Ink Witch Read online

  I drop to one knee to wipe the blade off on the side of his sweatshirt.

  Shank’s eyes are wild now. Scared. Good.

  I lean over him and bring my mouth close to his ear. “Don’t think this is over.” Nejeret souls live forever. If there’s a way to make the rest of his existence one of never-ending agony, I’ll find it. He’s on the top of my shitlist, dead or not, just under the Nejeret who killed my mom.

  BANG. BANG. BANG.

  I snorted awake, jerking upright in my chair and reflexively wiping the lower half of my face with the back of my hand. It came away wet. Of course.

  I could still smell the tangy, metallic scent of blood. I could still hear Shank’s final, gurgling breaths. No matter how deserving my victims were of death, they still haunted my dreams.

  BANG. BANG. BANG. It was the door downstairs, the one from the street to the shop.

  “You should probably get that,” Nik said from the couch behind me. “Sounds like a cop knock.”

  “Oh joy of joys,” I grumbled. I pushed my chair back with a screech of wood on wood and stood, blinking gritty eyelids. My cards were still on the table, though not in the neat stack I’d left them in, thanks to my flailing arms. I combed my hair back with my fingers, running my tongue over my teeth in an attempt to decide how terrible my morning breath might be. Pretty bad, I gathered. I felt my chest. At least I was wearing a bra.

  I trudged past Nik and the couch, slogged down the stairs, and rubbed my eyes with my left hand as I pushed through the beaded curtain. It was bright, but not full-morning bright. Early-dawn bright. Like, five-in-the-freaking-morning bright. I don’t do five in the morning. At least, not from this end.

  A large man stood on the other side of the glass door, his physique disturbingly similar to Shank’s and his dark blue uniform looking almost black in the pale morning light. Nik, that sneaky charlatan, had been right. Cop knock, indeed.

  I unlocked the door and pulled it open a few inches, keeping the toe of my boot wedged behind the door so the guy couldn’t shove his way in. I don’t have anything against the po-po—they’re great, I’m sure. Do-gooders and all that. But I’m not, and that makes us potential adversaries. I have a past that would incite this fresh-faced officer to try to take me in and throw me behind bars without hesitation. Then things would get ugly and he would get dead, and I would feel bad. And really, I wasn’t looking to murder one of Seattle’s finest at five in the damn morning.

  “Is there a problem?” I asked, then cleared my froggy throat. I could hear footsteps on the stairs in the back. Relative immortality, crazy-fast healing, and the occasional “magical” power aren’t my kind’s only gifts; our senses are extra keen and our reflexes unnaturally quick. I had no doubt that Nik was eavesdropping from the back room. Just in case.

  The cop, a Native guy in his mid- to late twenties, nodded to me in greeting. He was quite a bit taller than me and twice as wide—all muscle, from the looks of it. “Morning, miss.” He did a quick scan of me, his eyes lingering on the tribal orca tail tattooed on my exposed abdomen, the flock of seagulls flying along my collarbone and over my shoulder, and on the two tiny studs in the snakebite piercings on my lower lip. He glanced over his shoulder, then back at me. “Can I come in?”

  I narrowed my eyes. “Why?”

  He frowned. “I have an important matter to discuss with, uh . . .” He glanced down at his hand, where my name was scrawled across the palm. “Katarina Dubois. She owns this business, doesn’t she?”

  I raised one eyebrow. “She does.”

  “Well, can you get her?” Again, he looked over his shoulder. “Please?” He didn’t know enough about me to know that I was Katarina Dubois, which told me he wasn’t after me for an arrest or anything like that. But he definitely wanted something from me. My help in finding someone, probably. Too bad for him—I only worked for private clients, never for the police. Too many strings.

  I flashed him a bright smile. “Sure. Be right back.” I shut the door, locking it before turning around to head to the back. I was fully intending to return to the apartment upstairs to continue my investigation into Dom’s and the other Nejerets’ disappearances. The cards had been stubborn last night, not revealing anything new, no matter how long I studied them. For all intents and purposes, I was in a universe-ordained holding pattern, and it pissed me the hell off.

  Nik stepped away from the wall, blocking my passage through the beaded curtain. His eyebrows were drawn together, and the corners of his mouth were turned down. He wanted me to listen to the cop, and he was judging me for planning to ignore the guy. His feelings on the matter were plain as day. Damn it, if Nik was functioning as my moral compass, my own personal Jiminy Cricket, then the world was seriously screwed up.

  My shoulders slumped, and I let my head fall back, a groan rumbling up my throat. “Fine.”

  “Good girl,” Nik said, placing his hands on my shoulders and turning me around.

  Feet dragging, I headed for the door. I unlocked it and yanked it open. “Come on in.” Once the cop was inside, I twisted the lock again and turned to face him, leaning my back against the glass. “Officer . . . ?”

  “Smith,” he said, pointing to the name tag on his right breast pocket: G. Smith. He craned his neck to peek into the nearest tattooing office. “Officer Garth Smith. Will Ms. Dubois be joining us soon?”

  “You’re looking at her,” Nik said, pushing through the curtain. I glanced past the cop, and my eyes locked with Nik’s for the briefest moment. It was like he was allergic to minding his own business.

  To Officer Garth Smith, I was sure it looked like Nik was there to intimidate him—it was what Nik did best, after all. But I knew better. He was there for the cop’s safety. He probably still thought of me as the loose cannon I’d been two decades ago—the one who’d nearly killed herself in a suicide mission attempting misplaced vengeance for her mother’s death. But he didn’t know that girl was long gone, killed by an assassin of rogue Nejerets. Killed by me. He didn’t know any of that, because he hadn’t been around.

  “You’re Katarina Dubois?” Officer Smith said, spinning around to face me.

  I crossed my arms over my chest. “Last I checked.”

  He did another scan of me, longer than before, from my black combat boots up until, finally, he reached my face. I imagined what he saw—a troubled girl who’d been out partying all night, if the mussed hair, disheveled clothes, and smudged and crusted dark makeup around my eyes were anything to go by.

  “You own this place?” he asked dubiously.

  “Yep.”

  “And you’ve been helping people find their missing loved ones for the past two years?”

  “Yep.”

  “But you can’t be more than nineteen—”

  “I’m older than I look,” I said dryly.

  His head quirked to the side, his keen eyes narrowed. He thought I was yanking his chain. “How old are you?”

  “Twenty-five,” I lied. I’m thirty-eight, but experience has taught me that telling people anything beyond twenty-five is pushing it. Now, here’s to hoping Officer Garth Smith here didn’t go look up my actual records . . . then he’d learn the impossible truth. It was probably time for me to start posing as someone new—my own daughter or niece, maybe. But damn that sounded like a lot of work.

  “Call it a hunch,” I said, “but I’m betting my remarkably good genes aren’t the reason you’re here.”

  “Oh, no, of course not, um . . .” Officer Smith shook his head, a surprisingly adorable smile curving his lips. “I’ve heard rumors—well, more than rumors, really—that you can find people . . . people nobody else has been able to find. I looked back over a few of the cold cases that were solved this past year—always assisted by an anonymous tip.” His gaze became hawklike and focused. “It was you, wasn’t it?”

  Looking to the side, I shrugged.

  “The guys whisper about you . . . they say you’re a psychic. A real one. Word is you track peopl
e through sketches.” He inhaled, hesitating with a held breath.

  Don’t say it. Don’t say it. Don’t say it.

  “They call you the Ink Witch.”

  I looked past him, to Nik. The ancient Nejeret burst into laughter, almost doubling over.

  I glared at him, my hand balling into a fist. “I hate that name,” I said under my breath.

  Officer Smith looked from me to Nik and back, missing the joke. I was the joke.

  “You still haven’t told me why you’re here. I have other things to do . . .” Other people to find . . .

  “There’s a case,” Smith said. “Homeless folks have been going missing for a couple months now, but the department can’t afford to commit any resources to it.”

  I cocked a hip and examined my nails. “So, what—you want me to solve your missing bums case, pro bono?” We locked gazes. “Out of the goodness of my heart?”

  “Well, um . . .” His shoulders drooped; his whole body seemed to deflate. “Yeah.”

  “Well, um . . . no.” I smiled at him, lips pressed together and fake as hell. “Sorry, bud, but I don’t work for free.” I pushed off from the door, unlocked it, and pulled it open, holding it for Officer Smith.

  He headed for the door, pausing when he reached me. His rich, coffee-brown eyes searched mine, his face filled with pleas. “They’re kids, mostly. Dozens of them.”

  My resolve wilted.

  “Dom . . .” Nik’s voice was barely a whisper, too quiet for Smith’s human ears to pick up. I couldn’t afford to waste a single ounce of concentration on anything other than finding my half-brother. Not even on missing kids. I had to be ready for the moment the universe decided to throw me a bone and feed me some useful information. If I let myself become distracted by another case, if I let my concentration split, I might miss whatever signal the universe sent my way. Not even poor, missing kids could lure me away from what I had to do.

  I hardened my heart and met Smith’s desperate eyes. “Best of luck.”

  4

  “So, when you say ‘dragon,’ are you thinking more Lord of the Rings or more traditional Chinese?” I watched my client’s puzzled face. “Or something else entirely?” We were sitting in my tattoo office, the one nearest to the back room. I’d chosen it purposefully—anyone who approached the beaded curtain leading to my personal space had to pass by this doorway.

  My client looked at his girlfriend for help.

  I sat with my sketch pad propped against my upraised knees, pen poised. I just needed some sort of direction for this piece . . . some sort of anything. I was down here, working, because there wasn’t much else I could do for Dom at the moment. Nik reached out to his mom shortly after Officer Smith left, asking her for a list of all the names of the Nejerets who were missing. With that, I might be able to do some psychic triangulation and finally make some progress. Until then, I had to do something to prevent me from losing it completely.

  “Well, I mean,” the girlfriend started, “we definitely want it to look, you know . . . totally unique.”

  “Of course,” I said, suppressing an eye roll. Maybe working had been a bad idea. I hardly had the patience for this kind of thing right now.

  “We were thinking, like, real, maybe,” the girlfriend said. “Does that make sense? Like, what a dragon really looks like.”

  I was quiet for a few seconds, eyeing them. When neither of their faces gave me any clarity, I said, “But dragons aren’t real . . .”

  The girlfriend waved a manicured hand, her dark green polish contrasting with her almost colorless skin. “You know what I mean.”

  I stared at her for a moment, not sure I had the slightest idea what she meant. “Right, so . . .” I looked at my sketch pad and started to draw. “I’m going to sketch out a few possible styles of dragons, and we can go from there.” The last thing I wanted was a bad Yelp review simply because this couple couldn’t describe what they wanted.

  The first sketch of a dragon was a pretty crappy attempt, even I could admit that. It was generic and blah. I didn’t even bother showing it to my clients. I flipped the page and started again. The result was something that looked an awful lot like an iguana with tucked-in wings and visible fangs. Pretty damn realistic, if you asked me.

  “What about something like this?” I asked, showing them the sketch. “Realistic . . . unique . . .”

  The girlfriend bit her lip. “I don’t know . . . I mean, maybe if the wings were open and it had more spiney things?”

  I watched the dude’s face as his lady weighed in. “What do you think?” He was the one actually getting inked, after all.

  He nodded, frowning, just a little. “You know, I’m thinking that maybe it should be bigger—more like something that would be in a world with elves and dwarves and shit like that.”

  I bit back a snide re-mentioning of Lord of the Rings. “Alright . . .” I sketched out a rough idea. A monstrous, scaly beast with a long, snakelike tail covered in enough spikes to skewer a whole herd’s worth of lamb kabobs, soaring across the page, its enormous wings extended to either side. “So how’s this look to you?” I turned the sketchbook to them.

  “Dude, that’s badass,” the guy said.

  Smile cautious, I looked at the girlfriend.

  “I like it, I guess, but . . .” She scrunched her nose. “Why is its tail in its mouth?”

  My eyes opened wide, my eyebrows shooting upwards. I turned the sketchbook my way again, my feet sliding off the edge of the chair. My rubber soles landed on the wood floor with a thump.

  The dragon, the sneaky, snakey bastard, had moved. Its back was now curved, its clawed feed tucked in, its wings extended behind it, visible only in profile, and its tail sweeping up to its mouth. Its body, from nose to tail, made a perfect circle. Just like an ouroboros.

  I licked my lips, sparing only the briefest glance for my clients before flipping to the previous page. That dragon, the glorified iguana, had twisted itself into an awkward position, its forked tongue extended to reach the tip of its stubbier tail. A quick peek at the first attempt showed me that the lame-o dragon, too, was imitating an ouroboros.

  I stood abruptly, hugging the sketch pad to my chest, and muttered a breathy “Excuse me.” I hurried to the next office over. Sampson, the only male artist in the shop, sat beside his rented chair, his coil tattoo machine buzzing merrily as he worked on his client’s upper back. His coil went quiet, and he looked at me.

  “Big piece?” I asked him. I felt hollow, my voice reverberating throughout my entire body.

  Sampson nodded. “My whole morning’s blocked out for this one.” So he wouldn’t be able to take over with my clients. “Why?”

  “No reason.” I forced a smile. “Looks good,” I said, barely having glanced at whatever he was working on.

  I made a beeline for the counter, where the shop’s receptionist was seated on a stool, marking up passages in a textbook with a pink highlighter. “Hey, Kimi, who’s got the least busy schedule today?”

  She closed her book, marking her page with her highlighter, and tapped her tablet’s screen, chewing on the inside of her cheek. “Nobody,” she said, looking at me. “We’re booked solid through to close.”

  I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. This shop was my life, my livelihood. I needed to work. But I needed to find Dom more. I’d been begging the universe for a sign, for a clue of any kind. Maybe it had already responded, and I simply hadn’t been listening. That damn tail-eating snake was important. I just had to figure out why.

  “Everything okay?”

  I opened my eyes and looked at Kimi. “No, it’s not.” Even I could hear the resignation in my voice. “I need you to call everyone on my calendar today—I have to cancel.”

  “Oh, no.” She pouted her bottom lip. “Are you feeling alright? You do look a little pale.”

  “I, um . . .” I took a step backward. “I just can’t do this today.”

  “I can,” Nik said, pushing through the beaded curtain
.

  Both Kimi and I looked at him, eyebrows raised in surprise—Kimi, because she hadn’t even known he was there, and me, because I had no clue that Nik knew the first thing about giving tattoos; I thought he was just an expert at receiving them. Kimi’s eyes lit with interest as she scanned Nik, and I could hardly blame her. The guy oozed more bad-boy sex appeal than all of Cap Hill combined.

  “Hi.” Nik strolled to the counter and held his hand out to Kimi. “I’m Kat’s cousin, Nik.”

  “We’re not related,” I said.

  “We grew up together.”

  I snorted. Nik and I couldn’t have grown up further apart—his childhood ended thousands of years ago in an oasis in the heart of the Sahara. Mine ended here, some twenty years ago, the day my mom died to save my life. The day Nik dragged me off of her murderer’s dead body. The day he watched me come absolutely unhinged.

  “I’ve got years of experience with inking people,” Nik said, and my eyes narrowed. People, or just one person—namely, himself? “I’d be more than happy to cover for you if you’re not feeling up to it.” In other words, You should be searching for Dom. Why are you even down here trying to work in the first place?

  Because this is the only sane thing in my life, I wanted to scream at him, and I needed a bit of normal to balance out our crazy world. And yet, part of me knew he was right. I’d rather lose this place than lose Dom.

  “I just got off the phone with my mom,” Nik added. “That information you’ve been waiting for is upstairs.” The list of names of the other missing Nejerets. Finally!

  “Yeah? Awesome.” I shot a quick glance over my shoulder to where my client and his girlfriend were sitting, heads together as they argued about the style of dragon. “My morning appointments are all consults, but I’ve got a couple cover-ups this afternoon.” I looked at Nik. “Sure you can handle that?”