Inked Magic

by Jory Strong

  The closer he got to her street, the more excited he became. He touched himself through his pants. It didn’t matter now that the snake was wide awake and swollen to its full size. It was okay, because it was her and they’d be together soon.

  Excitement and nervousness twisted inside him. All along he must have known he was going to do this. That’s why he’d broken so many of the rules.

  Kevin would be so, so mad if he found out that he’d come here when he knew no one was home, sticking Kevin’s painting signs on the van and pretending to be a painter who was showing up for work. He’d wanted to look at her door lock and make sure he could open it.

  He could.

  Imagining Kevin’s expression, he started giggling. But that was choked off when he turned the corner and saw the light in her window.

  Frustration swelled up inside him. He felt like a balloon that was ready to pop until the air came out of him in a howl. “No! No! No!”

  He slammed his foot down on the gas pedal. Lifted it, almost doing the same to the brake but stopping himself in time.

  Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.

  He gently touched the brake pedal, slowing the car down. He passed her apartment and pulled over so he could use the binoculars and see if she was alone.

  A police car turned the corner and came toward him. He froze, not even daring to breathe until it had passed.

  In the rearview mirror he saw another police car, coming from the opposite direction. It stopped in front of her apartment, blocking the garage where she must have parked her bike.

  A dark sedan stopped along the curb and the other police car stopped, too. Men got out and moved toward the house, hands on their guns.

  One policeman went toward the door of the people who owned the house. The others concentrated on her apartment.

  His bladder felt full. He realized he was whimpering.

  He wanted to stay, but now he knew this was a trap after all and they thought he was inside with her. He needed to leave. He’d be in trouble if they started looking for him nearby when they didn’t find him with her.

  He was glad he hadn’t turned the engine off. They weren’t paying any attention to the street.

  He pulled away. It would be okay. Nothing had really changed. She was still his choice and there were other places he could take her from.

  Etaín lifted her head on a sigh. The image wouldn’t be banished no matter how hard she tried to concentrate on creating something else.

  She opened her eyes and took up the pencil again, only to still at the sound of footsteps climbing the stairs. Her heart gave a betraying lurch as she wondered which one of them it was, Cathal or Eamon.

  The involuntary, welcoming anticipation at the prospect of seeing one of them made her curse and slam the pencil onto the desk. She gathered her anger like a shield but that emotion fled with the pounding on the door and a man’s voice yelling, “Police! Open up!”

  Caution had her looking out the window first. The sight of the cars, their lights flashing, sent fear racing through her, tripping her heartbeat into a furious throb and her mind into a nightmare from her own past.

  “Open the door! Police!”

  She opened it and a man in a suit immediately grabbed and turned her, sending her to her knees and then onto her stomach in a practiced move of suppressed violence. He jerked her arms behind her back, handcuffing her, his anger and grief slamming into her so forcefully that instinct took over and she began struggling, fighting to get away from the skin-on-skin contact despite knowing better.

  He wrenched her to her feet, pulling her up by her forearms, the leverage sending pain screaming from her shoulders downward. “Get her out of here,” he said, thrusting her roughly at a uniformed officer.

  Her mind cleared with the loss of contact though adrenaline raced through her so the vines on her arms felt alive, the eyes on her palms turned into deadly weapons once again.

  “What’s this about?” she asked.

  The uniformed cop jerked her from the apartment, not answering.

  She saw a second suited man standing at her desk, leafing through a sketchbook before she was propelled down the stairways so quickly it took all her concentration to keep from tumbling to the bottom of them.

  Her heart pounded in her chest and ears as she was marched toward the police car blocking the garage door. She staved off panic by looking around. Desperate, hoping to see Liam, when earlier she’d been infuriated by the revelation he’d been following her at Eamon’s command.

  Seeing no sight of him, she asked again, “What’s this about?” And was ignored.

  She dug in her heels only to be pulled off her feet to stumble the last few steps.

  The uniformed officer opened the back door of the patrol car, shoving her in.

  She struggled to a sitting position, aware of her ragged breathing.

  Calm down. Calm down.

  Calm down. Calm down.

  She matched the words to her heartbeats.

  It helped. She hadn’t been read her rights. They hadn’t patted her down. She knew to lawyer up when it seemed smart to say those magic words.

  This was all about intimidation. Not a stretch given the fury and anguish that had poured into her when the suited cop put her on the ground.

  Why? The answer came in the solitary confinement of the car, with the image of the cop standing over her desk and the open tablet, looking at what she’d drawn.

  Denis Dunne. Her mouth went dry and her mind seized, freezing on that instant when she’d wondered if he intended to give the drawings to the police.

  Not my business, she’d thought then.

  Not my business, she told herself now, thoughts spiraling, jumbling as she wondered why they’d come to her at all, remembering those moments just inside the door, when she’d given Denis the sketch pad as Cathal stood next to them both.

  Pain stabbed into her as it occurred to her Cathal had been aware of what his uncle intended. Suspicion sharpened and twisted the blade. Had he known all along about her gift? Had he sought her out because of it?

  The suited cops left her apartment, descending the stairs empty-handed. Other men emerged from the shadows, going to cars and getting in them. Engines started. The patrol car she was in backed up, joining a caravan to San Francisco and the Hall of Justice, a building she hadn’t been in since the day the captain had her taken off the street and locked in a cell overnight.

  Panic flared. Intense, nearly paralyzing.

  She forced breath into her lungs. Reminding herself she hadn’t been read her rights. She wasn’t under arrest. She hadn’t done anything wrong.

  She’d be questioned and released. And if she wasn’t—

  The sweat clinging to her skin turned cold. She fought to suppress the fear though the vines on her forearms pulsed with it.

  She blocked her mind against memories of that day her father had her put in a cell. It won’t come to that. Eamon wouldn’t allow it to happen, she told herself, finding comfort from the very argument that had made her so furious with him.

  Twenty-five

  Cathal rubbed his thumb along the edge of his phone. How many calls would have to go directly to her voicemail before he finally broke down and contacted Sean to find out where she was?

  He wanted to see her. Needed to. And not just to continue the discussion about Eamon.

  His hand tightened around the phone as his eyes settled on a small TV at the corner of his desk. The sound was turned down, the music coming from the band onstage drowning out any talking on the screen. But unless the view shifted to a new murder scene, he no longer needed to listen to the reporters speculate on motive and the likelihood the four killings were related.

  He felt the same sense of icy foreboding he had after standing with his father and uncle at Caitlyn’s graveside. He’d known what they intended, but not like this. When he allowed himself to think about it at all, he’d imagined them taking care of it elsewhere, and further out into the future so it would
n’t raise suspicions. Doing it when the likelihood of Etaín making the connection between her drawings and the killings would be minimal.

  Was this justice? He didn’t have an answer, only knew that there’d been a small window of opportunity to take this in another direction but he’d slammed it shut with his jealousy this morning. And now none of it could be undone, and he bore some of the guilt, the responsibility.

  He called Sean. “Where is she?”

  “Bike’s at her apartment. But you remember I don’t have eyes on her, right?”

  Meaning she might not be alone. She might not even be there if she was with Eamon.

  “I remember,” he said, ending the call, his eyes going to the television screen as he accepted the possibility of sharing her if that was the only way to keep her safe.

  He needed to attend to some club business that couldn’t be put off any longer. But afterward he’d find her. He’d confess what she had to have guessed at hearing the news. He’d come clean about his involvement and his motives.

  Fury engulfed Eamon at hearing Liam’s report. He had guessed at the Dunnes’ intentions even if Etaín hadn’t. He had known she might be questioned by the police, but he had not anticipated she would be cuffed and treated like a criminal.

  Imagining her scared intensified the desire to strike out at those who’d dared threaten her. Magic howled inside him, begging to be unleashed as it hadn’t since he was a changeling.

  He forced himself to calm. She was safe enough for the moment. She had grown up in the home of a policeman and interacted with them since. She would know how to handle the situation until he could intervene.

  “You did well not to kill them when they came for her,” he told Liam. Doing so would have been easy for his third in those moments of threat to her.

  Even now, Eamon didn’t fault the Dunnes for the justice they had served. But the high-profile nature of it concerned him greatly.

  It brought with it the fear she might be taken from his territory, and he was not conversant enough with the intricacies of the human legal system to know best how to prevent it. Those he ruled avoided coming to the attention of the authorities. For them his word was the only law that mattered.

  To Rhys he said, “I believe it’s time to begin calling in favors from the humans whose acquaintances have been cultivated. I want her released, quickly and unharmed.” And when his gaze shifted to Liam, he saw no amusement glittering in his third’s eyes over this courtship dance with Etaín, there was only deadly promise.

  The handcuffs remained locked around Etaín’s wrists as she was escorted to a small, windowless interrogation room. Then the second of the suited men removed them, both cops leaving in the same silence they’d maintained since taking custody of her from the uniformed officer.

  She knew the door was locked, but she tried it anyway, her chest tightening at the confinement, her breathing growing ragged again.

  She knew, too, that they were watching her. Listening. Recording. Waiting. Letting time and silence and unanswered questions ratchet up her anxiety and fear.

  The knife blade of suspicion returned, cutting her again as she wondered if Parker and the captain were somehow involved in this. If they’d told the suited detectives the best way to gain her cooperation was like this, with an implied threat of incarceration. By locking her in a small enclosed space.

  She tried to distract herself by worrying at the question of why she’d been brought in. If they had the unsigned drawings, then they also had Denis.

  Time became distorted. She couldn’t tell how much of it had passed since they put her in the room.

  A blurred disorientation was the only forewarning she got before the wall separating Brianna’s stolen reality from her own cracked, flooding her consciousness with memory. A scream welled up inside her, primal and terrified and hopeless. No!

  She was aware of the heavy breathing above her. The grunting. The pain between her legs that came with having another one of them on top of her. Jordão she thought, by the smell of his hair, doing to her what Adam was doing to Caitlyn.

  The bed spun, turning the pictures on the walls into a kaleidoscope. Her vision blurred and when it cleared again, the boy named Mason had taken Adam’s place above Caitlyn.

  I’m sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry, she screamed silently.

  And her scream blended into a boy’s, into yelling. Confusion. Panic.

  The weight on top of her disappeared but the bed still shook violently. Caitlyn flailing. Thumping. Writhing naked next to her then going completely still, drooling blood and spit so close that if she could make her arm work she could reach out and close Caitlyn’s mouth for her.

  A different reality snapped into place with the sound of her own whimpering in the sterile white room, the feel of tears against her cheeks and the stink of fear rising off her skin. She was on her back on the floor though she didn’t remember falling.

  Panic threatened at how quickly the barriers had broken. It had taken almost twenty-four hours before, when the captain tried incarceration as a way of scaring her straight, and the friend monitoring her grew afraid she’d experienced a psychotic break.

  A hard tremor passed through her. She’d only just come into her gift then. She hadn’t had years of touching the victims of crime, of applying ink and unconsciously getting something back in the exchange.

  She got to her feet, clenching her fists to keep from pounding on the walls and doors. From screaming that she wanted a lawyer.

  Show more weakness now and she’d only be here longer. She just had to hold out a little longer, at least long enough to find out exactly why she’d been brought in.

  Still trembling, she took a seat, trying to keep Brianna’s escaped reality distant, like pages from a book. Desperate not to relive them, or worse, an expanded version of them.

  All doubt, all ability to hide in denial about the necessity of finding answers when it came to her abilities, had been stripped away by this latest demonstration of change. She believed Eamon’s warning when it came to it, needed also to believe he was arranging for a lawyer right now, or was somewhere in the building, applying pressure in order to get to her side.

  She put her head down on the table, blocking out the room and hiding her face in her arms. The action brought someone to the door within minutes. It opened and she looked up to see the two suited cops from her apartment enter the room.

  They took seats across from her, not bothering to give their names. The one who could have driven her to the floor with his emotions alone dealt a stack of pictures onto the desk, spreading them like a deck of horror cards.

  There was no looking away from them. Four boys lay in various poses, their eyes vacant in death, their clothing bloodstained.

  Etaín couldn’t feel sorry for them. Brianna’s memories were too close to the surface for that. These were executions, death a consequence of the choices they’d made, the acts they’d participated in.

  She looked away from the pictures, stomach roiling and sweat making her clothing cling to her skin at being trapped in this small room where the walls separating her reality from so many others felt thinned and fragile. If she’d known that’s what Denis intended—

  But she hadn’t, and there was no undoing what had been done. He’d meted out justice to the boys—or paid to have it done.

  The knife blade of suspicion twisted more deeply into her heart. Given the circles the Dunnes moved in, it wasn’t a stretch to imagine Denis had somehow found out about her gift.

  The quickness of his actions made her wonder if he’d guessed at their identities, adding weight to the possibility Cathal had sought her out in order to seduce her into providing the proof his uncle wanted before acting.

  A traitorous ache spread through her chest. Her throat tightened on the belief it had all been a subterfuge by Cathal, but despite that, she didn’t want to see him imprisoned. And for Brianna’s sake, she didn’t want it for Denis, either.

  A fist slammed down on
the table, making her jump and look at the detectives across from her. “You see this kid?” the one radiating fury and grief asked, shoving the photograph so it slammed into her arm. “Murdered in front of his home, with his family inside. They came out to find him dead.”

  She felt a clutch of sorrow before a second picture was shoved against her arm. “And this one, he’s the son of a diplomat.”

  He lifted two pictures, holding them inches away from her face before slamming them down on the table, panting with his own emotions. “You know what connects all four of these boys? All four of these murders?”

  She avoiding both truth and lie by saying, “What?”

  Her response infuriated him, reddening his face. “Don’t play blonde and dumb. Cooperate now. Otherwise, it won’t matter who your father and brother are. It won’t matter that you’ve helped out before, you’ll end up doing time as an accessory to murder.”

  A chill swept over her at the threat, with the acknowledgment they knew about her relationship with Parker and the captain but hadn’t questioned her at home or asked her to come in like they would have someone else in the same position, as they should have with her. They’d gone for expedience, for invading her apartment and bringing her to a place she associated with terror, though they couldn’t know that unless they’d been told.

  She crossed her arms over her chest as if holding in her courage. “I haven’t been read my rights or arrested, so unless you’ve got a reason to keep me here, I want to leave.”

  “Let’s calm down here,” the second detective said, speaking for the first time. “Emotions are running high and that’s understandable. My partner is too close to this, he knew one of the boys. Coached him when he was in Little League, so you can see why he’s not on his best behavior.”