She deadpanned me like I was being deliberately evasive. Then I realized she must have been waiting for my call since Sunday night, knowing all about Victor Tuse turning up dead and wondering why I didn’t call her on my day off. I’m sure the society had some kind of phone tree for notifying members and other pertinent individuals. I guess Sugar was considered pertinent.
“I’m just fine,” I reassured her, burying my face in a magazine on the counter. “Had a nice day off to think about all the bullshit going on in my world.”
She pulled it out from under my eyes and tossed it on a chair. “Come on. Time is money, baby. You and me got to talk.”
“I have a client coming in at eleven. I don’t have time for this, Sugar.”
“You got a whole hour and,” she glanced at my phone on the counter, “seven minutes.”
I relented and followed her across the street to Lou’s for a cup of coffee and a quick chat. Besides, I had something to show her. “So I guess you know about Victor Tuse,” I said.
“I know that man turned up like a prune left out in the hot Georgia sun for a few days,” she confirmed. “I also know that thing inside of him is on the move.” Her eyes shifted around the diner as if the spirit might be sitting at the next table. “Now you know I ain’t afraid of much, Katie, but only a fool be turning his back on what’s roaming free out there looking for a new body.” Her expression showed a rare glimpse of fear. “You need protection, baby.”
“Don’t worry about me, Sugar. I wouldn’t make a good host. I can’t apply that tattoo on its back if it’s living inside of me.” I glanced nervously across the table. “You, on the other hand—” My shoulders shuddered. We’d never finished our conversation about my dragon the last time we sat in this booth, seeing how we were interrupted by the thunder of choppers rolling down the street. “Trust me, Sugar, I can take care of myself. I guess I need to show you what we were talking about the other day.”
“I bet you got some real interesting skills, Katie B.” Her mood lightened a little. Not much, but a little. “But you got to understand what you’re dealing with here. This ain’t no garden variety spirit gunning for you—more like a demon, with them bones and all.”
I’d faced some pretty bad things over the past couple of years, but the look on Sugar’s face had me wondering if I was underestimating the one I was facing now. “There’s something else,” I said. “I met Fin at Lillian’s house Sunday night after he called to tell me about Tuse. When I came home I found this red powder sprinkled in a line across my front door. I think it was red brick dust. I guess you know what that is.” Coming from a long line of conjure women, I figured red brick dust was hoodoo 101 for her. “Then I found these hidden around my house.” I pulled a hand towel from my purse and unwrapped one of the strange looking roots. I hesitated to touch it or put it in my purse, but I needed to show it to Sugar. “I found six of them.”
“Seven,” she said. “You missed one. Probably the one in the kitchen pantry in the bag of flour.”
An incredulous laugh blurted out of my mouth. “You?” She arched her brow and demurely sipped her coffee, looking everywhere but at me. “I don’t believe this. You broke into my house and planted these creepy roots all over the place? I guess the brick dust came from you, too?”
“Angelica root,” she clarified. “And yes to the dust. And by the way, you need to get you one of them metal rods for that patio door of yours. All it took was a little lift off the track to disengage that flimsy lock. Didn’t your mama ever teach you anything?”
We sat silent for a minute, staring at each other over the table. She finally leaned across and crooked her finger at me. I met her halfway as she took my chin between her knuckle and thumb. Sugar rarely let down her sassy and fearless wall, never showed her vulnerable insides. Always genuine, I never questioned her loyalty, but today I was seeing a man behind all that makeup, the face she tried so hard to alter into who she really was. Those penetrating hazel eyes tracked back and forth between mine. I imagined she was a strikingly handsome man underneath it all—maybe a little bit too pretty. “I’m just trying to protect the people I love,” she said in a voice deeper and richer than the one I’d become accustomed to. “But the kind of safe you need ain’t gonna come from a bag of dust or a few roots thrown around that house of yours.”
I pulled away from her hand, feeling kind of awkward as my stomach heated up deep down inside. She smiled, recognizing the look on my face. Then she was back to the Sugar I knew so well. “There’s somewhere I need to take you. That tinkering Sunday night was just enough to get you through that day off of yours, seeing how you was avoiding me all day yesterday.”
“I wasn’t avoiding you, Sugar. I just needed a break from everything. That’s why it’s called a day off.”
“That’s all right, baby. But I’m taking you to see the big guns tonight if I have to drag you there.”
Before I could ask where she was planning to take me, I glanced around the room and saw a face staring over at us from a table on the far right side of the diner. I’d only made out the hair and glasses from a block away, but I’d bet my shop on it that the woman sitting at that table was the same one I saw standing under my streetlight yesterday morning. My breath hitched as I turned my eyes back to Sugar. “There’s a woman sitting across the room—”
I guess the look on my face was enough to alarm Sugar, because she turned around to look before I could finish my sentence. Her eyes came back to meet mine. “What woman?”
She was gone when I looked back at the table. “Sugar, I swear there was a woman sitting right there.” I pointed to the spot where she’d been sitting a few seconds earlier. “She was standing on the sidewalk when I came home from Lillian’s house, just staring at me from under the streetlight at two-thirty in the morning. What kind of person does that?” I could tell by the way Sugar was looking at me that we were having the same thought. “You don’t think that woman could be the new host?” My eyes darted around the room as the lines on my back stirred.
She shuddered briskly. “I don’t know, but you got to use your head, girl. And you ain’t gonna just sit around like some fat beetle waiting to get sucked dry like Tuse. We’re gonna get you good and jujued up tonight.”
Sugar walked me back to the shop and I agreed to meet her after we closed. She warned that the night could get intense, and it might be wise to take the next day off. Not likely. I had a business to run and tomorrow was two-for-one day, which meant twelve hours of cute little hearts, roses, and significant other’s names. Figuring it couldn’t hurt, though, I accepted her invitation. The fact that it was near impossible to put her off once she got something in her head didn’t make refusing any easier.
I walked into the shop with about five minutes to spare before my client arrived. Becky was in her early forties and catching up on her bucket list. After years of that son of a bitch she was married to smacking her around, she was finally getting to that tattoo she always wanted. We’d been working on covering her back with a tattoo of Diana, Goddess of the Hunt, starting it on the day she finally got the courage to file for divorce. I guess she got tired of him telling her what she could eat, who she could see, and what she could and couldn’t do with her own body.
Every few weeks she’d come in with enough money to have a small section completed. I would have done it for free if she’d let me. My contribution to women living with assholes everywhere. But I sensed that Becky took great pride in paying for something that went completely against the grain of her former life—and husband—even if it meant a sparsely filled refrigerator for a week. I applied a little extra each time she came in, free of charge.
“Ready to get this done?” I asked as she walked through the door with a wide grin on her face.
Becky laughed. “I’m going to wait until he signs those divorce papers next week, and then before that damn ink dries I’m going to lift my shirt and show him what I think about his rules.”
“Good for you
, Becky. Just make sure your lawyer’s in the room when you do it.”
She laughed again. “That’ll make his head explode, flashing my tits in front of another man.”
She climbed on the table and we started the final phase of her tattoo. I took my time with it, wanting to make it perfect for her big reveal. I looked up every time the door open, waiting for that biker to come walking in.
By one-thirty the masterpiece I’d been working on for months was complete. So much for stretching it out to distract me. “It looks perfect, Becky.”
She walked over to the full-length mirror and looked at it through the reflection of the smaller one in her hand. For a moment, I thought she was unsatisfied with the final work, the way her lower lip quivered and her brows pulled together. “This is it, isn’t it, Katie? Like they say, one journey ends and another begins.”
“I should tattoo that on your arm, Becky.”
She left the shop and headed for her car. I couldn’t help but wonder if she knew how lucky she was. A lot of women in her situation either never found the courage to leave, or left in a box. So far the verbal abuse had been worse than the physical, but it would have only been a matter of time before the bruises on her body progressed to broken bones.
I headed back to clean my station when Sea Bass came in through the back door, holding his phone and looking panicked. “Maggie had an accident.” His eyes were wide and vacant, like he didn’t know whether to bolt back out the door or prep for clients. “Tow truck’s on the way.”
“Jesus! Is she okay?” I asked, fearing the worst from the look on his face.
“Maggie is, but she thinks Marvin’s leg is broken.” He looked at me apologetically. “Katie, I gotta go.”
Abel tossed his car keys to Sea Bass. “You’re not getting that dog on the back of your bike. Just bring it back in one piece.”
Bike—Biker. The words made my stomach do a heavy flop. “Don’t you have a two o’clock?” I shamefully asked, suddenly realizing I might be doing hand to skin combat for the next few hours with Jackson Hunter. I glanced at Mouse, but she was barely halfway through her client’s tattoo. Abel just stared back at me when I looked at him next, thinking the unthinkable.
“You’re right,” I said “I’ll take care of it. Go on. Deal with Marvin.”
Fifteen minutes after Sea Bass left, I heard the unmistakable growl of a Harley coming down the street. Jackson Hunter pulled into one of the parking spots in front of the shop. He took his time climbing off the bike and garnered looks from passersby when his spray of long black hair fell out of his helmet, a Gothic monolith descending on their town.
My heart started to race like it had on Sunday when he so easily insinuated that a woman wasn’t qualified to apply ink to his precious skin. Not like some pitter-patter from a crush, but like I had a bad case of stage fright. How could a guy I didn’t even like send my adrenaline rushing straight up my throat? Maybe it was just my instincts warning me of trouble. God knows I’d run up against his type a thousand times before in the bars on the lower side of Manhattan. I’d just never run up against one the size of a truck before, with piercing green eyes.
His head lowered automatically to clear the height of the front door like it was second nature. Then he glanced at Mouse and Abel before making his way around to me. “Where is he?” he asked. “Steel Head, Flounder, whatever his name is.”
Mouse laughed without looking up from her client’s arm.
I forced back a smile. “You mean Sea Bass?” He just kept staring at me with that deep gaze that said one of two things: Yeah, who the fuck did you think I was talking about?, or You’re the loveliest thing I’ve ever seen. I was pretty sure it was the former. “Family emergency,” I said. It was true. Marvin was family. “I would have called you to cancel but he just left.”
Why didn’t I call him?
My stupidity astounded me. I had fifteen whole minutes to call Jackson Hunter to let him know he should reschedule. But no, I let him drive down here and walk into my shop just so we could have this painful little tête-à-tête.
He stood there showing no reaction to the news. Then he looked at my empty station. “Is that your chair?”
My mouth opened and closed. “Yeah, but—”
But what? My schedule was clear for the rest of the afternoon and he was a paying customer.
Without doing me the courtesy of asking, he walked over to my chair and sat down. A moment later I collected my scattered brain off the floor and got down to business. I guess Mr. Hunter decided to live dangerously by allowing a female to grace his skin with ink. “That was rude,” I muttered to him as I met him at my station and started preparing a tray.
“Yeah, I can be a real asshole sometimes,” he replied, straight-faced with absolutely no apology in the words.
Sometimes? I must have missed the other side of his personality. “You’re lucky,” I said. “I just happen to have time today.”
His brooding eyes never left mine as our uncomfortable exchange continued. “Is that what I am? Lucky?” he asked.
God, he was infuriating. I went to the back to retrieve the sketch of the hawk Mouse had done on Sunday and held it out to him for final approval. “Do you want to make any changes?”
He glanced at the drawing. “I don’t like it. I want you to draw me a new one.”
“A new one?” I repeated.
“A new one,” he repeated back a little slower. Aside from his mouth moving, his expression remained neutral.
“Are you toying with me, Mr. Hunter?” He slowly shook his head while his eyes took a walk over my face. “What’s wrong with this one? You were happy about it a couple of days ago, and it’s good.” Normally I wouldn’t question a client’s wish to modify an image that was about to be permanently embedded in their skin, but this guy was just being the asshole he said he could be.
“Yeah, it’s good,” he said with a shrug. “But you didn’t draw it.”
Without further ado and because I could feel the skin on my face heating up, I headed for the back and started rendering a new sketch. The extra time it took would make it impossible to complete the tattoo in one sitting, and that meant I’d have to suffer through the pleasure of his company again. I’d done a lot of birds before, but I made damn sure the drawing I presented to Jackson Hunter was the crème de la crème of all hawks. I wanted that man out of my chair, and the sooner I got his approval, the sooner I could start the damn thing and send him back to where he came from.
“Does this work?” I handed him the drawing. “It’s intricate and we close early today. You’ll probably have to come back for another session.”
He examined it for a good minute. “That’s a good-looking hawk, Miss Bishop. Let’s see if you can tattoo as well as you draw.”
My last name coming out of his mouth sent my pulse racing. He’d actually taken the time to find out who I was. He must have sensed my reaction, because his eyes wandered down to my business cards on the tray.
“Yep,” I grumbled, walking away to make the stencil. “You’re gonna remember me, Jackson Hunter.”
11
I felt guilty for about two seconds, pushing a little harder than I had to, making sure he felt every drop of ink that I embedded in his skin. After three hours of working in utter silence it was time to call it a day. The man in my chair had said about two words the entire time, choosing instead to stare at me while I worked. Every time I glanced up at him he was boring those green eyes into mine without the slightest bit of discretion.
Technically we were closed by the time I cleaned him up and wrapped the tattoo. It wasn’t unusual to stay late after the doors were locked to complete work on a regular client, but Jackson Hunter hadn’t earned that privilege and I had a date with Sugar at seven o’clock.
“Shouldn’t take more than a couple of hours to complete.” It would take a couple of weeks to heal before we could finish the rest of it. “You want to schedule another session now?”
He exami
ned the partial tattoo under the plastic wrap. “I’ll call you.”
Sugar pulled up next to the Harley, eyeing it suspiciously as she passed it on the way to the entrance. Abel unlocked the door to let her in. The first words out of her mouth made me cringe. “Don’t tell me you got yourself a new man, Katie B.”
“He’s a client,” I said. “And he was just leaving.” I took his money and pointed to the door with my eyes.
He smirked and turned to leave, but not before leaning over the counter to get within a few inches of my ear. “I knew your name before I walked through that door,” he said. “Thank God for family emergencies.”
There went my damn pulse again. He nodded to Sugar on his way out and climbed on his bike, staring at me through the window while he corralled his hair and pulled his helmet over his head. His bike engine revved as he sat there for a few more minutes. I waited for him to pull away and disappear down the road before slipping back into the bathroom for another one of those sink gripping sessions. Jesus, Lord! What the hell was wrong with me?
Sugar knocked on the door when I stayed in there a little longer than normal. “You okay in there, Katie?” The last thing I needed was for anyone to see my flushed face and shaking limbs from all that adrenaline pumping through me like a freight train.
“I’m fine, Sugar. Be right out.”
I could hear her lean her ear up to the door. “That boy didn’t do nothing to you, did he?”
Depends on what she meant by nothing. I opened the door and she nearly fell inside. “Of course not. And he’s not a boy.”
She glared at me, obviously picking up on my jacked nerves like a hound smelling a raccoon, but for some uncharacteristic reason she dropped the third degree. “You ready to go?” she asked.
“I guess. You plan on telling me where we’re going?”
She countered. “You plan on telling me what just happened in that bathroom?”
Neither of us pursued the conversation any further. I locked the shop door behind her and Abel and climbed into the front seat of her boat-sized Eldorado. “I could just follow you,” I said. “Save you the hassle of driving me back to my car.”
Crossroads of Bones (A Katie Bishop Novel Book 1) Page 10