Nightmare Ink

by Marcella Burnard

  “I understand you are afraid to practice your craft,” he said. “I do not understand why.”

  Guilt and pain stabbed her gut. Before Murmur could go rucking around in her head for the source of the pain, she said, “I put Live Ink on three people I loved. I lost them.”

  Oki’s father started, then tilted his head as if listening to something she couldn’t hear.

  The impression of sweet hit her taste buds again, and this time she caught the echo of other clinging to him.

  “Lost?” he echoed. “They died?”

  “Maybe,” Isa temporized. “They vanished.”

  He blinked. “What did you put on them?”

  “Raven, Coyote, and Lizard.”

  “Your teachers?”

  “My family. Yes.”

  “They requested these?”

  “Yes.”

  “They assimilated one another. Your teachers became the spirits that joined them, and the spirits became them.”

  “I lost them, and I lost my home.”

  “Did you ever have them?”

  That question gave her pause. Did she have claim on her teachers? Had she ever? They’d had claim on her. Viewed one way, one that hadn’t occurred to her until now, they’d taught her to the point that her skill proved equal to the task they’d had in mind all along. Seen that way, maybe she hadn’t harmed them.

  Maybe she’d freed them.

  Isa shook her head. The confusion wouldn’t rattle free.

  “Did Oki’s research give you what you sought?” he asked.

  “Yes. Thank you. I have a strong lead,” she said.

  “The man who granted my daughter access to the archives did my tattoo,” he said. “He sent this to me and asked that I put it into your hands.”

  He retrieved a leather thong from around his neck. A tiny flash drive dangled from it. “This holds the records and daily accounts of a master artisan.”

  Her eyes widened, and she closed her palms reverently around the drive. “I am honored.”

  “Evil has entered this world,” he said. “It is not the thing on your skin. If you can use my old friend’s information to end that evil, it will be our honor entirely.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Open it.

  “I need a computer.”

  OPEN IT. His impatience rolled like thunder.

  Isa winced and forced herself to stop at Nightmare Ink. Troy had a client in the chair.

  Nathalie had been watching for them. “Gus probably needs a walk,” she said as she joined Isa in returning to the apartment.

  Murmur hovered at her motor control, willing to let her kick off her shoes and wait for Nathalie get the dog out the door with a promise to keep the jaunt short.

  NOW.

  “It’s not going to be in English,” Isa said. “Oki’s going to have to translate. And if the recipe for a perfect Live Ink capture system were in there, do you think he’d have given me a lifetime of diaries in Japanese to sort through?”

  Smoky anger clouded her sight, building, filling the too-small confines of her skin. Another tantrum.

  She set the drive beside the laptop and went to the kitchen with the grim intention of turning one of Ruth’s favorite tools against Murmur.

  “Discipline, work, balance.” Ruth had always said that when, as a teen, Isa had let emotions get the better of her. Ruth had assigned chores. During Isa’s early adolescence, their hogan had been just short of clean room sterile until Isa had learned to manage her angst.

  Maybe she could channel Murmur’s emotions into something useful, like cleaning dishes.

  A remnant of Ruth’s chuckle bubbled up from the depths of Isa’s heart where she kept her mother’s memory. “There are all kinds of hard work I’ve asked you to do over the years, girl. You haven’t shied away from any it,” she’d said. The echo of ten-year-old praise soothed the ragged edges of Murmur’s wordless ire.

  Isa filled the sink with hot, sudsy water, sank a stack of crusty dishes, and picked up the sponge with the flat of her right hand. It would be a long, difficult task washing dishes with only one opposable thumb and fingers that wouldn’t bend.

  Another tidal wave of shadow swamped her.

  Isa swayed. “Too good for menial labor?”

  Rage as black as moonless midnight swallowed her a piece at a time.

  “Not this time, you overgrown child,” she grumbled. It sounded spiteful. She dove for the amber river running through her core. Pain cut from her hands up her arms, driving for her chest. She gritted her teeth and brought that best, brightest part of her up like internal sunrise to beat back his darkest-before-dawn attempt to overpower her. She refused to lose any more ground to his invasion. Her body. Her psyche. Her rules.

  Murmur stabbed mean-spirited ire through her airway, choking off her breath. Then he shifted on her skin. Her shoulder blades stretched back as if trying to unfurl wings her species didn’t have. Terror blanked her brain at the feeling of a many-legged something crawling across her right flank.

  Tearing pain followed. Hot moisture cooled as it trickled down her side.

  He was going critical.

  A single thought arrowed through her fuzzy brain. Get to the studio. The compulsion powered her trembling body away from the sink.

  The dish between her hands slid free. It hit the floor and shattered.

  Murmur launched another assault.

  Isa staggered. And stepped barefoot into the shards of pottery. She knew she’d been cut. It took several seconds for the nerve signals to report in. Hurt, yes. Itchy, sharp, perimeter-defenses-breached alarms jangled her nerves.

  What is that? Murmur sounded startled. The physical hurt acted like an arctic blast in the face of Murmur’s ire. He jerked back, tensing her muscles.

  Isa gasped, suddenly able to breathe again.

  “Ice?” Nathalie stood into the doorway, still in her coat.

  Gus peeked at her from behind Nathalie’s legs. Ikylla stalked into the kitchen, glaring.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Nathalie demanded. “Crap. You’re bleeding.”

  Sucking in shuddering breaths, Isa motioned for a chair. Nathalie bustled in and dragged one over so Isa could sit down to pick the broken shards from her feet while Nat yanked off her coat and then swept up the mess.

  Murmur flinched as Isa yanked pieces from the shallow lacerations.

  “How bad is it?” Nat asked.

  “We’re okay,” Isa said, though she wasn’t sure. He’d managed to tear a piece of his wing free from her side. It couldn’t be more than a scratch. It had already stopped bleeding, and it itched the same way a cut from one of Ikylla’s claws might.

  That didn’t change the fact he’d gained the power to tear free.

  Nathalie awarded her a long look as she wet a wad of paper towel to wipe up any stray bits of broken plate and the spots of blood.

  Turning her attention to Murmur, Isa asked, “What happened?”

  He sank out of her grasp, eluding her curiosity. Something about this episode had spooked him. And her. Was it that he’d tried to come off of her? What had stopped him?

  Isa accepted another paper towel from Nathalie and pressed it to the black soles of her bleeding feet. That stung.

  A tremor of emotion that hadn’t come from her rippled through her body. Was that fear? Chagrin?

  She realized what she’d said. “We’re okay.” Not “I.” “We.” He’d been cut, too. Her bleeding meant that on some level he bled, as well.

  “I don’t know how to ask this, Isa. The psych people at the hospital warned us that you could start trying to hurt yourself. Guess it’s something that can happen to victims of intense trauma . . .” Nathalie said.

  Murmur growled in disgust.

  Isa breathed a humorless laugh. “Definitely not.
Complete accident. It was a combination of my hands and Murmur not being accustomed to doing dishes.”

  Lines of doubt clouded the corners of Nat’s eyes. “I’ll get some bandages on your feet . . .”

  “Not necessary,” Murmur said with her voice.

  Isa started.

  Nathalie sucked in an audible breath, but said nothing. She nodded.

  Shadow lit with golden, winking fireflies lapped against the shores of her internal landscape.

  “The bleeding’s stopped,” Isa said.

  “Good. I know it’s early, but you look done in. How about calling it for the day? I’ll do the dishes.”

  Isa bridled at the suggestion that she was an invalid. Except that she was. She shifted her shoulders, breaking up the tension.

  Nathalie only wanted to help. So did Troy. Maybe it was time to return the favor and make certain they’d be taken care of if—when—something happened to her.

  Isa nodded. “Thank you.”

  Murmur ambushed her the moment she lay down and closed her eyes.

  These people. He flashed three familiar faces before her internal eye. Ruth. Joseph. Henry. The ones you say you lost. They called you daughter.

  “Yes.”

  You were not their blood.

  “No adoption where you come from?” Isa asked.

  Confusion answered. On some basic level, the term adoption didn’t translate for him.

  “I was a child of their hearts,” she said. “We were family on a different level. It isn’t the blood running through our veins that united us. Initially, it was magic. Then it was love.”

  He went still, a sly, black current waiting to pull her under.

  “Yes,” she said. “That makes you my family, too. Like it or not, we’re bound by blood and by magic.”

  Something rippled through him, an emotion so tenuous and so swiftly locked down that Isa couldn’t hope to identify it before they both sank into slumber.

  Nightmares waited.

  Empty. Starving. She clung to vertical stone, following the blood-song of her prey. The scent of stranger mingled with the scent of blood that belonged to her, blood that had given her life. Indigo magic glittered within the cave where her prey lingered. Not strong enough to sate her, but enough to keep starvation at bay. She swarmed up and over a ledge, wedging through the tight opening that stood between her and nourishment.

  The prey turned. Spotted her.

  The music of his heartbeat sped up. Terror sweat flooded to his skin, perfuming the air.

  Her sensitive antennae sampled the taste of him. She coiled and pounced. Claws sank into warm flesh. Teeth ripped. Blood and magic fountained. Hot. Salty.

  A black, brittle talon ripped through the hungry, blood-soaked dream. Isa wailed inside the pitch-black confines of sleep.

  Three faces, lit by flickering firelight, emerged from the darkness. Her racing pulse eased as she recognized them.

  Ruth. Joseph. Henry.

  Her dreams replayed the time they’d let her watch a healing ceremony, had even asked her to diagnose the patient as a kind of test, though they hadn’t let the patient know that. Ruth’s diagnosis had matched hers. Isa had been allowed to sit silently in the background while Joseph and Henry painted the appropriate prayer in colored sand and then sang the cure. Ruth and Isa had butchered a sheep and prepared the food for the end of the ceremony. She’d learned to make fry bread that day.

  It was a good memory and a healing, fortifying dream. When she woke from it, her feet were whole, like nothing had ever happened. What had possessed Murmur to forgo tormenting her? He could have pressed his advantage with the nightmare. Instead, he’d pulled it down and replaced it with something pleasant.

  There had to be a reason. One that served his purpose, not hers. It felt like an olive branch, nevertheless.

  ***

  Isa stuck the flash drive Oki’s father had given her into her computer. The data on it had been arranged in a series of subfolders, each filled with different file types. Text files, research data files, even photographs and drawings. At the root, a single text file named “Romanchzyk” caught her attention.

  Murmur slipped into sharing her eyesight as she opened the file.

  Dear Ms. Romanchzyk,

  Hiro Oshakagiri relayed your questions regarding Live Ink. Having some small experience with the subject, I have asked that he pass my working notes on to you. May they prove useful. I have taken the liberty of highlighting and translating a few passages and data sets that may be of particular interest to you at this time.

  Why, you ask, has a perfect stranger entrusted you with his accumulated work? We are not strangers, you and I. I had the honor of tattooing Hiro-san many years ago. The Ink linked us. We became friends, he and I, perhaps brothers. I have, through Hiro-san and his tattoo, experienced glimmers of your ability and heard my friend speak of your restraint with magic. I am particularly interested in the binds you discovered. To this point, I have taken no apprentice. It is unusual for the master to approach the student, but with Live Ink deaths rising in your city, I see these are unusual times.

  If it is not too forward, nor an insult to your skill, I would be honored if you would consider humoring an old man’s desire to pass on what little he knows.

  Sincere regards,

  Tokoro Masatoshi

  Isa gaped at the name.

  What?

  “The man is a legend,” she said. “Our Ink recipes, most of our practices for handling it, they all come from him. Rumor has it that it was his master who discovered Live Ink.”

  Murmur and Isa followed the old man’s pointers. They led her through a labyrinth of passages he’d translated into English. They spent the rest of the night twining through his diaries, into his research data, and back into the diaries.

  Tokoro Masatoshi had seen Live Ink go rogue early in his career. The host client had lived for three days before succumbing to her wounds. The tattoo had perished four weeks later. The Live Ink artist killed himself shortly thereafter. Masatoshi had begun experimenting with methods for preserving Live Ink.

  He’d given Isa his research data.

  Armed with that, Isa asked Nathalie to walk down and unlock Nightmare Ink the following morning. Grumbling over the insane hours Isa kept, Nathalie complied. “I’ll hang out. I don’t like the thought of you here by yourself.”

  “Lock me in,” Isa countered. “I’ll work downstairs until Troy gets here.”

  Nathalie let her in, turned off the alarm, unlocked the basement door, and then left, locking the front door behind her as she went. Isa suspected she’d texted Troy the second she’d locked the door and told him to come in early. Taking care of her.

  Time she returned the favor.

  Isa took advantage of the solitude to call the lawyer she’d used to get Nightmare Ink set up and legal.

  Then, with Murmur looking on, trying to keep his interest from bleeding over into her biology, she went to the basement, plans running through her head, both for the magic and for the paper.

  Murmur shouldered her thoughts out of his way, commanded her attention, and rolled out notions of his own.

  He seemed surprised when she listened, asked questions, and incorporated his suggestions into some of the vials of paper slurry to be tested.

  With her frozen hands, it took hours to do what should have taken thirty minutes. Impatience bordering on anxiety burned in her stomach.

  You could ask me to fix them, he said, studied nonchalance in his tone.

  “Sure. Murmur, would you be so kind as to repair my hands? It would . . .”

  He howled with malicious laughter.

  “. . . help when it comes time to choke the life out of Daniel.”

  Still snorting with derision, Murmur turned his back and walked into the depths of her brain.

/>   When Troy arrived and shouted “Hello!” down the stairs, Isa capped everything and went up for lunch.

  She left Nathalie with the lunch dishes and took the opportunity to walk her own dog for the first time since Daniel had kidnapped her.

  Clouds strolled the sky, bringing showers in short, intense bursts before ambling away.

  Her silly, forty-pound, three-legged dog wanted to play “snatch the leash” as they walked the wet sidewalks. With the bones in her hands healed, even if they were twisted and misshapen, Isa could lift both of their hearts by letting him. He delighted in leaping for the slack in his leash. He grabbed it in his teeth, laughing in short open-mouthed bursts of breath. He’d hang briefly, his legs and tail dangling while she staggered a step or two; then her arm strength failed, and he’d land on his single back leg and his front feet.

  They garnered a few disgusted looks from other people trying to get around them on the sidewalk.

  Even though he didn’t comment, Murmur slipped into her eyesight and watched Gus.

  At the corner of Leary Avenue, they paused for the light.

  Gus leaned one warm shoulder against her leg until the crosswalk light blinked to WALK. He bounded up, urging her into the crosswalk.

  Isa heard the car engine revving behind them and pegged it as another impatient driver wanting to turn right onto Leary and resenting the pedestrian traffic. Except the roar of the engine got louder, as if the car were accelerating into the crosswalk, not slowing.

  Spurred by Gus’s enthusiasm, she led the clump of pedestrians.

  Tires screeched.

  Gus hesitated. Isa’s heart leaped into her throat. She hauled back on the leash. Gus yelped and sprawled on the pavement behind her.

  A silver sedan turned within inches of her and jerked to a stop right in the middle of the crosswalk.

  The couple behind her in their knit caps and saggy jeans pulled up short, shouting obscenities. Cars on Market, waiting to turn, laid on their horns until the blue and red light bar in the back window of the sedan lit up.

  The driver’s-side door exploded open.

  Anne Macquarie popped up to glare over the roof of the car. “Get in.”