Intrinsic Inks (Love Sync Ink #2)

Chapter 1 Pax

ONE

PAX

The GPS was melting down.

“Turn left,” it insisted, and I’d ended up in someone’s driveway with a large dog leaping at my windshield.

“Turn right,” and I headed for a ditch and slammed on the brakes at the last minute.

After that near miss, I pulled over where the highway narrowed to two lanes.

The spring air billowed over me when I rolled down the window, and the aroma of damp earth had me thinking of new beginnings, even ones that might be a huge mistake.

That was appropriate, considering the decisions I’d made and where I was headed.

“Should I continue or turn back?” The wildflowers hadn’t committed to poking through the earth yet and couldn’t say, so I answered the question. “Spring’s the best time for new adventures.”

That was what I’d been telling myself for the past however many miles.

It was too late to change my mind, so I continued along the narrow road, lined by mostly bare trees, though there was a hint of green at the tips. That promise of things to come gave me hope that what lay at the end of my journey was better than what I’d left behind.

I passed a gas station with rusted pumps that I assumed was abandoned, but a car pulled in. I had a lot to learn about small towns.

It was almost five, and I had to push on and get to my destination before everything closed. In a town of five thousand, “open late” was six thirty if I was lucky.

I could have played it safe and booked a motel, but Aunt June’s lawyer said her house was livable. But it was no longer her house.

My great-aunt died three months ago and left the place to me.

Not to my folks but to me. She was my grandfather’s sister, and she’d always turned up to a family gathering with crystals that had good energy and read our palms whether we wanted our fortunes told or not.

My friends and I adored her, but our parents called it “woo-woo.”

But thinking of her in the past tense felt wrong. I loved her, and I always would. The love we shared we'd put out into the universe, and it was guiding me now, better than the damned GPS. I blinked away tears.

The town appeared all of a sudden, and I drove along what was must have been Main Street, passing a post office, grocery store, hardware store, and café that was still open. The street was lined with parked cars, and I wondered where everyone was.

I’d probably be a regular at the hardware store. The lawyer said the house was livable, but that could mean anything ranging from there were four walls and a roof to needing a touch-up of paint.

The GPS decided to behave and directed me to Beacon Street. Here the houses were bigger and older and set back from the road, as if they were standoffish and didn’t want to chat to any passersby.

And suddenly, thinking of Aunt June, I was transported back eight years to when I was eighteen.

It was the summer after my first year of college. I was on the porch sprawled on a sofa staring at my phone as if it held the answers to the meaning of the universe.

Aunt June’s ancient car pulled up, covered in stickers for crystal shops and tarot card readings. She didn’t go inside or yell to my folks that she’d arrived but sat beside me as if we’d always planned on meeting like this.

“What’s going on in that head of yours?”

In hindsight, I probably should have said, “Nothing much,” or made a joke. Instead I told her I was trying to figure out what I wanted from life. “Where do I belong?”

I’d never said as much to my folks or friends, but Aunt June was someone I could share stuff with. She was the aunt who didn’t just join in my childhood adventures. She created them. We’d built blanket forts, battled imaginary armies, and camped out in the backyard and stared at the stars.

“Everything feels so temporary. The seasons come and go, people get older, and in a few years I’ll be done with college and working.” I was scared the world was moving too fast. “I need something permanent.” I had so many dreams, but I didn’t know what to do with them.

“Hmmm.” She’d pulled a smooth stone from her bag and rubbed her fingers over it. “Perhaps you could get a tattoo.”

Huh? Where had that come from? “What?”

“A tattoo. That’s permanent. That’s something that will stay with you forever.”

“I don’t think so, Aunt June.”

My parents emerged from the house, so we didn’t discuss it again. My aunt was savvy enough to know they wouldn’t approve, but I was eighteen, so any decision about a permanent mark on my body was mine. But getting a tattoo was such an out-there decision, one I wasn’t ready to make.

But that night when I was in bed, I searched tattoos online. The typical hearts, flowers, anchors, and stars didn’t feel right, so I gave up and tossed my phone aside.

The next day I was running errands for my dad, and I glanced across the street at a tattoo parlor. It’d been there since I was a kid, but I’d never paid much attention to it.

I remember crossing the road and dodging traffic. It’d been raining, and I stepped in a puddle. My shoes and the bottoms of my jeans were soaked, and I stood at the entrance to the parlor, dripping water over the concrete.

I remembered the doorbell chiming as I walked in, and beyond that, my memories were hazy.

When I walked out, the mark on me mattered.

Just as Aunt June said. It was permanent.

Orange-and-red flames curled over my left shoulder surrounded by scales.

The scales were an odd addition and had me thinking of ancient reptiles which was cool.

It hurt like heck for a few days, and when Aunt June left, we shared a look and she smiled.

I pulled into the driveway and stared at the house.

It had two stories and a porch on either side.

There was a turret at the top, a place I’d played the summer that my mom was in the hospital and I stayed with Aunt June.

The garden was overgrown, and the rose petals glistened with raindrops from an earlier storm.

This was my new life. After the lawyer called, I’d given notice and packed up my stuff.

My parents told me I was throwing away my education and a promising career, but there was nothing positive about sitting at a desk and staring at rows of numbers.

I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life, but that wasn’t it.

And besides, I didn’t look the part, with my shoulder-length dark hair and the prominent gray streaks I’d added on a whim.

I couldn’t give my folks a satisfactory answer, but I felt the same need to grasp at something new, like the day I got the tattoo.

Along with the house, my aunt had left me enough money to live on for a while. Maybe she knew I was still looking for something permanent.

I grabbed the big old-fashioned metal key from the lockbox and opened the door that creaked. I shivered and half expected a ghost to greet me.

Inside, everything was smaller than I remembered as a kid.

There were two big rooms downstairs, along with a kitchen, bathroom, and laundry.

Upstairs there were three bedrooms and an ancient bathroom, plus a winding staircase to the turret.

I didn’t venture up to that highest floor, as it was getting dark and I wasn’t ready for the shadows that held my childhood memories.

The main bedroom had a view over the town to the mountains beyond.

I stood at the window, rubbing my shoulder where the flames were hidden under my sweater.

The dry air was making it itchy, so top of my shopping list would be body moisturizer.

Eight years since I got it and I still had no memory of getting etched.

Perhaps the tattoo represented blowing up my life and moving here. Or maybe it referred to the rest of the chaos, like failing an exam, a break-up that almost derailed my senior year, and falling asleep at the wheel after an all-nighter and totaling the car.

Or was it just a tattoo with no special significance?

I grabbed one bag of clothes, my laptop, and a box of granola bars and peanut butter. The rest could wait because I needed food, a shower, and sleep.

My phone buzzed.

Did you make it?

How did I answer Mom? Yes, I made it to a dead woman’s house that now belonged to me, in a town where I knew no one to start a new life.

Yeah. Grabbing dinner. I’ll call tomorrow.

The appointment with the lawyer was at nine, and I needed to be up early, though I didn’t have far to go.

The sheets in the smallest bedroom, my old bedroom, were clean. The lawyer had arranged that. I’d sleep there tonight. It felt too soon to take over Aunt June’s bedroom, as if I was going through her things before she was really gone.

I got in the car to go get dinner and stopped at the street entrance. A truck with a blue logo drove past as I waited, and the driver slowed down. He rubbernecked so hard I expected him to drive into the fence.

By tomorrow morning everyone would know that June Bartholomew’s nephew had arrived. That was something I’d have to get used to.

As I drove toward the café, I rubbed my shoulder again. The skin under the tattoo was warm. Or was that my imagination?