Bound by Ink (A Living Ink Novel)

by Marcella Burnard

  Isa hadn’t lied to the agents when she’d said she didn’t know him.

  “Will you come in?” she asked. “The view is terrific. I’ve been watching the ferries. And the sun on the water. Max made coffee.”

  That brought his gaze up. And there in his quirk of one eyebrow in the midst of a pressed tight expression, Isa finally found someone she knew. Her heart bumped against her ribs.

  Relief. How ridiculous. And selfish. The last thing he needed was to be trapped in this idiotic velvet-lined box with her.

  “Why did you ask for me?” he rasped, stalking into the living room and right up to her face.

  She had to look up to go on meeting his shadowed gaze.

  “You’ve given them reason to use me against you now,” he said. The whispered accusation shook. The shrill echo of it circled the room like a harpy.

  Chapter Thirteen

  “The bland suit twins said you’d recommended me,” Isa answered.

  George swayed.

  She caught his elbow. “Sit.”

  “I’m not Gus,” he grumbled.

  “Good. Then maybe you won’t throw up half-digested rawhide chew all over my tennis shoes,” Isa said.

  He chuckled and sank to the sofa. Even his laugh was alien.

  “I didn’t give you up,” he said in an undertone once she’d perched beside him. He sliced a sideways glance at the innocent-looking phone sitting on the side table.

  Isa nodded and poured him a cup of coffee. She’d expected listening devices. No Machiavellian agency worth their salt would allow her “privacy” unless they had a way of listening in. Not when you could mine those conversations for points of persuasion.

  “Never expected you had,” she said, closing one eye in a slow motion wink that she hoped George could interpret as “message received.” “I assume you’ve seen the news? Knew that I got shipped out to a containment camp in the mountains?”

  “Nearly froze your ass is the way I heard it,” he said.

  “I’m here now. Fed. I slept in the car on the way back.”

  “Warm?”

  She shook her head.

  “What the hell is happening out there, Ice?”

  “Fear is. Madness. Somewhere in among all of that, I’ve turned into a monster.”

  “I know the feeling.”

  Isa stared at him.

  He shifted his gaze away and pressed his lips thin.

  She reached to touch his hand, then hesitated. She wasn’t sure she had the right. Especially not if she’d endangered him by asking to see him.

  He glanced at her shaking, blue fingers, sighed, and took her hand in his thick-knuckled fingers. “What’d you do to your hands?”

  “Cheri’s fault. She gave me some pigment called Maya blue. Lovely color. Unbelievably permanent. Maybe I have no right to ask,” she said, “but are you okay?”

  He shook his head. Creases marred his forehead. They looked permanent, too. Worry and fear, etched deep.

  “Got a plan for getting out of here?” he asked. “Or a bottle of nail polish?”

  The image of him wearing candy cane–striped nail polish with his khaki slacks and shirt made Isa smile. “I’ve missed you.”

  “No, you haven’t. You missed Patty.”

  “Yes.”

  “Me, too.”

  She gaped. “I thought—you said you were a drag queen, not . . .”

  “Transgender,” he supplied when Isa faltered. “Yeah. It’s what I thought, too. I always knew I didn’t quite fit into my skin. I didn’t know—didn’t want to know maybe—until I couldn’t become her. She’s a better person than I am.”

  The acid in George’s voice jolted her. Isa shook her head, but the truth was, she didn’t know him as him. And she didn’t comprehend how one person could contain two different people. Not like this. She only understood sharing a soul with Live Ink. Patty and George were the same person, just different sexes. Weren’t they?

  She wouldn’t ask him to explain. It would only cause him pain and she didn’t have any right to a tour of his internal landscape.

  Based on what he’d said, she had a glimpse into how Dick and Lawrence might be controlling George. Rage rolled in a cold wave up through her feet into the rest of her. “They’re denying you the ability to live as Patty? How?”

  He laughed, an honest, gravelly laugh that Isa recognized when she’d recognized so little else in him. “This is one of the many reasons I adore you, Ice. I finally figure out I was born into the wrong body and you don’t even bat an eyelash.”

  Isa pulled in a slow, deep breath. “I’d like to claim some high-minded love of all humankind, but we both know it would be a lie. All I know is that I see you hurting and I hate everyone and everything that makes you feel that way.”

  He looked away, Adam’s apple bobbing. “They control everything. I don’t leave the premises. Not to buy clothes or groceries. When I came down with the flu, they brought a doctor in to see me.”

  Isa’s grip on her coffee cup hurt. For the pain in George’s voice, she’d willingly turn Lawrence, Dick, and Max into frogs if she had that power. She leaned in to catch George’s eye. “You once said you wouldn’t come back here. What happened?”

  “Ever been committed?” he asked.

  “Close.” Murmur had gotten them strapped down in the emergency room when he’d first been put on her.

  “Then you know what an illusion your autonomy is.”

  She flinched.

  “The thing I don’t understand is that they haven’t asked anything of me.”

  “They just manipulate you?”

  He didn’t answer. His gaze raced up to meet hers, then fled. She had to infer from his lack of response that manipulation was in play but that he wasn’t the target.

  “You think they’re using you to get at me?” she said. “That’s bad.”

  “Because it won’t work?”

  Isa shook her head. “Because it will.”

  “You have to get out of here.”

  “We,” she corrected.

  He glanced at the phone, then met her gaze. Leaning closer, he lowered his voice to a bare thread of sound. “How?”

  “Did you know I discovered my magic when I was a kid by drawing pictures that came true?”

  He frowned.

  She nodded. “I wanted a puppy. So I drew one. Two days later, she walked out of the sagebrush.” Then her cousin had killed the puppy. Isa shook away the memory.

  “A few years later, I wanted a particular kind of wristwatch so I’d fit in with the cool kids at school,” she said. “I drew it. Found one in the street a day later.”

  “Did it work?”

  “The watch ran.”

  George grinned. “No. Did you fit in?”

  “Of course not. Hard lesson discovering cool’s not really about the trappings.”

  “Why are you telling me this?” he asked.

  “Yesterday, in the containment camp, I drew yet another picture of something I wanted to come true. It worked, just not quite in the way I’d expected or hoped,” she said.

  “What did you draw?”

  “Freedom.” Quoting Murmur made her smile.

  He sucked in a sharp breath.

  “I think I’ll stay in tonight, do a little artwork. For both of us,” Isa said.

  “What if it doesn’t work the way you want this time, either?”

  “One prison at a time. Until then, what can I do to help you?”

  “I’d ask to raid your closet,” he said, “but you don’t shop at my stores.”

  “I don’t shop at any stores,” Isa said. “It’s why the gods created the Internet. Not sure what to do with the clothes in the closets in that master bedroom. Not a practical piece of clothing in there.”

  “You found
jeans, I see. Cut these guys a break, Ice. They aren’t used to artists,” George said. “Warn ’em before you start slopping ink or paint all over their polished marble floor.”

  “You got two pairs of new shoes out of me dropping my paint palette on your gold stilettos a year ago,” Isa protested.

  “Yes, I did,” he said. “And an Isa Romanchzyk original pair of oil paint on gold sequined sling-backs into the bargain.”

  Isa grimaced. “I could throw a tattoo into the ongoing apology over that incident.”

  “Only if it ended up as sexy as yours was.” He grinned, then the smile fell away as if his face had only momentarily forgotten fear. “Some things you need to know, Ice. You gotta play straight with these guys.”

  “That has to be a two-way street.”

  He groaned. “I know how you are. You can’t do this. Not here. Not with these people. Fair has nothing to do with—”

  “No, it doesn’t,” Isa snapped. “Fair hasn’t been a factor since someone threw one of my friends through my shop window four months ago. And certainly not since a bunch of AMBI agents took me to a containment camp in Eastern Washington. This is extortion. Pure and simple. Theirs. Mine. Even exchange. They want something from me. I want something in return.”

  He flinched and stared at her like she’d changed shape. “What?”

  Isa bit back the word revenge and squeezed her eyes shut.

  “Nothing good,” she finally said, not caring that she’d given whoever was listening, probably Max, a lever to use against her.

  Revenge wasn’t her drive. It was Murmur’s. So what was hers? Sighing, she opened her eyes. She wanted to be whole for once. She wanted Murmur back. Could she pretend that was a nobler goal than vengeance?

  If she didn’t grab hold of the angst-y shimmers of gold wafting through the room, and out into the afternoon, she’d have Murmur here. Imprisoned with her. Then she wouldn’t want to escape. Not if they’d let her keep him. Until he sacrificed her to close the damned portal.

  George had paled.

  Everything she thought she wanted piled up on the back of her tongue. She glanced at the phone in mirror of George’s gesture.

  His gaze followed hers. “You’ve changed, Isa.”

  “Yes, I have.”

  “I got word you’d lost your Live Ink on top of everything else. Are you okay?”

  She snorted. “I don’t know what okay looks like anymore.”

  “I hear that. Let me lay this out for you,” he said, leaning forward to prop his elbows on his knees. “Don’t make things too difficult. The value of your life is directly proportional to your ability and willingness to do what they ask. Tip the balance and no one will ever find your body.”

  “They wouldn’t be the first to try.”

  “They’d sure as hell be the last. Ask yourself who lived in this condo before you.”

  Meaning they’d already murdered someone who refused to do their bidding? Isa shook off a glimmer of disquiet. “I’m awfully hard to kill.”

  “No,” George snapped. He stood up. “You’re not. Your Ink was. He’s gone. You’re human again. Act like it.”

  He walked out, leaving Isa to wonder who’d brought him word that she’d lost Murmur.

  Max returned as Isa finished her coffee. She studied him, set down her cup, and said, “Your move.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “I seem to be in check,” Isa noted. Not that she played chess. How many games that she didn’t know was she expected to play? “The next move belongs to you. Won’t you sit down? I’d like those explanations now, please. Coffee?”

  He sat in the spot George had vacated. “No, thank you. This is complicated.”

  She folded her hands in her lap, waiting. If he expected her to rush into his silence and let him off the hook, he underestimated her pique. “Start with who you are.”

  When he met her gaze, the look in his eyes made her shiver. Not at all in a good way. He said, “We are associated with Homeland Security. Anything more than that basic identification is classified.”

  “Mission?”

  “Also classified.”

  “Meaning ‘military,’” she said.

  “No,” he said. “I can’t go into detail, but we’re the good guys. We sought you out because of your history of cooperation with law enforcement.”

  Huh. Good guys. She crossed her arms. “What is it you want from me?”

  “You have specific talents, Isa,” he said. “Talents that would make a measurable contribution to the safety of the United States.”

  “What talents?”

  “We have reason to believe you can track other magic users.”

  “No. I’m a Live Ink artist.”

  “That’s a conditioned response,” he chided. “You say it because you’ve never tried. But isn’t seeing someone else’s magic part of your job description?”

  Isa grimaced. “Only in the capacity of measuring whether someone can support Live Ink.”

  “I suspect that if you tried, you’d be able to hold on to the vision and trail the owner of that magic,” he said.

  When a rogue tattoo had escaped her containment studio, she had tried and failed to track it. Isa shook her head. “That can’t be all there is to it. You didn’t steal me from a containment camp and bring me to the hip, high-rent district based on something I’ve never done.”

  “No. You can track and capture Living Tattoos.”

  Alarm jolted her heart to a gallop. “That is interesting conjecture.”

  He grinned. “No. It isn’t conjecture. Work with us. We’ll make it worth your while.”

  “Had you taken me home, offered me protection, and then asked for my help, you’d have suckered me right in, you know,” she said.

  He shrugged and rose. “You said the price tag for you agreeing to stay was an explanation. You’ve had that. Welcome aboard.”

  She closed her eyes.

  “Lawrence and Dick will begin working with you this evening,” he said.

  The smug note in his voice dug in between her ribs.

  “I’ll be downstairs if you need anything.”

  ***

  As promised, Dick and Lawrence showed up with Chinese take-out as the sun began to set.

  “From the International District,” Lawrence said. “It isn’t Okari Sushi, but we hope you like it.”

  Isa brought plates and silverware to the table.

  Dick made tea.

  The setting sun slanted orange light across the glass and stainless steel dining table.

  Lawrence put his back to the window, sitting at the head of the table. Taking control of the room.

  Dick took the chair on the left, and gestured for Isa to take the chair opposite him.

  Hugging her cold arms tight around her ribs, Isa took the chair and sat. Odd, pretending to be companionable, sharing food with people who, according to George, wouldn’t hesitate to kill her if she became a liability.

  Her bones groaning beneath the pressure of everything that hadn’t been said, Isa managed only a few bites of supper.

  The food was excellent, spicy, still steaming. It turned to blocks of ice halfway down.

  “You want to use me to track people,” she said into the silence punctuated by the clank of silverware against china.

  Lawrence lifted an eyebrow. “Even before Max laid out our case this afternoon, you seemed to know a great deal about us. Has someone been telling tales out of school?”

  Silence settled while he waited for her to grow uncomfortable and answer.

  Lucky her. She’d learned that particular game from a trio of Navajo elders so long ago, and lost every damned time they’d turned their neutral, waiting gazes upon her, that Isa had no intention of losing ever again. Not to anyone who wasn’t fit to be mentioned in the
same breath as them.

  A muscle in Lawrence’s jaw ticked. “We are interested in finding certain items or individuals. We provide something to prime your ability, and then you track. In return, you are taken care of. Housing, food, clothing, all medical, everything you could want or need.”

  “I’ve already told Max. You’ve been misled regarding my abilities,” Isa said. “I’m a Live Ink artist. Not a tracker.”

  Dick smirked, a bright green sprig of broccoli between his front teeth. “Where is Daniel Alvarez?”

  “Somewhere in the city, I presume,” she said as her shoulders climbed.

  “No. Where is he?”

  She slapped her fork down and sat back.

  “Magic? Right here, right now?” she asked, eyeing the pair of them. Did they not have to worry about Acts of Magic Laws that prohibited the use of unshielded magic? Or could she use the laws to her advantage? Max and his agents had to have magic of their own. They wouldn’t have survived in contact with someone like George—or her—if they didn’t.

  How much did they have? Enough to keep Steve’s team from picking up her magical signature if she happened to let some of it spill through her shields?

  Better to find out sooner than to wonder later.

  Isa shrugged, stood up, and summoned power. Gold light, thick and turgid with cold, climbed the central pathway of her being, the one that connected past to present to future. It linked the spirit world, the mundane world, and the world of possibility. Magic flowed into the vast empty space inside and the ice gripping her soul thickened, raised and jagged where it grew over the scar of Murmur’s absence.

  She put a shield in place simply because to not do so would give away her intent to shoot a beacon out to Steve and his team. They’d better be paying attention.

  No one professing the professional affiliation that she had would conceivably work without a shield. Dick and Lawrence didn’t need to know that some shields were less permeable than others. Isa poked a few holes in hers.

  Then she opened her magical and physical eyes.

  The song of the city colored the room, overlaying the dining room with the cool, blue-gray symphony that was the combination of everything that lived and had lived in this land. The buildings and the history of the place sculpted the melody.