The Final Catch: Book 3: See Jane Spell (The Final Catch: A Tarot Sorceress Series) (9 page)

A winged dragon crept across the floor toward me. Insects clicked and buzzed by my head and hearts beat and then became pierced by arrows and I felt every stab.

On and on it went with me trapped in the crazy onslaught of emotional animation. I heard myself moan and cry out, but no one helped me. If that wasn’t bad enough the ugly crocheted cushions on the couch began to move and turn into miniature belly dancers.

I heard myself laughing hysterically

It didn’t stop there. The pattern on the dirty carpet under my feet turned into snakes! They crawled away under the furniture. Swastikas floated through the air like Chinese lanterns. I ducked so they wouldn’t hit me in the head. A couple of I-heart-you’s snuggled up to me. I heard a very loud voice in my head, and, like Alice when the caterpillar began to speak to her, I listened.

I think I heard Sia’s voice, but Jamie interrupted.

“Jane! Jane, this is my boyfriend. Gas,” I barely recognized Jamie’s voice.

“Eff, off, Gas,” I said, with my head between my legs. I think I vomited, but I wasn’t sure.

“She
is
a sensit,” Gas said, sounding incredulous.

“What's it to you?” I heard Jamie say to Gas.

“She's got magic. S'girl feels the voo-doo in these.” He rubbed his tattooed arm and looked as if he was going to touch me again. Jamie stared him down. Gas moved on. The crowd of people that had gathered in the room to watch my hysteria went away with Gas.

Jamie turned back to me.

By now I was down on my hands and knees trying not to be sick again. She kneeled down and spoke into my ear. “Barkman’s a bit psycho. He likes to control people. That’s why he ended up in Maisie’s deck. He steals a small personal item from them and then he has a hold over them.”

If I kept my eyes shut the effects of the magical tattoos lessened. I heard Jamie suck hard on her beer.

“He killed Maisie’s Cheshire.”

“Barkman killed Maisie’s Cheshire!” I screamed. I’d lost control of my voice modulation.

I learned from Jamie that it was accidental. He got drunk and took too much blood or something like that, at least that’s what he claimed, but Jamie was pretty sure it was part of his psycho nature to take something small and precious then control it and its owner, but it backfired when he took Anastasia from Maisie.

I vomited again. As long as no one touched me again, I knew I’d recover soon. After that I had to get out of there, but again, I heard Barkman’s voice. Jamie had confiscated all my cans of hairspray. I guess she knew what they were for.

I didn’t have another plan for escape.

Barkman came out of the kitchen followed by a strange, partially naked man – naked to the waist, his body covered in tattoos and he wore a tribal voodoo mask. He carried a small cardboard box.

The mask seemed to be all teeth and eyes.

I stared and froze with terror.

The strange man pulled out a bottle of ink from the box he carried, a box missing its corner, and filled a tattoo gun he picked up from a nearby coffee table.

“What the eff is he doing?” I asked Jamie, still nearly breathless.

The man held the tattoo gun high above his head. He danced his way down the room toward me. The small crowd of partiers followed him, some dancing a little, but most walked and drank their beers. Then they rushed ahead of him to grab hold of me.

“Hey!” I yelled. I got some of my strength back, but I didn’t want to move in case I came into contact with any of their tattoos. I struggled a bit but that was useless. 

I turned to Jamie.

“A little help here?” I asked.

“They got it going.” She said, and shrugged me off.

The frightening voodoo man ran the tattoo gun along my arm. I pulled away from him, but someone holding me wrenched on my arm. “What do you think you're doing?” I looked at the masked man, straight into the whites of his eyes. Someone had relaxed and released my arm. I took the opportunity to slap that guy’s mask away.

Devon grinned devilishly back at me. “Jane,” he snapped. Now, you will be mine.  I love you, Jane.  I want you forever.”

I don’t know why I was surprised, or even why I felt so betrayed by this small time demon.

Then he touched me with the tattoo gun. He jabbed into me and I screamed. Something awful happened. I began to implode. My body folded into itself and the world rapidly shrank all around me. Faces whipped by and were gone. I was like Alice who drank from the bottle and shrank. Then, after I folded in on myself, I seemed to be racing out of control through a narrow dark tunnel, and I became liquid, black and cold, thin as ink.

I’d become locked inside a small bottle. I managed to retain a breath of consciousness and see through the glass container and watched the crowd gather as Devon performed his theatrical antics. I heard the tattoo gun start up! And I guess I had an out of body experience. It was very much like my lucid dreams, I watched from the outside as part of the jeering and cheering crowd, yet, I was stuck inside the ink bottle.

Devon turned to Barkman and carefully began to ink an illustration of me onto Barkman's chest.
Omg
. I went down the ink gun like a liquid flushed from a toilet at bullet speed, and then affixed to Barkman and his flexing pectoral. Devon hadn’t even finished and Barkman was already trying to show off.

“I'll show you, Mr. Strong guy!” I yelled inside my head. When trapped inside the Star tarot card, I had the strange experience of being in two places at one time, in Maisie’s shop and inside the tarot card; I figured out quickly how to move my consciousness back and forth. Now, snuggled into Barkman’s pec, I wiggled and moved. I kicked my legs, hard!

I heard a voice that was not part of the tribal jeer going on around us, but a deep, wise voice that I’d heard before.

Jane, it’s me. Theodosia. It’s my blood in this jar. They’ve used my blood for this ink. They ink themselves with Cheshire blood. Kick away at your belly jewel
.

Barkman had fastened my navel ring to his ear and it hung down on to chest. I’d managed to lift my legs away and booted that spangle right off Barkman’s ear. The navel jewelry fell to the floor and down an air vent.

Gone, forever.

“Where are you, Sia?” But she didn’t speak again. I hoped she wasn’t dead. I was one with Sia. Her blood, my essence, united in this ink bottle to be tattooed on Barkman’s chest.

“Nooo. You effing teensie bitch. No!” 

I’d done what she said, but I remained ingrained in the skin over his bulging muscle.

He slapped his big, meaty palm over top of me. It didn’t hurt, but jarred the hell out of me, and I stopped kicking because I didn’t want him to do it again. When he took his hand away, Barkman looked to Devon for help.

But Devon didn’t look one bit interested in helping. He was done with this whole scene. The blank look on his face indicated the disconnection he felt, as if he only now awakened from a dream. He took off his mask, shrugged and moved deep into the party….

*

…Meanwhile, upstairs in the upper part of the tattoo shop, Emilia lay in darkness that was lit only by her dying cell phone. Still tied and gagged, she tried to talk.

“Ahoo hop.” Party music wafted upward through the floor boards where Emilia managed to once again, push Maisie’s speed dial with her chin.

*

Apparently Maisie was sorting the tarot cards in her magic deck when she got the call from Emilia. The death dealer’s name showed up on her cell's call display. When Maisie answered, there was a long pause, and she did the wise thing. Rather than hang up, she waited out the silence until she got a read on where Emi was being held.

*

Maisie quickly deposited the magic tarot deck in her purse and left the Curio shop to head directly to Voo-Toos.  She had her cell phone out, “Hang in. I'm coming,” she said. She walked fast towards her car. She looked concerned. At least that’s how I’d describe the expression on her face from the phone photos she accidentally took while trying to press the right buttons to GPS Emilia.

*

Barkman looked at his tat of me in a mirror, and I tried to be as flat and as quiet as possible. He didn’t have a very friendly expression on his face. Barkman pulled the cover off the air vent, and then looked down it. He looked for the lost jewel and it soon became clear that the search was futile.

He gently stroked the tattooed image of me and made sounds like a cooing dove.  He seemed to be resigned to the fact that the jewel was gone. Stupidly, I felt a little sorry for the big lug, but not as sorry as I was gonna feel if I had to stay tattooed forever on this guy’s breast, but I knew that wasn’t going to happen.  I did a little exotic dance on there, much like the one I did for Barkman at the Black and Blue and even though that was only a few hours ago, it seemed like a life time had passed since then. Barkman loved my dance and he waved Jamie over for her to have a look.

“You lost the navel ring?” Jamie asked.

“Yeah,” he said sounding all dejected. He patted me like a master pats his good dog.

“You know, she's gonna come off.”

“Yeah,” he said, again sounding resigned to that fact.

Then with no warning, he collapsed to his knees in agony as his Jane tattoo began to pull away from his pec. 

“Babe, you okay?” I heard Jamie say as he fell away from her. I guess it hurt, lots, to lose a tattoo.

I reappeared in the room, but I’d never really left it. If I’d stayed very much longer as a tattoo on Barkman, I believe I would have lost myself and disappeared completely from the land of the living. While Barkman still writhed on the floor, I took the opportunity to reach into his pocket and grab the keys to his bike.

“Hey!” I heard Jamie yell after me. The crowd turned on me and surrounded me before I could get away. “Stop her,” I heard Jamie yell.  I instinctively reached for Sia’s collar hanging from my necklace under my shirt. I snapped it onto my wrist and the crowd disappeared, and I assumed I did too.

That was great but for the fact I was in that strange, surreal, Cheshire landscape, I’d only experienced one other time while in the Curio shop with Sia. I made sure I stayed quiet so that Jamie’s gang didn’t hear any great meows from me.  Despite the topsy-turvy crazy of the Cheshire dimension, I managed to find my way out of the basement. The Cheshire dimension was a little less surreal than it was the last time, and I remembered Sia telling me that I’d get better at navigating it. I ran out of that tattoo hell party, and when I figured I was outside, I took off Sia’s collar, hopped on the Harley and took off.

*

The fact that I’d never ridden a motorcycle of any kind didn’t slow me at all.  I weaved, and jerked, and nearly stalled my way down the road. I think that if Barkman had had the strength to chase me, he most probably could have caught up on foot.

I can’t ride.

After two blocks of nearly running over every curb and manhole, I abandoned the bike, but not before I grabbed Emi’s sword. I pushed it through my belt loops and called Maisie.

“Where are you?” I asked breathlessly.

*

Maisie stood in the shadows of the tattoo shop. When she saw Emilia on the floor, she hurried over and cut her lose. She finally pulled the gag off Emilia, and used it to wipe down her sweaty face.

That’s how she described it, and she let me watch live from her cell. Her conversation was short and sweet.

“At the ink shop, upstairs, rescuing Emilia.”

I was just there. I should have saved her. “I have her sword,” I said, hoping that might make up for something. I stopped running and held up the sword and looked at it as it gleamed in the moonlight.

Maisie continued to whisper. “Good hang on tight to that sword.  I’m trying to untie Emilia.Meet us wherever you left Glendie. Where
did
you leave her?”

Omg
, Glendie handcuffed to the fence all this time.  I really hoped she wasn’t dead, or worse, found by someone.

“The fence,” I said. “Behind the bank. A kilometer or so. I cuffed her to the fence. Hello?” Maisie hung up on me.

I ran.

As I drew closer to the lane, where’d I’d left Glendie, I stopped, looked into the deep, dark shadows, looking for what, I’m not sure. I was working up my courage to walk down there and see how Glendie had fared. I had a really bad feeling in my gut. I was out of breath from all the running, and all I heard was my own breathing as I walked through the dark to the chain link fence. A single street lamp shone pushing back the night.

Glendie was gone.

The golden handcuffs hung from the links. They weren’t locked and I unhooked them and put them on my belt loop. I took a seat on the garbage can I’d put there for Glendie to sit on.  I buried my face in my hands then rubbed my eyes. I was tired and a little upset about the missing Glendie.

I really hoped she was alright.

A shiny black Mercedes came slinking down the back lane. Emi and Maisie arrived in style. The window on the driver side slid down. Maisie’s eyes glistened as she stared at me.