'Ink It Over: A Touch Of Ink Novel

by Rachel Rawlings

  The formidable Ms. Brown answered with as much pleasure as I felt in having had to dial her number. In other words, none.

  A meaty thump, the sound of a fist against softer flesh, greeted me as I reached the side of the car.

  “Ms. Brown, I’m going to have to call you back.” I hit the end button, cutting her protests short. Widening my stride, I came around to the back of the car in two steps to find Lars subduing a stranger in a rear naked choke.

  Except he wasn’t a stranger. Not really. I’d seen this guy before. In my shop, no less. Fake business card guy, the reason I’d decided to skip town before I ended up having a date with an Angel of Mercy.

  Just once it would be nice if the universe had a little mercy on me.

  “Lars, ease up.”

  Even in the dark, the reddish-purple tinge to the man’s skin was noticeable. Another second with Lars’s forearm and bicep pressed against his throat and the guy would be lights-out before we had a chance to question him.

  “We need to talk...” I began.

  The guy’s eyelids closed, his head lilting to one side as much as possible in the confines of Lars’s bulging arm. His body went limp.

  “Never mind.”

  “Houdini here tripped the wards.” Lars released his hold on the intruder, letting him fold in on himself like a metal chair before hitting the ground.

  “Now that we have the obvious out of the way, what are we going to do with him?”

  Lars eyeballed the trunk.

  “No, absolutely not.”

  Lars raised his brows and shrugged his shoulders in a ‘what, you got any better ideas?’ gesture. Since I didn’t actually have a better idea, I was having a hard time forming an argument.

  “We can’t leave him here. He’ll call the Magistrate the second he wakes up.” Lars bent down, hooking his arms under the spy’s armpits and hoisting him up. “Grab his ankles.”

  “You’re serious? How’s this for a role reversal? You’re supposed to be the voice of reason.” Following Lars’s lead—because what choice did I really have?—I grabbed the guy by his ankles and helped hoist him into the trunk.

  “This is about as reasonable as it gets, given the situation.” Lars tucked our uninvited guest into the trunk. “Snug like a bug in a rug.”

  “He was heavier than he looked.” One hand on my hip, I pulled in a deep breath. “I want it noted that I, the queen of bad decisions, have officially deemed this a bad idea.”

  “Noted. And for the record, I would like to note whose initial bad decision landed us in the position of shoving an unconscious person into a trunk in the first place.” Lars slammed the trunk lid shut.

  “Duly noted.” I tossed Lars the keys and walked around to the passenger side. “Your plan, you’re driving.”

  Rhode Island is small when compared to other states. The smallest, in fact, but limited square mileage or not, there was still more than one route to reach your destination. I knew every one that led to Something to ‘Ink About like the back of my hand.

  “Maybe I should have driven after all.” Wedging myself between the side of the seat and the car door, I positioned myself so I could get a better look at Lars while I grilled him on his master plan. “Taking him to the shop is yet another bad idea in a series of bad ideas. We could have been in Connecticut well on our way to Georgia by now.”

  “With an unconscious Magistrate man in the trunk?” Lars kept his attention focused on the road and the needle on the speedometer precisely on the speed limit. “They sent him to watch us. You don’t think they have someone watching him?”

  “Enlighten me as to how this guy arriving at the shop knocked out and in the back of the car is going to help any of us.” A smile crept across my face before a few chuckles burst free. For a moment, the ridiculousness of our situation overrode the pending danger.

  “Having him reach his destination, awake or otherwise, will still be viewed by the Magistrate as better than not having arrived at all.” The blinker tick-tocked as Lars continued to obey every traffic law and signaled we were making a left onto Broadway. “They’ll see it as an opportunity to exchange information. He’ll give us a little about the Magistrate, but he’s likely to gather just as much information on us.”

  I hated it when he thought things through further than I had—which was often enough that I should have been used to the feeling.

  “I’ll take your silence as agreement.” After turning on the radio, he switched stations until he found a familiar song, joining in with a voice only a tone-deaf mother could love.

  Carpeting, cushions, and upholstery went a long way to deadening the sounds of a man kicking and screaming from inside the trunk of a car, but as we slowed to turn into the parking lot behind the shop, even the radio failed to drown him out.

  “As soon as you pop that trunk, the whole neighborhood will know we’re kidnappers. If they don’t already.” Casting a glance over the back seat, I asked Lars the obvious question. “So, what now?”

  “We’re not kidnappers. Kidnapping insinuates we initiated the crime. I’d like to think of him more as collateral, a negotiating piece.” Lars fixed his attention on the rear seats.

  “We’ve got a guy screaming bloody murder in the back of my car, Lars. Now is not the time to argue semantics.” I wiggled through the space between the two front seats and onto the back seat. “Did any spare needles make it out of the diner?”

  “You can’t ward him, Del. He’d be living, breathing proof of what you can do.”

  “I’ll ward you for being ridiculous,” I threatened.

  Lars pointed to the backpack on the floor. “Front pocket.”

  After tearing open the sealed packet of needles, I held them between my lips and popped the latches to access the trunk from inside the car. The seats lowered, exposing the Magistrate’s spy who’d rolled to his side.

  His yells picked up again as I pricked my finger and squeezed a well of blood to the tip. The driver’s seat groaned under Lars’s weight as he tried to get a better look at what I was doing.

  “This won’t hurt a bit. Now, hold still.” With the guy curled up to fit inside the trunk overpowering him was easier than I expected. On my knees, I held his head between my thighs as I forced more blood to the surface of my fingertip.

  He shook his head side to side, trying to break free, a look of fear in his light brown eyes likely resembling the look I’d had when my foster mother placed the same sigil on my forehead every night. How many times had I begged her to stop, pled for mercy?

  None ever came, and every night was the same.

  “Grim didn’t teach you that.” Lars spoke in hushed tones, his hand resting on my shoulder, pulling me back from the abyss of the memories.

  With his eyes and mouth open wide, no sound came out, but the Magistrate’s man screamed nonetheless, the blood spell on his forehead rendering him mute.

  “No, he didn’t,” I said.

  “Del.” Lars gave my shoulder a gentle squeeze, prodding my mind and body into action. He didn’t bother asking if I was all right. It was probably obvious that I was anything but.

  After carefully putting the needles back into the packet, I shoved them into my pants pocket to be destroyed once we were safely inside the building. I wasn’t taking any chances with a sample of my blood landing in the hands of the Magistrate should our hostage manage to escape.

  I took a deep breath. “Let’s get this over with.”

  Chapter Eight

  “NICHOLAS MARKS.” LARS tossed me the wallet he’d pilfered from our hostage’s pocket. “So, you’re a man of the Magistrate, huh? Were you just spying on her or something more nefarious? Did you find your mark, Mr. Marks?” Lars leaned in, knuckles white as he gripped the armrest of the office chair, which cracked and groaned in protest under the pressure of his massive hands.

  To his credit, Nicholas Marks didn’t so much as blink when faced with the enormous bear-man that went by the name of Lars. His eyes just shifted fro
m me to Lars and back again, like he was sizing us up, trying to figure out which one of us he stood a better chance of convincing to let him go.

  “Don’t bother.” Arms crossed over my chest, I leaned against my desk. “He tied you up and stuffed you in a trunk. I stole your voice, effectively silencing you until I decide to give it back. If I do at all, that is. We’re not going to help you. So, you might as well give those puppy-dog eyes a rest because they’re not going to work with him”—I jabbed a thumb in Lars’s direction—“and they’re certainly not going to work with me.”

  At least not right away.

  I was a sucker for a sad case, and our captive played the part well. It didn’t hurt that Nicholas Marks was easy to look at or that his eyes were two deep blue pools filled with emotions which threatened to swallow me whole if I stared too long. Long and lean, he had more of a swimmer’s build with muscles where it mattered and that were impossible to ignore.

  The longer we kept him, the more likely I was to end up suffering from a reversal of Stockholm syndrome.

  We needed to get whatever information we could from him and then get rid of him. Lars and I would come up with a plan to save the shop and my ass before the Magistrate shut us down for good.

  “Now, we’re going to ask you some questions.” I pushed myself the rest of the way up onto my desk to sit, my feet dangling. “And you’re going to answer them, understand?”

  Nicholas sat stone still, a statue void of any emotions apart from the swirling depths of his dark blue eyes.

  “This is the part where you nod.”

  Nothing.

  “Blink once for yes, twice for no?”

  Lars all but growled, frustration pulsing off of him in waves that prickled against my skin as he set to work warding the office. “You’re good. You can remove the sigil.” Lars completed the protective seal, turning an everyday office into a soundproof booth.

  I hopped off the desk and slid my index and middle finger into my mouth, coating them with saliva in a way that under different circumstances may have seemed provocative to some people. Or, as in this particular case, terrifying. Nicholas squirmed in his seat as I drew a wet line through the sigil, breaking the spell and releasing him from the forced silence.

  “You mean all I had to do was rub that off?” Nicholas shook his head as he tested the bonds around his hands and feet.

  “No. All I had to do was rub that off.” I leaned back against the desk, crossing one leg in front of the other. “So, you’re a Magistrate man, huh?”

  “No.” He dropped his head back, staring up at the ceiling.

  “No?”

  His chest and shoulders rose and fell on his sigh. “Yes, but it’s not how you think.”

  “So, you weren’t assigned by the Magistrate to follow Del, find out what she can do, collect your evidence, and turn her in?” Lars clenched and unclenched his hands at his sides.

  “Yes, I was assigned to Del.” Nicholas continued to stare at the ceiling like it was the most interesting thing in the world.

  “And how’s that working out for you so far?” I kicked the leg of the chair to get his attention. Eye contact was just as important as body language.

  “Well, let’s just say whenever I fantasized about a woman tying me up, it didn’t involve another guy or a trunk.” Nicholas offered a sardonic smile and a small shrug. “Things could be better.”

  Lars’s grimace and furrowed brow deepened to ravine level. Despite my best effort to mimic his expression, I wound up cracking a smile. Nothing about the night’s events had unfolded according to Nicholas’s plans. We still hadn’t uncovered what exactly his plans were, but we could all agree they did not involve being stuffed into a trunk or tied to a chair.

  “Why don’t you elaborate on the details of your assignment while we decide what to do with you.” Lars walked around to the back of the desk and opened the bottom drawer, pulling out the emergency bottle of vodka we kept for occasions where you needed to put coffee on the bench and call in the alcohol. He took a swig before passing it to me.

  I waved the glass bottle back and forth in front of Nicholas, offering him a shot to calm his nerves. Loose lips sink ships, and nothing loosened someone up like alcohol. Except for magic, of course, but Lars and I had burned through most of our stored energy. Alcohol was a crude way to accomplish our goals, but we were already staring down a massive spell hangover and neither of us wanted to add to it by using more magic.

  Nicholas looked at his hands and then back at me, brows quirked as if to say untie me? When I shook my head, he just tilted his head back and opened his mouth for me to pour a shot of vodka in.

  After swallowing hard, he let out a breath like that would ease the burn from the cheap alcohol. “They sent me to watch you. Can I get some more of that?”

  “We already figured that out. Tell us what we want to know, Nicholas, and you just might walk out of here with your memory intact.” I took another swig from the bottle before pouring a shot of vodka into his mouth.

  “Look, scrub my brain, kill me, do whatever you want. It’s a far cry from what will happen if I go back empty-handed.” With brows raised, Nicholas held his mouth open, my apparent cue to pour him another.

  “What will happen if you go back without me? Because, let’s be real, you promised them you’d bring me in, right?”

  “Yeah.” Nicholas laughed. “I should have done my homework on you, though. I always hated homework. But in your case, it would have probably paid off.” It took another shot of vodka to get him to continue. “You’re tougher than you look, a lot of power stuffed into a small package. That sigil you put on my forehead? That’s some scary shit. Man, I wish I could have seen what it actually looked like.”

  I glanced over at Lars while the words continued to pour from Nicholas’s mouth faster than the vodka poured in. The wheels were officially greased. With a small wink, I mouthed the word wow to Lars and turned my attention back to our captive, who was still talking.

  “And that guy, well, he pretty much lives up to expectations, right?” Nicholas laughed, seeming unfazed that no one joined in. “Big guy, all brute strength, good with the basics but not too bright, right?”

  “Okay, that took a turn.” My eyebrows were probably level with my hairline.

  Lars stirred from his spot at my back. I needed to steer the conversation back on course before Lars showed him just how much brute strength he had.

  “Let’s get back to the Magistrate,” I said.

  “Right, the Magistrate. They’ve reserved a room for me. One of those lead ones. If I don’t take you in, I get to stay there. Rent free, though. So, you know, silver linings, right?”

  “Is that lead-lined box a double suite? Because that’s where they’re going to put me if they catch me. Until they decide whether they want to hang or burn me, that is. ‘Thou shalt not suffer a Warder to live.’ It’s in their doctrine.” I took another swig from the bottle before passing it back to Lars.

  “You had to know the risks. So, why do it?” Nicholas seemed genuinely confused by the choice I’d made.

  As if it was a choice.

  “It’s what I am.” I shook my head when Lars’s hand squeezed my shoulder and stayed there as an offer of support. “No, it’s more than that. It’s who I am. I help them. You know, like how the Magistrate is supposed to.” All the bitterness I felt over the way they had betrayed and continued to betray the covens roiled up. “The only people they help are themselves. Unless you have something they want or can afford to stay in their good graces.”

  Nicholas met Lars’s glare with one of his own. “Why don’t you just go get the Forgive and Forget you offered Ms. Brown, huh?”

  “You’re clever, Nicholas.” Lars lunged forward, hand clenched in a white-knuckled fist.

  I flattened my palm against his chest, just above his heart which was beating like a caged beast, and stopped him.

  “You’ve been watching us for a couple days unnoticed,” Lars said.
“How’d a guy like you end up under the Magistrate’s thumb?”

  “I turned my roommate into my familiar.” The words came out of Nicholas’s mouth in a jumbled rush.

  A sobering silence, thick and heavy, fell over the room as we processed what he’d said. Human familiars were forbidden, like Rule Number One on the list of things you didn’t do as a practitioner—right above warding. I hadn’t thought it possible, but there was actually someone who’d done something even more taboo than me and he was tied to a chair in my office.

  “It was an accident, obviously. I barely tolerated him as a roommate. There was no way I wanted him latched to me for the rest of my life. I’d been working on the spell for days. It was meant for a raven. I thought it would be cool. Very Edgar Allan Poe, you know?” Nicholas laughed but Lars and I apparently weren’t in on the joke. “Turns out when you’ve been touched with death magic, using a carrion bird for your familiar won’t work. I probably should have made an appointment with you instead of trying to force my will on the magic. My do-gooder roommate Joshua tried to stop me, and, well... You get the picture.”

  “And Joshua?” I asked.

  “Well, we were in the lab on campus, so it didn’t take long for a Footman to find out. The Magistrate can’t have an otherwise perfect human specimen under their control and permanently bound to someone else, can they? The Footman killed Joshua and then hauled me in front of the full council.” Nicholas looked down at the rope binding him. “It’s funny... They knew what I was capable of and never strapped me to a chair.”

  “Yeah, well, when you live on the fringe of Magistrate society, you learn taking too many chances will get you killed.” Lars all but bored a hole in Nicholas’s skull while staring at him. “Like your friend Josh.”

  “Lars.”

  “Don’t tell me you’re going soft on this guy after hearing his sob story. It’s probably all bullshit, anyway,” Lars growled, his hands still clenched at his sides. “Except the part about being on campus. He looks like a Magistrate trainee.”