Sofie’s eyes narrowed to thin yellow slits. “Are you thinking that you can just dump me? I warn you—”
“Geez, no! I’m trying to find a good place for you to live. My apartment isn’t it.”
“Well, don’t think you can just forget about me. I’m not going to let you. Besides, it seems like you could use a little help with your life considering all the messes you’ve gotten yourself into. I have some experience in dispensing good advice and direction to the young.”
It was a fight not to roll my eyes at that announcement. Sofie had decided to become my own Jiminy Cricket with fur. A little magic advice would be appreciated if I was to go up against Simon, but I had a feeling that Sofie had no intention of limiting herself merely to the teaching of spells. No, this nosy cat was going to meddle in my personal life because, while in the Ivory Towers, she had been the only one to have any kind of motherly attitude toward the apprentices. Meddling was who Sofie was.
“My life is not a mess,” I grumbled, pushing away the nagging thought that the claim was a blatant lie.
“Honestly, Gage, you’ve got Simon chasing you and you’re on the least-favorite list of the members of the council. Heaven only knows what other scrapes you’ve gotten into. And you’ve got no girlfriend. You’re a handsome, talented young man. You should have a girlfriend.”
“How do you know I don’t have a girlfriend?” I demanded, feeling more than a little silly glaring at a cat. The fact was that I might have a girlfriend. Trixie and I hadn’t had that exact discussion yet and it wasn’t one that I was particularly looking forward to considering that I had hung myself and threatened her brother on the same day, but I was hoping that our arrangement was more than a “friends with benefits” kind of thing.
“Because you said you had an appointment tonight. Not a date,” Sofie pointed out, batting one paw at me for emphasis.
I ran a hand roughly over my face. I was wasting time that I needed to get things settled before Tera arrived. Focusing on Sofie, who was once again waiting for me to respond to her accusation, I frowned. This could be the last time I’d see Sofie if things didn’t go well tonight.
“Look, I’ve got to take care of something important this evening,” I started, my voice thick and heavy. “If . . . if things don’t go well, I’m going to leave a note in the parlor explaining everything. I will ask my friend Trixie to take care of you. She’s a very sweet, wonderful person and I know she’ll watch over you. I would just like you to promise not to use mind control on her. She doesn’t deserve that kind of treatment.”
Standing on her back paws, Sofie rested her front paws against my chest so that her face was closer to mine. “What’s going on?”
“It would take too long to explain and I don’t have the time. Just promise me no mind control.”
Sofie dropped back down to the arm of the couch, sitting on her haunches as she stared up at me. “I promise.” I didn’t think a cat could look worried, so it might have been something in her voice telling me she was. I forced a smile on my lips as I reached up and scratched the top of her head. I suddenly jerked to a stop when I realized that I was treating the witch like a cat, but to my surprise she leaned into my hand, closing her eyes as she purred deeply. Apparently she wasn’t opposed to a little physical attention, just like a regular cat. This was going to get more than confusing.
Slipping out of the apartment, I stomped down the wooden stairs and then went around to the front door of the parlor and inside. I locked the door and didn’t bother to turn on the lights in the front of the shop. I didn’t want to draw the attention of anyone who might be walking by. We all had a number of friends who frequented the bars in the area and I didn’t want to take the chance that someone might stop by for a visit. Weaving in the dark through the chairs in the back, I headed to the room in the very rear of the building, where I shut the door and flipped on the light. I retreated to my storeroom in the basement and retrieved the vial of Styx river water and carefully carried it back up to the main floor.
Setting the vial on the middle shelf of the large cabinet that dominated the far wall, I quickly turned and searched out a plastic pipette and a plastic cap for the ink. I soundlessly gathered the last of the equipment I needed, pulling it all together on the shelf with the water. When I got Tera situated on the table, I didn’t want to worry about running around to get my supplies. I wanted everything on hand so that I could get the job done quickly.
As I placed the sealed packet of needles next to the paper plate, petroleum jelly, and stack of paper napkins, I looked down at my hands and found them shaking. My heart was pounding in my chest and my breath was coming in short rapid bursts, as if I had been running. Wiping away the sweat that had started to bead on my forehead, I walked over and sat down on a stool while flexing my hands. I needed to calm down. I wouldn’t be able to work if my hands were shaking.
I didn’t want to do this. It wasn’t right for Tera to be given immortality because of a careless mistake on my part, because no one should be immortal in this world. Yet I didn’t want her to go rushing to her death either. There had to be some kind of middle ground. She was young and sweet, and should be allowed to live out her life to a more natural end in her seventies or eighties.
Leaning forward, I dropped my face into my hands. People died every day—young and old. It wasn’t my job to decide who got to live and who had to die. I was more than happy to leave that to my visitor the grim reaper. I didn’t envy him that job. Did he even have a life? When he wasn’t running around reaping souls, did he have time off to play golf or date?
I rubbed my face to clear my thoughts of the strange bent they had taken and rose to my feet. There were things I still needed to get done. Glancing up at the clock as I entered the main room, I had about thirty minutes before Tera was to arrive. I flipped on the light and grabbed a couple of sheets of blank paper from the printer before sitting on one of the stools. Laying the paper on a thick book on my lap of tattooing designs and techniques, I started a letter to Trixie and Bronx.
It was with a weary sigh that I explained everything. I briefly admitted my warlock background, warned of the danger of the basement, detailed the mess I had made with Tera and the promise I had made to Chang. I didn’t want them going into the basement should I be killed, but I asked that they allow Chang to try. I trusted the old man to not only get past my defenses, but to also pay my friends a fair price for the items that he would find. I was on the third piece of paper when I finally got around to asking Trixie to take care of Sofie and explaining what little I knew of the witch’s problems. I told them where to find my will, which left them the tattoo parlor if I had been killed or was missing for more than eighteen months. I concluded with telling Trixie to demand that Chang find her a proper fertility relic that would help with her problem in exchange for the items in the basement. Unfortunately, I had no fix for Bronx’s current situation and I only hoped that Reave would release him if I was no longer around to torment.
Looking over the letter, I felt a swell of disgust rising in my stomach. My life had been quickly detailed over three pages in brutal, unflinching honesty. It was a mess. There was no mention of the family I hadn’t seen in a decade, no tender words for Trixie, or even an apology for hurting her and Bronx. There was nothing telling my two best friends in the world how much they had meant to me and my sanity over the years. There just wasn’t time.
A knock on the front door jerked my head up. Walking over to the doorway leading into the lobby, I motioned toward Tera, who was peering through the glass, that I would be there in just a minute. Turning back toward the tattooing room, I folded the thick letter twice and wrote on the outside “Read If I Don’t Appear by 9 P.M.” That would give me twenty-four hours to clean up the mess I had created of my life and Tera’s. If I succeeded, I would be able to get back to the shop and destroy the letter before anyone saw it. Laying the letter on the chair that Trixie used for tattooing, I looked over the room as I reached for the light switch. There
had been so much laughter here. Before I had decided to dabble in the realm of life and death.
Forcing a smile on my face, I turned off the light and moved toward the front door where Tera was waiting. I had the acting job of a lifetime before me. I had to pretend to be excited and happy while planning to steal a young girl’s life away. I was a monster.
Chapter 29
Tera’s soft moan brought my gaze up to where she lay on her stomach, tied down to the table. Everything was going according to plan, except for me. Actually, it had started out better than I’d planned. Tera realized as we walked down to a bar close to the shop that she had forgotten her ID, so we quickly popped by her apartment. While there I convinced her to have a celebratory drink with me to christen our night. She missed me dropping the strong sedative I had crushed up into her beer bottle. The sleeping pill mixed with the alcohol took quick effect once we had returned to my car. By the time we had gotten back to the shop, she was out. Parking behind the parlor, I entered through the back door. Quickly removing her shirt, I laid her gently on the padded surface and taped her hands together under the table.
I had gotten the red ink and Styx water mixed, as well as the needles placed in the tattooing machine, before reality started to set in again.
Now I sat on the floor against the cabinet in the dark, listening to Tera’s slow breathing and my own erratic heart rate. I didn’t need to retattoo her entire back. I planned on adding a few red highlights to her existing tattoo by using the red ink mixed with the underworld river water. But now that I was faced with her limp body, I couldn’t do it.
My own will to live easily conjured up the argument that I was returning things to their natural order. Humans weren’t meant to be immortal. It was as simple as that. I was correcting a mistake I’d made and I couldn’t take the chance of Tera fighting me on this matter, so I had to tattoo her while she was unconscious.
But that argument tasted like ash on my tongue when I thought about the fact that she was facing an almost immediate death should I succeed at my task. Was my problem that I was still determined to cheat death? Was I really so cocky that I thought I could save her when the grim reaper had already laid claim to her soul? I wanted it to be, because she seemed like a nice person and I didn’t want a nice person to die when there was so much evil in the world. I wasn’t sure. Maybe I didn’t want the guilt of being linked to her eventual death in any way because the guilt would be suffocating.
Tera groaned as the sound of tape stretching and scraping the underside of the table ripped through the silence. My muscles tensed as my eyes lifted to her face, waiting for her to fully awaken. She gave a soft grunt in the back of her throat as her struggles with the tape on her wrists became more pronounced. I hadn’t wanted to do this while she was awake. Not only would she then know that I was robbing her of her life, but the still-healing skin on her back would be extremely tender and sore as I laid the tattooing needle down for a second trip. She didn’t deserve the extra helping of pain to go along with the death that loomed.
As she woke, I knew that my conscience would only allow me to proceed if she realized what the situation was. I’d been afraid that if I’d told her sooner, she would have run. Even now, knowing that I was going to tell her the truth, I was unwilling to release her. I couldn’t take the chance. My life was on the line too.
“What’s going on?” Tera demanded in a rough, groggy voice. She lifted her head, her eyes blinking against the thick, inky darkness that filled the room. I doubted that she could see anything. I had been sitting in the dark for nearly an hour and could make out only shapes in the blackness. I could hear her struggling to free her hands again as her breathing started to become heavier. “Help! Help! Please, someone—”
“It’s okay, Tera,” I interrupted in a low voice. “I’m not going to hurt you.” It had been on the tip of my tongue to say that she was safe, but I swallowed those bitter words. She wasn’t safe. Not from me. Not from death.
Staring at her in the darkness, my will hardened. As distasteful as I found it, I knew that I was going to do this. It had come down to either me or her. If that was all that was at stake, I think I would have at least considered trading places with her. But it wasn’t. If I died, Trixie would be left to fend for herself. Bronx would be stuck with Reave because of me. And if the world found out there was an immortal walking the earth, there would be a war, resulting in the death of many, many more. Sure, I had made certain there were contingencies in place that could head off those problems for the most part, but so much could be solved it I simply let Tera die.
Her head whipped around to look in the direction from where my voice had originated. “Gage?”
“Yes.” It looked as if a lock of hair had fallen in front of her eyes and I resisted the urge to move over and brush it out of her face.
“Wh-where am I? Why am I tied down to this table? What’s going on?” Her tone grew angrier as she spoke now that she realized that she was alone with me. She had trusted me, was starting to count me as a friend, and I was going to betray that.
“You’re at the tattoo parlor,” I replied and then paused, my mind struggling for a way to launch into this ugly topic. “There’s something that we need to talk about.”
“Okay, fine, but why am I tied to this table and why are we in the dark?”
“Because I can’t take the chance of you running.”
“Running? What’s going on?”
I drew in a deep breath and slowly released it. Pulling my legs up toward my chest, I rested my elbows on my bent knees and dropped my head into my hands. “Do you remember when you came in and said that I had done something to your tattoo?”
“Yes, but you said you didn’t,” she replied softly.
“I lied. I did.” I paused and licked my lips as I searched for a good explanation. “After you left following our initial talk, I started thinking about what you had told me. I wondered if I could come up with some way to heal you. I didn’t want to tell you because I wasn’t sure that I could actually succeed and I didn’t want you to get your hopes up for nothing.”
“But you did succeed,” Tera argued. “I’m cured. The doctors said all the cancer is gone.”
“No, I didn’t!” I countered more sharply than I had meant to. I was angry at myself, not her, and I didn’t need to take it out on Tera.
“What do you mean?”
“I didn’t cure your cancer. I made you immortal.”
I waited, letting the information sink in. The only response I received was the sound of duct tape stretching and scraping.
“I don’t understand. If I’m immortal, why can’t I break out of this tape?”
A fraction of a smile tweaked one corner of my mouth. “I said I made you immortal, not superhuman.”
Tera stopped struggling with the tape and looked back over at where I sat on the floor against the cabinet of potion ingredients. “Immortal? So I can’t die?”
“No, you can’t die.”
The soft “Oh” that followed my confirmation was somewhat reassuring, as she apparently didn’t seem overjoyed by the prospect of being immortal. While most people were afraid of death and sought to avoid it at all costs, few truly considered the overwhelming idea of forever while you watched everyone around you die. I was in no hurry to go rushing off to my own death, particularly considering that I still had so much that needed to be done, but I had no desire to live beyond the normal human life span.
“But there’s a problem.”
“Besides being immortal?” she snapped.
“No, it’s about being immortal. The grim reaper had already scheduled your death and he can no longer reap your soul because of what I’ve done. He’s informed me that if I don’t return your mortality so that he can do his job, then he will take my soul in your place.”
“Wait! He can do that? He can kill you instead of me?”
Threading the fingers of my left hand through my hair, I glanced up at her. “I don’t know
if it’s particularly legal, but the grim reaper isn’t the type of guy I want to get into an argument with about his job.”
“Did he tell you when I was scheduled to die?” she asked in a small voice that shot straight through my chest.
I closed my eyes and for a brief moment I considered lying, but quickly pushed the temptation aside. Lying was what had gotten me into this mess. “He didn’t give any exact figures, but I got the impression that it was soon.”
“Well, that would be in keeping with what the doctors were saying,” she mumbled, talking mostly to herself. Pressing her forehead against the padded table under her, Tera heaved a heavy sigh. “I’m assuming that you’ve got me taped down to this table because you’ve got a plan for undoing this.”
“I was going to retattoo you with a different potion.”
“Will it kill me?”
“Honestly, I don’t know,” I admitted in a rough voice. “I am hoping that it simply counters the ingredients of the first tattoo, returning your mortality. With both the first tattoo and the one I want to do tonight, I am working with materials I don’t know the effects of.”
Her head popped up so that she could glare at me. “How can you use materials when you don’t know how they’re going to work?”
“Because the items are extremely rare and no one has ever used them,” I admitted. I gave a little snort. “I even had to die to get one of them,” I added under my breath.
“What do you mean you had to die?” she asked, her tone losing some of its earlier venom.
“It’s nothing.” I shook my head, not wanting any sympathy. She was the victim here.
“No, you said you died, but how? Are you dead . . . now?”
“No,” I replied, unable to stop the smile at her tense question. I wasn’t a zombie, ghoul, or member of the undead. “A friend revived me before it was too late. There was one ingredient I had to travel to the underworld to get.”
“Wasn’t that dangerous?”
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