Page 99 of The Seven Miracles of Beatrix Holland
Minna squeaked. “Can I ever!” She pulled out a drawer and then muttered, “Whoops, can I? Hang on.” Then she triumphantly held up a plastic bottle with a purple pointed top. “Yes, I can!”
The prep went quickly. Minna asked Beatrice to draw the sigil while she sterilized the tattoo area and her tools. Then Minna made a stencil sheet of the design and pressed it against Beatrice’s right wrist. She pulled the paper away, leaving behindlight purple lines. “You like the placement? We can move it, or make it bigger or smaller, whatever.”
“It’s perfect.”
Minna sniffed. “That’s a gardenia flower, right? Is that what I smell?”
There it was, again, that sweet perfumed air.Wow.“Yeah.”
“She sure smells good.” Minna held up the gun. “This won’t hurt very much. And if I’m lying, at least it won’t take very long.”
But Minna wasn’t lying. The tattooing hardly hurt at all. The pain of the needle wasn’t like any other pain Beatrice had ever felt, actually. If someone were holding her down and tattooing her against her will, it probably would have hurt like a son of a bitch. But as it was, it felt like a weird, scratchy itch, one that she’d chosen. It felt good.
As she worked, Minna kept up a steady stream of chatter, as if she were trying to distract her. Beatrice listened and responded, but the words didn’t feel important.
Nothing felt as important as being here with Minna, getting the symbol of Naya (and of her, and of her father) inscribed upon her skin.
The gardenia scent bloomed, getting more and more heady, until Minna finally said, “There. Done.” She wiped away a small bit of blood welling to the surface. “Look as much as you want, and then I’m going to wrap it in plastic for the night, okay? Tomorrow you can let it air out and I’ll show you how to take care of it. Do you like it? How does it feel?”
It feltright. As if Beatrice’s skin had been waiting for this, exactly. “I love it. It’s weird…”
Minna took off her gloves and reached for her phone. “I’ll put on a new pair before I wrap it, but I want to get some good shots now—is that okay?”
“Sure. The scent has faded, right?”
Minna nodded. “I have a theory.”
Did it match the question running through Beatrice’s mind? “The smell went into my skin with the ink?”
“That’s what I think.”
“Oh.” Beatrice felt warmed from the inside out. “She’s inside me.”
Minna held her phone over Beatrice’s wrist, taking multiple shots. “Well, to be fair, she already was. But yeah, stuff like that’s important. Reno’s got Scarlett’s ashes in a couple of her tattoos.”
“Oh, my god, people do that?”
“It’s not a big deal if you do it right. Which I do. I wish I had some of my dad’s ashes, but he was buried. If I did, I’d use them in the sigil I’m trying to copy from that photo of him—do you want to see it?”
“Of course I do.”
Minna flipped open a notebook to a sketch of a bold T surrounded by slashes and lines made through two conjoined circles. The effect was strong, almost leaping off the page.
“I love it.”
“I’m getting closer. I know I’m missing something, but I can’t tell what it is.”
“It’ll come to you.”
With a sly look, Minna said, “Oryoucould help me figure it out by auto-writing.Hecould tell me.”
“Nope.” Okay, rejecting her niece’s bad ideas was getting easier with practice apparently.
Minna huffed out a breath. “I keep trying. I say the spell perfectly but nothing happens. What’s wrong with me? Why can’t I do it?”
The image of the fountain pen entering the padlock rose in Beatrice’s mind.
“Oh!” Minna exclaimed. “You figured it out!”
