Angel's Ink (17 page)

I shrugged, a small smile slipping across my lips again. “Probably. I shouldn’t have, but it’s been a long day. I lost my temper.”

“We all have bad days. You’re just more dangerous than others when you let loose.”

“I’m not that dangerous.”

“Magic, a gun in your back pocket, and the last I heard you were studying a few styles of martial arts. Yeah, you’re a real pussycat.”

“Thanks. And what about you?”

“Oh, it’s my turn now?” he asked innocently, snapping the brief good mood that I had managed to capture.

“What the fuck?” I demanded, motioning with both my hands to encompass the decrepit surroundings.

“That’s it?”

“Seriously, Sparks! I went to the old shop and it looks like you haven’t been there in years. What happened?”

“Business dried up.”

“That’s it? Business dried up? You weren’t in a bad spot. If it was about business, you could always have come to me. I could have fit you into the rotation for a few days a week. You’re a talented tattooist and—”

“You smug son of a bitch!” Sparks snarled, pushing off the couch and closing the distance between us faster than I would have thought possible considering his advanced age. “You think I would ever come begging to
my
apprentice
for a job? I’m the one who taught you everything you know. There’s nothing on this earth that would make me come crawling—”

“Who said anything about crawling? I would have been honored to have you at the shop. You would have been a great asset. Like you said, you taught me everything I know about inking and stirring. You could have helped out the two people I did end up hiring. They’re great, but they were a little rough around the edges starting out. It would have helped me immensely to have you.”

“Would have? So, just like that you close the door on me? You would have taken me in years ago but not now?” he countered unexpectedly, leaving me flat-footed by the question.

“Now? I don’t know, Sparks. When was the last time you held a tattoo machine?”

“It’s like riding a bike.”

“Yeah, but the skills get rusty from lack of use. Besides, you know the kind of trouble I’m in. That mess is going to rain down on my shop no matter how hard I try to protect my people. I’d rather you not be a part of that. The people I’ve got now . . . they have ways of protecting themselves.”

I was babbling as my brain scrambled to decide whether I really wanted Atticus Sparks in my shop. Initially, my brain and heart had reacted to the rotting mess that was his life. He was a talented tattooist, but he was also a stubborn, crotchety old man who wouldn’t listen to a thing I said because I’d been his apprentice. In many ways, having him in the shop would be hell on earth for me. But as I looked around at what I could see of his house, could I honestly turn my back on him?

“Easy, boy,” Sparks said with a slight cough as he patted me on the shoulder. “I don’t want a job in your shop. I appreciate it that you would think of me like that and that you’re worried about your old mentor. That’s enough.”

“Yeah, but what happened?”

“Just got old,” he muttered with a slight shrug of his slumped, rounded shoulders. “I couldn’t keep up with the in-crowd. I wasn’t getting any more apprentices to keep the shop interesting, so business died. I came here, and I’ve found ways to get by. I don’t want you to worry about me. I’m managing just fine, regardless of what it looks like. Why don’t you tell me why you really came looking for me?”

“I got myself into a mess and I need your help,” I started as Sparks wandered back over to the couch.

He laughed as he sank into the flat cushions. “I can’t do shit to help you with the Towers and you know it.”

“Oh no, I’ve dug a hole deeper than just trouble with the warlocks right now. Hell, believe it or not, they’re the least of my concerns. I’ve got the grim reaper breathing down my neck, trying to get hold of my soul if I don’t get him what he wants.”

“The grim reaper?” he repeated slowly, as if I had lost my mind.

“Don’t fuck with me, Sparks! He’s real. Or rather
they
are real. There’s this whole union of them and the one I met is nice enough so long as I don’t screw up his schedule, but I have.”

“How could you screw up his schedule?”

I paused and took a deep breath. Raising both my hands over my head, I murmured a soft spell so that a shell fell over the small house, making it impossible for anyone to overhear our conversation either through natural means or through magic. I couldn’t risk the warlocks finding out about this giant mistake. It was bad enough that they wanted me dead. I couldn’t risk them wanting to take me alive. I dropped my hands back down to my sides and sighed once the spell was in place.

“I made a girl immortal,” I said in a soft voice, hating to utter the words.

“What?” Sparks demanded, leaning forward as if he hadn’t heard me correctly.

“Immortal. She can’t die and the grim reaper wants her soul in three days or he’s going to take mine in its place. I need some help.”

“How the hell did you make her immortal? I didn’t think such a thing was even possible. I mean, those fucking warlocks can’t even claim to be immortal.”

“A tattoo. She came in telling me she was dying and wanted angel wings tattooed on her back. I agreed. When I was preparing the ink, I put in pollen from an Easter Lily and a frond from the angel feather that you gave me years ago.”

“Angel feather?”

“Yes, you gave me a sizable stockpile of contraband when I started my shop, remember?”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“Well, it included an angel’s feather. You even went so far as to speculate that the feather had belonged to Gabriel. I kept it under tight lock and key for years, never intending to use it, but this seemed like a good cause. I didn’t know what it would do, but I thought it might wipe away her cancer. I never, ever thought for a second that it would make her immortal. Hell, if the thought had crossed my mind, I would never have allowed you to give me the damned feather.”

“You used the angel feather,” he breathed. He dropped his head into both of his hands as he placed both of his elbows on his knees. “I never thought you’d use it. I never thought you would come up with a good excuse to use it. I just wanted it to be in safe hands and I couldn’t think of anyone safer than someone with a warlock’s background.”

“I screwed up.”

“In a way. You saved a girl’s life.”

“I killed myself in the process and ruined hers over the long term. No matter how pretty it sounds, no one wants to be immortal. I have to undo what I’ve done.”

Shaking his head, Sparks pushed to his feet and waved for me to follow him. “You know there’s only one way out of this mess. You have to tattoo her again.”

We passed through a kitchen that was a disaster area of dirty dishes, rotting food, and an overflowing trash can to a back room that had a large chair in the center; cabinets holding potion ingredients lined the walls.

“You’re still tattooing,” I murmured, my eyes taking in the room.

Sparks shrugged indifferently at me. “In a way.”

“In a way? This is illegal, Sparks. If you get caught—”

“What? They gonna take my license away?”

“No, they’re going to put you in jail. The bloodsuckers are going to come for you and they are going to put you away. You wouldn’t survive, Sparks.”

“You take your chances, Gage, and I’ll take mine.”

“Fine. You’re right. This is none of my concern. Let’s get back to the business at hand, making someone mortal again.”

“What makes you think I would know how to do that?” Sparks demanded, throwing open the cabinets, one glass door after another, so we could look at the contents without any hindrances. “I didn’t know you could make someone immortal, so how would I know how to kill them?”

“Killing someone is easy,” I replied in a cold voice. I didn’t know firsthand, as I had never killed anyone, but I had watched Simon succeed at the task often enough without even a flicker of guilt or remorse. “The hard part apparently is handing the soul over to the grim reaper after it’s been protected.”

Sparks heaved a sigh as he crossed his arms over his stomach and stared at the array of jars, wooden boxes, and yellowed envelopes filled with items. “Was there anything in the design that I should know about?”

“Nothing. Just wings.”

“Easter lily pollen and . . . your unique item?”

“Yes.”

“How old was the pollen?”

“Few months.”

“Local?”

“The basilica downtown.”

“Good choice,” Atticus murmured softly, but I knew his mind was turning over the items that were before him. “The pollen was a nice touch, but it’s unlikely that it did much except maybe bind the ink to the—”

“Yeah,” I filled in. Neither of us wanted to mention aloud what I had used. “How about really potent venom? Even the Towers haven’t come up with an antidote for basilisk venom. Kills every living thing it’s injected into.”

“That’s rare stuff since basilisks are supposedly extinct.”

“Not that rare,” I muttered.

Sparks shoved a hand through his hair and shook his head. “Oh, yeah. Right.” He finally remembered that he had given me a vial of it when I moved out on my own. “Regardless, it’s not strong enough against immortality.”

“How about red dragon blood? Or maybe a bit of horn from a black unicorn?”

“Come on! Why don’t you just drop some strychnine in her morning coffee and call it a day!” Sparks snapped as he turned back toward me. He reached up and clasped my face between both of his clammy palms. “This stuff will kill a mortal anything, but not an immortal.”

I jerked away, pacing a little around the small room as my mind swirled in useless circles. “I don’t know! If a heavenly agent can give a human soul immortality, what’s the opposite? What can take it away?”

“A little piece of Hell, I guess,” Sparks replied.

“Yeah, well, as far as I know no one has ever brought a piece of that back with them from the dead. Not even if they had to do time.”

“What do you mean?”

Shaking my head, I reached into my pocket to pull out my cell phone and check the time. I didn’t want to go into it and wasn’t allowed to anyway. It was one of the few secrets I had learned from the Ivory Towers that I was willing to keep. There was one way to touch the afterlife and come back from it. It was easy to do, but impossible to control. All you had to do was kill someone with magic. Kill someone with magic and you were forced to give up one year of your life. Your body died and your soul traveled to the underworld, where it stayed for that year. Unfortunately, you never knew when you were going to die and those who came back were no longer in their right mind after the experience.

Other races knew about this little catch in the use of magic, but not many liked to talk about it. Among humans, it was largely seen as a myth. Warlocks and witches had found messy ways around it. Throw a body in front of a speeding car and the person is killed by the impact with the car, not magic. Push a body off a bridge and they drown in the river, not by magic. But pull all the blood out of a body through the pores with a spell and you’re fucked.

“It’s getting late. I’ve got to get going,” I muttered as I walked toward the front of the house. “One of these days you’ll have to tell me how you got your hands on the angel feather in the first place.”

“Same way most people do. You know someone,” Atticus Sparks said softly, his rumbly voice following me through the living room.

“Or you go get it yourself,” I chuckled as I pulled open the door and left Sparks’s small depressing house. Walking back down the street, I nodded to the werewolf pack on the porch as I passed while I pulled out my cell phone. I called for another taxi to take me back to my own shop on the other side of town.

Fear knifed through my stomach and sped up my heart so that it coursed through my veins. I had been sure that Sparks would know how I could get out of this mess. Atticus Sparks had always seemed to me to know exactly what items needed to be mixed together in order to accomplish whatever wish a client might have. Now I needed to accomplish the impossible for a second time, and I was beginning to realize that it would take a miracle.

Or a warlock.

Chapter 15

P
apa Roach singing about betraying the ones you love was the first sound to greet me when I pulled open the front door to my parlor later that afternoon. Rather than taking the taxi to the shop, I had the driver take me to where I’d left my car, near Sparks’s old shop, which I then took to Asylum.

The heat of the day had left me feeling sweaty, sticky, and more than a little grimy. Given my fight with Simon, my scuffle in the alley with Gideon, and standing in Sparks’s disgusting home, I felt as if I were wearing a coating of the filth of the world. I would rather have taken a shower before I picked up a needle, but I would have to do with sterilizing my arms and face with the soap we had on hand. When I crawled into my own apartment tonight, I would be able to turn on water hot enough to strip away the layers of dirt and lies. For now, I had to get to work.

When I entered the main tattooing room, Trixie was sitting in one of the tattooing chairs while she picked at a salad with a black plastic fork. She grimaced at the salad, looking less than enthusiastically at the wilted lettuce and collection of vegetables.

Leaning against the doorway, I shoved my hands into my pockets and smirked at her. “I always warned you that that vegetarian shit was going to kill you. Hamburger with everything on it is the way to go.”

She gave a little jump at my voice. “Go to your grave,” she snapped, and then turned grimly serious. “I didn’t hear you enter or see you on the monitor. You powerful enough to get around the security system?”

My smirk disappeared at her question. “The music is loud and you’re distracted. If you had been looking up, you would have seen me on the video monitor. Nothing has changed, Trixie.”

“I know that nothing is supposed to have changed, Gage, but it feels like it has. The warlocks—”

“The warlocks are dangerous, and that’s why I always thought it best to keep you and Bronx in the dark about my past. TAPSS knows a little, just enough to be wary of me, but at the same time keep a close eye on the shop. Beyond that, there’s nothing that you or Bronx need to worry about. We’re still friends, right?”