Bound by Ink (A Living Ink Novel) Read online

  “I do,” Steve said. “Marches and protests started last night after the candlelight memorial. I’m hearing some disturbing rumblings about disqualifying people with Live Ink from jobs like public transportation, emergency services, teaching, and daycare.”

  She jerked her gaze up to stare at him. “Discrimination?”

  He shrugged. “It’s just talk at this point. And it’s being framed as protecting the lives of everyone without Living Tattoos. You know how any tragedy plays out. People die. Fingers get pointed.”

  She did know. And she knew exactly where the fingers needed to be pointed. At Uriel. And by extension, at her, for failing to lock Uriel out of this world. But the only other person on earth who knew that didn’t belong to this earth.

  Isa wasn’t sure anyone on this earth would feel better knowing where to lay the blame. She didn’t.

  Creases lined Steve’s forehead. His shoulders slumped and he wouldn’t meet her eye.

  It would have been easy to stay where she was and let him deal with his worries. Easy, but cowardly. She filled the thermos, capped it, and set it on the table beside him. She uncrossed his arms and put them around her.

  He smiled, but the worry didn’t dissipate.

  “Thank you for bringing me home.”

  He nodded. “My pleasure. I don’t know when I’ll see you.”

  “I understand. Call when you can. All I want is to know you’re okay. If you need me, for anything, don’t hesitate.”

  His smile flashed into a grin, then died. “As soon as I can. In the meantime, I need you to be careful.”

  “Of course.”

  “What I’m saying,” Steve said, “is that you might want to think twice about doing Live Ink for a little while.”

  She sucked in a sharp breath. It hadn’t crossed her mind. She nodded. “Excellent advice.”

  That she ultimately couldn’t take.

  ***

  She hadn’t been inside Nightmare Ink ten minutes after opening the shop at noon when a crash outside the door brought her to her feet. A compact woman with short-cropped silver hair stumbled into the plate glass window next to the door, shaking soil and pansies from one of her shoes.

  Beyond her, the tree on the corner waved fuzzy with new growth branches against the blue-and-white mottled mid-April sky.

  The woman straightened and yanked open the door. The bell on the door jangled. She lurched into the shop. Her face stretched long, as if she had weights hooked into her bones and muscles.

  Isa frowned and stepped up to the reception desk. The woman looked familiar, but she couldn’t place her.

  “Something’s wrong,” she blurted out, reaching inside her rain jacket.

  Her voice reinforced Isa’s impression that she should know who she was.

  The woman pulled out a piece of carefully folded paper and set it on the counter.

  The cogs aligned in Isa’s brain with a clunk. Where she hadn’t recognized the woman, Isa definitely recognized the sheet of stasis paper she’d made and used to rescue the woman and her Live Ink three weeks ago. “You’re the one with the mermaid tattoo. From the hospital. Helen, wasn’t it?”

  In Isa’s defense, the woman had been facedown on the blood-smeared floor of her hospital room when last they’d met.

  Nodding, the woman met Isa’s gaze, her brown eyes filling. “She’s sick.” She pressed her lips so tight, they disappeared.

  Isa realized then that the sag in her features was terrible fear. She reached for the paper, then hesitated before touching it. The unnatural blue of her stained palms seemed to glow in the momentary spring sunshine slanting in the window. “May I?”

  Helen’s head jerked assent.

  Isa unfolded the paper and caught her breath.

  Surely the tattoo had been brighter than the pale creature supine on the rocks. The stasis paper she’d made should have preserved her perfectly.

  Isa’s heart bumped into faster rhythm.

  Something was wrong.

  Nathalie entered the shop. “Holy crap, Ice! Glad to see you. How’re you feeling? What happened out front?”

  Helen’s shoulders drooped.

  “It’s nothing. I’ll take care of it,” Isa said. “We’re headed downstairs. Can we talk later?”

  “Of course,” Nathalie said, grinning and nodding at Helen. “Welcome. Can I bring you some coffee?”

  Isa’s piercing artist had revamped her spiky black and purple-tipped hair for spring. She’d grown her shorn locks an inch longer and colored the curls robin’s egg blue. It turned her fair complexion translucent. In a nod to her underlying Goth sensibility, she’d traded her metallic facial piercings for all black jewelry.

  “No, thank you,” Helen said as she followed on Isa’s heels to the basement door.

  Isa no longer locked the door to the basement. Since she’d survived having Murmur crammed into her internal landscape and then his subsequent exit, nothing about the magic she worked downstairs frightened her any longer. It couldn’t rise up to swallow her any more than her Live Tattoo had. Score one for having some kind of demon Inked to her skin and crowded in to share her psyche. Maybe she’d learned another layer of control.

  Of magic, anyway.

  “I’m Isa,” she said.

  “I know,” the woman replied, following as if afraid to let the mermaid out of her sight. “What happened to your hands?”

  Isa snorted as she led the way down the narrow concrete steps into the basement. “Paint.”

  Helen would have trod on Isa’s heels had she not been a step below her.

  Someone, Isa suspected Troy, had put her blue canvas against the wall and covered it. A blank canvas stood on the easel, inviting her to fill it.

  Turning her back, Isa switched on the computer outside the containment studio and activated the monitoring equipment.

  In the dim studio, red lights winked near the juncture of wall and ceiling.

  Helen paused. “What is that? Cameras?”

  “The Acts of Magic laws require that certified Live Tattoo artists record everything that goes on inside a containment studio,” Isa said. “For your protection and for mine.”

  “Nothing like having ‘cover your ass’ codified into law,” Helen said, then snorted. “Especially now.”

  Isa ushered her into the metal and black basalt studio, nodding at the recliner bolted to the floor in the middle of the room. “Have a seat. Will you hold her paper for me? I need to seal the room.”

  Helen lowered herself into the chair, flinching as her left arm bent in easing her weight into the recliner. When she took the paper, it trembled.

  “We’ll figure this out,” Isa promised. “Even if I have to put her back on you right now in order to save her, I won’t let her die.”

  A tear spilled over, but Helen’s lips reappeared in a tremulous smile. She nodded.

  No pressure, Ice.

  She shut and locked the heavy metal door. She called golden energy. It concentrated at her core, a pillar of sage-and-pinyon-scented magic flowing through her, slower and colder than she’d become accustomed to while Murmur’s magic had augmented hers. They’d been stronger together. She was smaller now. Diminished. Was he?

  Sending energy through her right palm, she cast a circle within the room, walling maudlin conjecture off outside the circle. Save a life first. Miss her tattoo and count her deficiencies later.

  She lit candles and summoned power into the room. Magic shimmered up within her, tickling her palms. Sweet-smelling sunshine brushed her face. Isa shivered, missing the heat it used to carry with it.

  Kicking her rolling stool close to the recliner, she settled upon it and focused her gaze upon the graying mermaid.

  “My fingers on the paper,” Isa said, “while I investigate.”

  “Okay,” Helen breathed.
r />   Isa touched the page, channeled a tendril of magic through that contact, and nudged her awareness out of her body. She landed on her feet on the slippery, seaweed-encrusted rocks. A ghostly sea sighed against the stones of the mermaid’s island.

  As Isa knelt beside the limp mermaid, she detected no rise and fall of her ribs. The stones and the sea faded.

  With a gasp, Isa planted both palms on the mermaid’s shoulder and shoved energy into the tattoo, desperate to stabilize her. To keep her promise not to let her die.

  One more life she owed Murmur since she had to assume that it had been his power that had restored hers.

  Damn, she missed him.

  Yanking her attention back to the mermaid, Isa frowned. Something had gone seriously wrong with the stasis paper. She’d intended for it to sustain a Living Tattoo indefinitely. Not sentence the spirit enlivening the Ink to a slow decline and death. In a flash, she saw what must have happened.

  Live Ink fed on blood and magic. She’d thought she’d embedded enough of both in the stasis paper. Apparently, she’d been wrong.

  Power poured out of her into what felt like a cold, bottomless pit beneath her hands. Even though she didn’t need to breathe in this otherworld, her physical body reacted to her effort by spiking her respiration rate as if she were running a race.

  Trapped in the paper Isa had made, the mermaid had been starving to death.

  Isa’s heart knocked against her physical ribs. The tattoo of the whirlwind. Was she killing it with stasis paper, too?

  The mermaid groaned.

  Relief shot another surge of liquid gold up from the depths.

  Color rippled through the mermaid’s scales. Blue, green, silver. Her eyes opened. Her brow creased and her mouth worked.

  “Helen brought you to me,” Isa said. “You’re in trouble. We’ve got to get you back onto her.”

  Milky tears flooded the mermaid’s eyes but didn’t spill over.

  “The magic I’ve fed you should suffice long enough for me to do the job,” Isa said. “Can you hang on that long?”

  The mermaid needed life force combined with magic in order to survive. Putting her back on Helen would give her unlimited access to both. Though Isa had thought she’d designed the paper to do the same thing—to stand in for a host. Some critical part of the formula had to be wrong.

  The mermaid’s lips moved.

  “Don’t talk,” Isa urged. “Save your strength . . .”

  “Is she well?” the mermaid rasped in defiance of the command.

  A stab of loss went through Isa’s chest. In both worlds.

  Starving to death, the tattoo still cared more about her host’s well-being than her own. Why did the love the two of them shared wound Isa? She’d understood the pain three weeks ago when she’d still had a hostile tattoo of her own crowded into her psyche.

  Now that all she had left was the hole where he’d once been, shouldn’t she be immune to what she couldn’t have? Devotion hadn’t been one of his strong suits. Hers, either, she guessed.

  How could she long for something she’d never had?

  Helen had to have a scar on her soul to match Isa’s. She couldn’t do anything about her own. She could Helen’s. She would.

  “She’s fine,” Isa said. “Worried about you. So am I. Let’s get you back where you belong.”

  She slid sideways into her physical body.

  “What is it?” Helen demanded in a rush.

  Vision and motor control lagged several seconds while Isa seated her awareness into the too empty space inside her body.

  “She’s starving to death,” Isa said when her mouth caught up with her intention to speak.

  Helen gaped. “You swore she’d be okay! Put her back. Now.”

  Isa unlocked the compartment on the bottom shelf of her work cart and brought forth the apple wood box holding her Live Inks.

  The sweet, crisp scent of a long-lost orchard wrapped around her as she lifted the polished lid. Crystal vials lined the interior, glinting like diamonds in the overhead lights. Or like ice.

  They numbed her fingers when she handled them to pour Ink into reservoirs. Isa rubbed the frost-burned pads of her Maya blue fingers against her jeans, trying to restore feeling. Pins and needles prickled her right hand.

  Steve’s warning echoed in her head: Don’t do Live Ink. The timing couldn’t be worse. Especially not when Isa knew the specific risk.

  Helen raised her eyebrows as Isa hesitated.

  “You know what happened yesterday?” Isa asked.

  “Day before yesterday.” She nodded, her features set in a grim line. “My brother-in-law was on that bridge.”

  “Is he okay?”

  She shrugged. “He made it. The rest of his vanpool didn’t.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I don’t know how he’ll handle it. Mentally. Emotionally. He saw those people die.”

  Isa blew out a breath. She’d wanted it to steady her. It didn’t. “Are you sure you want Live Ink again? I’m hearing chatter about the city barring people with Live Ink from certain jobs.”

  Helen stared. “You haven’t listened to the news this morning?”

  “No.”

  “It’s done,” she said. “Statewide. Buses. Teachers. Police. Fire. I don’t know how many more. The state is calling it a temporary reassignment until the investigation into the accident is complete. Something necessary to protect the lives of people who don’t have Living Ink. One of the news stations did a big exposé last night about a series of Live Tattoo deaths a month ago and a battle of magic somewhere in the city. It killed some nurses and cops out at Harborview. You know. When I was there. They’re talking about those incidents as leading up to what happened yesterday.”

  Isa’s heart slid to her toes.

  “When the reporters started interviewing people who’d come off the bridge, a few of them suggested rounding up everyone with Live Ink and getting them away from the city,” Helen said.

  “That’s crazy,” Isa said, shaking her head. “It’s not even possible.”

  Except.

  She glanced at the winking red lights of her cameras. It was possible.

  “The registry,” she muttered.

  Helen nodded. “That got mentioned on the news this morning. The government already keeps tabs on everyone with Live Ink.”

  “Only the people who go to legal shops,” Isa corrected on autopilot. She shook away the prickly uneasiness crawling down her throat. “In this atmosphere, do you want me to put your tattoo back on? I know some things we can try to keep her going until things calm down.”

  “No! I have to have her back,” Helen said. “I’m dead without her. Inside. And outside? It’s only a matter of time before I walk into traffic and die. You saw. I broke your planter outside your front door and it wasn’t like it was in the way or anything. I’m—I can’t live without her.”

  She sucked in an audible breath. “I understand some of the fear about Live Ink after yesterday. But the terrible things they’re saying on the news about Living Tattoos are wrong.”

  “I know.” Isa shifted the work cart closer and, under the guise of pulling on a pair of gloves, contemplated the wisdom of proceeding.

  Helen and her tattoo had nearly died because of Daniel and his tattoo, Uriel. Now Isa was putting Helen’s tattoo back knowing full well that Uriel was once again summoning tattoos from hosts. Was it the right thing to do? She might be consigning the both of them to a death as messy as the hydra had been. But the mermaid was starving. No “might” about that.

  Isa didn’t believe in love conquering much of anything. At least, she hadn’t before she’d met Helen and her mermaid.

  Could she trust that what they shared would bind them together in spite of the hysteria wandering the city like another kind of monster? It would consum
e people. Left unchecked, it, too, would kill.

  Isa could deal with a monster of magic. She had no idea how to handle an emotional one.

  Maybe she could show Helen and her Ink how to shield. At least they could learn to defend themselves from Uriel.

  “Where do you want her?”

  “Right here. Where the paper is.”

  Center mass, just below her breasts.

  “Over your ribs? That’s going to smart,” Isa said.

  “Anything to take away the fire in my head and have her back where she belongs. I don’t want to spend another minute alone. Feeling like I’m being consumed.”

  Isa’s heart bumped down her spine in recognition.

  “Let’s fix that,” she breathed around the glacier sitting on her ribs. “For both of you. Take off your shirt? I don’t want to ruin it with Ink.”

  She barked a harsh laugh. “Like I give a shit.”

  “I’m pretending to be a professional,” Isa said.

  “Of course,” Helen said as she stripped.

  Isa grabbed a felt pen.

  “Lean forward for a second? I need a measurement. We have to keep the tattoo the same size as when you had her on your back,” she said, “to maintain the balance you achieved when you integrated the first time.”

  “We have to go through integration again?”

  “Yes. You’ll need to remake the links tying the two of you together,” Isa said as she measured the pink scar on Helen’s back. “It might not be difficult since you’ve been through it once.”

  “Or it’ll be harder because now I’m scarred inside,” she said. “Where she used to be.”

  Isa’s hand froze in dotting a measurement on the skin of Helen’s belly.

  “Yes,” Isa said, pain tracing her internal wound. She put away her pen and picked up her tattoo machine. Turning it on, she stepped into the etheric.

  The mermaid ambushed Isa. She threw ocean-cold arms around Isa’s neck, chanting, “Thank you, thank you.”

  “Are you strong enough for this?” Isa demanded, trying to disengage her.