by Holly Evans
I didn’t even make it onto Ben’s block before he came bounding towards me. It looked as though he were wearing the entire colour of the city. His coat was a patchwork of colours, patterns, and textures. It fit his slender form and went down to his ankles. His shirt was somehow even more garish, with magic woven into the threads to make the colours eye-wateringly bright. His strides were comically bouncy and long, the grin on his face verging on insane.
“Oh, Dacian! I knew you were coming! The thief has returned, and oh, what a thing he is!” Ben said.
I wished I’d brought my sunglasses to protect my eyes. It hadn’t crossed my mind on the cool grey day.
“We should talk about this in private,” I said.
“Yes, yes,” Ben said.
The entire world shifted around me. Suddenly, I was standing in the middle of a park in spring. Purple fruits hung from the red-leaved trees, the grass a peculiar blueish green. I sighed and drew on my shrinking reserve of patience.
“I had meant somewhere on the physical plane. What exactly is my body doing right now?” I asked.
Ben looked at me and blinked twice before he seemed to understand my words.
“Oh! Well, I think it just sat down,” he said.
“In the middle of the path…?”
He blinked again. “Yes. Oh, oh, sorry Dacian, yes, I’ll take us back,” he said.
I snapped back to the physical world to find myself sitting cross-legged in the middle of the path with a small cluster of young magic students standing around me. I glared at them and stood, dusting myself off.
“Come along, Dacian, we don’t have all night,” Ben called.
It was going to be a long night.
42
I managed to corral Ben into his flat before he continued on with his findings. I stood just inside the doorway for fear of getting lost amid the chaos of Ben’s home. There were strings running between the walls and over the ceiling. Crystals hung precariously from the strings, along with feathers, bones, and other things I didn’t want to touch. The windows were covered in brightly coloured semi-translucent paintings and glass ornaments. There was no space to stand, and yet Ben somehow managed to dance around the small living area without breaking either himself or his things.
“Oh, Dacian, it’s amazing, it’s truly incredible! There are two of you. That’s how he’s doing it, but he’s shattered and malformed, whereas you’re beautiful,” Ben said while twisting and dancing to music only he heard.
“Can I get that in English?” I asked.
He froze, one leg stretched out between three strings at just below shoulder height, his head canted to one side, and one arm thrust out behind him.
“He’s an ink magician, but he’s also a chaote,” he said calmly.
I tried to parse what he’d said. I understood the words, but there was so much more there.
“He can’t connect fully to the ink network, it’s rejecting him. He’s broken, he’s a bundle of fractured pieces that he keeps trying to glue together, but he’s failing,” Ben continued.
“Can you find him?” I asked.
I decided it was better not to tackle the fact that he’d openly stated I was an ink magician.
“Well, no. Maybe. I need more time. He’s fractured, and the pieces slip through the dreams in different places. I have to find the connecting string. He thought the ink would pull him together, but it rejected him, so he’s stealing pieces of it,” Ben said.
A chill ran down my spine. The image he was forming of the tattoo thief was deeply twisted and macabre. Chaotes were notorious for going insane, but that one seemed particularly fucked.
“Ok, how is he hiding?” I asked.
“Magic!” Ben said gleefully.
I rolled my eyes as he began dancing once more.
“Is that all you have for me?” I asked.
“He loved her,” he said.
“Loved who?”
“The tiger. He would hold her paw and run his thumb over the soft paw while she purred.”
“He was with Ms. Goldarn?”
“She shattered him, but he couldn’t lose the tiger,” Ben said.
His eyes were growing glassier, his tone more distant.
“The thief was dating Ms. Goldarn?”
Ben’s eyes had turned entirely glassy. His movements became more fluid. He was long gone. I let myself out of the flat and chewed over the information. The thief had been with Ms. Goldarn. There had been rumours of her dating a student, but I’d ignored them. They must have been incredibly close for the thief to have had his hands on Goldarn’s tiger like that. That explained why he’d gone after the tiger, and potentially gave us a name. Surely the gossip mill would have something for us. Ben had mentioned he was an ink magician like me, maybe I could use that to track him down via the ink network too. I dragged my fingers through my hair in frustration. Everyone was depending on me to solve this problem, and I had neither the skills nor the resources to do so.
I cursed out the gods, only to be rewarded with the skies opening and cold, hard rain accompanying me on the long walk home.
I was cold, wet, and pissed off by the time I walked in the back door. Ethan was sitting at the table by himself. I assumed the others were back in Keirn’s art room.
“We haven’t served dinner yet. We were waiting for you,” Ethan said without looking at me.
“What did the council want?” I demanded while I stripped down and towelled myself off.
Keirn had taken to leaving a heap of clean towels by the back door. ‘If you’re going to insist on cursing out the gods, I’m going to be prepared,’ he’d told me.
I’d told him that if they listen that closely, they could have the decency to help with the tattoo thief. Of course, there was no response for that. It slipped into faith and philosophy, so we’d left it be.
“They made me an offer,” Ethan said.
I pulled on the dry jeans and T-shirt that had been put with the towels.
“I gathered that much. What kind of offer?” I asked.
He finally turned to look at me once I was fully dressed again.
“A job offer. They’re suspicious of both you and Keirn.”
I stared him down and waited for him to continue. He didn’t shrink away like most people did under my gaze.
“I told them to go fuck themselves. I’m not going to spy on my friends,” he said.
“Why are they suspicious? Of what?”
“The dragon you pulled through is the strongest tattoo anyone has ever pulled through. They believe something happened with the grading. There are rumours around the city that there’s an ink magician amongst them.”
“And how did those rumours start?”
He stood up, chest out, jaw tight. “Not from me.”
“That doesn’t answer my question.”
“I made a blood oath.”
“Still doesn’t answer my question.”
“There’s some whisperings between the pixies about a prophecy. The nymphs embellished on it. They say that a thief will accompany the saviour. Ink mixed with blood will connect the gods and breathe life back into the magic, or some bullshit,” he said.
I raised an eyebrow. “And the council listen to that?”
“They didn’t until they began looking more closely at that dragon. Why did you take that job, Dan?”
I shrugged. “It seemed like a perfectly reasonable job at the time.”
“Surely you felt the strength of it?”
“Clearly not.”
“You turned down the job, I trust,” Keirn said.
Vyx and the spirit fox were at his side. The fox had a bright-blue-tipped tail and one lime-green ear. It had clearly been having fun in the art room.
Ethan smiled. His entire demeanor shifted when he turned to face Keirn.
“Of course I did, old friend. I’m not going to work for those assholes, no matter how much money they offer me,” Ethan said.
Keirn relaxed and smiled.
Vyx gave a small nod before she began rummaging in the cupboards.
“You shouldn’t take so long, Dacian, and the gods will stop raining on you if you stop being cruel to them,” Vyx said.
“If they stopped being assholes, I’d stop cursing them,” I replied.
“They gave you Isa,” Vyx said.
I couldn’t argue with that particular point.
43
I told Keirn what Ben had told me. The elf had connections to everyone and everything. He listed out a long string of names of people that he’d ask about those old rumours. They were a few years old, now, but they gave us something, and that was better than the nothing we’d had that morning. Ethan remained quiet throughout dinner. He didn’t have any of his usual quips and comments. Vyx watched him very closely, but Keirn’s fox distracted her once we’d eaten, and I retired to the rooftop to continue my study and meditation. I was getting closer to truly connecting the ink network, and I’d learned most of the standard sigils and runes. If I could just connect, then I could track the thief via the network and finally return to my quiet little life.
Kyra remained quiet and still in her tattoo, recovering from her run-in with the thief. Aris had moved closer to her, protecting her. I closed my eyes and slowed my breathing, focusing on Kyra and the thief, the way it had felt when he’d laid his hands on her. There was something there, a sparkly feeling in the back of my mind. I focused on that sensation and tried to track it back to its source. The darkness closed in around me, and the increasingly familiar sensation of feeling distant from my body slipped over me as I mentally walked through the shadows of the ink network.
I whispered questions to the network in the hope of getting some form of usable response. Images flickered around me. Blood red dripped off the edge of what looked to be a shard of glass. A malformed tiger prowled within an unseen cage to the side of me. I tried to remain calm, and the frustration mounted. I knew those things. I needed more.
I held out my arms and shouted, “I need more. Show me the thief. If I’m supposed to be your fucking ambassador, give me more.”
The darkness flickered and shifted around me. Deeper patches of absolute black rolled over paler shadows revealing glimpses of colours under the darkness. Slowly, they shimmered and rippled before something played out in front of me. A pair of silhouettes. A slender woman with a great tiger and a tall broad man. The man leaned down and kissed the woman before the woman turned away. A crack formed within the man. The woman walked away, and things became blurry. I ground my teeth. I knew that. Ben had already told me that Goldarn had shattered him, but that didn’t tell me who he was.
I woke with a jolt. My head hit the wall behind me and the cold air hit me like a slap in the face. The ink network had apparently grown tired of my pushing and had kicked me out of the meditation. I steadied my breathing and looked at the night sky. For once, I could see the stars glittering. Something had shifted within me. Kyra and Aris were clearer in my mind, more physical beneath my skin, somehow. I frowned and walked over to the wall. I gazed out over the city. I’d clearly been spending too much time with the ink network. A figure stood leaning against the wall directly opposite the door to the parlour, one foot casually up against the wall. They had a long coat on and a hood pulled up over their head. It seemed that my stalker was back.
Aris was eager to leave his tattoo, and gladly vanished into the night to investigate the stalker. I hadn’t seen him in a while, and the timing was certainly suspicious. I gave Aris permission to bite but not kill. The snake had huffed at the latter part, but accepted the command. Kyra remained sleeping. I was beginning to miss her, even if she was a disloyal little wretch. Aris would return to me when he’d finished checking out the man watching the front door. Until then, I needed sleep. My bed felt a little empty and cold without Isa. We’d been spending a lot of nights together, and I was still deciding how I felt about that. He made me happy, and I was so pleased to see him shaking off the fear that had shrouded him when we first met. Still, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I’d have to run at some point, and that wasn’t fair on him.
My little weaver was tough, and he’d survive without me, but I didn’t want to survive without him.
44
Aris returned late in the morning. Smells dusty. Not thief was all he gave me.
Did you bite him? I asked.
No. Smelled funny. Dusty.
Do you have nothing else?
No. Magic person. Don’t like.
I sighed and allowed him back in his tattoo before I went out into the parlour to open up for the day. I’d gotten into the habit of carrying a small notebook and an ink pen in my pocket so I could practise my ink magic in the quiet moments. The notebook was half full of little sigils for simple things such as temporarily changing the colour of my eyes, or making myself that little bit luckier. I wasn’t ready to try any big workings; they were too likely to get me caught.
Keirn and Vyx were hidden away in their art room. Vyx was giggling at something. I had to smile, I was glad to see the little feral so happy and settled. My phone rang, snapping me from the happy distractions. Jake was growling and snarling. It was a minute before he paused for breath, allowing me to tell him to speak.
He took a deep breath and said, “The thief has taken one of my pack. Stop him.”
The words didn’t quite fit together in my head. I shook my head and focused.
“Where is the pack member? Why can’t you stop the thief?”
“The gym. He’s hidden her with illusions. We need someone to track the ink magic.”
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
“I’ll be there in five minutes,” I said.
My thoughts were racing, but nothing usable was coming from it. I ran through the city towards the gym. What was I supposed to do? I hadn’t connected well enough with the ink network to do what Jake had asked. I skidded around the corner and almost slammed into Jake and his second.
“We can’t smell them. We can’t hear them. Find her,” Jake snarled.
I had to use ink magic. I couldn’t let her die, not like that.
“I need somewhere quiet,” I said.
Jake gestured to the gym.
“Don’t waste precious time, Dan.”
I nodded and jogged down the hallway to the sparring room. Jake was behind me, but I only heard his footsteps. I couldn’t send him away. He was too uptight, and there was no time to make excuses. I kept my back to him and kneeled, pulling my notebook and pen out as subtly as I could manage.
Sigils were a thing of logic. With the basic understanding in mind, you could construct one to do just about anything. That was why I’d focused my studies on them. I took a deep breath to steady myself, and tried to figure out what I needed. First, I had to save the shifter. Then I had to reveal the thief.
I pricked my finger to add the small droplet of blood to the ink. Fortunately, the wound healed almost instantly. I felt the ink magic reweaving the skin, protecting me. It was another consideration for another time. I focused on the moment and tried to figure out what exactly I needed to do. Images of ink dripping through fingers appeared in my mind, and I smiled. I constructed a sigil formed of sloping lines that meant the shifter’s tattoos would turn to pure ink when touched. No one would be able reach in deep enough to harm the bond between them and the shifter.
Taking a deep breath, I pulled what I had studied from my memories and worked as quickly as I could. There needed to be a central focus, a heart to structure the rest of the sigil around. My fingers moved of their own volition, much as they did when I painted the tattoos onto clients. The sensation of the ink magic flowing through my hands was a little unsettling. There was a cool thrum of power that wasn’t present when I tattooed. I was closer to the source, working with something purer and more powerful. I swallowed down the rising fear and focused on the rest of the sigil. I made sure the lines were clean and strong. The ink needed clear direction. My instincts told me bad things would happen if I wavered a
nd allowed the ink magic to slip from my sigil.
My stomach lurched when I made the final line. A feeling of exhaustion washed over me. I wasn’t used to such intense work. It was unlike bringing through the animal tattoos. The energy from coming from within me, the ink network was using me as a pure vessel. When I tattooed, something came from within the client, too, and I had Keirn there to help and support me. The sigil work was so much more. I was walking a very dangerous line, one I wasn’t sure I was ready for, but I had no choice. I wasn’t going to allow the shifter to die.
Brushing aside the exhaustion, I turned the page in my notebook and set to creating the sigil that would reveal the thief. I didn’t have it in me to make it a permanent solution. Consciousness was already threatening to flee when I began the sigil. It took everything I had to finish the sigil and push the ink magic through. It ran through my hands in a dull roar. I fought to contain it and focus it through the sigil into its purpose. There was resistance on the other end. The thief was stronger than expected. I drove all I had down through the ink magic and was rewarded with a shattering sensation. The ink magic suddenly dropped away, the work of the sigil having been completed. My hands shook, and the edges of my vision blurred. A shifter yipped somewhere close by and Jake’s footsteps vanished down the hallway behind me.
I put my notebook away and did my best to compose myself. I’d just saved a life.
It had taken longer than I wanted to pull myself together and get outside to track down the pack. One of the wolves that I’d tattooed the year before grinned at me and slapped me on the back.
“Good going, Dan. I didn’t know tattoo magicians could do that,” he said.
I smiled weakly. “I didn’t do anything, really.”
“You saved Beth!”
I smiled and took a shaky breath. “She’s ok?”
Jake and a slender brunette came around the corner, Jake’s arm firmly around her waist. They both had grins plastered on their faces.
