Bound by Ink (A Living Ink Novel) (15 page)

“I’ve already told Max. You’ve been misled regarding my abilities,” Isa said. “I’m a Live Ink artist. Not a tracker.”

Dick smirked, a bright green sprig of broccoli between his front teeth. “Where is Daniel Alvarez?”

“Somewhere in the city, I presume,” she said as her shoulders climbed.

“No. Where is he?”

She slapped her fork down and sat back.

“Magic? Right here, right now?” she asked, eyeing the pair of them. Did they not have to worry about Acts of Magic Laws that prohibited the use of unshielded magic? Or could she use the laws to her advantage? Max and his agents had to have magic of their own. They wouldn’t have survived in contact with someone like George—or her—if they didn’t.

How much did they have? Enough to keep Steve’s team from picking up her magical signature if she happened to let some of it spill through her shields?

Better to find out sooner than to wonder later.

Isa shrugged, stood up, and summoned power. Gold light, thick and turgid with cold, climbed the central pathway of her being, the one that connected past to present to future. It linked the spirit world, the mundane world, and the world of possibility. Magic flowed into the vast empty space inside and the ice gripping her soul thickened, raised and jagged where it grew over the scar of Murmur’s absence.

She put a shield in place simply because to not do so would give away her intent to shoot a beacon out to Steve and his team. They’d better be paying attention.

No one professing the professional affiliation that she had would conceivably work without a shield. Dick and Lawrence didn’t need to know that some shields were less permeable than others. Isa poked a few holes in hers.

Then she opened her magical and physical eyes.

The song of the city colored the room, overlaying the dining room with the cool, blue-gray symphony that was the combination of everything that lived and had lived in this land. The buildings and the history of the place sculpted the melody.

Now that George had made her think about who else might have lived here, Isa glanced around the condo. Trails of magic showed where people had traipsed through the ultramodern stainless steel and white linen–furnished dining room. Those trails had to be the basis for tracking. She’d seen them often enough, knowing they represented people moving through their daily lives, but she’d never contemplated picking one strand and following it unless it belonged to a rogue tattoo she needed to capture. Could she track? Should she?

Sunny yellow power gleamed from the chair where she’d sat at the table, momentarily pushing aside her questions. Interesting. She’d ended up sitting in the same chair as the person they’d killed. If that’s what had happened. Had she already merged in their minds with her predecessor?

The signature, the last thing that remained of the person who’d once lived here, was fading. When it finally winked out, it would erase him or her from the world entirely.

What a waste of potential.

The ice coating her innards shifted and groaned. Not in pain, nor in sorrow. The snapping and cracking sounded like a threat. A snow field finally grown massive enough to begin shifting under its own weight, opening and closing crevasses like hungry maws. To have become a mobile, dynamic leviathan.

Before spinning her awareness out into the city’s aura in search of Murmur, Isa studied her captors.

Magic. Both of them. Enough to allow them to function in contact with other magic users, not enough to make them candidates for Live Ink. The amount of magic they each possessed didn’t make them any less dangerous. If anything, they were more of a hazard. She doubted they’d had much formal training in harnessing their abilities, if they even knew what those were.

No, they were a danger precisely because they’d rely on manipulation and coercion to achieve their ends. The thorny, oily sheen of their power suggested they enjoyed the brutal aspects of their jobs. Enjoyed it too much.

They reminded her of Ria. Cold, calculating, heartless. They lacked Ria’s talent at being utterly convincing when it came to pretending he cared. Ria’s malady was soul-sickness. He didn’t know any other way.

These men did, and they enjoyed twisting what they knew about other people’s hearts. It was a game. A kind of hunt.

They’d made Isa their prey.

Now it was a question of how they’d execute the kill, and how interesting she’d make the struggle before they eviscerated her.

The cold gripping her left no room for fear. She merely turned her magical gaze away from them and sought the warm tendril of midnight she craved. It would tell her where Murmur was in relation to her position.

She wouldn’t give him up to them. But there was no harm in finding a direction, if she could. If he hadn’t shielded. Or taken to spending every moment inside a reverse containment studio, one designed to keep magic out as well as in.

She turned a slow circle. South first. West. North.

Isa tasted smoky caramel. A splinter of warm black lodged in her heart, blossoming into satisfaction that didn’t belong to her.

Her heart skipped as the warmth burrowed deeper, acquiring a lock on her that hinted he wouldn’t let go. No matter what she did to dissuade him from coming after her.

Breath snagged on the sharp horns of hope. She wanted this. Wanted him. And she shouldn’t.

For his sake.

Rule twelve: Be careful who you make yourself vulnerable to.

She smiled, pressing the heel of her hand against the center of her chest, where the tendril of black power burrowed.

The song of the city dipped a quarter tone, scraping like a dentist’s drill on an exposed nerve.

Isa stumbled.

The line of Murmur’s magic
hissed
.

What?

A fist of pure silver light shaded by blood clamped around her throat. It crushed the splinter of Murmur’s magic out of her.

The smoky caramel of Murmur’s presence vanished.

She rocked and slammed the holes in her shield closed.

“What the fuck is that?” she gasped. Within the depths of her being, claws scrabbled at a round, frost-bound door. Symbols in a language she didn’t know crawled like maggots around the outside of the shuddering portal.

Isa recognized what she was looking at. The door Daniel and Uriel had opened. The door she had closed.

But not, as Murmur had noted, locked.

She gasped. The song of the city climbed to a shriek of terror. The door tore free.

Uriel had blown open the portal.

She pried his questing tendril of magic from her heart, tucked a brief spell into the line, and cast it back at the doorway. No need to watch it explode. It wouldn’t do any meaningful damage. All she wanted was a diversion, one that would allow her to escape Uriel’s sticky grasp. Already he spun power out into the etheric, flailing, searching for her.

That he hadn’t come through the door into the reality of her Seattle must mean that he couldn’t. Not yet.

Why
not?

If she allowed him to get a grip on her, he could pull her through to his world. To the world Murmur had come into her body to escape. Isa had no doubt Uriel would attempt to use her to torment Murmur further.

She had no intention of finding out that Murmur didn’t care enough to make it impossible.

Her only option was to close her magical eye, suck every mote of power into her body, and shoot it into the stone floor beneath her feet. The magic didn’t dissipate.

“Damn it,” Isa snapped, opened her physical eyes, and spun on the agents at the table. “Your stone isn’t tied to ground. What is wrong with you people? It’s one of the basic tenets of magic. Call it rule thirteen. You send excess power to earth via stone tied to the bedrock. You haven’t done that. As a result, this penthouse is a fucking magical beacon.”

“You seem upset, Isa. May I call you Isa?” Lawrence said, but didn’t wait for a response. “What happened?”

Overwhelmed by the enormity of what they couldn’t possibly know, she covered her face with trembling hands and groaned.

“Something startled you while you were looking for Daniel Alvarez,” Dick said. “Tell us.”

She straightened and dropped her hands to her sides. “A closed door just crashed open. You aren’t the only ones who want a word with Daniel Alvarez. Nor are you the only ones to imagine you can use me to bind him.”

“What are we talking about?” Lawrence demanded.

“An enemy who will cross worlds and destroy anything in his path to get to M—Daniel now knows where I am.”

They blinked in unison.

Isa almost laughed.

“You mean to use me,” she said instead.

This time, neither of them protested.

“There’s a new price tag.”

Patty’s words came back to haunt her:
You think Daniel Alvarez is your biggest problem. You’re wrong.
These men thought they were her biggest problem.

They were wrong.

“Your safety?” Lawrence surmised.

She bit out a bitter laugh at that. “Not within your power.”

He jerked as if she’d slapped him.

“Living Tattoos are going to start coming off people even faster now,” Isa said.

“Because of this door?”

“Yes.”

Dick shook his head. “Anyone with Live Ink inside the city limits has been remanded to containment camps.”

“Only the ones the government knew about.”

“You’re thinking of the criminal element? Gangs? Thugs and thieves?”

“In part. Hacks make good money,” she said. “Because they have a never-ending supply of people who want the power augmentation and longevity that Live Ink has to offer without the scrutiny involved with coming to see a legal artist.”

The boulder clasped his hands on the table and leaned in, studying her. “Your point?”

Finally. No smirk. No condescension.

“When Ink starts going bad, if I sense it, I’m going out there to stop it.”

“I’m afraid we can’t let you—”

“I’m not asking,” Isa interrupted. “I’m telling you. This will happen. You can handle it or you can’t. It puts you in the position of having to decide whether to dispose of me now or later, but you do have to decide.”

They stared at her. Misgiving bloomed in the lines deepening around Lawrence’s mouth.

George’s warning—
Don’t push past the point that they can bend
—chased around and around the ice field growing in her chest.

“Attempt at any time to twist my ability to save lives into a means of manipulating me and I will walk off the roof of this building myself to save you the cost of the bullet.”

“Do we need a psychiatrist in to chat with you?” Dick asked. “You’re very matter of fact about threatening to commit suicide.”

“My sole value in this world and to other people boils down to one thing. What use I serve. Not who I am. Not what I am. What I can be used for. I foresee getting tired of it.”

“For that you’re willing to die?”

“I’ve been dead. I know what awaits me.”

The two men exchanged frowns.

“What do you need?” Dick asked.

“I need Nightmare Ink.”

Lawrence tilted his head as if considering. “Containment. Tattooing equipment.”

“Yes. I’ll also need a computer and an Internet connection,” Isa said.

“I’m sorry, because of the nature of this operation, we can’t allow anything that could be traced. We were led to believe you understood that part.”

“What I understand is if you can’t keep IP addresses from being tracked, you’re paying your IT people way too much,” she said. “At least three of my clients could do the job.”

“We’re your clients now.”

“My continued ability to do up-to-the-minute research is to your benefit, then.”

“On what?”

“Currently? The Mayan underworld. Also, I have unique access to one of the best, most innovative minds in Live Ink.”

“Master Masatoshi.”

“That’s right.”

“We cannot allow you to contact him. Just yet.”

“Ever” was clear. What did anger in a frozen land look like? The frost in her chest congealed into a slow-moving, implacable force, aimed at grinding her prison to dust.

“But we can certainly find a book on the Mayan underworld for you. We’ll have that within a few hours.”

“Very well.” She wouldn’t thank them. “My art supplies?”

“I thought we understood one another,” Lawrence said. “Each of us wants something from the other . . .”

“You’re holding my art supplies hostage against my willingness to track for you? Do you think that’s wise?”

Lawrence lifted his hands. “We’d like to establish equitable trade, Isa. We asked you to locate Daniel Alvarez.”

“And I watched a portal between the worlds swing wide to admit a horror,” she snapped.

“I do notice that you haven’t made any further attempt to locate him.”

Southwest. The warm, firewood scent of Murmur’s power battered her shield. She’d be damned, if it wasn’t already too late for that, before she’d give them the satisfaction. She stared at Lawrence.

They really believed they could enforce her compliance by withholding paper and a few paints? From someone who’d spent a childhood apprenticed to Navajo sand painters? Were they insane? She barked a harsh laugh. The granite counters in the kitchen would take a flour, cornmeal, and sugar painting beautifully.

“What’s funny?” Dick asked.

“You believe withholding something you promised will bend me to your will when you’ve taken me from my home, my family, and the life I’ve built? Fuck off. I’ve tried playing straight with you. You wouldn’t know honesty if it bit you in the ass. Max might, but it’s too late for that. You now have to buy my cooperation from this point forward.” She turned her back.

“You have a huge chip on your shoulder, Isa,” Lawrence noted. Menace dripped from his observation.

“Yes, I do.”

“Don’t push,” he said. “You won’t win.”

“How often does the AMBI or Seattle PD come sniffing around because of the magic you’ve splattered all over this building?” she asked.

They traded a glance.

“No need to look so worried. It won’t matter where you move me at this point, unless you actually have complete containment somewhere,” she said. “Uriel will find me. Since I’m the one that threw him out of this world and slammed the door on his fingers last time, I’m number one on his hit list. Wish I could say it’s been nice knowing you, gentlemen, but it hasn’t.”

Dick shook his head. “You’re safe here, Isa. What do we have to do to convince you that no one can reach you here?”

She snorted. And they accused her of having a chip on her shoulder? Wasn’t there a Shakespeare quote to handle this? “More things between heaven and earth”? Something like that. She should have paid better attention in high school.

***

She didn’t sleep.

The cold kept her wakeful. Thoughts twisted and writhed like a pit full of snakes. She couldn’t keep her eye on any single one long enough to tease out a glimpse of the whole thing.

So she raided the kitchen pantry. Flour. Sugar. Brown sugar. No cornmeal. Didn’t matter. A monochromatic picture would still serve to let her draw her freedom if she focused her intention and her will.

Maybe this time it wouldn’t have such twisted consequences. Though to be fair, she hadn’t finished her last drawing. Entirely. Lawrence and Dick showing up to kidnap her from her jailors could have been coincidence. It could.

She turned out all the lights, lit a tall white candle in a slender gold holder, and set it on one end of the black granite island in the center of the kitchen. She spent the night sitting cross-legged atop the counter with the canister of flour at her right knee. The sugar and brown sugar sat at her left.

Henry and Joseph had taught her the basics of sand painting for the discipline required. They’d carefully taught her only the forms and patterns used to make framed sand art pieces the tourists bought. True sand paintings were prayers, ephemeral things, not meant to be held by human hands.

Maybe what she did—drawing pictures that sort of came true—was a form of prayer, too. Albeit, a form she had yet to master. Isa shielded, summoned cold power, and drew.

Flour, she discovered, didn’t fall like sand. It took several tries to get the feel of the material and to get it to fall the way she wanted. The sugar scattered on the hard surface. The brown sugar clumped and resisted falling evenly.

Wrapped in a shield filled with drifts of gold, Isa sank into the desert that had once been the best part of her. Now, encased in thick, life-killing ice, it echoed. Dead. Empty.

Like her.

Interesting.

She hadn’t wanted to believe Kukulcan when he’d said that mortals weren’t meant to survive the House of Cold. She’d wanted a way out. Still did. Yet she wore the Maya blue stain of a sacrifice. A sacrifice was required to close and lock Uriel’s door. So be it.

She’d given up her life once before, believing she’d shut Uriel out of her world. She’d do it again. Surely the training she’d had in childhood could secure her freedom first. How she escaped Lawrence and Dick didn’t matter. Only that she did. And freed George/Patty in the process.

It made knowing what to draw to achieve their freedom all the harder. She finally settled for a picture of the two of them, George and Isa, walking in the front door of Nightmare Ink.

She drew. The candle melted down, guttered, and died. Wax pooled, hardening on the granite.

Another possible medium. Malleable wax. Could she sculpt freedom?

The sun came up.

She finished the picture.

Careful not to stir the air and disturb the flour, she climbed off the counter. Seven
A.M.

She went to the shower as much to kill time as to clean up and change clothes. At nine, Isa picked up her phone.

“Ms. Romanchzyk?” a woman’s voice said on the other end.

“Which apartment is Mr. Tollefson’s?”

The woman hesitated.

“Please don’t tell me that’s classified, too.”

“No, ma’am, Of course not. He has the unit next to you. Number two.”

“Thank you.” Isa hung up and went to knock on George’s door.

A man with dark hair hanging across his brown eyes, cheekbones that could cut, and full, pouty lips answered the door. He looked her up and down. His gaze paused on her coat. He raised an eyebrow.

George appeared behind him, peering over the younger man’s head. “Hey, Ice. You okay?”

“Would you gentlemen care to take a walk? Get some air and sun?”

George snorted. “They aren’t gonna let—”

“I think that’s a fabulous idea,” the younger man said. He smiled and stuck out a hand. “I’m Simon.”

George raised his eyebrows as Isa accepted and shook Simon’s hand.

“Isa.”

“The artist George was telling me about. I didn’t know you painted you as well as canvas,” he said, smiling down at the Maya blue spreading across the backs of her hands and wrists. “Pleased to meet you. I know a sweet little coffee shop four blocks east of here. I’d kill for a decent mocha. My treat. It’s the least I can do for a new neighbor.”

Simon invited her into the entryway to wait while they pulled on their coats. The stone of George’s condo was darker, polished blue-gray. Immaculate. Like a museum.

Simon offered her an elbow as they exited the lobby.

She hesitated.

George stuck a hand through the crook of Simon’s arm and held out his left hand as if waiting for Isa to offer him an elbow, too.

Smiling up at him, she complied.

He winked as he linked the three of them together.

“Lead me to coffee nirvana,” he said to Simon.

“Don’t laugh,” Simon said. “Their baristas are so beautiful, they’ll make you cry.”

“I look forward to it,” George said.

It took two days to turn the walk into a ritual. Isa assumed that the agents were fine with it because Simon chaperoned, and because she never attempted to deviate from the script.

They walked to the coffee shop, grabbed their drinks to go while George and Simon flirted shamelessly with one of the young men behind the counter, and they walked back. No side trips. No being out of Simon’s sight for even a second. Simon always paid.

When they’d returned that first morning, Isa’s kitchen was spotless. No mention of the drawing in flour was made, but neither did she still have a store of flour or sugar. Max said nothing. He had, however, replaced the candle.

Isa stifled a laugh.

The third morning, as they walked the same route to the coffee shop, they unlinked arms to allow a woman and her young son to pass.

As Isa edged around the front of George, the little boy, zipped up in a green nylon coat and laden with a backpack as big as he was, slammed into her legs.