes intent upon me. “In the meantime, then, I have a job for you.”
Chapter Ten
My eyebrows fought each other in an epic struggle to reach the top of my forehead first. “You are barely upright, Mercault. You should be focusing on healing.”
“Believe me, this will help me heal.” He gestured to the table, where two high-backed overstuffed dining chairs sat. “You are right, though. I will tire too quickly if I don’t rest.”
He took a chair, and I pulled the other one out and away from the table before settling into it as well. Mercault had been a good client, but he was devious, coldhearted, and an absolute nutter. That level of crazy could be directed at me at any time.
“Two weeks ago, you attended the Rarity show,” he said. “There was another of the black market elite there, Annika Soo. Her loyalties are of great interest to me.”
“I thought you syndicate guys weren’t loyal to anything but your next infusion of cash.”
He smiled thinly. “Soo’s holdings have not, to my knowledge, been infiltrated by the scum that is SANCTUS, while that organization has been a patent thorn in my side,” he said. I nodded. I had personal experience with SANCTUS, none of it good. The quasi-religious, quasi-military organization was dedicated to the elimination of all things magical. All things, all people, and, apparently, all suppliers. “I am losing money and facilities, while she is stepping in to control the flow where my supply chain is being disrupted.”
