The Kat Dubois Chronicles: The Complete Series (Echo World Book 2) Read online

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

  Chapter Four

  “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?”

  He grinned. From the spark of
mischief in his eyes, I wasn’t sure if this was a great idea or a terrible one. It was my business, after all, and I should’ve cared one way or the other. But I didn’t. The hunt for Dom was calling to me through the ink. I had no choice but to answer.

  Nejeret is French, technically, derived from a set of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs—Netjer-At—that translate roughly to “god of time.” A remnant of where we came from, originally. The universe was dying, and Re, one of the two original old gods, or Netjers, and the co-creator of our universe, along with his partner, Apep, possessed a human just a few moments before birth in the hopes that he could restore universal balance, known as ma’at to my people. That human’s name was Nuin, and he became the first Nejeret, the father of our species.

  Lucky for us all, Re succeeded, and thousands of years after he first came to earth, two new gods were born. And they just happen to be my niece and nephew, Susie and Syris. That’s right, my half-sister, Lex, is the mother of the gods . . . but that’s another story entirely. The point is, I wouldn’t have my special gift, my sheut, without those rascally new gods. Of course, I’d probably have a much better idea of what all I could do with my sheut if they hadn’t gone off to another universe completely to learn how to use their own, much more substantial sheuts. So, the new gods and I, we were sort of in the same boat. Or, at least, in the same marina. The one where you go when you don’t have any clue about what you’re doing. It’s a shitty marina. Lots of shipwrecks and flipped boats.

  I knelt on the floor of the second, bed-less bedroom in the apartment, surrounded by a ring of sketches. They were all unique, each focusing on a different missing Nejeret, but for one thing—the tail-eating snake. The ouroboros. I couldn’t get away from it, not even in my sanctuary.

  This room was the only one I actually cared about, the only place I felt at home. At peace. The only place I could be me. The only furniture in here was a built-in bookcase covering the entirety of the wall behind me, and I’m not even sure it counted as furniture. Its shelves were filled with a mishmash of trinkets and doodads, of toys and rocks and other little mementos that each had meant enough to someone once that they’d allowed me to forge a connection with that person strong enough that I could find them through the cards and my art. I kept them all, reminders that I could be good. That I didn’t always hurt people, that I could help them, too.

  One wall, the smallest by the door, was taken up entirely by a closet. That was where I stored my less-savory possessions, the equipment and gear I’d used during my previous, darker career as one of the Senate’s deadly hounds alongside Mari. As one of their assassins. It had been more than three years since I’d stowed those tools of death away in there, three years since I’d opened the doors. Had it only been three years? Had it already been three years? It felt like yesterday. Like yesterday, and like a lifetime ago.

  The other two walls were far from bare. They were covered in black paint as permanent as a mountain, as changeable as a volcano. Like the designs on my tarot cards, the paint on these walls had a tendency to take on a life of its own. It’s basically magic, so I don’t know why I don’t just call it that.

  I remembered the way the dragon sketches had changed on their own and felt a flit of panic in my chest. Usually it was only these walls and the tarot cards that reacted so autonomously, along with the odd sketch or tattoo here and there—all things I’d created with intent. With purpose beyond simply existing. All things I’d poured a bit of myself into.

  I glanced down at my left arm. The tattoo of the Strength card from the traditional Rider-Waite tarot deck was still there on the inside of my forearm, the lion and the white-robed woman with my mom’s face faded almost to obscurity by years of regeneration but otherwise unchanged. There was no sign of a serpent. There was nothing but the tarot card, a reminder of my mom. A reminder of what happens when I care about someone . . . and when I let someone care about me. A reminder to avoid that at any cost.

  I blew out a breath. Thankfully, the ink was staying put.

  I stared at my latest drawing of Dom. The perspective was strange, as though I was looking down at him from the ceiling. He was standing, looking up at me, and screaming. In pain? In warning? I couldn’t tell. I also couldn’t tell if I’d drawn something that had already happened, was happening right now, or would happen sometime soon. My gift didn’t work like that. I just thought of the person I was trying to find, and if the connection between us was strong enough, my hand started to move.

  The ouroboros was in this picture, just like all of the others. It wound around him multiple times before its mouth reached its tail.

  “What does it mean?” I whispered. My fingertips traced the sketched lines of Dom’s face.

  With a splat, a wet spot appeared on the paper, barely missing the snake. I blinked several times and felt my cheek with the fingertips of one hand. It was wet. Because I was crying.

  I almost couldn’t believe it. I hadn’t shed a tear in at least a decade.

  Dom’s faced changed suddenly. For a few seconds, he wasn’t screaming. For those few seconds, it was as though he was actually looking at me through the paper, could actually see me.

  “I’m alive,” he mouthed. “Find me.” I blinked, and he went back to screaming.

  “How?” I asked the sketch, voice raised. “Where are you?” I sat up on my knees. Leaned forward, hunching over the drawing. “Dom! Where are you?” I was yelling at a creation of ink and paper, and I didn’t care one bit how insane that made me. “How am I supposed to find you?”

  I heard the slap of a hand against a wall behind me, then another, and another. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see the paint on the wall bleeding away, pooling near the floor. And still, behind me, the slapping continued.

  Until it stopped.

  Hand shaking, I set the sheet of paper down on the hardwood floor and climbed to my feet. I turned around and gasped, my fingers migrating up to cover my mouth.

  Black hand prints covered the wall in a strip maybe three or four feet off the ground. Small hand prints. Children’s hand prints.

  Eyes wide, I backed out of the room and slammed the door shut. The last thing I wanted was for Nik to stumble across that little horror show. I ran into the kitchen and grabbed the tarot cards off the table, stacking them roughly and more or less shoving them into their little drawstring carrying bag.

  It was time to pay Officer Garth Smith a little visit and talk about his missing street kids. I was ready to help. Pro fucking bono.

  Chapter Five

  According to Officer Smith’s card, he was stationed at the Seattle Police Department’s East Precinct, right here on Capitol Hill, just a half-dozen blocks southeast of my shop. I didn’t even have to take my bike. Not that I ever minded riding the Ducati. But still, how convenient and thoughtful of Officer Smith.

  I haven’t been in many police stations before, and I’d certainly never been in this one. The building is two stories of whitewashed brick, broad-paned windows, and Tardis-blue trim. I passed under a stoic steel sign proclaiming this the right place and pulled a glass door open. There was a small waiting area to my right—very doctor’s office–esque—and a reception window straight ahead. Through the window, I could see several rows of cluttered utilitarian desks, each with a laptop and a phone and a stack of files higher than I thought any one person could get to in a week, let alone a day. Most of the desks were vacant, but a couple were occupied by officers in their blues, neither of which was Officer Smith. The doughy, middle-aged officer watching me peer through the window wasn’t him, either.

  I spotted Smith standing in the back corner, a coffee cup in one hand and a sugar dispenser in the other, an endless stream of the sweet stuff pouring into his cup of coffee. The man was a damn hummingbird.

  I approached the reception window, aware of the stares of the few other people seated in the waiting area. My fitted black leather motorcycle jacket covered the tattoos on my arms, but those peeking out from the top and bottom
of my tank top were visible enough. I could practically hear the thoughts whispering through their minds—troublemaker . . . bad kid . . . keep an eye on her . . .

  I shook my head, laughing under my breath. If only they knew. A quick recount of my personal and professional history could clear a room faster than teargas.

  “Fill this out,” the heavy, mustached officer at the counter said. The one who’d been watching me. There was the sense of a walrus about him. C. Henderson, the name badge on his right breast pocket read. Not knowing what the “C” stood for, I named him Charles in my head, Chuck to those of us who know him especially well.

  I glanced down at the form and frowned, then raised my gaze back up to Officer Henderson’s face. “Why would I fill that out?”

  He coughed, ruffling his mustache. “Aren’t you here to report another missing homeless kid?”

  “Why would I be doing that?”

  Henderson lifted a hand and sort of pointed my way. “You just look the type.”

  I raised my eyebrows. Homeless kid—that was a new one for me. I slid the form back across the counter to him. “I’m here to see Officer Smith, Garth Smith.” Remembering that Garth hadn’t seemed too keen on being seen standing outside of my shop, I batted my eyelashes and added, “We have a date.” I flashed Henderson a cheeky grin. Maybe I could lend the youthful Officer Smith a little street cred in the process. “So if you could just skedaddle on over to him there, Chuckster, and let him know I’m here, that’d be swell.” I sighed. “Isn’t he so dreamy?”

  Officer Henderson did that coughing, mustache-ruffling thing again, watching me like I’d sprouted two new heads.

  I rolled my eyes and leaned to the side to see around Henderson. “Garth,” I called out, “I changed my mind about that thing you wanted me to do.” I glanced at Henderson and winked.

  In the very back of the room, Officer Smith choked on a big gulp of ultra-sweet coffee, his eyes bugging out as he stared at me through the reception window.