Bound by Ink (A Living Ink Novel) Page 29

  “Master Masatoshi would be honored if you would allow him to lend his magic to your ceremony to be directed as you see fit,” Oki said to Jaiden.

  “Oki, my cousin Jaiden. Jaiden, Oki,” Isa said.

  “I welcome your master’s contribution,” Jaiden said. He lit a bundle of sage and smudged them all.

  At the scent, Isa’s head buzzed. Old home week. She slid into trance.

  Magic shifted in the room.

  Jaiden’s.

  Steve’s.

  Oki’s and her dragon’s.

  Masatoshi’s.

  Murmur’s.

  Hers.

  And still more. Indefinable. Almost imperceptible.

  When Jaiden knelt and settled into chant, Isa tumbled through her interior, into the desert at her center. Until it had frozen, it had been her sanctuary. She loathed what it had become. What she’d become.

  Except that, in the face of Jaiden’s ceremony, it had thawed. Frost crunched beneath her sneakers, but she stood on sand. Silver-blue new growth dotted the tips of the sage. Spicy, sweet pinyon sap perfumed the chilly air. The sun hung golden in her internal sky.

  A crunch of a footfall brought her around.

  Murmur, she’d expected. He’d once had unfettered access to her inner landscape.

  Jaiden, certainly. He’d been trained to follow his patients into the spirit world, just as Isa had been. He should feel right at home.

  Master Masatoshi? Maybe she’d expected him, too, since no barrier she could erect would ever bar the kind of power he wielded. Magically, she was a child still drawing stick figures in the sand in comparison to the Ink Master.

  Oki, Isa hadn’t expected. Nor Steve. Nor the silver snaking around their ankles—indication of Uriel seeking a weakness to exploit.

  Fear thumped her between the eyes.

  It could be worse.

  Raven flew in on a breath of sweet-smelling air.

  Tiny claws dug into the skin on the back of Isa’s hand. Lizard smiled up at her when Isa glanced at the boulder she used for support.

  Rough, hoary fur brushed the fingers of her other hand. Coyote.

  Oh, yes. It would be worse if still more of the people she loved were involved.

  Cold stuck a knife through her chest.

  She croaked a protest and fell to her knees.

  Masatoshi spoke, words hurried, voice raised.

  “She’s the portal!” Oki translated. “Her magic is the key!”

  On her hands and knees in the sand, Isa struggled to block the ice sawing through her breastbone. Silver magic, pure, unblemished, spilled like blood from her, as yet, intact chest. Bastard. She’d kill Uriel with her own two hands. Grimacing, she summoned magic.

  “No magic!” Murmur growled. He yanked her against his chest, his forearm at her throat. “No opening the door.”

  Wheezing, she squeezed her eyes shut and struggled to release her grip on the run of energy deep within her. She’d learned to control magic, which meant handling it. Consciously. Every moment. She’d never learned how not to do it.

  “Watch them,” he said at her ear. “Watch your Ink Master.”

  Sipping air, she subsided against him.

  Masatoshi wove a spell so intricate Isa marveled at the interplay of spoken word, gesture, and mossy, spring water energy.

  She couldn’t follow where the spell led without swimming in the suddenly toxic river of her own power. She had to trust. Again. Something she wasn’t at all good at. Unless Murmur’s forearm pressing against her windpipe enforcing it counted.

  Jaiden’s chant and his silvery-blue sage flower magic beat across the landscape. Distant thunder answered, picking up the rhythm.

  The ground beneath her knees trembled. Sand grains vibrated. Settled. Then jumped again.

  Isa struggled against Murmur’s grasp, wanting to scan the horizon, desperate for the lift of hope the approach of her adoptive family’s deities would bring. Who would answer Jaiden’s call?

  Spider Woman?

  Changing Woman herself?

  Starlight, shot through with vibrant shimmers of green and gold, brushed Isa’s awareness. Oki and her tattoo, integrated and working in harmony. Steve’s blue sky magic eased past Isa. She hated that he’d had to learn to handle his magic because he had to defend himself from her.

  “Murmur,” Master Masatoshi said, the word accented, but comprehensible. The rest followed in Japanese.

  Murmur loosened his grasp and urged Isa to her feet.

  “Ready?” Murmur asked. “You can put me back?”

  Oki drew herself up, her potent, tattoo-augmented power resting against Isa’s chest like a bandage, stemming the flow of silver.

  “Master Masatoshi asks that you stand here,” Oki said to Murmur. “You will be in the center of his circle.”

  Murmur squeezed Isa’s shoulder and met her eye. His expression was placid, but the tip of his tongue ran out to moisten his lips. In that simple gesture, Isa saw uncertainty.

  “Yes,” she said. Yes, she wanted him. No matter how it happened.

  A fleeting smile came and went on his face. He strode to the spot Oki indicated.

  Ruth’s raven form cackled beside her.

  Reassurance?

  Isa rested her hand on the rock where Henry perched. The lizard’s tongue flicked against her wrist.

  She offered him a smile and murmured, “No magic. No door. That evil doesn’t get through me.”

  Joseph sat on his haunches, his back to her. He yawned. The first vote of confidence from her teachers.

  Cold burned the inside her sternum. She grunted and sank to one knee.

  “Fuck off, Uriel,” she gritted. “Ow, that hurts.”

  Jaiden’s chant surrounded her. The tremors of something large approaching increased, rattling her bones.

  Out of the shimmer of Jaiden’s and Masatoshi’s magic, a glowing young woman wearing a jaguar’s face walked. The Mayan moon goddess. Spider Woman strode at her side.

  Two cultures answering the prayer of one Navajo Singer in order to heal one—what was she? A bridge of some kind between the two? Isa only knew what she didn’t intend to be. Uriel’s door.

  A voice that threatened to burst Isa’s skull with its rain on corn leaves tone took up Jaiden’s chant. Spider Woman.

  The moonlight glow of the Mayan goddess’s power enfolded Master Masatoshi’s spring water spell. The combined energy buffeted Isa. It speared up from the sand beneath Isa’s feet and shook her like a dog with a toy.

  Masatoshi shouted and gestured as if shoving Murmur at Isa.

  Murmur swayed.

  A wall of magic slammed Isa. Moonlight sharp enough to cut glass combined with Masatoshi’s mossy water pounded smoky shadow into her physical form.

  Pain carved Isa open. She cried out. The river of gold at her core boiled, dissolving the vital portions of her will that bound body, soul, and magic together.

  Another filament of shadow twined into her body. Internal pressure intensified. Agony sliced the breath from Isa’s lungs. Her watery gaze touched Steve. Pale. Surrounded by blue sky.

  Oki had vanished in the brilliant glow of green-gold star shine.

  Jaiden, flanked by goddesses, knelt in a vortex of energy that encompassed every color of the rainbow.

  All of it prying her limb from aching limb.

  Murmur. His true form stood out in silhouette against Daniel’s smaller physicality. He shuddered.

  Only Masatoshi remained unchanged. No magic obscured him, as if he were too solid, too peaceful for even this sacred place to unsettle him.

  A sword blade of pure silver erupted from the sand in front of Isa.

  She couldn’t scream.

  Her teachers could. Raven and Coyote raised the alarm. Raven cawed, her wings beating. Coyo
te lunged at the blade, snapping. His snarl rumbled deep in his chest. The Lizard that was Henry inflated his hood and hissed, flinging fiery embers of magic at Uriel’s weapon.

  Henry’s attack forced the blade to retreat from Isa.

  Uriel’s silver magic wavered, turning to mist on the ground. The ground that was a part of Isa, the manifestation of the magic propping up her soul the way her bones propped up her physical form.

  She managed a croak as the mist floated within reach of Oki and her tattoo. He’d prise them apart just to spill their lives and blood into the sand.

  The mist curled back upon itself, hesitating.

  Isa tasted smoke and caramel. Murmur’s emerald gaze met hers. The insubstantial mist brushed Murmur’s shadowy form. Murmur started.

  Silver light exploded from the ground, tracing the path of Masatoshi’s spell designed to shoehorn Murmur back into Isa’s psyche. Uriel’s magic climbed Murmur, wrapping his chest, and then flared. The ground beneath Murmur sundered. Uriel yanked Murmur through the opening.

  A bellow of anguish hung in the shadowed sky.

  The portal slammed shut. Swallowing Murmur as if he’d never come into her world at all.

  Not a grain of sand in Master Masatoshi’s circle had been disturbed.

  Rolling like thunder, the roar of the door slamming rippled across the spirit world and dwindled to silence.

  The Mayan moon goddess hissed.

  Isa settled to her feet. She stared at the spot where Murmur had stood. Even the imprint of his feet had been erased.

  When she couldn’t look any longer, she glanced at Ruth, Joseph, and Henry. Rage stood out in Coyote’s raised hackles, and in Raven’s spread wings. Lizard’s hood deflated in slow motion.

  Trust Henry to regroup first.

  “I can do no more,” Jaiden said. Livid purple streaks of regret bruised the air. “None of us can.”

  “No,” Isa said. “You can’t. I should have realized long ago this isn’t your fight. It never was. I imagined I could be made whole with a ceremony, rather than by facing and destroying the monsters myself.” She shook her head at her own foolishness.

  Master Masatoshi spoke.

  Oki, shaking, tears on her face, said, “He begs your forgiveness. It is because . . .”

  Isa waved off the apology. “It is because I’ve been a coward.”

  “You have not,” Steve growled.

  “I have,” she countered, her voice sharp. “I thought I could be a passenger. That’s been the problem all along, hasn’t it? Me. Not taking responsibility for my choices or my actions. Or facing up to the spiritual heavy lifting required of me.”

  Isa looked into the golden jaguar eyes of the moon goddess. “That’s what my trip into Xibalba was about, wasn’t it? Teaching me to face my duty and my fears all in one go.”

  The goddess bared her fangs in a feline grin.

  “Choose to change, then,” her cousin said, climbing to his feet as if every bone in his body ached. “What will you do?”

  She drew a deep breath of sweet desert air into her chest. She was warm. All the way through.

  The healing had worked. It had driven the evil spirit out of her wounded soul. But he’d taken a member of her family when he’d gone. His mistake.

  She smiled.

  Her friends recoiled.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  “I will do what I have been trained to do,” Isa said. “I will gird my soul for war and I will go after them. Both of them.”

  Rule twenty: Mess with a magic user’s family at your peril.

  “Good.”

  It wasn’t that simple. Isa needed an actual, mundane door that knew where Murmur’s world was in order for her to physically go after him. She knew of only one place that met that criteria.

  Steve insisted on remaining at her side while she sent Jaiden to the airport from the doorstep of Daniel’s building. Even if Steve thought it, he didn’t suggest leaving Murmur to Uriel.

  Isa took his hand.

  Steve curled warm fingers tight around hers and stood taller.

  “Thank you,” she said to her cousin. “I appreciate everything you’ve done. Your songs should close the way to the Skinwalker now.”

  “The breach I came to close is healed,” he confirmed, “and it left an even bigger wound behind. I am sorry.”

  “Not your fault,” she said. “Have a safe trip home.”

  “Will you visit, do you think?” he asked.

  Steve moved closer and settled an arm around her shoulders.

  She leaned into the comfort he offered and nodded. “I might. I have a great deal to repay.”

  “Do you need to go?” Steve asked her as Jaiden’s cab pulled away. “To deal with the Skinwalker?”

  “They don’t need me. The Navajo have been handling Skinwalkers for centuries,” she said. “It was Uriel’s access into the heart of the land through me that caused a problem.”

  “Master Masatoshi has some suggestions for hunting this Uriel thing,” Oki said. “Let’s get this show on the road.”

  Isa and Steve took Oki and Master Masatoshi to Nightmare Ink despite the possibility that the shop would be watched by the AMBI. Isa wanted Oki near containment in case Uriel opened the portal and resumed pulling Ink from people.

  Steve alerted Nathalie and Troy. They waited in the basement containment studio when Isa led Steve, Oki, and Master Masatoshi through the door in the alley.

  Troy handed Isa an envelope.

  She tossed a questioning glance at him.

  He shrugged.

  No return address.

  She tore it open and shook a single photo out. It was a close-up shot of fingernails painted with little palm trees against a fire engine red background. Isa grinned and turned over the photo.

  “What happens in Vegas won’t stay in Vegas. Be seeing you. P.”

  “Patty,” Troy said.

  Nathalie hugged Isa.

  “Troy, I need Ria,” Isa said.

  “You’re scaring me,” Troy replied and went upstairs.

  Within minutes, Troy led Ria into the studio. “He already knew you were here.”

  “I expected no less,” Isa said. “Ria, I need help only you can provide.”

  “Explain,” Ria said.

  She blew out an unsteady breath and plunged ahead. “Daniel Alvarez is dead.”

  “Bueno.”

  “He died three, no, four weeks ago in the hold of a ship.”

  Ria shook his head. “I did not strike a corpse four days ago.”

  “Daniel’s body,” Isa corrected. “He’s not in it anymore. My tattoo is.”

  He stared at her. “How?”

  “When Daniel died, he’d stabbed me,” she said. “Murmur was coming off of me anyway, so he followed the line of my blood to where it mixed with Daniel’s. We think the energy released by Daniel’s death sucked Murmur into the body. I admit that so much was happening, I will never know for certain how or why Murmur ended up in Daniel Alvarez’s body. A little while ago, a demon punched a hole between the worlds and took Murmur out of this plane.”

  He chewed on the explanation for several seconds before his flat gaze came back to hers. “What do you require?”

  “No one takes my family without a fight from me. It’s time to go hunting.”

  A faint smile touched his lips. He nodded. “Where?”

  “The big fishing vessel. The one where Daniel died. Is it still here?”

  “Sí.”

  “Can you get me in there?”

  “Sí.”

  “Gracias.”

  His smile deepened. He very pointedly did not say De nada. “Is half an hour soon enough?”

  “It is.”

  “Use the alley door,” he said and left, taking the stairs two at a tim
e.

  Under the watchful eyes of her friends, Isa paced, throwing random items into the backpack Troy had assembled for her and wracking her brain for a workable plan of any kind. Her brain didn’t have one.

  The stasis page holding the whirlwind still sat atop her desk. She fished the paper holding the big cat out of her backpack, along with the red notebook she’d been given to see if she could track a teenager.

  At the sound of footsteps on the stone behind her, she set the notebook on her desk and tucked both stasis pages into her back pocket. She ought to show them to Masatoshi and let him examine her spell form for the mistakes making the paper starve the tattoos.

  Steve brought her around to face him. “Marry me.” He said it so fast it took several seconds for it to sink past the noise in Isa’s brain. She reeled.

  Nathalie gasped and clapped her hands to her mouth.

  Oki whooped.

  Pain stabbed Isa in the heart. She glanced down, expecting to see Uriel’s blade protruding from her chest. It wasn’t.

  Troy clapped Steve on the back.

  Only Master Masatoshi remained unmoved. Though, possibly, he waited for Oki to translate.

  “I know. I know,” Steve said. “Most romantic proposal ever. Best timing, too.”

  “I’m the reason you’ve been suspended!” she protested.

  “Yes. No. My temper is the reason I’m suspended.”

  “Something you don’t have unless I’m around!”

  He grinned. “Do you know, the captain said it was good to know I had a weak spot? Every cop does. She’d been wondering when and how mine would hit. She was relieved that it’s you. I want you with me, Isa. Irene. Whatever name you choose . . .”

  She put fingers to his lips. “Stop.”

  He wilted.

  The knife plunged into her heart again. “For now,” she amended.

  His gaze met hers. He smiled against the block of her fingers.

  “I am walking out of this world,” she said. “I have no idea how I’ll get back.” If it was even possible.

  He clasped her hand in his, drawing it away from his mouth. “What aren’t you telling me?”

  “I’m scared.”

  “Of this—mission?” He chuckled at the word. “I’m in love with a magic commando.”