Nightmare Ink

by Marcella Burnard

  Having Nathalie with her worked in Isa’s favor. She insisted on brushing the snarls from Isa’s hair so she wouldn’t go out in public looking like she’d just walked out of Daniel’s prison.

  She led the way out of the apartment.

  Troy met them on the stairs. He grinned, reversed course, and unlocked the shop.

  The window had been replaced. Not a single shard of shattered glass remained. Why couldn’t Isa get the image of crushed, bloodstained glass out of her head? The oak reception desk was gone, carted away, she assumed, as evidence in Zoog’s murder investigation. A new counter of galvanized steel and thick, polished glass, lit to look like rippling water stood in its place.

  “Like it?” Troy asked as she studied it.

  “Cheri built that?”

  “She did.”

  “It’s stunning,” Isa said. “What the hell is it doing here, where I can’t afford to pay her its worth?”

  “She did it because she wanted to do it, Ice,” Troy said. “She couldn’t help us look for you because of the boy. She could do this.”

  Murmur lifted one of her eyebrows. Amused condescension trickled through her.

  She slumped. Was she being insensitive to everyone else’s feelings? How telling was it that a demon had better emotional intelligence than she did?

  “Thank her for me,” Isa managed. “Can I post her business card?”

  Troy nodded, a faint smile on his face. “That would be great.”

  “Least I can do,” she said. Except it wasn’t the only thing she could—or should—do. The Infernal attack and Murmur’s reaction to it made it clear what had to happen.

  Nathalie and Ikylla had been hurt because of her. Either one or both of them could have been killed. She didn’t understand why, but by virtue of having Murmur on board, Isa knew Daniel wouldn’t stop until he’d destroyed her. Her tattoo intended to play the same game.

  The worst part in having him in residence was that he experienced every shudder of her heart at the thought of anyone she cared about being hurt. More than Nathalie and Ikylla already had been. He wasn’t above using that in his quest to get what he wanted.

  Daniel’s smug assurance that he had her cornered scared her, sure. It also enraged her. But Murmur’s passionless calculation as he examined Troy and Nathalie through her eyes made her blood run cold. She owed it to them to protect them the only way she could.

  “I need to ask the two of you for one last favor,” she said.

  Nathalie, wrapped in a green leaf-print fleece blanket, plopped down into the desk chair.

  “Sure,” Troy said. “What’s up?”

  “Would you take Nathalie home?”

  “Wait,” Nathalie protested.

  “Take Gus and Ikylla with you.” Isa’s voice broke. Pain stabbed through her chest, resolving into a burn in her eyes. She gasped at the sting.

  “We’re back to this? What are you doing, Ice?” Troy rumbled.

  “I’m closing the shop and leaving.”

  “Why?” Nathalie demanded.

  “You can’t run from what’s happened,” Troy said. “Not when you carry the marks with you.”

  “And I don’t need the constant reminders everyone and everything in this city represents!” she said.

  Murmur twitched. Vile anticipation curled through her gut.

  “Why are you doing this?” Nathalie said.

  “Doing what?”

  “Trying to shove everyone away? Me? Troy? You’re abandoning me! Us. Just like everyone else ever has!”

  “What? No! Damn it. This has nothing to do with you.”

  “My folks tossed me out because I’m gay. Why should you be any different?” Nathalie smeared moisture from her face.

  “They did? Jesus.”

  “Hey, you okay?” Nathalie asked, peering at Isa with watery eyes. “You look like melted candle wax.”

  She asked that when she thought Isa wanted to toss her out like trash because of who Nathalie slept with? Why hadn’t it occurred to Isa that someone else might have been thrown out of a family?

  “I’m sorry,” Isa said. God, that was weak.

  “Thanks.” Nathalie stared at her hands clasped between her knees. “I know this isn’t about my sexuality, Ice. Intellectually, I mean. I get that you think you’re trying to protect us, right? Well, I have abandonment issues. So stop it. And thanks for not calling my parents names.”

  “I am. Internally. Really despicable ones.”

  Troy snorted.

  Nathalie giggled, meeting Isa’s gaze. It was like watching water tremble on the brim of a too-full glass. “They can’t help what they are.”

  Isa grunted, hoping Nat would accept the noncommittal response.

  “You think I’m making excuses for them.”

  “Doesn’t matter what I think.”

  “It’s what my therapist said. Everyone expects me to hate them.”

  “Hate is a waste,” Isa said. “It destroys you and robs you of power.”

  “See? That’s what I think! So why, Ice? Why are you pushing everyone away? I don’t get it.”

  Isa turned her head to expose the tattoo’s gleaming emerald eye, his fangs buried in her jugular, and the single ruby drop of blood dripping from that bite.

  Nathalie’s brows lowered. “Him.”

  “He’s dangerous.”

  “You’re fighting him,” Troy said.

  “One lapse,” Isa countered, “one single slip on my part, and he’ll hurt someone. You, if you’re here. And we’ve had graphic proof that being around me is dangerous.”

  Murmur listened hard. She couldn’t say exactly what she felt to know that, but he also held perfectly, painfully still. Waiting for that lapse so he could pounce? Or waiting for the other shoe to drop? Too bad she didn’t have one. She’d give anything to be armed against him.

  “He’ll hurt you if we’re not here!” Nathalie protested.

  “I can stand that,” she said. “Not you. Not Gus. Not Ikylla. Not—”

  “Not anyone you consider family,” Nat finished for her.

  Troy nodded once when Isa gaped at him.

  Was it true? Had she inadvertently built a surrogate family? Was she really playing out the same pattern for a third time? Hadn’t she learned anything from destroying the family that had adopted her? Or from being bribed to leave the family she’d imagined she’d had in Triple J’s tattoo shop? She hadn’t done anything to destroy this family yet, but with Murmur etched on her skin and soul that was a matter of time.

  You didn’t need my help the first two families.

  “You don’t want to be my family,” she choked. “My track record . . . You have to get away from me. All of you.”

  “We won’t,” Troy said.

  “You can’t make us,” pale, shaking Nathalie agreed.

  Isa snorted. “A strong breeze would take you out. And this thing is already plotting horrific ways to hurt all of you so he can destroy me and take over my body.”

  “Which would only work because you care about us,” Nathalie noted.

  Isa threw her useless hands wide. “Yes. Fine. You caught me. Now get away so I know you’ll be safe!”

  “Nothing doing,” Troy said. “Seems to me that if we go, we make it easy for you to give up, to not have any reason to fight him.”

  Murmur laughed with her voice. She could no longer stop him.

  Nathalie grimaced.

  Troy crossed his arms and leaned against the wall, the picture of nonchalance. “What do you think of repainting the entry wall, Ice? I know a kid with a real gift for tagging. Almost as good as Zoog was. Let me put down a slate base coat. He’d do the job just to have his name in the shop.”

  “She’s afraid I’ll orphan that baby of yours,” Murmur said with Isa’s voice.

/>   “There are no guarantees in life, man,” Troy said, meeting her gaze. His features tightened.

  She guessed he saw her struggling to pry control of her vocal chords from Murmur’s grasp.

  “You son of a bitch,” she gasped when she mentally peeled the last tendril of Ink from her voice. “I’ll destroy you myself before you’ll hurt anyone.”

  With what? Murmur shot.

  Her hands throbbed. She gritted her teeth and stomped toward the basement door.

  “Ice,” Troy said. “You strong enough to do a bind?”

  “No,” she replied. “I’m going downstairs to see if I can heal up enough to do a bind if it comes to that. It’s what I came for before . . .”

  “Before we wouldn’t let you put on a martyr complex and run for the hills?” he finished for her.

  “I was trying to protect you.”

  “Not your job, darlin’, but thanks.”

  Isa sighed. “Would you open the door, please?”

  Silence for several long seconds while she stared at the peeling music posters plastered all over the basement door.

  Murmur lingered, taking lazy sips of her sensory input, all without comment, just a sense of curiosity, as if he’d pulled up a chair and a box of popcorn on the fifth of July to see whether there’d be any fireworks that night, too.

  Isa heard a desk drawer slide open. Keys jingled. Heavy, combat-booted footsteps shook the floorboards as Troy approached. He unlocked the door and opened it without a word. When she started down the steps, he followed.

  “The door to the magic microwave is heavy,” he said when she glanced over her shoulder at him. “We need you, Ice. Me and Nat, we could find other gigs, but we don’t want to, you know? Nightmare Ink is a part of us, too. Besides, anyone in this city wearing Live Ink that might go bad needs you right here.”

  Troy opened the door to the studio and watched her turn on the lights.

  “Where would you run to that you wouldn’t endanger anyone?” he asked.

  She blew out an unsteady breath. “I don’t know.”

  “If you have to fight, do it where you have allies,” he said. “I’m going to hang here until you’re done. I’ll be right outside the door.”

  He was right. There wasn’t anywhere Isa could go where no one would be endangered by her presence.

  They need me.

  The clang of metal on metal when Troy closed the door pulled her out of the words circling in her brain.

  She shut away everything but what she’d come to do. She couldn’t light candles, but she could still cast a circle and complete the rituals that would center her.

  Murmur crowded into her eyesight to survey the studio.

  She squinted at the ache settling into her temples, but she grounded. Then she reached down into her center, seeking power. It shimmered there, darker than she remembered, shot through with squiggling black lines that bled darkness into the liquid gold of her magic.

  Could she still use this tainted power for her purposes? Should she?

  Only one way to find out. She called up energy.

  Razors sliced through her hands. She choked back a cry, waited for the hurt to fade, and tried again.

  Magic rose in answer to her call.

  She thought she heard the dry-twig snap of bone breaking.

  Her concentration shattered. She cursed. How could six weeks of conditioning undo over a decade of intense study?

  It couldn’t.

  It wouldn’t.

  She closed her eyes.

  Years ago, Joseph had given her a simple task. Sort the yellow kernels of corn from the blue. Use magic. Don’t let anything stop her.

  She’d started the job full of confidence. Then Ruth had thrown a bucket of water over her. Isa spilled both bowls of corn in the mud. All three teachers had howled with laughter so contagious, Isa could only join them, even as she’d realized how difficult they intended to make the assignment. She’d tried again. For days. Eventually, she’d learned. And what she had learned could be remembered and built upon.

  She descended into her center, sinking through the river of magic into the desert she hadn’t visited since she’d last seen it while in Daniel’s cage.

  Spider Woman was gone. The doorway and the road she’d taken to escape had vanished. Only sand, pale sky, and shimmering heat remained, perfumed by sage and pinyon.

  Isa breathed deep and noticed she could. In this place, she was alone. Murmur, it seemed, could not follow. Here, she was unmarked. Unchanged.

  Here, she could call magic unsullied by his touch.

  She drew energy and power from the sand beneath her feet, gathered it into her body from the heat and light surrounding her. Energy flooded her interior.

  She wanted desperately to burn the tattoo away with the heat of sunshine, but he hadn’t been able to follow her here. Instead, she concentrated on turning her power to healing her injuries.

  From far away, pain lashed her. It washed through her physical body, and then drained away, scorched by the light she focused. She directed power to her hands, trying to remember what they’d looked like before Daniel had destroyed them.

  Heat pulsed down her arms in waves. Her fingers tingled—a pleasant, warm buzz that set hope aflutter in her chest.

  She returned to the studio, opened her eyes, and using her teeth tugged free the gauze wrapping.

  Disappointment burned hope alive. Her hands hadn’t changed.

  They did. Murmur sounded amused. Condescending. But also ever so slightly intrigued.

  She brought her hands before her face. Still twisted. Still misshapen—but they didn’t hurt. The constant throb of outraged nerve impulses and blood pulsing past healing bone had evaporated.

  “Brilliant,” she muttered. “Try to straighten everything out and end up healing the bones exactly as they’d been broken.”

  Not enough power.

  Bitterness clogged her throat. Daniel had seen to that. She’d been able to focus enough to summon a fraction of the power that should have answered her call. The bastard had crippled her on far more than a physical level.

  For that, she’d rip his heart out with her teeth and use his arteries for straws.

  Muted appreciation filtered through Murmur’s lift of her eyebrows. He tamped down the feeling and urged her attention around to the recliner she’d last used to ink Zoog.

  It had been flattened out to a table. She gasped and took an involuntary step back.

  What is that?

  Magic outlined the shape of a man on the surface. Greenish fox fire winked and faded like the batteries running down in a flashlight.

  She let her hands fall to her sides and stared. “Too big for Zoog. Kelli Solvang?”

  He’d been the only other person in the studio, and he’d died on that table. Why hadn’t she seen or sensed it while she’d worked on Zoog?

  Heart racing, she sidestepped and looked at the spot on the floor where she remembered Solvang’s blood mingling with her broken vial of binding ink.

  Nothing.

  No. Not quite nothing.

  Glimmers of magic traced the path his blood had dripped. Why was there no puddle of magic on the floor? The grounding properties of the basalt?

  If she could see the magic imprint—the memory of Kelli Solvang’s death in this place—could she detect and follow his tattoo’s path to freedom?

  She spun.

  Murmur competed for use of her eyesight.

  “Ow!” she said. “Stop it. I won’t block you out if you’ll stop making me sick with headache.”

  He snorted.

  The pain in her head spiked. Nausea sloshed through her middle.

  Anger handed her the will to shove him off her optic nerves or possibly her visual cortex, assuming that his access actually had a biological an
alogue. She shunted him into an eddied backwater in her mind, tore down the bridges, and stranded him there.

  When Isa blinked and surveyed the studio, every last flicker of magic had dissipated.

  Murmur swarmed back into her consciousness radiating icy shards of fury and contempt.

  His interference had cost her the dragon’s trail.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Isa found Steve waiting in the shop when Troy walked her up from the basement.

  Still blinking her eyesight back into this world, she caught sight of a sunny, blue-sky glimmer surrounding Steve. She bit back a laugh. Magic. Of course.

  “I’ve got an Ink death,” he said by way of greeting. “My people tell me there’s still magic buzzing around the room, but they can’t read it. Too confused.”

  Murmur shifted, interested.

  Isa frowned. Troy had been right, in part. He’d said that people needed her to do her job. But it was more than that. Was she power tripping because helping Steve steadied her? Made her feel stronger?

  She needed that. “Let’s go. I’ll do what I can.”

  Steve drove north past Bitter Lake into a residential neighborhood one block off of Aurora. The neat Craftsman-style cottage stood out on the block. The rest of the homes were bigger. Newer. Cop cars lined the curb.

  They pulled in as rain began spattering the windshield.

  Murmur rose within her. Since he offered a unique perspective on Ink, Isa didn’t attempt to shut him out, despite the renewed ache in her head.

  She caught a whiff of varnish as Steve ushered her through the polished front door. The remains of flat, stale magic inside stopped her cold.

  A circle had been inscribed on the satin-finish hardwood floor. Symbols she didn’t recognize lined the interior. Inside a second, smaller circle at the center of the room, a body sprawled, hands outflung.

  A tremor of black that hadn’t originated from her shook her body.

  “What?” she asked the Ink.

  No reply.

  Police littered the room, measuring, photographing, collecting specimens and evidence. Steve waded into the thick of the activity, asking questions.

  She’d sensed something she couldn’t put a finger on. Normally, she’d be willing to plow through so subtle a warning, but anything that gave her tattoo pause warranted a second look. She opened to magic. The scent of sun-warmed sage caressed her cheek. It carried a hint of leather and sulfur.