Ink Exchange tf-2 Page 4

  Irial held the girl's gaze as he told his court, "Their regents did this, brought us to this when they killed Beira. Remember that as you offer them your hospitality."

  Chapter 4

  The tattoo shop was empty when Leslie walked in. No voice broke the stillness of the room. Even the stereo was silenced.

  "It's me," she called.

  She went back to the room where Rabbit would do the work. The paper with the stencil of her tattoo waited on a tray on the counter beside a disposable razor and miscellaneous other items. "I'm a little early."

  Rabbit stared at her for a moment but didn't say anything.

  "You said we could start tonight. Do the outline." She came over to stare down at the stencil. She didn't touch it, though, strangely afraid that it would vanish if she did.

  Finally Rabbit said, "Let me get the door."

  While he was gone, she wandered around the tiny room—more to keep from touching the stencil than anything else. The walls were covered in various show and convention flyers—most faded and for events long past. A few framed photos, all black-and-white, and theater-size film posters were intermingled with the flyers. Like every other part of the shop, the room was impossibly clean and had a slight antiseptic scent.

  She paused at several of the photos, not recognizing most of the people or places. Interspersed among them were framed pen-and-ink sketches. In one, Capone-era thugs were smiling at the artist. It was as realistic as any photograph, skillful to the degree that it seemed bizarre to see it hanging amidst the snapshots and posters. Rabbit returned as she was tracing the form of a stunningly beautiful man sitting in the middle of the group of gangsters. They were all striking, but it was him, the one leaning on an old twisted tree, who looked almost familiar. The others clustered around, beside, or behind him, but he was obviously the one with power. She asked, "Who's this?"

  "Relatives," was all Rabbit said.

  Leslie's attention lingered on the picture. The man in the image wore a dark suit like the other men, but his posture—arrogant and assessing—gave him the impression of being more menacing than the men around him. Here was someone to fear.

  Rabbit cleared his throat and pointed in front of him. "Come on. Can't start with you over there."

  Leslie forced herself to look away from the image. Fearing—or lusting on—someone who was either old or long dead was sort of weird anyhow. She went to where Rabbit had pointed, put her back to him, and pulled her shirt off.

  Rabbit tucked a cloth of some sort under her bra strap. "To keep it clean."

  "If ink or whatever gets on it, it's not a big deal." She folded her arms across her chest and tried to stand still. Despite how much she wanted the ink, standing there in her bra felt uncomfortable.

  "You're sure?"

  "Definitely. No buyer's remorse. Really, it's starting to border on obsession. I actually dreamed about it. The eyes in it and those wings." She blushed, thankful Rabbit was behind her and couldn't see her face.

  He wiped her skin with something cold. "Makes sense."

  "Sure it does." Leslie smiled, though: Rabbit wasn't fazed by anything, acting as if the oddest things were okay. It made her relax a little.

  "Stay still." He shaved the fine hairs on the skin where the tattoo would go and wiped her off again with more cold liquid.

  She glanced back as he walked away. He tossed the razor into a bin, pausing to give her a serious look before coming behind her again. She watched him over her shoulder.

  He picked up the stencil. "Face that way."

  "Where's Ani?" Leslie'd rarely been at the shop when Ani didn't show up, usually with Tish in tow. It was like she had some radar, able to track people down without any obvious explanation how.

  "Ani needed quiet." He put a hand on her hip and moved her. Then he spritzed something lightly on her back where the ink would go—at the top of her spine between her shoulders, spanning the width of her back, centered over the spot where Leslie thought the wings would attach if they were real. She closed her eyes as he pressed the stencil onto her back. Somehow even that felt exciting.

  Then he peeled away the paper. "See if it's where you want it."

  She went to the mirror as quickly as she could without running. Using the hand mirror to see her reflection in the wall mirror, she saw it—her ink, her perfect ink stenciled on her skin—and grinned so widely, her cheeks hurt. "Yes. Gods, yes."

  "Sit." He pointed at the chair.

  She sat on the edge and watched as Rabbit methodically put on gloves, opened a sterile stick, and used it to pull a glop of clear ointment out of a jar and put it on a cloth-covered tray. He pulled out several tiny ink caps and tacked them down to the drop cloth. Then he poured ink into them.

  I've watched this plenty of times; it's not a big deal. She couldn't look away, though.

  Rabbit did each step silently, as if she weren't there. He opened the needle package and pulled out a length of thin metal. It looked like it was just one needle, but she knew from her hours listening to Rabbit talk shop that there were several individual needles at the tip of a needle bar. My needles, for my ink, in my skin. Rabbit slid the needle bar into the machine. The soft sound of metal sliding across metal was followed by an almost inaudible snick. Leslie let out breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding. If she thought Rabbit would let her, she'd ask to hold the tattoo machine, ask to wrap her hand around the primitive-looking coils and angled bits of metal. Instead she watched Rabbit make adjustments to it. She shivered. It looked like a crude handheld sewing machine, and with it he'd stitch beauty onto her body. There was something primal about the process that resonated for her, some sense that after this she'd be irrevocably different, and that was exactly what she needed.

  "Turn that way." Rabbit motioned, and she moved so her back was to him. He smeared ointment over her skin with a latex-clad finger. "Ready?"

  "Mm-hmm." She braced herself, wondering briefly if it would hurt but not caring. Some of the people she'd seen complained like the pain was unbearable. Others seemed not to notice it at all. It'll be fine. The first touch of needles was startling, a sharp sensation that felt more like irritation than pain. It was far from awful.

  "You good?" He paused, taking away the touch of needles as he spoke.

  "Mm-hmm," she said again: it was the most articulate answer she could offer in the moment. Then, after a pause that was almost long enough to make her beg him to get back to it, he lowered the tattoo machine to her skin again. Neither spoke as he outlined the tattoo. Leslie closed her eyes and concentrated on the machine as it hummed and paused, lifting from her skin only to touch back down. She couldn't see it, but she'd watched Rabbit work often enough to know that in some of those pauses Rabbit dipped the tip of the needle into the tiny ink caps like a scholar inking his quill.

  And she sat there, her back stretched in front of him as if she were a breathing piece of canvas. It was wonderful. The only sound was the hum of the machine. It was more than a sound, though: it was a vibration that seemed to slip through her skin and sink into the marrow of her bones.

  "I could stay like this forever," she whispered, eyes still closed.

  A dark laugh rolled out of somewhere. Leslie’s eyessnapped open. "Is someone here?"

  "You're tired. School and extra shifts this month, right? Maybe you drifted off." He tilted his head in that peculiar way he and his sisters had, like a dog hearing a new sound.

  "Are you saying I fell asleep sitting up while you were tattooing me?" She looked back at him and frowned.

  "Maybe." He shrugged and turned away to open a brown glass bottle. It was unlike the other ink bottles: the label was handwritten in a language she didn't recognize.

  When he uncapped it, it seemed as if tiny shadows slithered out of it. Weird. She blinked and stared at it. "I must be tired," she muttered.

  He poured ink from the bottle into another ink cap— holding it aloft so the outside of the bottle didn't touch the side of the ink cap—then sealed th
e bottle and changed gloves.

  She repositioned herself and closed her eyes again. "I expected it to hurt, you know?"

  "It does hurt." Then he lowered the tattoo machine to her skin again, and she stopped remembering how to speak.

  The hum had always sounded comforting when Leslie had listened to Rabbit working, but feeling the vibration on her skin made it seem exciting and not at all comforting. It felt different from what she'd imagined, but it wasn't what she'd call pain. Still, she doubted it was something she could've slept through.

  "You okay?" Rabbit wiped her skin again.

  "I'm good." She felt languid, like her bones weren't all the way solid anymore. "More ink."

  "Not tonight."

  "We could just finish it tonight—"

  "No. This one will take a couple sessions." Rabbit was quiet as he wiped her skin. He slid his chair back; the wheels sounded loud as they slid over the floor, like a boulder being pushed across a metal grate.

  Weird.

  She stretched—and almost blacked out.

  Rabbit steadied her. "Give it a sec."

  "Head rush or something." She blinked to clear her vision, resisting the urge to try to focus on the shadows that seemed to be walking through the room unattached to anything.

  But Rabbit was there, showing her the tattoo—my tattoo—with a pair of hand mirrors. She tried to speak, and might have. She wasn't sure. Time felt like it was off, speeding and slowing, keeping pace with some faraway chaos clock, bending to rhythms that weren't predictable. Rabbit was covering her new tattoo with a sterile bandage. At the same time, it seemed, his arm was around her, helping her stand.

  She stepped unsteadily forward. "Careful with my wings."

  She stumbled. Wings?

  Rabbit said nothing; perhaps he hadn't heard or understood. Perhaps she hadn't spoken—but she could picture them—dark, shadowy swoops, somewhere between feathers and slick-soft aged leather, that tickled the sensitive skin at the backs of her knees.

  As soft as I remembered.

  "Rabbit? I feel weird. Wrong. Something wrong."

  "Endorphin rush, Leslie, making you feel high. It'll be okay. It's not unusual." He didn't look at her when he spoke, and she knew he was lying.

  She felt like she should be afraid, but she wasn't. Rabbit had lied: something was very wrong. She knew with a certainty that seemed impossible—like tasting sugar and having it called salt—that the words he said didn't taste true.

  But then it didn't matter. The missing hands of the chaos clock shifted again, and nothing else mattered in that moment, just the ink in her skin, the hum in her veins, the euphoric zinging that made her feel a confidence she'd not known in far too long.

  Chapter 5

  Although Rabbit had told him where to find her, Irial hadn't approached the mortal yet; he'd had no intention of doing so until he saw if she really was strong enough to be worth the effort. But when he felt their first tenuous link fall into place, felt her euphoria as Rabbit's tattoo machine danced across her skin, he knew he had to see her. It was like a compulsion tugging at him—and not just him: all thedark fey felt it, tied as they were to Irial. They'd protect her, fight to be near her now.

  And that urge was a good one to encourage—their being near her would mean they'd taunt and torment the mortals, elicit fear and anguish, appetites and furies, delicious meals to sate his appetites once the ink exchange was complete. Where the girl walked, his fey would follow. Mortals would become a feast for king and court—he'd caught only slight drifts of it so far, but already it was an invigorating thing. Shadows in her wake, for me, for us. He drew a deep breath, pulling on that still-tenuous link Rabbit was forging with his tattoo machine.

  Irial rationalized it: if he was going to be tied to her, it made sense to check in on her. She'd be his responsibility, his burden, and in many ways a weakness. But despite the reasons he could list, he knew it wasn't logic leading him: it was desire. Fortunately, the king of the Dark Court saw no reason to resist his appetites, so he'd co-opted Gabriel and was on the way to her city, seeking her presence the way he had sought so many other indulgences over the years. He leaned back, seat reclined all the way, enjoying the thrill of Gabriel's seemingly reckless driving.

  Irial propped one boot on the door, and Gabriel growled. "She's fresh painted, Iri. Come on."

  "Chill."

  The Hound shook his shaggy head. "I don't put my boots on your bed or any of those little sofas you have everywhere. Get your boot off there before you scratch her."

  Like the rest of the Hounds' steeds, Gabriel's wore the guise of a mortal vehicle, shifting so truly into that form that it was sometimes hard to remember when it had last looked like the terrifying beast it truly was. Maybe it was an extension of Gabriel's will; maybe it was the steed's own whim. All of the creatures mimicked mortal vehicles so well that it was easy to forget that they were living things— except when anyone other than the Hounds tried to ride them. Then it was easy to recall what they were: the speed at which they moved sent the offending faery—or mortal— hurtling through the air into whatever target the beasts chose.

  Gabriel steered his Mustang into the small lot beside Verlaine's, the restaurant where the mortal worked. Irial lowered his foot, scraping his boot on the window as he did so; the illusion of its being a machine didn't waver.

  "Dress code, Gabe. Change." As Irial spoke, his own appearance shifted. Had any mortals been watching, they'd have seen his jeans and club-friendly shirt vanish in favor of a pressed pair of trousers and conservative oxford-cloth shirt. His scuffed boots, however, stayed. It wasn't the glamour he usually wore, but he didn't want the mortal to recognize him later. This meeting was for him, so he could watch her; it was not one he'd prefer her to remember.

  "A face to meet the faces that we meet," but not my face— not even the mask I wear for the mortals. Layers of illusions … Irial scowled, unsure of the source of the strange melancholia that was riding him, and gestured to Gabriel to don a relatively unthreatening glamour as well. "Pretty yourself up."

  Gabriel's appearance shift was more subtle than Irial's: he still wore black jeans and a collarless shirt, but the Hound's tattoos were now hidden under long sleeves. His unruly hair appeared to be neatly trimmed, as were his goatee and sideburns. Like Irial's, Gabriel's glamour was not his usual one. Gabriel's face was somehow gentler, without the dark shadows and hollows that he usually left visible for the mortals. Of course, the glamour did nothing for the Hound's intimidating height, but for Gabriel, it was near conservative.

  As they got out of the car, Gabriel bared his teeth at several of the Summer Court's guards in a taunting smile. They were, no doubt, minding the mortal since she was friends with the new Summer Queen. The guards saw him as he truly was and cringed. If Gabriel were to start trouble, they'd inevitably suffer serious injury.

  Irial opened the door. "Not now, Gabriel."

  After a longing look at the fey who lingered in the street, Gabriel went inside the restaurant. In a low voice, Irial told him, "After the meal, you can visit our watchers. A bit of terror so near the girl … It's what she's for, right? Let's see how the initial connection holds up."

  Gabriel smiled then, happily anticipating a spot of trouble with the Summer Court guards. Their presence meant that neither Winter nor Summer Court would harm the girl, and no solitary fey would be foolish enough to try to engage in any sport with a mortal who was under such careful watch. Of course, it also meant that Irial would have the great fun of stealing her away without their noticing before it was too late.

  "Just the two of you?" the hostess, a rather vapid mortal with a perky smile, asked.

  A quick glance at the chart on the hostess station showed him which tables were in his mortal's section. Irial motioned to a table in the far corner, a darkened section fit for romantic dinners or stolen trysts. "We'll take that table in back. The one by the ficus."

  After the hostess led them to the table in question, Irial waited unti
l she—Leslie—walked up, her hips swaying slightly, her expression friendly and warm. Such a look would work well if he were the mortal he appeared to be. As it was, the shadows that danced around her and the smoke-thin tendrils that snaked from her skin to his— visible only to dark fey—were what made his breath catch.

  "Hi, I'm Leslie. I'll be your server tonight," she said as she placed a basket of fresh bread on the table. Then she launched into specials and other nonsense he didn't quite hear. She had too-thin lips for his taste, darkened only slightly with something pink and girlish. Not suitable for my mortal at all. But the darkness that clung so poignantly to her skin was quite fit for his court. He studied her, reading her feelings now that they were linked even this slightly. When he'd met her she'd been tainted, but now she positively crawled with shadows. Someone had hurt her, and badly, since he'd first seen her.

  Anger that someone had touched what was his vied with awareness. What they had done—and how ably she resisted the shadows—these were what made her ready to be his. Had they not wounded her, she'd be inaccessible to him. Had she not resisted the darkness so successfully, she'd not be strong enough to handle what he was about to do to her. She'd been damaged, but not irreparably. Fragmented and strong, the perfect mix for him.

  But he'd still kill them for touching her.

  Silent now, obviously done with her lists and recommendations, she stood and stared expectantly at him. Aside from a quick glance at Gabriel, her attention was riveted on Irial. It pleased him more than he'd expected, seeing the mortal look at him attentively. He liked her hunger. "Leslie, can you do me a favor?"

  "Sir?" She smiled again but looked hesitant as she did so. Her fear spiked, showing in a slight shifting of shadows that made his heart race.

  "I'm not feeling very decisive" — he shot a glare at Gabriel, whose muffled laugh turned into a loud cough— "in terms of the menu here. Could you order for me?"