Chapter Nine – Jack #2
It was a woman’s voice and as Luna turned I could see her.
She was a black woman, as lean as she was tall.
Her brown eyes were wide-set, her lips full, and she was wearing a white tight fitting long sleeved shirt, and a long white skirt that made the darkness of her skin appear more stark.
Her hair was close cropped and she wore no make-up—she didn’t need any.
“Hey—I was looking for Jack?” She had a light accent and glanced between us as though worried she’d interrupted something.
“You’ve found him.” I gave her a warm smile. See? Word of mouth. All Dark Ink Tattoo needed was word of mouth. I nudged Luna. “Go home.”
“What?”
“Your shift’s over. I’ve got this. I’ll set you up with the computer stuff tomorrow.”
“But—how am I,” she started to protest.
“You got here somehow, right? I suggest you take that same mode of transportation—only this time in reverse.” I could see her transforming back into petulant girl-mode before my eyes, and I didn’t want the customer to see.
“Don’t make me tell you,” I said under my breath, threatening her with my whammy.
Her eyes narrowed sharply and her lips set. But she’d been whammied before—I had no doubt Rosalie liked to order even her right-hand-woman around—so she knew what I could do.
“Fine. See you later. At home,” she said spitefully.
I nodded and gestured her toward the door. Luna grabbed her bag and stomped out. Watching this, the woman’s eyebrows rose.
“Sorry,” I apologized. “New hire, visiting from out of town—distant cousin. She thinks she’s more important than she is. Sometimes you tell an aunt you’ll do a favor, and you get more than you bargained for.”
The woman crossed long arms. “I see.”
“So, now—how can I help you? I only do tattoos—if you want a piercing, you’ll have to come back during daytime.”
“I want someone to add on to my original art.” She gave me a Cheshire cat smile, teeth white against the darkness of her lips.
“Come on back,” I said, holding one of the saloon doors wide.
I settled her into my station and handed her my portfolio.
She didn’t look like the tattoo getting type—especially what with all the clothes hiding them—but I would do my best, no matter what.
Maybe she’d made a bad decision back in college and what she wanted was a cover-up.
You had to be confident to tattoo darker skin, to have an appreciation for it, so that it would appreciate your art—and luckily for her, confidence was my middle name.
“These are nice and you come highly recommended,” she said, closing the examples.
“But?” I asked, because I heard one.
“But not everyone is used to tattooing on me.”
There was a stillness to her, one I had attributed to the elegance that seemed to surround her, but now up close it was eerie. Almost pressing.
Maybe confidence was just my middle initial.
“If you show me what you want worked on, I’ll try a sketch. If you don’t like the sketch, no harm done.”
“All right.” She started rolling up one sleeve, revealing a long and dagger-like shape that could also be a cross, in ink done three shades darker than the natural tone of her arm. It was subtle—it made it look like the cross was a part of her, living just beneath her skin.
And I had recently seen a similar tattoo on a dying man who’d sworn vengeance on all vampire-kind.
“That’s lovely,” I said, pushing back. If she was human, I could whammy her. If she wasn’t…. “Let me get my good pen,” I said and turned, acting normal while watching her reflection in the shop glass.
The second my back was turned, objects behind me began levitating.
My tattoo gun, my tray of inks, even Luna’s neck-stabbing pencil.
I had no doubt she could hurl them at me, the only question was with how much force.
I had inhaled to command her to drop them—even though I didn’t know how she was holding them up—when the bells chimed and Luna raced back in, a blur in the glass’s reflection.
“Don’t hurt him!” she shouted, a battle cry, and in her hand was something jagged and white. As I whirled, objects dropped, and the strange woman had darted away, pressing her back against my office’s wall.
Luna leapt over the counter and raced to my side, hissing like a cat, and I could see what she held—it looked like a rib-bone on a handle, like a tiny scythe. The woman pushed her hands out to ward it away from her, while Luna made forward jabbing motions.
“He’s mine!” Luna shouted. “All mine!”
“That is a matter of debate,” I said, stepping aside. The woman’s eyes weren’t on me anymore—she was looking for an exit—and I heard a nearby window start to rattle.
“Don’t!” I commanded with my whammy. The rattle stopped, and Luna momentarily stilled. “I’m sorry—windows are expensive.”
The woman’s jaw ground as if in pain. “What perverse things would you have me do, demon?” Every time Luna got closer to her with the bone she held, the woman winced.
“Luna, stop that,” I said.
Luna growled. “Don’t get your hopes up. He won’t even do perverse things with me.” She lowered her arm a little, but still held the bone out like a weapon. The woman stopped wincing, but her eyes gave away that she knew she was trapped.
“I suppose you know Bryan?” I’d talked to the dying tattooed man before his death. He’d been planning a raid on Rosalie’s secret hide out prior to his capture. He’d called it a ‘nest’, and he’d lined the edges of the tunnels there with C4.
“I knew Bryan,” she said, correcting my tense. “Before you killed him.”
I raised a hand, as if about to swear. “Technically, I did not kill him, nor drink from him. But I’ll admit that I was there.
I was watching a friend of mine’s child at the time, trying to protect him from a werewolf army—I didn’t have any leverage to use on Bryan’s behalf.
I’m sorry.” She snorted in disbelief. “He did say something before he died,” I went on.
“About some guy named Sam. He wanted him to know he’d died. ”
“He meant Samantha. She who stands before you, now.”
And she who had some sort of freakish telekinetic powers. I nodded. “Again, I’m sorry. If it makes you feel better, I killed both Tamo and Rosalie myself. And I got to use his very cleverly placed bombs.”
She—Sam—still appeared tense. I reached out and pushed Luna back, and at that, Sam began relaxing.
“Why are you here, Sam? What can I do for you?”
Luna gave me an aghast look. I ignored her.
Sam settled her shoulders and lifted her chin, becoming regal once more. “I would see where he died.”
I’d left Bryan at the bottom of a mine-shaft—that’d then been exploded. “You’d need a backhoe and a construction crew to get his body back.”
“I don’t need that. I only need to see where he died.”
It occurred to me belatedly that being telekinetic was perhaps like being your own construction crew. “Fair enough. I’ve got a booking at two.”
“That was me,” she admitted.
“Well then—I guess my evening’s free.”
“No, it is not,” Luna said, jabbing her weapon forward and Sam shuddered in pain.
“Luna—stop that,” I repeated. She followed orders, but only barely, and her eyes were dark. “Sam’s not going to kill me, is she?” I asked the woman in third person.
She spread her hands wide in innocence. “Not tonight.”
“Give me a few minutes to close up.”
Sam stood and made her way outside. Luna watched her like a hawk, before whirling on me the moment the door was closed.