“What was all that about?” Irish hissed at me as I hustled him down the steps and out into the rain.
“We need to get back to my house. Wait, the house is in the car. Okay, we need to get to my store. I need a look at that tattoo of yours.” My mind was racing, thinking ahead to what I might need, what tools I was going to want. The shadow boiled in my mind, sharing my excitement and poking through my memories on a hunt for anything that might be useful. She flicked bits of knowledge into my foremind like cards at a hat, things I’d forgotten ever learning in the first place.
Irish pulled me to a stop by the gate, which was closed and padlocked. “Wait, wait. You think the tattoo is the source of my abilities.”
“Duh.” I shook my head, rattling the gate. “Owen didn’t understand the question because of the way you phrased it. You can’t get back a godly blessing if you never had one!” I grit my teeth and scanned the yard, seeing no sign of the demon. “Sam! Come on!”
“Alice, that makes no sense.”
“It makes perfect sense.” I waved him off, thinking furiously. The whole thing would depend on what the inks were made out of, probably. What all had I seen Irish do? What had he talked about being able to do? Armor, okay, I could think of ten or twelve ways to do that, and he’d mentioned strength, but hell, that was just healing magic. It’d be tricky as hell to make it self-sustaining in a non-magician, though. Wonder how they managed it?
“Alice,” Irish began.
“What?” I snapped, turning on him. “I’m thinking. Where is that goddamn demon, anyway?”
“It can’t be magic.” Irish heaved a tired sigh. “It’d be nice if ye could fix it, but –”
“Please don’t tell me you’re about to start preaching at me.” I rolled my eyes.
“Alice, think about it.” Irish set his jaw, forcing a tone of patience into his voice. “If it were magic, wouldn’t yer lot have figured it out by now?”
“Why would they? It’s an artifact.” I tossed my hands in the air, frustrated. “I mean, it’s fucking genius. Artificers aren’t exactly common, and artifacts don’t radiate magic unless they’re made really sloppily. That’d be like driving a car that leaks gas all over the place.”
“The Order’s been around for hundreds of years, Alice.”
“Yeah? Well, the Arcana hasn’t. A century, maybe a little more, for us. It wasn’t until the Industrial Revolution that we really got organized. It’d be easy to keep a secret like this.”
“But –”
“But nothing.” I poked him in the chest for emphasis. “Shit, man, I knew you for months and I didn’t sense anything! Not until I touched your tattoo, and how likely was that to ever happen?”
We stared at each other for a moment, Irish glowering at me as he thought about it.
“Sounds too easy,” he finally said, crossing his arms and looking away.
“Probably why it worked for so long. Even another magician wouldn’t have noticed anything from just a touch, but me? Tanner must’ve about shit his pants when he realized you were chatting up an artificer. Your ink is an artifact, big guy, and it is active. All I have to do now is figure out what it does, and how it does it.” I turned in a circle. “Sam! Come on, dammit!”
“I can probably just pick it,” Irish said, grabbing the lock to study it.
“That lock? Doubt it. Edison made it.” I pointed out the maker’s mark on the base. “It’s tied into the wards on the property. I wouldn’t suggest trying to hop the fence, either.”
Irish turned, treating me to a slow, considering gaze. “Edison.”
“Yep.”
“As in Thomas?”
“Of course.” I scanned the yard, watching for Sam’s usual heat shimmer. “Before he left Detroit.”
“Thomas Edison was a magician,” Irish said, deadpan.
“Was? Try ‘is.’ Specifically, he’s an artificer. I tried to get an internship with him, but you wouldn’t believe the waiting list.”
“So, if it’s a magic lock, how come you can’t just open it?”
I turned to look back at Irish, wide-eyed and unsure whether to be flattered that he’d think I was in that league, or disgusted with his apparent ignorance. “Irish. Thomas Edison made that lock. It’s a little out of my weight class.”
Irish’s eyes widened, and for a heart beat, I was pleased that he’d caught on to the importance of the lock, then he nodded towards something behind me, and I remembered the approaching demon.
“Damn right it is,” came Sam’s drawl, and blindingly bright light flared from the corner of the building as the demon approached. My shadow howled in terror and coiled down into the smallest little knot she could huddle herself into and pleaded with me to run, run, run away.
“Shit,” I muttered, turning as my heart sank.
I tossed a hand up to shield my eyes against the glare, trying to make out the shape the demon was wearing. There was something of a koi fish to it, with large sweeping fins, and something of a shark. Were those fins, or were they wings? It was so bright, too, like burning magnesium. It had arms, and it seemed to be inspecting its hands thoughtfully as it floated/swam toward us. “Not my usual look, Alice, but after that cartoonish devil shape your buddy conjured, I thought I’d let your fears choose my shape. What is this, some kind of light elemental? I like the teeth.” My shadow gasped in horror as he came closer, and I knew it hadn’t been my fears he’d accessed, but hers.
He was too bright to look at, the incandescent glare shining right through my hand as I held it up to shelter my eyes. I could make out the dark shadows of my bones with faint curling furls of shadow visible right through the flesh. “Open the damn gate, Sam. I freckle when I tan, and I hate that.” I could hear raindrops sizzling as they hit him. I composed a mental image, something I knew frightened the shadow. Only I just had the two choices to pick from, and I didn’t want to force Irish to confront Cat just now… so that left Irish himself. I willed the picture of Irish, putting all the menace and threat he’d posed to us both behind it, and sent that at her. No, I thought. Fear this. Fear him.
“Well, see, here’s the thing.” Sam paused, and through squinted, watering eyes, I could make out him moving like he was opening a coat and pulling something out of an inner pocket. A pack of cigarettes. The light dimmed, but didn’t go away entirely. “I had to let you in. I don’t have to let you out.” I wiped at my eyes, moaning softly with my shadow, the two of us seeing a taller, stronger version of Irish standing there taking a Marlboro out of a battered soft pack. His skin was pale and iridescent, glowing like he was some kind of animate light bulb, and his eyes blazed almost as bright as the fish/shark/bird thing a second ago had. He wore the same clothes as Irish, right down to the gunbelt and sword in his scabbard. Even in the chilly rain, he put off a palpable heat.
“What does he mean?” Irish whispered, risking a glance at Sam. “And why does he look like me? Sort of like me?”
“Good questions. What the fuck, Sam?” Was this how the shadow saw Irish? But that didn’t make any sense! Even if it were true… light? Heat? That’s food for her! And what was that thing Sam had been a second ago? Nothing I’d ever seen or heard of, I knew that for sure. Maybe something from before we’d been joined? From her home universe?
“Oh, I called Tyler. He’s on his way.” He put his cigarette in his mouth, and I noticed while it lit itself that he’d kept the teeth. Several rows of serrated, pointed, gleamingly bright teeth. “He’ll be pretty tickled with me for catching you, I think. I’m not allowed to kill you, either of you, but I’ve got permission to hurt you. A lot.”
“Fuck it,” I said, and though it pained me to do it, I drew my Colt. “Sorry, Edison!” I pulled the big padlock to the limit of its slack on the chain and hugged it against my chest. Holding the gun so the tip of the barrel touched the lock, I took a deep breath, channeling as much power as I could to the bracelet of rubber bands I was wearing. This was a dumb idea.
The concussion round went off, knocking the gun out of my grip and lifting me a few inches off the ground as my bracelet ‘bounced’ the impact back off me again – much of it catching the lock a second time as I was hunched over and around it. The lock cracked, but didn’t open dammit, and I scrambled to retrieve the Colt.
Sam lunged at me and Irish intercepted him with a mid-air tackle, which was pretty stupid when you think about it. Of the two of us, I was better equipped to handle a rampaging demon. I crawled over the wet grass, feeling for the Colt while my eyes streamed and little spots of light still danced in my vision. I gave the shadow a mental slap, and told her to stop hiding and make herself useful. Thin, foggy wisps of darkness flowed from my hands and spread out, feeling for the missing gun, but she wasn’t happy about it.
Behind me, Irish shouted, a pained, strangled cry, and I smelled burning flesh. I turned to see what the hell was going on. The demon’s white light had shifted to a more reddish glare, and black horns were curling up from his brow. His face was contorted and warped, looking less like Irish and more, well, demonic. He and Irish were rolling over the gravel walk, trading blows as they grappled – and little bursts of flame gouted up every time Irish hit him.
Sam was laughing. “Irish!” I yelled, digging in a belt pouch and raising myself up on my knees. “Catch!”
I threw him my small perfume bottle, and he caught it, even as the demon grabbed him by the throat. Wisps of smoke began to rise from that grip, and Irish sprizted Sam in the face, trusting that the bottle would do something impressive.
It didn’t. Aside from a few additives, like ground-up rubber and some zinc oxide, it was pretty much just Elmer’s glue in that bottle.
The shadow found my gun in the shrub just to the right of the gate, and I leaped for it. I heard Irish snarl, fighting for air and spritzing away like a madman. I grabbed the lock again, and again breathed deep, powering up the rubberband bracelet as I lined up the shot again. “I’m rubber,” I breathed out. “And you’re glue.”
This time when I fired, I remained firmly on the ground as the concussion blast went off in my lap. Some of the rubber granules in that glue had come from this bracelet, and all the force that was redirected from the explosion I’d just set off hit Sam full in the face. There was enough initial damage to finish breaking the Wizard of Menlo Park’s lock, and I swung the gate open wide. “Come on!”
Sam was lying on his back, scrabbling in the gravel and thrashing. His face was a ruined mess, his skull caved in enough to set his horns off-kilter. A loud gurgle was the best scream he could manage, as Irish leapt to his feet and ran through the gate. I shot Sam the bird on my way through, swinging the gate shut behind me. Fucking demons.
Irish was leaning on his knees, one hand at his throat and gasping for breath. “That was stupid,” I told him, retrieving the glue bottle from him. “Come on.”
“Stupid –”
“I’m the one wearing magic armor, dumbass. For the time being, I stand in front, okay? Jesus.” I shoved my gun in my holster, spinning on my heel and heading down the sidewalk. “What were you even thinking?” I snapped over my shoulder. “Tackling a damn demon? You’re lucky he was just fucking with us a little!”
Irish caught up to me. From the corner of my eye, I saw him wrapping the rag he’d used on his sword around his left hand. “Aye, I know that. He fuckin’ said he couldn’t kill us, and he fuckin’ knew I couldn’t stand up to him.” Irish finally looked at me, his eyes hot and angry. “So I shoved him out’ve the fuckin’ way so you’d have time to do something to him while he was distracted with me.”
“Ah.” I nodded, looking around. “What if he’d lied?”
“What?”
“About having orders not to kill us? What if that were bullshit?”
“He can lie about that?”
“He’s a demon, Irish. They lie about everything. You can tell when they’re doing it, because their lips move.” The rain fell as we walked, though I really had no idea where we were walking to. There was nothing around us for miles but more suburbs. Residences, mostly, with scattered small businesses, open fields, vacant lots, and wide open spaces. No place to run on foot, certainly. Who builds a town like this? “How bad is it?”
“Burns on my fists. On my neck. He kneed me in the jimmy, too, if you’re curious.”
“God, you’re pissy when you’re hurt.” His hand was a mass of blisters, some of the skin charred black from contact with the demon. His neck looked bad, too, though he kept his chin tucked down to hide the worst of it. I shook my head, and decided that if he was in good enough shape for sarcasm, he was in good enough shape for me to ignore it.
“Alice,” he started, voice dropping to a warning, exasperated timber, but I was saved from his irritation by the screeching sound of brakes. I whirled to find a black four-door Cavalier skidding to a stop at the corner.
“Fuck!” I scrambled for my gun, and the passenger side door of the car spilled open, revealing – “Grace?” I froze, my gun only half out of its holster, as Irish drew both his guns and obediently took up a firing stance from just behind me.
The thing in the car was still recognizably Grace Perry, and that made it worse. She was easily a foot taller than she had been last night, but the height had stretched her out, all thin and spindly, brittle-looking, like her bones had turned into spun glass. Her arms were too long, and she’d hardly had to lean at all to open the passenger door from the driver’s seat. Her skin had taken on a greasy, wet sheen, and it was speckled with something black, like leprosy. The bones in her face stood out in sharp relief, like they were about to burst through her skin, pulled tight against a lengthened skull. Black hair hung loose, flowing down to her shoulders and just as lovely as it had always been, which seemed to make it worse, somehow. Her eyes were sunken, practically invisible in their deepened sockets, and her nose was smeared flat, lips so thin they were almost gone.
For an instant, the image wavered, and I saw Grace looking as lovely and composed as always. She was wearing a loose, silky-looking black top and a blue scarf, and a confident smile that, when I blinked, was once again a lipless grimace on a warped and deformed face.
“Come with me if you want to live,” she said.
“Seriously?” I goggled at her. “I mean… seriously?”
“I know, but I’ve always wanted to use that line.” She smirked, but it was stretched out of shape by her too-tight skin. “But really, get in. Tyler’s pissed, and he’s bringing fireballs.”
I turned my thunderstruck look on Irish, who wore an equally stunned expression. “This has gotta be a trap,” I said to him.
“It’s not a trap!” Grace waved us toward the car. “Get in already!”
Irish glanced at me and shrugged, which was no help at all. I approached the car, gun drawn, leaning down to look in at Grace. “You look like hell, Grace. Is this after Damian slowed it down?” The illusory face blushed, but the true face didn’t seem able to anymore. She flicked a glance at Irish, behind me, then back to me. This close, I could see her eyes, and they were full of a tightly-leashed panic.
“I don’t think it worked,” she admitted, voice a bit more strained, now.
“Are…” I looked back at Irish, then to Grace, thinking of the dogs last night. “Are you contagious?”
“Day said I wasn’t.” She blinked, and I saw her eyelids slide sideways, like a lizard’s. She stared at me, expression – what she could manage of one – pleading. “Please, Alice.”
“Shit.” I turned back to Irish, and he was wearing his poker face, giving nothing away, which probably meant he’d just figured out the same thing I had. If the Knights all thought I’d summoned Carl’s outlander, then Grace was probably here to ask me to help her.
And even if I’d felt like it, there wasn’t a damn thing I could do.
Still, a ride was a ride. She didn’t need to know I couldn’t help until we were back at my shop. I could put her out of her misery or something.
“Get in the back,” I told Irish. “And don’t touch her, just in case.”
“Why not?” he whispered, holding my shoulder and watching her warily.
I pushed him toward the back door, snarling “Can we discuss it while we drive?” I hopped in the front seat, but kept the Colt in hand, aimed at Grace. In these tight quarters, the backblast from the concussion rounds would do a number on Irish, too, but I’d worry about that later, if I had to.
“Where to?” Grace pulled away from the curb, and I saw she’d had to put the seat all the way back. Even so, she was still scrunched up to fit behind the wheel.
“My store.”
“I’m not going to hurt you.” Grace’s near eye rolled in its socket to look at me, and I leaned forward a bit to see if the other eye had moved, too. It hadn’t.
“Whoa,” I said. That was – well, to be fair, it was kind of cool. Bet it’d be handy too, when she got used to it. Assuming she remained sentient, of course.
From the backseat, Irish cleared his throat. “What’d ye mean, contagious?”
“You don’t see it, do you?” I asked. Grace did a double take, again pivoting one eye my way. I shifted in the seat so I could look back at Irish. “This is Grace Perry, the Knight of Wands. She’s an enchantress.” I paused, thoughtful. “I’m a little surprised you still can do that, Grace. The whole ‘clouding the minds of men’ thing.”
“There were… some changes to the way I think. I was becoming feral. Damian managed to reverse that, restore my mind, but it meant letting the physical changes progress.”
“What changes?” Irish had put his guns away, and was settling back, adjusting his scabbard so he could sit more comfortably. Grace raised one eybrow, without looking away from the road, and Irish suddenly flinched. “Ah. Those changes.”
“She got attacked by a corruption, like those junkyard dogs,” I explained, keeping the gun steady and aimed at her center mass. “Remember how I advised against letting any of them get too close?”
“It puked worms on me,” she said, and laughed, a sharp and bitter sound. “Worms, can you believe it? From what we can tell, the worms that burrowed into me died, but left a pocket of unreality in me. My body was changing, adapting to that reality.” She lifted her hair out of her eyes and moved to tuck it behind her right ear, but the ear had withered and was too small to hold anything. “So, Alice. Is that him?” She kept her tone light, curious. “The Irishman?”
“Sort of,” Irish shrugged.
“Yeah, it is.” I almost shot her then and there. “I just call him Irish, though.”
“Clever, clever, Alice.” She shook her head. “The official line is that you were feeding him intel, setting up an ambush so he could take out Jada.”
“That’s not how it was.”
She nodded. “Didn’t think so. It’s too far-fetched. They’re saying you seduced him, so he’d provide the cover you needed to summon an outlander. You’re a handsome woman, Alice, but… no, I don’t think you’d hinge your plan on wrapping a homicidal zealot around your…” she cleared her throat, delicately. “finger?”
“Hey!”
“Actually,” Irish mused, looking out the window, “she probably could have.”
“Are you a hollowman, Alice?” Grace asked, while I shot Irish a scandalized look. “Is that why you could see through the enchantment when he couldn’t?”
“Well…” I hesitated. Was it really cards-on-the-table time? “Actually, yeah. I am. But it’s nothing new. I’ve been half-outlander since I was a kid.”
“What, really? Then this creature turning up all over town…?”
“Not mine.”
“Wow.” Grace drove in silence for a few seconds. “We had no idea.”
“Good. I worked hard to keep it that way.”
“So, this infection in me… you didn’t cause it?” I shook my head. “Can you fix it?”
Irish leaned forward. “So, wait… Is… Grace, is it? Is Grace a hollowman, too? And a witch? Like you?”
I shook my head again. “No, Irish. She’s just corrupted. Thanks to Damian, she’s still sane, and with her magic she can pass for human… but she isn’t human, and won’t likely ever be human again.” I raised my hand, and let shadow flow from my palm. A small cloud of darkness rolled over my hand and between my fingers before sinking back into my skin again. “Grace doesn’t have another being sharing her skin, it’s just her. And she’s not of this world, not entirely. Not anymore. I could send my shadow into her, and it could eat away at the alien parts… siphon and consume that energy. But it’d just kill her at this point.”
Grace squared her shoulders, and I realized she was trying not to cry. “So… last night, by the pool. Could you have killed it then?”
“Before it took root? Before the worms died and passed the corruption along to you?” I thought about it. “Yeah, probably. But not without spilling the beans about what I am.”
She nodded. “I’d have done the same thing.” I watched her wipe the tears out of her eyes, blinking that creepy sidewise blink of hers. “It sucks. What about him?” she asked. “How are you two together?”
Irish spoke up, saving me the trouble. “I was hunting her, a few months ago. Only when I tracked her down, she didn’t strike me as being evil. Something of a bitch, aye, but evil? Nah. And she knew a lot about the supernatural world, and I thought she’d be a useful informant. She led me to a couple of vampires, a revenant, a nest of chupacabras… helped me dismantle a monkey’s paw.”
“But she never aimed you at us?”
Irish shook his head, meeting her gaze in the mirror. “She did not. Said it wouldn’t be fair, since I wasn’t giving her anything about the Order she could give to you.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“Huh.” She shot me a creepy smile again. “That sounds like utter bullshit. I guess I was wrong about your feminine wiles, Alice.”
“What?” Irish and Grace shared a good laugh at that, while I looked between them in confusion and thought about shooting both of them. A minute later, we were pulled up outside my shop.
“Alice, you’re screwed,” Grace said as we got out of the car. “Somebody in the Order came to us early this morning. Called himself Tanner.”
“Tanner,” Irish growled, crossing his arms as he scored yet another mental point against the priest.
“Right. He had pictures of you with the Irishman, here. Look, I can’t stay. Damian can track me too easily. We set it up as a security measure, in case I… if I turned…” she choked. “Look. I’ll do what I can to smooth this over for you, but… I can’t promise much. You are guilty, of consorting with Irish and being a hollowman… even if we have the context wrong. I’ll try though. And you… if there’s anything you can do? To fix me?”
“I’ll think about it.” When she looked so downcast, I stepped up to the driver’s window and put a hand on her shoulder. It felt wiry and strong and solid. “I mean I’ll think of something. Shapeshifting, maybe. I bet I can work up something with a werewolf extract, let you shift back to fully human for a time. Yeah, that sounds doable.” Her eyes were still that clear, beautiful blue when she looked up at me hopefully. “After that, it’d just be a question of making it permanent,” I lied.
“Okay. Good luck, you two. Tanner has another Inquisitor looking for you, Irish.”
“We’ve met,” I snipped.
“And this other hollowman…?”
“It’s Carl Meiter. The geomancer who worked in City Planning. It’s weird, though, because it’s like he’s in two places at once,” I said, sending my shadow walking away from me toward the door. She appeared as a shadow replica of me, and leaned against my front door, waving at us before she melted away and blended into the gloom. “Though who am I to judge?”
Grace laughed. “Okay, that’s pretty cool. Much cooler than what I got. I think I’m growing an ovipositor. Anyway, I’m off, before Damian notices I’ve stopped here. Watch yourselves!”
Irish watched her go. “So,” he asked, carefully. “Does this mean we have a friend on the inside?”
I felt very tired. “I don’t know, man. Maybe she’s legit. Maybe she was just sounding us out, before they bring the hammer down on us.”
“It seems odd that Tanner would go to the witches to get help tracking us down,” he said. “Inquisitors are gifted. Able to track, or anticipate where their quarry will be. And even if Caitlin couldn’t find us, he could bring in others. Footsoldiers, other Inquisitors. Falconers, even.”
“I don’t know what any of that means.”
“Nothing good. But instead… he went to the witches, with a flag of truce. We never do that, Alice. Why would he do that?”
“So she’s lying?”
“How would she know the name?”
“So she’s not lying?” I asked as I unlocked the front door with a swipe of my skeleton key-ring.
“Can’t say. You were, though, about that crap with werewolf extract. There’s really nothin’ ye can do for her, is there?” Irish asked as he followed me into the store.
I flipped the lights on. “Not a fucking thing.”
“That’s… that’s awful.” He glanced back out the window. Grace’s car was long gone. He shook his head. “I can’t imagine.”
“Eh, it’s not so bad. It’s been hours, and she’s still thinking. And sane. She’ll probably be okay. Well, fucking creepy, but otherwise…” I shrugged. “Anyway, get your shirt off,” I said, twirling a hand in a hurry-up gesture. “I’m sick of ‘I don’t know,’ aren’t you? Let’s get some fucking answers, shall we?” I headed behind the counter, rummaging amongst the mess there to see what I had. I didn’t keep much in the shop, but I did have a few basics, in case something needed repair. I tossed a couple of scalpels up on the counter, in case I needed to scrape a sample out of the tattoo.
“What’re ye going to do?” He tossed his coat across a case, eying the scalpels as I added a jeweler’s loupe.
“Oh, I thought I’d start by taking advantage of you while you’re half-naked and wounded,” I drawled as I dug around under the counter and found some gauze. He’d need it to wrap those burns up. Which reminded me; I probably ought to grab the first aid kit for him.
“Oh. Well, then, if ye think we have time. Ye should’ve said.” I smirked at the pained amusement in his tone, shrugging out of my jacket and digging out and unfolding my first aid kit. I stood up and stopped dead.
Irish had already taken off his shirt and armored vest, and was pulling his tee shirt up over his head, and I couldn’t help but stare. Ogle, really. I watched the muscle moving across his wide shoulders, flexing over his broad, defined chest, the way his six-pack abs folded when he leaned to toss the shirt over his coat. He had a few scars, including a set of ragged claw marks that started up by his right shoulder and trailed down his chest, through the graying hair there, down across his stomach to disappear under the waistband of his jeans, by his left hip.
I was a little surprised at my sudden and intense interest in discovering where those scars ended. It’s not like I’d never noticed he was a good-looking man, it was just… Well, I suppose I’d filed him away under “Will Not Ever Happen” and forgot about it.
“What?” he said, as he looked up and caught me staring. Well, let’s be honest, here. I was practically leering. I put one eyebrow up suggestively, and he blushed.
“Oh, I see. It’s different when I’m the one enjoying the view.” I leaned on my elbows, hands folded under my chin and Irish flicked a quick glance sideways at his shirt, as though he were wondering if he should have taken it off.
“Hardly fair, is it? You got to hide,” he said, trying for a lighter tone, and not quite making it.
“I can make it darker,” I offered, only slightly off-put at my shadow’s sudden willingness to assist. The shop dimmed. “Mood lighting is fun.” Irish cast a quick look around the shop as my shadow moved to sip down the lights. I felt my smile falter just a tiny bit, and said, “What’s the matter? You shy?”
“Ah. It’s just…” he cleared his throat, before finally managing, “lookin’s one thing, isn’t it?”
I realized he wasn’t watching me. He was watching the darkness. and looking increasingly uneasy about it.
“Oh. Sorry.” I straightened up and mentally slapped the shadow down, probably harder than was strictly necessary. She spat in anger, but the shop brightened immediately. “Have a seat,” I said, patting the stool behind the counter. “Be right back,” I called over my shoulder as I darted into the storage room, in search of something that might be useful in dealing with that tattoo.
Yes. I was definitely looking for tools. I was certainly not dodging into the back room to hide.
“Alice?” Irish’s voice sounded hesitant.
“Yeah, hang on. I’ve got some stuff back here.” I paused to push my hair out of my face, staring around the back room while my shadow slithered through the shelves and grumbled at my poor treatment of her. She wrapped herself around my spare toolbox, sullen.
Stupid of me, really, reading more into Irish’s staring than had been there. And listening to Grace’s jokes about my wiles. I mean, wiles? Hell, any halfway decent-looking woman parading around in her underwear, and less, is going to attract a man’s gaze whether he’s actually interested or not. And just because he was being particularly tolerant of me didn’t mean he had any interest in me beyond using me to keep his own ass alive. And yeah, showing off how I’m not human… that’s a turn-on.
Stupid. I pulled the tool box off the shelf, and it trailed shadows as I carried it toward the door. I caught my reflection in the mirror mounted there, and stopped cold.
My eyes were solid orbs of darkness. My shadow was churning in my mind, rolling in a pool of emotions. Anger, frustration, impatience… and arousal. She was so strong just now, what with all the extra feedings I’d been forced to allow her. If she forced a confrontation, I didn’t know if I’d win… and instead, she was being very helpful. I looked at my reflection and saw my shadow looking back at me using my own eyes. I’d never seen her do this before, and it might just be a side-effect of her increased strength. I was upset and flustered, and she didn’t know why. She wanted to know why, and I didn’t know what to tell her. Because he looked at us like we were a monster? Because sometimes he didn’t? I don’t know, I thought at her, meeting that empty hungry confused stare until she backed down, and my green eyes faded back into view again. Cussing myself out under my breath as I stepped back out into the shop, I found Irish standing by the counter. Still shirtless.
He flicked a quick, vaguely embarrassed glance at me. “I, ah, didn’t mean…” he began, and I hustled to cut him off.
“Let’s have a look at those burns. Sit down.”
“It’s just –”
“Throat’s not as bad as I thought it was,” I said, firmly, and glared him into silence. He looked away. “Let me see the hand.”
Irish unwrapped the rag and held his burned hand out, and I took him by the wrist, and not very gently, either. He let a little hiss out between his teeth, and I flipped his hand over to see his knuckles, where the worst of the burns were.
Were.
There wasn’t so much as a blister. The skin looked a bit scalded, red. Reddish. It looked like maybe he’d spilled some hot water across his hand.
I flipped his hand back over again. I knew his palm had been a rash of blisters and blackened skin. I’d seen it.
“All right, what the fuck,” I said, and looked back up at him, catching him staring at me. He looked quickly down at his hand, reddening a bit. The blush faded as he frowned down at his palm. I let him go, and he flexed his hand.
“What did you do?”
“Nothing.” I took his hand again in both of mine, frowning hard in concentration as I smoothed my thumbs over his palm, trying to sense something, anything, there. His skin was rough under my thumbs, thick with callus, and his knuckles, under my fingers, were the same. I could feel the strength in his hand, the little nicks of scar tissue across his knuckles. His pinky and ring finger were a touch crooked, broken at least once, I thought, and his index and middle finger didn’t quite straighten out right, either. He had fighter’s hands.
I realized I was lingering a bit and glanced up at him, meeting his gaze again. His eyes were warm. Intense.
I cleared my throat, letting go of his hand. “Does it hurt at all?” My face felt warm. I was blushing, dammit.
“Not much, no,” he admitted, holding my gaze. “You really didn’t do anything?”
“I didn’t.” He really did have nice eyes. I hadn’t noticed it so much before. Usually he was busy glaring murder at me. Takes some of the attraction out of the moment, you know?
“It shouldn’t've done that, Alice.”
“Did before,” I pointed out, reaching up to cup his chin in my palm, hold his face still. He hadn’t shaved in a while, and his cheek was bristly under my palm. I rather liked the feel of it. “Tilt your head down a bit,” I said, staring him in the eyes, extending my senses, trying to get a feel for him, in the same way I might feel out a new batch of ingredients. I couldn’t sense anything out of the ordinary in him, though.
Though to tell the truth, I probably wasn’t concentrating as hard as I could have. He was a little… distracting all of a sudden.
He caught my wrist, pulling back from me with a deep breath. “That was before.”
I straightened up, feeling flushed, heart racing. “Yeah, well…” I pulled in a breath, too, and made myself focus. “Spin around. Let’s have a look at that tattoo.”
“Right.” He shifted around on the stool, giving me the first clear view I’d had of his ink.
“It’s not as big as I thought it’d be,” I said, frowning.
“That’s a really hurtful thing t’ say to man, Alice.” He shot me a reproachful look over his shoulder.
I burst out laughing, and he gave me a half grin as he turned away again. I grinned as I turned my attention back to his tattoo. It was eighteen, maybe twenty inches wide, another twelve or fifteen tall. He had a lot of back to work with, broad and muscular. So… three hundred inches square, and just gorgeous work, as far as the artistry went. It was an ornate stone Jerusalem cross, four equilateral crosses, all arrayed behind a single, larger cross formed of four T-shapes converging into a point. It gave the effect of a medieval set of crosshairs, which was eerily appropriate. In the center of the cross was an enormous white rose, the petals stained here and there with drops of blood rendered so well that it was hard to tell it from real blood. There were bits of greenery filling in the gaps of the design, ivy and morning glories and thorny rose vines.
“But no, really, the tattoo’s not as big as it should be,” I went on, grin fading to a frown as I ran my fingers over it. I could feel the ink, and the hot tingle of magic. “I mean, what all could you do? Think about it. The more an artifact does, the more work needs to go into it, which usually means they have to get bigger, to accommodate the spells and whatnot. That’s why I usually stick with single-enchantment type stuff. Smaller, easier to make.”
“So, it’s not where my abilities came from, then.” Irish’s tone was full of “told you so.”
“It’s pretty detailed. That makes up for some of it. And you could do a fair bit with layering. But…” I felt for the edges of the magic, finding the beginning of the matrices built into the tattoo. Off to my side, the shadow swirled, just out of Irish’s line of sight, flowing into patterned ribbons, building the matrix as I felt it out. I glanced at it every few minutes, licking my lips as I watched the pattern form.
A slow tickle of dread curled down my spine, lacing itself into my stomach as I watched the shadow twist and twine and build folded layer after folded layer. While we were at it, she provided tidbits of knowledge, bits about tattoo lore that I had no memory of. Must have seen or heard it somewhere, though, because the shadow didn’t forget anything.
“You’re being awfully quiet,” Irish prompted.
“Yeah.” I eyed the patterns, feeling them as I watched them form, and something else tickled along with the dread, something hot and sharp and angry. I ground my back teeth together. I’d have to pull some of the ink out to be sure, but I had a good idea of what I was looking at already.
“Is… is it bad?” Irish shifted to look at me, starting a bit when he saw what the shadow was up to.
“It’s enchantments,” I said through gritted teeth. “It’s all enchantments.”
“Like Grace does?” He glanced from the shadow to me. “Alice?” he asked, tone a bit worried, now that he’d seen the expression on my face.
“You must have to get the tattoo recolored once in awhile, huh? Otherwise the magic would degrade, because you guys are resistant, right?”
“I don’t know about that, but aye, we’re to get it touched up once n’ awhile. It’s a badge of honor, and when it get damaged or scarred, they encourage us to have it repaired.”
“Missed the last one you were supposed to have done?”
“Sure. Missed the last couple, actually.” He studied me. “What is it? Is it bad?”
The shadow’s ribbony twines fell away to drifts of fading darkness as I turned back to him. “Enchantments affect the way you think, Irish. The way you feel and believe and act. The tattoo is a construct made of loyalty and faith and…” He stared at me, and somewhere in the back of his eyes, I could see the anger kindling. “…and that sort of thing. I kind of wondered how they kept you guys from defecting. I mean, seriously. It’s not like every magician on Earth is actually an evil asshole, but no matter what, you guys all treat us that way, right? No one ever changes an Orderman’s mind, right?”
He nodded, eyes hot, hard, vicious. He glanced towards the counter, where the scalpel sat, and picked it up, shoving it into my hand. “Get it off me. Right now,” he snarled.
“No need to be that drastic,” I said, tone dry. “I can shut it off. Breaking these things is easy. You’ve done most of the work already.”
“What are ye goin’ on about now?”
“They’ve probably been watching you for a while. Since you started thinking for yourself, at any rate. Turn back around. This is going to feel funny.”
“How d’yeh mean – ”
I picked up a needle from the roll of tools, and put both hands against the tattoo and found the linchpin holding the patterns together. It was easy enough to locate, burning away at the center of the morass. I snatched it up in my will and stabbed it sharply – draining the energy from the construct and replacing it with a block. Iron and will, stopping it dead like a monkey wrench thrown into the gears. Irish sat up straight with a shuddery gasp, jerking away from my touch.
“Ow!” He spun around to glare at me. “Fuck, woman, ye didn’t say it’d –” He staggered a step, reaching out to grab the counter, rubbing his forehead.
“Sit down.” I rolled my eyes. “I just undid twenty years’ worth of magic, Irish. You might want to sit still a moment.”
Irish more fell to the stool than sat down, looking drawn and still holding the counter. “God in Heaven, that feels…”
I leaned down a little, so I could look him in the eyes. “You ready for the rest of the bad news?”
“There’s more?” He looked up, meeting my gaze.
“I recognize some of these patterns. I’ve used them for… other things.” I put a hand on his chest, and I could feel his heart racing under my palm. “Irish, they’re… well, you might as well call them love spells. It makes sense when you think about it. Remember how devoted you were to the job, back in the day? No time for dating, right? At least, before you met your wife? I bet Tanner or someone like him introduced the two of you.” I was rambling, but I couldn’t seem to stop. “I’m right, aren’t I? Then she was your world. Even when she was gone, you couldn’t let her go. They wouldn’t want you to wander, now would they?”
He stared at me for a long moment, uncomprehending, like it was too much all at once. He reached up, fumbled for my hand, finding it and gripping it tight.
“You’re lying. Tell me yer lying!” His voice was a breathy little whisper. The doorbell rang, one brassy ding that echoed in the silent shop. That meant someone I knew was coming in. I glanced that way, and Irish caught my face in his other hand, turning me to look at him, staring at me from inches away, eyes desperate. “Alice, please? My God, please tell me you’re just fucking with me!”
That’s when Randall walked in. With flowers. “Oh,” he said. “Am I early for our dinner date?”
Table of Contents / Chapter Twenty-Nine >>
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