Bound by Ink (A Living Ink Novel)

by Marcella Burnard

  She edged out the door, into sunshine, her eyes adjusting enough to follow the young woman with a curly mane of violet-red hair.

  “Come on around here,” she said, galloping down the stairs and around the building. She carried a video camera and microphone, both off at the moment, given the way they dangled from her hands. “My name’s Jen.”

  “Isa.”

  “I know,” she said, tossing Isa a grin. “This is good, against the wall.” She hefted the camera to her shoulder. “I’ve got great light. No, no. Keep the blanket.”

  Isa suspected she looked like she’d slept standing on her head. At best. She’d faced down the gods of the underworld. Stupid time to be vain.

  Steve rounded the corner of the building and, arms crossed, leaned against the cinderblocks not three feet away. Her bodyguard.

  “Are you comfortable here?” Jen asked.

  “I’m on the run,” Isa said. “If your friends in the truck aren’t calling the police, I’m comfortable.”

  “Gotcha,” Jen said. She pressed the microphone into the hand Isa used to clutch the blanket. “Leave it right there and say your name for me, so I can check levels?”

  Isa complied.

  Jen grunted in satisfaction. “Set?”

  “I guess.”

  A red light winked on atop the camera.

  “Okay,” Jen said. “In three, two, one. I’m Jen McIntyre with Ms. Isa Romanchzyk, a tattoo artist specializing in Living Tattoos. Ms. Romanchzyk?”

  Isa blinked, her mind a jumble. Blowing out a shaky breath, she shook her head. “My name’s Isa Romanchzyk. I escaped from a containment camp.”

  Silence.

  “Tell me about that,” Jen prompted.

  “I can’t talk about how I got out,” Isa said, “not without endangering the people still there. The containment camp I was in on the eastern side of the Cascades was ill equipped and woefully underprepared to handle people with Live Ink. Still, if someone you know is in a containment camp, they’re safest there.”

  Jen pounced on the word. “Safest? What makes you say that?”

  “This is complicated.”

  “Hey, your mouth is bleeding.”

  “Yes. Sorry.”

  “It’s okay. Take your time.”

  “Short story. There’s a power-hungry magic user. He’s insane. I don’t know if he was insane to start with or if grasping for more and more magic made him that way. Doesn’t matter, I guess. He’s pulling Living Tattoos from people. Has been for longer than the police want anyone to know.”

  Steve straightened, drawing Isa’s eye briefly. She looked back to the camera.

  “He was responsible for the disaster on the bridge,” Isa said. “That bus driver did not lose control of his tattoo.”

  “You know because you were out there on that bridge, weren’t you, Ms. Romanchzyk?” Jen asked. “The news helicopters got some rough footage. News crews have been trying to find you since you were ID’d on the film.”

  “I was picked up by the AMBI and taken across the mountains within the first twenty-four hours after the bridge disaster,” Isa said.

  “But that was you on the bridge, wasn’t it?”

  She hesitated and resisted looking at Steve again. Would it damage the investigation if she said so?

  “Ms. Romanchzyk?”

  “I was on the bridge.”

  “Why?”

  “You identified me as someone who specializes in Live Ink,” she said. “That’s recent. My first specialty is binding Live Ink, destroying tattoos that were in the process of going bad.”

  “You make it sound like that happened often,” Jen said.

  “When people go to hacks, it does,” she retorted. “Then when tattoos started coming off people . . .”

  “Because of the madman you mentioned?”

  “Yes.”

  “How did you discover him?”

  “About the first of this year, I saw an uptick in Live Ink going bad,” Isa said. “Because I was the only Live Ink artist in the area doing binds, it was obvious something was going wrong.”

  “Did your kidnapping have anything to do with what you discovered?”

  “I can’t answer that question without compromising that investigation,” Isa said, echoing something she’d heard police spokespeople saying to reporters before.

  “I’ll take that as a yes,” Jen said. “Back to the bridge disaster . . .”

  “The Seattle PD Acts of Magic Unit asked me if I could bind the rogue tattoo,” Isa said.

  “You destroyed it.”

  “Yes.”

  “And as a result, ended up imprisoned without due process,” Jen said.

  Isa nodded.

  “Do you have Live Ink, Ms. Romanchzyk?”

  “No. They came for anyone who could do Live Ink first. Then they started in on the people with Living Tattoos.”

  “They, who?”

  “Initially the AMBI. Now I think there are more agencies involved than I can identify. I didn’t want to be tangled up in this. Still don’t. But I am. The important thing for anyone with Live Ink to know is that distance matters. If you’re having trouble with your Ink, get out of town until this guy pulling Ink from people is—” She broke off, searching for a word that wouldn’t make her sound as mad as Uriel was.

  “What, Ms. Romanchzyk?” Jen coaxed.

  Isa sighed. “Neutralized. I know how that sounds.”

  “Do you?”

  “Like I have delusions of superhero-dom? Yes. I do.”

  Jen chuckled.

  “I have to go. The important thing to know is this. If you have loved ones in a containment camp,” Isa said, “they need food, warm blankets, and clothes. They need heat. They need medical supplies.”

  “The camps aren’t feeding people?” Jen asked, her voice sharp, avid.

  “They had more people than food,” Isa hedged. “Maybe the supply situation has been remedied since I left.”

  “We’ll find out,” she promised. “Can you describe the camp?”

  She did, sketching out a hurried verbal painting of razor wire, quarantine, metal dorms, threadbare blankets, and bare lightbulbs to ward off the high desert early spring chill. “Thanks for the chance to let people know what’s going on. Marches and violence are feeding the madman I told you about. He’s counting on the bloodshed. Stop it. One last thing. If you or someone you know has any capacity for magic whatsoever, learn to shield.”

  “From whom?” Jen asked.

  Isa shook her head. “I wish it were as easy as giving you a few names. There are people with credentials in this city. In this environment, anyone who charges more than a few bucks to teach you isn’t one of them.”

  Isa handed the microphone back to Jen.

  “Thank you, Ms. Romanchzyk.” The red light winked out. Jen set the camera down and accepted the microphone. “Our lead reporters will have further questions. I know you’re on the run . . .”

  “I can’t tell you where I’ll be,” she said. Or if she’d be alive in twenty-four hours.

  Jen keyed a walkie-talkie clipped to her pink sweater. “Lou! Text Tanya. She’s going to want to run with this file and some of the tips we just got.”

  She released the button. “I’m going to give you a card. It’s my direct number. Can you call in?”

  “Phones can be traced.”

  “When you aren’t on the run?”

  “Sure.”

  She grinned. “You’re a bad liar.”

  Isa nodded. “At least I know that. I’ll take the card; I can’t make any promises.”

  “Understood.”

  “Producer’s going ballistic,” a gruff male voice said over the unit on Jen’s sweater. “Wants you to hang on to the source.”

  Isa slid toward Stev
e, shaking her head. “Your communications channels can be traced and it won’t take long for the authorities to figure this out.”

  “Too bad Tanya’s message got here after you took off,” Jen said.

  “Thanks,” Isa said. Her breath fogged on the word.

  “Like I said. Protecting my source.”

  Steve took Isa’s elbow and escorted her to the back door of the black sedan.

  Murmur, already in the backseat, held out a hand.

  Isa took it.

  “Ground,” he said.

  Steve drove.

  Murmur refused to relinquish his grasp on her.

  Isa was glad.

  He sat, one arm around her shoulders, sending wisps of heat into her whenever her breath became visible.

  Jaiden, in the front passenger’s seat, shot long, searching glances at her as they drove back into town.

  “No checkpoints,” she noted.

  “No one imagined that anyone with Live Ink would want to sneak into the region,” Steve said.

  “It’s not just Seattle, then?”

  “Every route into the Puget Sound region is covered,” he said. “It’s starting to impact delivery of goods and fuel.”

  Maybe that fact, all by itself, would end the containment camps, without anything she’d said. Or failed to say.

  If she could slam Uriel’s door before he swarmed through it into this world.

  Relaxed and warmed by the contact of Murmur’s magic, Isa’s eyes closed. She jolted awake when Murmur drew away.

  She opened her eyes on an underground garage. She slid out of the car.

  Murmur led them to an elevator. He keyed in a passcode, then wrapped an arm around her waist when the elevator lifted off and she swayed.

  On her other side, Steve took her elbow.

  Isa closed her eyes before she rolled them. Torn between two men? No. Three. If Uriel counted. He wanted her and Murmur dead. Maybe that was all she needed to know for right now.

  The elevator slowed and stopped.

  Isa opened her eyes as the doors swept open on a lavish, polished marble foyer. Huge potted palms on either side of the elevator draped graceful fronds over their heads as they exited the lift.

  Murmur led her into a penthouse made of sunshine.

  “Nice digs,” Steve said. “No way did Live Ink pay for this.”

  “No,” Murmur agreed. “I am discovering that Daniel Alvarez had dirty fingers.”

  Isa frowned.

  Steve’s brows lowered in confusion.

  “Had his fingers in many pies?” Jaiden guessed after a second.

  “Okay, that makes sense,” Isa said as Murmur escorted her into the master suite.

  “He may have been right the first time,” Steve said. “Daniel had blood on his hands.”

  So did Isa. Did why she’d killed matter? She’d recently learned it didn’t change the color of the blood.

  The master bedroom dwarfed the black lacquer bed covered in what looked like garnet watered silk. A leather sofa, bookended by upholstered armchairs, sat beneath a bank of windows shrouded in sheer falls of gold fabric.

  “This is bigger than my whole apartment,” she said. “You can’t tell me this is containment?”

  Murmur took her to what should have been the door to a walk-in closet. It didn’t open like a simple wooden door. It opened like something much heavier. He turned on the light.

  “He retrofitted the closet?” Isa marveled.

  “What the hell was he doing up here?” Steve demanded.

  “It could be some sort of magical safe room,” she said.

  Steve and Murmur both snorted.

  “Then I don’t want to know,” she said. “I can already imagine more than makes me comfortable.”

  Smooth granite lined the floor, ceiling, and walls. When Isa sent an experimental flicker of power down through her feet into the stone, it sank into the rock, and wicked away, out of her magical sight. She nodded.

  “Perfect,” she said. “Thank you. I can rest in here while you three do—”

  “I’m not leaving you alone,” Steve interrupted.

  “I can’t hurt anyone who isn’t in here with me, Steve,” she said. “You still have blood on your face from my last lapse.”

  “I will stay,” Murmur said.

  “No,” Steve growled, fists clenched.

  Murmur released Isa and drew himself up.

  “Keep it up and I’ll give you both bloody noses,” Isa grumbled. “Without magic.”

  Murmur sneered.

  “I am not leaving him, either him, alone with you!” Steve snarled.

  Jaiden stepped between the two men. One man. One demon in a dead man’s body. “Detective. Have you noticed that in his presence”—Jaiden lifted his chin to indicate Murmur—“Irene is no longer cold?”

  Steve’s gaze darted to her. He frowned and touched Isa’s cheek.

  The contact tingled along the path of her nerves. Hope stirred in her chest.

  “Why? And why him?”

  “When we separated, we tore,” Murmur said. “She has a piece of me. I have a piece of her.”

  Steve’s jaw flexed. “What piece?”

  “Control of magic, I think,” Isa said. “We both seem to be losing our grips.”

  “This is what I seek to heal,” Jaiden said to Steve. “You’re a little old to apprentice, but you have the magic and the discretion to assist me. Will you?”

  Steve hesitated, uncertainty furrowing the skin between his brows. The glimmer of hurt in his eyes when he glanced at her pinched her heart. It brought her out of paralysis.

  Letting her blanket fall, she went to wrap her arms around him. Max’s words echoed in her head: You never let him in.

  She wanted to. How did she do that?

  Rule nineteen: So many things magic can’t touch.

  Steve’s arms enfolded her, his breath went out in a rush.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  “This isn’t the freedom either Murmur or I had envisioned,” she said.

  Steve’s diaphragm kicked and he loosened his grasp on her to look at her cousin. “I’ll help. Thanks.”

  Murmur gave Jaiden the keys to Daniel’s office with its much larger containment studio.

  “I won’t kiss you just now,” Isa said when Steve met her eye. Her heart rolled over at his lopsided smile.

  “You are a vision of destruction,” he said. “You have blood in your teeth.”

  “Please tell me it wasn’t there during the interview.” Of course it had been. Hadn’t Jen commented on it?

  Steve chuckled and press his lips to her cheek. “Rain check. We’ll bring supper up in a few minutes.”

  He released her and followed Jaiden out of the room.

  Murmur pushed the door closed behind them.

  “Wait,” she said. “I’d really like to brush my teeth. And we might want something besides granite to sleep on.”

  His head came up. He arrested the door’s swing and looked over his shoulder at her. His gaze connecting with hers rippled awareness through her like a pebble dropped into a pond.

  She drew in a slow, careful breath. It did nothing to dispel the tension gathering low in her belly.

  “Here,” she rasped, fishing in her front pocket. She held the crinkled stasis paper out to him.

  His gaze dropped and his eyes widened, but he made no move to take the quaking page from her.

  Moistening dry lips, she went to him and pressed the paper to his chest. A jolt of electricity sparked beneath her fingers.

  Gasping, he started. He folded a hand over hers. And over the paper.

  Isa tugged free as the rise and fall of his chest sped up.

  “Why?” he breathed.

  “You’re the only reason he di
dn’t kill me,” she said. “He’s yours. Though I admit I don’t know what to do with that. I have no idea whether or not you can have a Live Tattoo.”

  “Thank you.” He caressed the folded paper.

  Isa nodded.

  Murmur took her hand, and led her to a tiny powder room tucked into the back of the containment closet. He released her to rummage beneath the sink. “Toothbrush.”

  Still in the package. “A stash of toothbrushes? I guess Daniel—entertained often.”

  “Containment here is superior to that in his office,” Murmur said. “Some days, I’m sorry I ended up with his body.”

  She stared. “How much do you remember of what he’s done? Who he was?”

  “Hints. Nightmares,” he said. “His life and his connections rising up to snare me. This biology succumbs to horror too readily.”

  “That’s not what you said when you were giving me nightmares.”

  He let out a derisive laugh and strode out of the bathroom. “An eternity in hell and yet a single human’s appetites turn my stomach.”

  “That, too, may be the price of being human,” she said, turning to admire the flex of muscle as he walked away.

  He spun at the door to the closet and caught her looking. His lips curved.

  Flushing, despite the chill rising within her, Isa ducked into the bathroom, fumbling to open the packaged toothbrush.

  Chuckling, Murmur left the containment closet.

  She glanced at the mirror, bared her teeth, and groaned. Her hair stood out like a frizzy cloud around her head. Dark circles smudged under her eyes. And drying, horrible, gritty blood crusted her teeth.

  “How many pantheons am I dealing with here?” she asked her reflection. “I’m not clear how a journey into Xibalba turns me into an image of Kali.”

  She brushed her teeth clean, then rinsed gingerly, wanting to wash the taste of blood from her tongue without breaking open the puncture wound.

  “Irene?” Jaiden called from the outer door.

  When she left the bathroom, Jaiden and Murmur wrestled a mattress between them. She picked her blanket up so they could set the mattress into one corner.

  Murmur shed his leather jacket, shot a glance from Jaiden to her, turned, and quit the room.

  Jaiden studied her for several seconds. “We have to put him back.”