“Better than the AMBI,” she muttered.
“Yeah, they have more questions, too,” he called as he turned and stalked into the studio.
“Freaking yay,” she said, turning her back on the young cop’s smirk.
She shuffled to her scarred wooden workbench. A bare lightbulb illuminated shelves stacked with bottles of reagents charged for making magic ink. Isa stuffed the slow cooker full of ink ingredients, a dab of magic, and a liberal splash of high-test white rum.
Then, since most of Seattle PD’s Acts of Magic unit was in her studio expecting her to use unshielded magic, Isa brought up power for an experiment. Warmth shimmered inside her body in answer.
Halfway between normal and the otherworld existed a place where the two overlapped. She’d learned to access it years ago when she’d still lived with her adoptive mother, Ruth. Isa wanted to see if, in the marriage of magic and the mundane, she could pick up the escaped dragon’s trail.
Opening to another sense, she studied the basement, concentrating on the path from the studio to the alley door. The gold of her magic permeated the space, spillover from what she’d summoned to make ink, she assumed. But between the studio and the exit, a multicolored path twisted, evidence of people coming and going, unaware of their magic leaking out wherever they went. They’d erased every trace of the dragon’s escape.
Isa swore. She’d try again in the alley.
Shifting her other-sight to one side, she turned on the slow cooker and set the timer.
“Officer Davis?” she said as she limped for the door. “If you smell smoke? Don’t go in there.”
“Wait. What?” he yelped.
“I’ll be back to check on it tomorrow,” she said before stepping out into the crispy snow. “If it doesn’t blow up.”
“Ha-ha. Very funny!” he hollered from the doorway. “That was a joke, right?”
Isa waved and thought she caught a glimmer of green and gold magic at the corner. She followed. Until it vanished into the energy wash of people using the snow as an excuse to walk to restaurants, grocery stores, and other shops up and down the street.
Frustrating that she hadn’t been able to go with Steve’s tracking team. Between her injury and the blizzard, Steve had flat refused to let her go after the dragon.
In the twenty-four hours since Kelli Solvang’s death, Steve’d had his tracking team on the streets. They’d reported tantalizing traces of the creature, but nothing that persisted in the environment to allow them to follow it.
She needed a plan for what to do when it turned up.
A knock on her apartment door three hours later brought her out of her chair without thinking, which upset the dog sleeping hunched atop her stocking feet. Her injured quad cramped. She collapsed into the chair with a yelp of pain.
Gus barked once, then crowded against her legs, his snout on her knees asking if she was okay.
The door opened.
Steve stalked into the apartment, bristling with indignation. “What did I tell you about getting off that leg?”
“I am!” Gritting her teeth, Isa pressed her fingers deep into the muscle fibers in an uninjured spot.
Agent Anne Macquarie followed Steve through the door at a sedate pace, pausing to close it behind her.
Isa swallowed a curse. Of course the police had access to the apartment building, but she should have locked her apartment door. She’d left it unlocked because Nathalie had insisted on walking Gus in Isa’s stead. She’d even scooped the cat’s litter box.
The cramp receded. Something warm and wet trickled from at least one of the puncture wounds. Great.
“Agent Macquarie has some additional questions, if you’re up to it,” Steve said.
As if she could say no without him carting her to the ER. She gestured them into the apartment and shut her laptop. “Sure. What do you want to know?”
“I’m told you could have prevented that thing from escaping,” she said.
Gus rumbled a low growl.
Isa wound a hand in his collar and rubbed one of his ears to silence him. She scowled at the agent. “Been talking to Daniel, I take it?”
He was the only person who’d known she’d failed to cast a circle. What the hell was he doing? Trying to force her out of business? Did he really think she’d work for him if he managed to run her out of Nightmare Ink?
“Yes or no, Ms. Romanchzyk?” Anne pressed.
“True,” Isa said to spite her. “I could have prevented the creature’s escape.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“The ritual required to lock the creature inside a magic circle with me would have taken time your witness didn’t have,” she said.
“I may be at some fault, too,” Steve broke in.
They looked at him. The surprise written in Anne’s raised eyebrows mirrored Isa’s.
He shrugged. “I opened the studio door. If I hadn’t, it wouldn’t have gotten away.”
That was true, too.
Isa sighed. “The fact remains that a circle cast inside the studio would have contained the dragon whether you’d opened the door or blown down the entire room. That’s the point of casting one. However, Mr. Solvang was already bleeding and incoherent when the marshals brought him in. We were out of time before they got him through my door. I forewent the circle in the hopes of saving him.”
“So,” the agent said in a rippling tone that conveyed far too much satisfaction for Isa’s comfort. “Multiple procedural violations?”
Gus shifted against Isa’s hold on him, tags jingling. He growled again.
“Sure,” Isa said, using her free hand to press the dog’s haunches down. “Multiple procedural failures led to the dragon’s escape, but not to your witness’s death. In retrospect, nothing could have stopped that.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Mr. Solvang had bloody foam on his lips when he came in.”
“Meaning?”
Isa pinned her with what she hoped was a hard look. “He was already drowning in his own blood, Ms. Macquarie. How many procedural violations will you be racking up for the marshals who failed to recognize Ink Madness until it was too late?”
“My source suggests that Mr. Solvang could have been saved,” Anne persisted, brushing off the question.
“Who, precisely, is your source?” Isa demanded. “Daniel doesn’t bind Ink. He doesn’t know how.”
“Could he?”
Confirmation of Daniel’s meddling in the case.
Gus whined a sharp complaint and twisted. The audible click of his teeth said her willful dog was losing patience with her hold on him. He tugged.
Isa didn’t dare release him. She suspected he intended to herd Anne out the door.
“Absolutely Daniel could do a bind,” Isa said, meeting the agent’s smug gaze, “right after he developed his own binding ink recipe, a ritual for binding, an inking method, and then pulled his ramrod definition of artiste out of his ass so he could do the work.”
“You’re the only person in the world—” she began.
Shoving her free hand in her pocket, Isa produced a handful of change and bit out, “Here’s a quarter.” She flipped the coin at the agent. It struck her gray lapel, rebounded, and hit the floor. “Make a phone call to the Live Ink Association. Ask them who in the US binds Live Ink. Come on back with questions about saving Mr. Solvang after you have that list of people who might actually be qualified to talk about what happened to your witness.”
The woman glared for several seconds before turning on her heel and stomping out of the apartment.
Isa expected her to slam the door.
It closed with a civilized, pointed click.
Isa let the still grumbling dog go.
Gus eased out from under the table, hackles raised.
Steve blew out a
noisy breath. “You sure are a people person, aren’t you, Ice? Could you answer her questions without baiting her?”
“That woman gets on every last nerve I have,” Isa said. Thing is, she couldn’t put a finger on why. Did the agent’s bad attitude and loaded questions justify Isa’s snide responses?
“I gathered. She’s going to retaliate, you know. Hey, Gus. How are you, mutt?” Steve leaned over to scratch Augustus’s back when the dog, nose to the floor as if tracking Anne, wandered into range.
Gus’s tail and ears came up. He grinned at Steve.
Isa looked at him. “Retaliate how?”
“Search warrant on your customer files.”
She sat bolt upright and squeaked, “Based on what? She can’t take my computers, can she?”
“It’s common practice, Ice. Where are you going?” he demanded as she levered herself out of her chair.
“To hex my boxes.”
“Isa . . .”
“Those computers run my business, Steve,” she shrilled. “And there’s not a thing in them related to her case. If she takes them, she doesn’t get to keep her eyebrows.”
He nodded as if she’d confirmed his worst fears. “You did not just say that to the head of the Acts of Magic investigative unit.”
She sighed, subsided into the chair, and pinched the bridge of her nose. “You know who comes through the doors of Nightmare Ink. It’s not all soccer moms and sailors.”
Steve drew in a slow breath that drew him up straighter. “You’re worried about the gangs.”
“And all of the other people in the shadows who make rare use of my services. If the AMBI takes my computers, the people we least want wandering the city with Ink going bad will avoid me,” she said. “They’ll go to the hacks.”
“And if the AMBI examines your files on-site, it’s clear that it’s just a fishing expedition,” Steve surmised. “All right. I’m making a phone call, but I can’t guarantee anything.”
“Not asking you to.”
“No booby traps?”
She shook her head.
“Good. It ruined my day to put you in jail when you were seventeen. I don’t ever want to have to do it again.” He walked away.
Pausing in the doorway, he looked over his shoulder. “I care what happens to you, Isa, but if Agent Macquarie realizes I do, I can’t guarantee she’d replace me with someone who understands what you do.”
She groaned. “Agency versus department politics? I don’t know how to play those kinds of games, Steve.”
“It’s reassuring you know the line we’re walking.” His taut expression eased. “It has been a rough couple of days. Are you okay?”
“I think so.” It wasn’t a complete lie. What blood had oozed earlier had begun drying into an itchy crust on her leg. That counted as okay, right?
“You take care of your mom,” he said to the dog. Then he met her gaze. “Take it easy.”
He left.
She rubbed her temples, hoping it would ease the certainty that she was a complete screwup, even if she couldn’t quite identify how.
Opening the computer, Isa returned to digging through the Live Ink Association’s library. She found plenty of information about Live Ink—getting tattoos, the laws regarding tattoos, the usual cautions about going to certified and registered Live Ink artists, even a few mentions of the more lurid deaths associated with Live Ink going bad in the old days before the Acts of Magic laws. She saw nothing at all on capturing rogue Ink. Very little mention of rogue Ink, in fact.
While Isa rubbed her eyes and contemplated the wisdom of giving up, Nathalie knocked and let herself in without waiting for an answer. “Thanks for leaving the door unlocked for me,” Nathalie said as she entered. “Given anymore thought to giving me a copy of your key so I can help take care of the critters?”
“No need.”
Gus bounded out of his bed at Isa’s feet and tried to bowl Nathalie over with his greeting.
“Hey, Gus,” Nathalie said, rubbing the dog’s ears. She scowled. “Ice. When I first joined Nightmare Ink, you spotted me two month’s rent until I got up and running. You hosted that baby supply party for Cheri and Troy when they ran short of cash.”
When Troy and Isa had signed the lease a year ago, she’d had no idea that she’d gotten the muscular, soft-spoken man’s shiny-eyed, artist wife, Cheri, in the bargain. Until she’d gone into labor with their son, Cheri had spent hours at Nightmare Ink’s reception desk, sketching when she wasn’t chatting up customers or writing about the shop on an art blog she hosted.
Isa’s flat ink business had doubled.
“We want to help,” Nathalie said. “Why won’t you let us?”
Isa gaped at her. It hadn’t occurred to her that anyone wanted to help or even could. “My keys are in my coat pocket. Where are you going to go to get copies in this winter wonderland?”
“Bitter about the snow much?” Nathalie said, grinning as she fished for the keys. “Troy drove his POS truck. I have no idea how he got off Queen Anne in this mess, and I have no intention of asking. He said he’d hit a hardware place after he finishes the tattoo he’s working on. He’s going to drop me at my apartment on his way home so I don’t have to take the bus back up to Capitol Hill. In the meantime, however, I’m running to the grocery store for him. I guess Cheri’s got a yen for sauerkraut.”
Isa grimaced. “I thought I’d gotten used to keeping rum raisin ice cream in the shop freezer while she was pregnant, but sauerkraut? Has anyone told her she had the baby?”
“I guess nursing takes its toll,” Nathalie said. “’Cause I’m also buying a six-pack of porter.”
“Sauerkraut and porter? Remind me to never reproduce.”
“Amen, sister. I thought I’d take Gus out for his walk while I go. Want anything?”
“I’m so grossed out by beer and pickled cabbage that any appetite I had is dead,” she groused. “No. Wait. Ibuprofen. Research is giving me a headache.” Not to mention Daniel and Agent Anne Macquarie.
“How’s that going?”
“Badly.”
“I thought you could find anything on the Internet.”
“Common misconception. Maybe this is what I get for not going to college.”
“Yeah?” Nathalie frowned and came to glance at the screen. “What are you searching for?”
“How to capture rogue Ink. The problem is that Live Ink is new enough we haven’t had to deal with hosts dying from old age. The Ink deaths I’m finding are all failures to assimilate.”
“Both Ink and host die, then, right, unless you bind the tattoo?” she asked, leaning in to peer at the screen. “Whoa. Over two million hits? That sucks. But you’re searching the ‘history of Live Ink.’”
“All of which is wild conjecture and bullshit,” Isa said. She typed in a new parameter. “Here. My original search on ‘capturing rogue Ink.’”
“A mere half million hits?”
“All about the early days of Live Ink going bad in public.”
“Oh, yeah. Terrorists using it as a suicide bomb until their sacrificial teenagers turned out to have the magic cojones to handle the Ink,” Nathalie said. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but don’t you already know all this stuff? You’re SPD’s Live Ink expert because you’re the best, right?”
Isa sank lower in her chair. “Hardly. I’m the one they can afford.”
Nathalie flushed. “Wow. Sorry.”
She snagged Isa’s cell phone from the far side of the table and handed it to her. “Look. If you get stuck, call the research desk at the Seattle Public Library. If there’s anything to be found, the research librarians will know where to look. I’ve never stumped them. Come on, Gus. Let’s go for a walk in the snow.”
The dog bounced between Isa’s chair and Nathalie going for his leash in the entryway, the nylon of her
parka rustling.
Isa frowned at Nathalie’s back. “What are you researching that you know this?”
“Song lyrics, man!” she said, clipping Gus into his halter and leash. “Poetry is hard work.”
Isa’s skinny, spiky-haired piercing artist led a not-so-secret rock ’n’ roll life on the side. She wrote songs and played lead guitar for her band, Rage of the Raptors.
Nat and Gus jingled out the door. “Back with the keys and the mutt in a little while!”
With nothing to lose, Isa called the library. It wasn’t as if she could be more mired in crappy search results.
The research librarians taught her a few search parameter tricks, but they came up dry, too. After twenty minutes on the phone, the woman said she had other customers to assist. “From what I found,” she said in parting, “I see the first Living Tattoo was created in Japan about sixty years ago.”
“That’s the theory.”
“I’d recommend checking the Live Tattoo organizations in Japan. Sorry we couldn’t help. Good luck.”
Japan. Why hadn’t that occurred to her? She hung up and did another search. Sure enough, three separate Live Ink organizations had their libraries online. In Japanese.
On impulse, Isa dialed another number.
“Okari Sushi. How may I help you?” Oki said in that absent, working-and-don’t-want-to-be voice she might have been born with.
“How’s your written Japanese?”
“Hey, Ice. Reading or writing?”
“Translating a website. I’m trying to find information on how to capture or destroy rogue Ink.”
Silence.
“Am I supposed to know you need to know how to capture or destroy rogue Ink?” she finally asked.
“Nope.”
“Okay. Shoot me the URL. I’ll take a look and call you.”
“Thanks, Oki.”
“It beats slinging sushi.”
***
In the morning, Anne produced her search warrant and a small army of geeks in suits. She stalked up on Isa blending and bottling ink in the basement of Nightmare Ink.
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