by Holly Evans
“Continue, tattooist,” he said.
I shot him a dark look and took my time relaxing and rolling my shoulders. The instinct telling me to run was screaming in the back of my mind. I calmed my breathing and continued to stretch out my stiff muscles. I’d been hunched over the tattoo for a long time, it wasn’t unreasonable that I’d need to stretch. The client remained exactly as he’d been at the beginning. I didn’t know what it was, but it was far from a normal human. The councilman gave a polite little cough when I took a long drink of water. His presence felt like a razorblade in the back of my mind. Keirn snapped something in elvish at him. I took a deep breath and extended my magic back out to the dragon that lay watching me and the councilman cautiously, still and quiet. Nothing and no one quieted a wild dragon that easily. The entire situation was making me very twitchy.
Aris uncoiled slowly, stretching down my back and over my chest, making it easier for him to strike should he feel the need. I paid him no attention. We were comfortable allies, nothing more, nothing less. Once more, the familiar soft buzz of magic mingling with the tattoo gun filled the room, and I continued on, taking my time filling in the fine details on the great dragon etched into the man’s back. Sweat dripped down the back of my neck when I finished the final stroke, thus completing the work. The dragon pushed hard against the man’s consciousness, a sudden blur of fire and movement. It stilled again just as quickly. I brought my own magic back as quickly as I could muster, exhaustion sinking into my very bones.
“That will do,” the councilman said.
I took my time cleaning the gun as the councilman instructed the client to gather his belongings. As much as I hated doing it, I kept my back to the councilman trying to calm myself. Every muscle was tight. I was waiting for a blade to be driven between my ribs.
“I trust that I don’t need to tell you not to tell a soul about this,” the councilman said, his tone icy.
I gave a small shrug. I knew the deal. Keep your head down, your mouth shut, and your eyes averted. If I kept my mouth shut, then I’d be forgettable and could return to my nice quiet life.
“We’re not fools,” Keirn snapped.
The councilman grunted. The client stood and walked, stiff-legged, to the councilman. The door shut with a soft click. Keirn locked up without either of us needing to speak. Once the shutters were down, I took a long deep breath and tried to relax. It was over. Aris slipped down to the floor. I released Kyra, who jumped onto the floor with a pissed growl.
“Keep out of trouble,” I said.
They both vanished into the shadows. They would bring back any useful information while stretching and enjoying themselves. I could feel them if I needed to. I’d know if they got into trouble and would be able to find them again.
“Get a shower. I’ll cook dinner,” Keirn said.
His voice wavered slightly. He’d done a lot of magic. It must have taken a lot out of him.
I slapped him on the back. “Relax, old friend. I’ll cook, you worked hard today.”
He handed me half of the large pile of cash that the client had left on the table. “I earnt this.”
The corner of his mouth pulled up into a smile. I grinned back at him. We headed up into our living quarters in a comfortable silence. His fox curled up at his feet and soon slept. I likely would have been killed by that dragon had Keirn not been there to watch my back. That sort of power shouldn’t have been loose in the city. It was a huge weapon. No good came from it. I pushed the thoughts aside. That was for the council to deal with. It was not my concern. Keep my head down and my mouth shut. I prepared a feast; we were both starving.
“Do we have anyone booked in for tomorrow?” I asked Keirn over my shoulder.
“No.”
“We deserve a day off,” I replied.
He gave a noise of agreement in return. When I’d finished cooking the food, he was fast asleep in the hard wooden chair. I poked his leg with my toe, causing him to jump and shoot me a particularly nasty look.
“I’ll have your share, if that’s how you really feel,” I said with a smirk.
He looked down at the large plate overloaded with food and his face shifted into one of happiness. There wasn’t much that a good meal couldn’t cure.
5
The darkness filled my dreams again. I woke up with a start, the feeling of terror ripping through my chest, my breath stolen by an unseen foe. Kyra nuzzled against my hand, purring and soothing me. Aris was curled up at the end of my bed, his great body a comforting weight. I rubbed Kyra behind her ears and calmed myself. It was just a foolish dream, something the gods were plaguing me with because they had nothing better to do with their time. I swallowed down the remnants of the fear and tried to settle down to return to sleep. Kyra chirped and walked circles on my chest, insisting that I stay awake. I rubbed her cheek with my thumb and told her to tell her news.
Aris cut her off. He slithered up alongside me and laid his head on my shoulder. Communication with your tattoos isn’t like that with a human. It’s done in feelings and images. We passed ideas and information between us with ease, but it usually took people years. Some never became truly fluent. The idea that Aris pressed into my mind was one of a thief. A soul thief. I ran my fingers over his cool scales, the contact aiding in the communication. I didn’t understand what he could mean by a soul thief. Kyra fidgeted and butted in. Someone, or something, had corrupted the ink magic. They were killing people. It sounded so absurd. We’d have heard about it if it were true. They must have gotten themselves confused. I thanked them for their information and tried to settle down once more.
They allowed me to do so, seemingly satisfied that I’d understood. Kyra settled on my chest, Aris remained stretched along my side. Unfortunately, their comfort didn’t extend to my dreams. I was almost immediately dragged into the thick, viscous darkness. It pressed against my lips, eager to fill my lungs and consume me. I forced myself awake and jumped out of bed, my heart pounding. The feeling that I needed to do something clawed at the back of my mind. I cursed the gods. I needed solid information if they wanted me to do something. Even then, what had they ever done for me?
Kyra sprang from the bed and landed on my upper back. She clawed her way onto my shoulder, where she perched. She’d always struck me as a rather confused cat.
It’s the soul thief they both pressed on me.
I groaned. I didn’t understand. I tried to ask them to explain. Aris simply said the dreams are the thief. That was all they had for me. I squeezed my eyes shut. I was being dragged into something. The gods were laughing at me and all my hard work to remain hidden, to keep the gift they had given me firmly out of the eyes of the council and those like them. Kyra nuzzled against my cheek, purring.
“If they steal my soul, you’ll die too,” I thought back at her. She ignored me and continued purring.
Once again, I found myself on the rooftop, watching the sun stain the horizon red before it made its daily ascent, pushing the moon out of the sky for another day. Exhaustion wracked me. I wanted nothing more than to spend the day in bed, yet I was going to have to visit Ben, the dreamwalker, in the hopes of his having some answers for me. Why was it so much to ask for a quiet, peaceful life?
As if hearing my thoughts, a pixie fluttered down onto the stone wall in front of me. Her pale golden skin glittered in the early sunlight. I didn't dare look at her face. Those things had sharp teeth. Kyra's tail twitched. Her claws dug deeper into my shoulder. I mentally told her to chill. The pixie buzzed its translucent wings and took a step closer to me. It was only six inches tall, but it had the potential to shift into a full human form, should it so choose, and they were mean fighters. They made the bear shifters look friendly. She took another step closer to my right hand, a large, almost comical side-step. I took a large side-step away from her. I was quite attached to that hand, and I liked to stay that way. Her little friend caught me off guard. He landed right next to my left hand. Kyra swished her tail. Aris was somewhere c
lose behind me. If he was quick, he could eat them in one swift bite.
"There are whispers about you," the male said.
For something so little, his voice was oddly deep. It grated against my mind like fingernails on chalkboard. I hated pixies. Nothing good ever came from being near them. I continued to watch the sunrise and hoped that they'd get bored and fuck off soon. The female jumped on my hand. I tried not to jump back to swat her. Knowing my luck, an entire nest of them would be living nearby, and then we'd have to move to another city, maybe another continent.
"You're the one," the female said.
I rolled my eyes and bit my tongue. Was it so much to ask for them to talk in a straightforward normal fashion? The fae were all too fond of their games, and it was usually painful to get dragged into them. The male jumped on my other hand. They were barely more than a kitten in weight, but their presence was far heavier. The air began to buzz and hum around them.
“Save them," they said as one.
I yanked my hands back and sprinted backwards just before the buzzing stopped and they exploded. Pink glittery shards of pixie filled the air before the breeze carried it out across the city. They'd be scattered across the various parks and buildings. My heart started beating again. Kyra yawned and cleaned her paws as if nothing has happened. Aris observed me with a startled curiosity. Taking a deep breath, I collected myself. Pixies didn't just explode like that. Had they been a weird magical bomb? I needed coffee. The day was far too young to be dealing with random magical acts. Or anything. I should have been in bed until noon.
Keirn was still in bed when I made it into the kitchen. I smacked the wall until I hit the light switch. It took me five minutes of searching to see where the elf had hidden the coffee. He had his own way of organising things, and it made absolutely no sense. As first I thought it was alphabetical when I found the flour in with the fenugreek. Then the coffee was butted up against the ice cream, and I was lost again. The water took forever to boil. I rolled my head and tried to loosen my increasingly stiff neck while Kyra mewed at me, demanding food. In the end, I pointed at the back door and told her to go and hunt. She could bring me back breakfast, while she was at it. She nipped my ear before she jumped down onto the floor and stalked out the back door into the shortening shadows. Aris curled up under the table and watched over me as I waited for the coffee to brew. I made a note to get some more fire stones so that I wouldn't have to wait and the water would be heated in the blink of an eye, which just left the brewing.
The pixie's voices ran back through my memory. What the fuck did they mean the whispers? And why did they explode? I groaned and poured out the coffee. For once, I wanted a simple straightforward week. No dragons, no councilmen, just a rabbit tattoo and a good stiff drink with a pretty man at the end of the day. I dropped one of Keirn's tablets into my coffee. It tasted like cinnamon cream and had the kick of a double vodka shot. It was an elven specialty: simpler to transport than wine, and it got you far more wasted much quicker. I didn't see a down side.
I rubbed my forehead as I knocked back the thick rich coffee as quickly as I could. Nothing was making sense, and I had nothing to do before Ben got up, which I didn't expect before mid-afternoon. It had been a good while since I'd visited the dreamwalker. They were odd people. It wasn't something I relished, but I didn't know anyone else that might have been able to give me answers. I was on my third elven coffee by the time Keirn stumbled into the kitchen. His hair stuck up at creative angles and he wore nothing more than his bright purple boxers.
I handed him a coffee as he almost fell down into a chair. "Rough night?"
He groaned. "The magic is upset. It tugged at my senses, but wouldn't reveal any answers."
I raised an eyebrow. "You wouldn't know anything about exploding pixies, would you?"
He narrowed his eyes at me over his coffee mug. “Why?"
I shrugged. “It happened to me this morning."
“What did they say?"
I rolled my eyes and went to find some semblance of food. “Something about whispers and me being the one."
He curled up lips. “Pixies rarely are intelligent enough to convey a full message. You've caught someone's attention, though, if they exploded. It's a creative and violent form of execution."
I stopped dead in my tracks. “Did you just say ‘execution’?"
He shook his head and stretched. “More like a warning, I suppose."
“There's a big difference between a warning and an execution..."
6
Keirn hadn’t been much use until he was on his second coffee and third round of breakfast.
“You’re worrying too much. The pixies didn’t do you any harm,” he said around the pink and blue iced doughnut.
I crossed my arms and leaned back against the hard wooden back of the chair. “You said they were a warning, a potential execution. That strikes me as something to worry about.”
He chewed the last of the doughnut thoughtfully before he shrugged and went looking for more coffee.
“I’d be more worried about those dreams, if I were you. We’re both feeling the problems in the ink magic, although it seems to be grabbing you more harshly. I wonder why that is…” he trailed off into his own thoughts.
It’s because I’m born of ink, an ink walker, I thought to myself.
Instead, I said, “I must just have shitty luck.”
He snorted. “If you’d stop cursing out the gods, perhaps it would improve.”
“If they’d stop being such dicks, I’d stop cursing them.”
He laughed and set about making some more coffee. I glanced at the clock on the wall. Ben would be waking soon. I hoped. Keirn sauntered off into the room that he’d commandeered as his art room. I wouldn’t see him again until he was starving. I eyed the coffee pot, but reminded myself that turning up to Ben’s tipsy wouldn’t be a good idea. I needed to be polite and able to understand him. I pulled on a pair of jeans that I found on the floor and a T-shirt that I’d thrown into the wardrobe at some point. A simple classic look. The silver knife on my hip was the perfect accessory. A glance in the mirror told me that my thick dark hair was tidy enough to stop me from looking homeless. Perfect.
The city was wide awake, and thus noisy and bustling. I stood blinking on the doorstep for a moment. The sun was hanging low in the sky, putting it perfectly in line to blind me. The pale yellow light slid down the sharp edges of the steel and glass buildings, yet left deep dark shadows in the old stone relics. I shoved my hands into my pockets and set out down the cracked pavement to Ben’s place. Cars crawled along the road. Some beeped and hung out of their windows to swear at those around them, others just clung onto their steering wheels giving death stares. I only drove if I was heading out of the city limits. It wasn’t worth the death threats and stress to drive around the city itself.
A pair of Sidhe tried to walk into me. Their pale blond hair was tied back in colourful ribbons that showed their houses, not that I knew much about Sidhe houses. The expensive silk and leather clothes showed off their lean and slender forms to their very best and gave the impression they were born of money. I put my shoulders back and continued to look straight ahead. Just because I was a human magician didn’t mean I was going to bow and scrape to the supernals.
They parted at the very last second and both bumped me with their shoulders. I ignored them and continued on my way. At least they’d had the good sense to keep their magic to themselves. I turned the corner, walking towards the nicer part of the city, and felt Kyra pressing into my mind. She was sitting in the shadows just up ahead with a new friend curled up next to her. The bloody cat was forever sticking her nose into everything. She wove between my legs and rubbed her cheeks against my calves while she purred and tried to direct me towards the scrawny little fox feral that had pressed herself against the wall to try and hide. Kyra sat in front of the feral and looked up at me expectantly.
The red-headed woman lifted her eyes to peer at me from under
her thick fringe. Her pale amber eyes glittered with tears. She pressed herself tighter against the wall, trying to put more distance between me and her. It wasn’t uncommon to find ferals hiding in dark corners on the streets. They were the bottom of the societal hierarchy, having little to no magic and yet still not being human. That particular feral could almost have passed for human if it weren’t for her razor-sharp cheekbones and the white points of long canine teeth that slipped out from under her upper lip when she got more nervous.
Kyra mewed. The woman’s collarbone clearly protruded. Dirt smudged her face. I looked down to Kyra and asked her what I was supposed to do with her through our bond. Kyra just mewed again. Damn cat. I crouched down and pulled my wallet out of my pocket. I wasn’t rich, but I could afford to go a couple of months without work if I needed to. I pulled out a twenty note and extended it to the feral. Her eyes went wide and she trembled. It took me a moment to realise she thought I wanted to buy her body.
I shook my head and said, “Food.”
She looked between the money and my face before she snatched the note and shoved it into her pants pocket. She leant down and Kyra rubbed her cheek against the feral’s before the feral took off down the alley.
“I can’t afford to help every stray you feel sorry for,” I muttered.
Kyra jumped onto my knee then up onto my shoulder, where she perched as I stood. She purred in my ear and sank her claws into my shoulder to keep herself steady. I pressed against her to return to her tattoo. She mewed and cried, drawing attention of a group of magical students.
“Do not do that again,” I growled at her.
She huffed at me, but settled down and allowed me to press her back down into her tattoo, where she sulked. I continued walking through the city on my way to the edge of the old district where Ben lived.
