Ink (28 page)

“No, the kid didn’t do anything. I haven’t even seen him. I’m just tired, that’s all.”

He kissed her, and her lips tasted like a promise, a promise he didn’t think he could keep. He wanted to take her upstairs and keep kissing her until he forgot about everything, but he couldn’t. Forgetting wouldn’t make it go away.

“Okay,” she said when their lips parted.

You’ll get through this. Remember your father’s words. Strong on the inside, where it counts.

6

Jason caught the last ten minutes of the news, but saw no special reports. A phone call to Shelley would be the easiest way to find out, but if he called and she didn’t answer, or worse, if she did answer, maybe with her left hand? He could ask her if she’d seen a griffin lately. Big critter with golden-brown wings, a lion’s tail and wickedly sharp talons.

Jason laughed. Psychosis didn’t run in the family, but there was always a first time for everything, even lunacy.

Call her.

“No, I don’t think so.”

That was what a guilty estranged husband would do. He had to do something, though. He couldn’t sit around waiting for something to happen, not anymore.

7

Jason drove to Fells Point with a stone in his chest. He’d tell Sailor he saw the griffin and demand answers. Sailor might not even be at the shop, not this late, but Jason had a feeling he didn’t keep banker’s hours, and if Sailor
wasn’t
there, he’d wait as long as he needed to. Sailor had to come back sometime.

He found a parking spot on the opposite side of the street directly across from the café and sat in the car, watching the dark windows, with only his travel mug of coffee for company. Neither the moon nor the pale glow of the streetlamps touched the shadows on Shakespeare Street. Noises from the bars, only a block away, should have been audible, but they weren’t. A strange hush—the absence of sound—filled the spaces in the street. Even the wind was quiet; it reached into the car, touched his skin, then danced away. The silence tasted like tears and sorrow and dread.

The entrance to 1303 wavered in the darkness, a door-shaped suggestion, sometimes clear and sometimes not there at all. He laughed and the street swallowed up the sound. The street appeared abandoned, not deserted, the buildings standing like broken statues in a desert of gray, forgotten and neglected. The silent wind sent a twisted section of newspaper down the center of the street, but the paper made no sound as it bounced on the asphalt. The smell of exhaust and the water of the harbor should’ve kissed the air; instead, the street had no smell at all.

But it does. Underneath the silence, it smells of despair.

A fat fly, made lazy from the night’s warmth, landed on his windshield and sat motionless, but nothing else moved. Not far away, a siren roared to life, loud enough to pierce the thick quiet, then the wail faded and vanished into nothing at all. Jason drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. An odd sensation buzzed in his ears, like soft, dangerous music.

After an hour passed, a group of people strolled down the street, their bright laughter odd and out of place, and stopped in front of a car parked in front of the café. One young woman with long dark hair turned to face the buildings, and she rubbed her upper arms, still staring as her friends climbed into the car. They didn’t notice when her arms dropped down to her sides and her shoulders slumped. She looked directly at the door for 1303, and Jason wondered if she saw the door or brick.

It’s stronger tonight. Whatever lingers here is somehow more.

Jason’s fingers clenched on the steering wheel.

Look away. It’s his magic. Sailor magic.

Another girl with copper-colored curls stepped back out of the car and shook the dark-haired girl’s arm. When she turned with a face empty of all expression, the redhead backed up, talking to the others already in the car. Jason reached for the door handle as the girl shifted and flooded back into herself. The redhead got back into the car; the dark-haired girl started to follow. She paused to look over her shoulder, shuddered, and disappeared into the car. When the tail lights vanished around the corner, Jason gulped down the last of his cold coffee.

What am I doing here?

The answer, which seemed so clear earlier, was now hazy at the edges. When he reached for the key, the window above the door to 1303 filled with pale, bluish light. He shook his head, sure it was an illusion, but the image remained. The light appeared a little to the right the door, not directly above, which didn’t make sense, since the door at the top of the narrow staircase had opened to the left.

Left. Right. Does it matter? Your tattoo is alive. You can’t get more ”doesn’t make sense” than that.

High-pitched carnival music drifted past. Jason turned his head to catch the tune, but it faded away. An upbeat whistle began at the top of the street, growing louder as a darkness in the shadows moved closer. He slid low in the seat. A man-sized shape emerged, and the whistle slowed. Shifted to melancholy. A tune reminiscent of cigarette smoke, horned instruments, women with tight dresses and small waists and men with striped suits and dangerous smiles. The whistle shifted again, and the smell of the street became exotic perfume, hair oil and smoke hovering in a thick cloud overhead. Jason closed his eyes, sighing as the whistle slid inside his head, like a memory.

But someone else’s. Not mine.

Notes shivered in the air as the musicians played in the crowded club, and even though the song held sadness in its words, laughter drifted under the haze of tobacco smoke. The women held cigarettes in red-lacquered nails and smiled in all the right places. They were window-dressing, beautiful, but curved to admire and bed and nothing more. A group of men with slicked-back hair leaned in over their table, their brows creased with the intensity of their conversation. They were the kind of men best to avoid; Jason moved away from their table as fast as he could.

Except I’m not here. Not really. I’m in his memories somehow, even though it feels real.

The smoke stung his eyes, and a woman bumped into him as she passed. She turned, smiling with full, pink-lipsticked lips in a way that said the bump wasn’t accidental. Her lips matched the pink, satiny dress clinging to her swaying hips. He could follow her…

The music reached a crescendo, drowning out all the voices as it built and built, the notes climbing impossible heights. It hung, then with a clash of cymbals, stopped. Applause followed, some enthusiastic, some only polite. Perfunctory.

When the band members walked offstage, the drummer’s skin shimmered like ebony in the lights, in sharp contrast to his crisp, white shirt. He wiped sweat off his brow and laughed, a big, booming laugh filled with genuine happiness, not caring if anyone in the room paid any attention at all; he played for the love of the music. His bald head bobbed through the crowd as he walked to the bar and stopped only once, when the pink-lipped woman touched his upper arm with an enviable familiarity and whispered something in his ear. As he laughed again, his eyes filled with naked hunger. She walked away, smiling.

I would stay away from her, buddy. I think she’s more dangerous than the slick men.

The bartender slid a drink across the bar, nodding toward the end. Jason followed the nod. The man wore a dark, tailored suit, and his features struck a chord in Jason’s own memory. The memories of the club

Max’s

pushed it away. The suited man lifted his drink in a silent toast. The drummer did the same, then walked over to him. He sat down on the padded stool next to the man in the suit, their lips moving in conversation.

It’s when they met.

But how could I know that? This isn’t real. It’s some sort of illusion.

Jason stood too far away to hear their words, but they both wore smiles on their faces. The drummer turned to look at the woman in the pink dress several times, each time with the same expression. He wanted her. Maybe not for forever, but for more than an hour or two. He couldn’t because she was married to a bastard with fast fists, and it wouldn’t take much to push him over the edge. Her husband wasn’t one of the slick men, but he was slick.

How do I know all this? Why is he showing this to me?

Eventually, another musician went over to the drummer and nudged his shoulder. He said his goodbyes to the man in the suit and walked back to the stage. The man left behind slid money onto the bar, and when he got up, his eyes—pale, watery green eyes—met Jason’s. A razor-sharp jolt of fear sent his pulse racing. The man in the suit started to walk toward Jason, but he didn’t walk. He
rolled
. Hips first, then legs, then hips again. A shipwalk. A sailor walk.

But he’s never been on a ship. Not this man.

The music started again, and this time it wasn’t sad. It was longing. The desire to possess the very thing you cannot touch. Whispered words and unrequited love. The green eyes moved closer, close enough for Jason to smell the oil in his hair and the smoke on his clothing. He rolled past Jason and smiled a terrible smile. It held dark promises, that smile.

A musician with a voice like warm honey sang with one hand pressed against his chest. “Had a girl and she sure was fine.”

Jason shuddered.

“Don’t worry. You’ll have plenty of company,” the suited man said in a husky, cigarette voice.

The memory disappeared in a flash.

It was a game. All of it. It wasn’t real, even though I could hear their voices. And the music. The song…

Still whistling, the shape rolled out of the shadows, the orderly from the hospital, in a bright white dress shirt and black pinstriped pants, although not just the orderly, but also the man from the club. The bones of his face held a different shape, yet Jason knew it was the same man. The same man but with Sailor’s walk.

The orderly stopped in front of the faded gray door and looked over at Jason with a smile on his dark face, his green eyes glowing in the darkness like a cat’s, then he opened the door and slipped inside. Jason waited for five minutes.

With his heart racing, he got out of the car, darted across the street, and approached the door. It wavered in the shadows but held its shape. He raised his hand, reached out, and his fingers met brick instead of wood.

What the hell?

He stepped back. In several places, the faded paint peeled down in brittle strips with red underneath the gray, bright, vivid red, like streaks of blood under the paint. He moved forward and placed his palms on the door. Once again, his skin met rough brick. He slid his hands down the door

the brick

and paint peeled away. When he pulled his hands back and turned them up, a small, jagged piece of gray paint lay like an ashen tear in the center of his palm. It grew warm, then hot, hot enough to burn. Jason suppressed a shout, shaking his hand to dislodge the paint. A small pink circle of flesh appeared next to the line separating his thumb from the rest of his hand—his own personal stigmata.

The orderly had gone inside; the door had to be there. Jason put his hands back on the door and dragged them down, hissing through his teeth as the brick scraped the skin raw. More paint peeled, falling to the ground in flakes. Jason brought his hands back up, then down, pushing harder.

I can see the door. It’s right here.

Heat bloomed against his skin again, and pieces of gray stuck to the bloody streaks on his skin. When he rubbed his hands on his jeans, the burn stopped. Blood streaked the surface of the door. Real blood, not paint.

He reached for the handle, and for one fleeting moment, his fingers curled around the cool curve of metal, then it vanished, leaving behind only brick. His eyes narrowed. He knew Sailor waited inside, just as he knew the door was real but hidden somehow, hidden by some dark magic.

Iblis magic.

Jason curled his hands into fist and pounded on the

brick the door the brick the

door. The skin on one of his knuckles split, leaving behind a long streak of blood on the gray. His shoulders hunched forward as he took his hands away. He knew he could stand there all night knocking; it wouldn’t matter. If Sailor didn’t want him to come in, he would never touch the door. It would always be the brick wall, because he—

Made a mistake, son.

“Go away, Dad. You’re dead and you can’t help me,” he said.

But he had made a mistake, a grave one. Sailor wouldn’t open the door because their business was done. The griffin belonged to him now.

“And I have to get rid of it.”

The signs had all been there from the very start: the dogs’ reactions, the tails left on his doormat, his father’s words before dying, the strange heat in his arm when the minister touched him.

“Even my nieces knew.”

All there, right in the open.

“And I ignored them all.”

He’d been weak, spineless, and too afraid to accept the truth, so he’d turned away and tuned it out, the same thing he’d done for years and years.

“Brilliant, Jason. Just brilliant.”