Bound by Ink (A Living Ink Novel) (6 page)

She lit candles and summoned power into the room. Magic shimmered up within her, tickling her palms. Sweet-smelling sunshine brushed her face. Isa shivered, missing the heat it used to carry with it.

Kicking her rolling stool close to the recliner, she settled upon it and focused her gaze upon the graying mermaid.

“My fingers on the paper,” Isa said, “while I investigate.”

“Okay,” Helen breathed.

Isa touched the page, channeled a tendril of magic through that contact, and nudged her awareness out of her body. She landed on her feet on the slippery, seaweed-encrusted rocks. A ghostly sea sighed against the stones of the mermaid’s island.

As Isa knelt beside the limp mermaid, she detected no rise and fall of her ribs. The stones and the sea faded.

With a gasp, Isa planted both palms on the mermaid’s shoulder and shoved energy into the tattoo, desperate to stabilize her. To keep her promise not to let her die.

One more life she owed Murmur since she had to assume that it had been his power that had restored hers.

Damn, she missed him.

Yanking her attention back to the mermaid, Isa frowned. Something had gone seriously wrong with the stasis paper. She’d intended for it to sustain a Living Tattoo indefinitely. Not sentence the spirit enlivening the Ink to a slow decline and death. In a flash, she saw what must have happened.

Live Ink fed on blood and magic. She’d thought she’d embedded enough of both in the stasis paper. Apparently, she’d been wrong.

Power poured out of her into what felt like a cold, bottomless pit beneath her hands. Even though she didn’t need to breathe in this otherworld, her physical body reacted to her effort by spiking her respiration rate as if she were running a race.

Trapped in the paper Isa had made, the mermaid had been starving to death.

Isa’s heart knocked against her physical ribs. The tattoo of the whirlwind. Was she killing it with stasis paper, too?

The mermaid groaned.

Relief shot another surge of liquid gold up from the depths.

Color rippled through the mermaid’s scales. Blue, green, silver. Her eyes opened. Her brow creased and her mouth worked.

“Helen brought you to me,” Isa said. “You’re in trouble. We’ve got to get you back onto her.”

Milky tears flooded the mermaid’s eyes but didn’t spill over.

“The magic I’ve fed you should suffice long enough for me to do the job,” Isa said. “Can you hang on that long?”

The mermaid needed life force combined with magic in order to survive. Putting her back on Helen would give her unlimited access to both. Though Isa had thought she’d designed the paper to do the same thing—to stand in for a host. Some critical part of the formula had to be wrong.

The mermaid’s lips moved.

“Don’t talk,” Isa urged. “Save your strength . . .”

“Is she well?” the mermaid rasped in defiance of the command.

A stab of loss went through Isa’s chest. In both worlds.

Starving to death, the tattoo still cared more about her host’s well-being than her own. Why did the love the two of them shared wound Isa? She’d understood the pain three weeks ago when she’d still had a hostile tattoo of her own crowded into her psyche.

Now that all she had left was the hole where he’d once been, shouldn’t she be immune to what she couldn’t have? Devotion hadn’t been one of his strong suits. Hers, either, she guessed.

How could she long for something she’d never had?

Helen had to have a scar on her soul to match Isa’s. She couldn’t do anything about her own. She could Helen’s. She would.

“She’s fine,” Isa said. “Worried about you. So am I. Let’s get you back where you belong.”

She slid sideways into her physical body.

“What is it?” Helen demanded in a rush.

Vision and motor control lagged several seconds while Isa seated her awareness into the too empty space inside her body.

“She’s starving to death,” Isa said when her mouth caught up with her intention to speak.

Helen gaped. “You swore she’d be okay! Put her back. Now.”

Isa unlocked the compartment on the bottom shelf of her work cart and brought forth the apple wood box holding her Live Inks.

The sweet, crisp scent of a long-lost orchard wrapped around her as she lifted the polished lid. Crystal vials lined the interior, glinting like diamonds in the overhead lights. Or like ice.

They numbed her fingers when she handled them to pour Ink into reservoirs. Isa rubbed the frost-burned pads of her Maya blue fingers against her jeans, trying to restore feeling. Pins and needles prickled her right hand.

Steve’s warning echoed in her head:
Don’t do Live Ink
. The timing couldn’t be worse. Especially not when Isa knew the specific risk.

Helen raised her eyebrows as Isa hesitated.

“You know what happened yesterday?” Isa asked.

“Day before yesterday.” She nodded, her features set in a grim line. “My brother-in-law was on that bridge.”

“Is he okay?”

She shrugged. “He made it. The rest of his vanpool didn’t.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I don’t know how he’ll handle it. Mentally. Emotionally. He saw those people die.”

Isa blew out a breath. She’d wanted it to steady her. It didn’t. “Are you sure you want Live Ink again? I’m hearing chatter about the city barring people with Live Ink from certain jobs.”

Helen stared. “You haven’t listened to the news this morning?”

“No.”

“It’s done,” she said. “Statewide. Buses. Teachers. Police. Fire. I don’t know how many more. The state is calling it a temporary reassignment until the investigation into the accident is complete. Something necessary to protect the lives of people who don’t have Living Ink. One of the news stations did a big exposé last night about a series of Live Tattoo deaths a month ago and a battle of magic somewhere in the city. It killed some nurses and cops out at Harborview. You know. When I was there. They’re talking about those incidents as leading up to what happened yesterday.”

Isa’s heart slid to her toes.

“When the reporters started interviewing people who’d come off the bridge, a few of them suggested rounding up everyone with Live Ink and getting them away from the city,” Helen said.

“That’s crazy,” Isa said, shaking her head. “It’s not even possible.”

Except.

She glanced at the winking red lights of her cameras. It was possible.

“The registry,” she muttered.

Helen nodded. “That got mentioned on the news this morning. The government already keeps tabs on everyone with Live Ink.”

“Only the people who go to legal shops,” Isa corrected on autopilot. She shook away the prickly uneasiness crawling down her throat. “In this atmosphere, do you want me to put your tattoo back on? I know some things we can try to keep her going until things calm down.”

“No! I have to have her back,” Helen said. “I’m dead without her. Inside. And outside? It’s only a matter of time before I walk into traffic and die. You saw. I broke your planter outside your front door and it wasn’t like it was in the way or anything. I’m—I can’t live without her.”

She sucked in an audible breath. “I understand some of the fear about Live Ink after yesterday. But the terrible things they’re saying on the news about Living Tattoos are wrong.”

“I know.” Isa shifted the work cart closer and, under the guise of pulling on a pair of gloves, contemplated the wisdom of proceeding.

Helen and her tattoo had nearly died because of Daniel and his tattoo, Uriel. Now Isa was putting Helen’s tattoo back knowing full well that Uriel was once again summoning tattoos from hosts. Was it the right thing to do? She might be consigning the both of them to a death as messy as the hydra had been. But the mermaid was starving. No “might” about that.

Isa didn’t believe in love conquering much of anything. At least, she hadn’t before she’d met Helen and her mermaid.

Could she trust that what they shared would bind them together in spite of the hysteria wandering the city like another kind of monster? It would consume people. Left unchecked, it, too, would kill.

Isa could deal with a monster of magic. She had no idea how to handle an emotional one.

Maybe she could show Helen and her Ink how to shield. At least they could learn to defend themselves from Uriel.

“Where do you want her?”

“Right here. Where the paper is.”

Center mass, just below her breasts.

“Over your ribs? That’s going to smart,” Isa said.

“Anything to take away the fire in my head and have her back where she belongs. I don’t want to spend another minute alone. Feeling like I’m being consumed.”

Isa’s heart bumped down her spine in recognition.

“Let’s fix that,” she breathed around the glacier sitting on her ribs. “For both of you. Take off your shirt? I don’t want to ruin it with Ink.”

She barked a harsh laugh. “Like I give a shit.”

“I’m pretending to be a professional,” Isa said.

“Of course,” Helen said as she stripped.

Isa grabbed a felt pen.

“Lean forward for a second? I need a measurement. We have to keep the tattoo the same size as when you had her on your back,” she said, “to maintain the balance you achieved when you integrated the first time.”

“We have to go through integration again?”

“Yes. You’ll need to remake the links tying the two of you together,” Isa said as she measured the pink scar on Helen’s back. “It might not be difficult since you’ve been through it once.”

“Or it’ll be harder because now I’m scarred inside,” she said. “Where she used to be.”

Isa’s hand froze in dotting a measurement on the skin of Helen’s belly.

“Yes,” Isa said, pain tracing her internal wound. She put away her pen and picked up her tattoo machine. Turning it on, she stepped into the etheric.

The mermaid ambushed Isa. She threw ocean-cold arms around Isa’s neck, chanting, “Thank you, thank you.”

“Are you strong enough for this?” Isa demanded, trying to disengage her.

She caught in a breath that sounded like a sob. “You’re putting me back?”

“You’ll have to let me go, but yes, if you’re okay with it.”

The mermaid released Isa so fast, they both stumbled. “Yes! What do I have to do?”

“Follow the line of magic, Ink, and blood back to Helen. I’m the bridge between Helen’s magic and yours.”

The mermaid clapped her hands to her mouth. Brilliant tears, vibrating with hope, caught on her blue-green lashes. She made to throw herself at Isa again.

Isa raised her hands to forestall her. “Let me get a circle up so we can put you where you belong.”

The mermaid subsided, dropping her hands to her sides. “You don’t like feeling. Do you?”

Isa pressed her lips tight, forced a smile, summoned more magic, and got to work.

Helen’s skin and soul took Live Ink beautifully. Because she was used to it? Or because she and her chosen tattoo loved one another?

Isa didn’t care. After establishing the initial flow of magic and Ink, she relaxed into the process of painting the pair of them together again.

“You’re different, you know,” Helen finally said as the tattoo neared completion.

Isa blinked her physical eyes. The gesture rippled through into the etheric, where she stood within a second circle of magic, using the flow of her energy to thread the soul of a mermaid through silver tattoo needles into the skin and soul of the woman on the recliner.

Isa parsed her attention, half for the mermaid waiting in the otherworld, half for Helen.

“Almost done,” she said. “How are you holding up?”

“This is nothing,” Helen said. “I’d bleed myself dry to save her.”

Helen’s declaration rippled through the line of energy Isa had established to bridge the worlds. They reached the vivid blue-green mermaid.

“I wouldn’t let her!” she said.

Helen apparently caught part of that. She snorted.

“Easy, you two. In a minute you can argue without me in the middle,” Isa said.

The mermaid laughed, a clear, bright splash of waves on sparkling sand.

“Okay,” Isa said. “Last strokes going in.”

In the physical world of the containment studio, she applied the final strokes of Live Ink, finishing the picture of the mermaid poised upon rocks awash with waves.

In the etheric, she picked up the last blue-green thread of the mermaid’s magic, freeing her from the stasis paper.

“Last one,” Isa told the mermaid. “You should feel the pull as I weave it into Helen.”

Color washed out of the mermaid, surging through the line of power, down Isa’s right arm into the Live Ink flowing through the silver tattoo needles, and into Helen’s skin.

Isa poured concentration and energy into that final filament, sealing the work, giving the both of them a chance to heal on every level.

She hoped.

The mermaid, the ocean, and the rocks vanished from the etheric plane.

Beneath Isa’s physical hands, Helen’s diaphragm kicked, then shuddered. “She’s back. She’s home!”

Isa brought her awareness out of the otherworld to the empty shell of her own body.

“Cleaning up,” she said. “I’ll need another minute to make sure everything is sealed.”

Helen subsided, though her breath continued to catch.

“Sorry,” she gasped. “I didn’t realize it would be . . . I feel again.”

A block of ice lodged in Isa’s throat wouldn’t let her answer. She nodded. She swabbed the tattoo, then surveyed the artwork. Her shoulders eased lower. It was right. She stopped the machine and put it down.

She sprayed dilute soapy water on the areas she’d worked. As she wiped them dry, she spent more magic sealing the work and the joining of spirit to flesh, blood, and bone already occupied by Helen.

On her skin, the blue-green mermaid sat on rocks, combing her seashell-studded hair while waves broke on the rocks behind her. Serene. Radiant.

Murmuring thanks to the power she’d used, Isa closed her eyes, and dispersed magic into the black basalt stone beneath her cold-numb feet.

When she opened her eyes, Helen met her gaze.

Both she and the mermaid looked at Isa from Helen’s brown eyes.

It rocked Isa back on her stool. She turned that jolt into a reach for the hand mirror she kept on her work cart.