Page 40 of The Deer and the Dragon
Chapter Fourteen
I was struck by how medical it smelled.
The chemical scents of astringent and dried blood filled my nostrils from the moment I stepped through the door. I’d expected dark rooms, leather jackets, skulls, and the sort of intimidating figure who might have stepped off the streets from a motorcycle gang. The music was a little too loud, but it was the sort of alternative rock I liked. Glass cases full of jewelry greeted me. Elaborate art dotted the walls. A girl with a swirly spike in her gauged ear and an inked sleeve of herbs and spices smiled at me as I entered. She was in a lovely shade of mustard and wore the sort of embellished, floral broach I’d seen only on grannies in their late nineties. She looked up from her phone and flashed me her teeth.
“Do you have an appointment?” she asked, voice chirping up over the bass that thrummed through the building, both music and receptionist fighting to be heard over the constant buzz from somewhere in the back.
“Do you take walk-ins?”
She nodded. “Can I see the size of your piece?”
I showed her and she offered me a reassuring look. “You’re lucky,” she said. “Nick is busy, but Mikey is scheduled for a regular who always shows up an hour late, and we’ve barely opened. He should be able to squeeze you in. But even if thepiece only takes twenty minutes, we still charge one-hour minimum. Got it?”
She shouted for Mikey after my nod in confirmation. She slid a form for me to sign my life away before I lay down in Mikey’s chair. He examined the folded piece of paper.
“That wizard movie?” he asked.
I closed my eyes in a soft chuckle, making an on-the-spot decision as to whether or not now was the time to grandstand about ethical consumption of media. Instead, I landed on responding with, “Absolutely not.”
“Sacred geometry, then? One of those chakra things?”
I made an apologetic face. He was trying, but I wasn’t ready to be loose-lipped. “Not quite.”
“This some demonic shit?” he asked. Mikey was a man in his late thirties covered in a series of disconnected patchwork tattoos, not unlike someone collecting Girl Scout badges.
We were surrounded by paintings, prints, and charts, presumably from the artists who worked at the studio. Some were intricate mandalas or lovely watercolors; others were big-breasted purple women with horns poking up from their glossy hair in 1950s pinup poses. An enormous mural of the four horsemen of the apocalypse lined one end of the shop, showcasing a skeletal army of conquest, famine, war, and death. Maybe they’d be fine with devilry. I tore my eyes from the painting to look at the man who waited patiently for my answer.
I looked as nonchalant as I could. “It might be. Can you make the circle better? I did sort of a bad job.”
“Are there any other changes—”
“No!” I said a little too forcefully, jolting up as I did so. I made myself relax before lying back down. He raised his eyebrows at me, so I calmed my tone before saying, “The only thing I want perfected is the circle around it. Other than that, you can’t change a single thing. Not a line, not a shape, nothing. Okay?”
He shrugged as he dipped the needle in ink. “It’s your tattoo, boss.”
I swallowed as he lowered the humming piece of machinery to my arm, pausing on my forearm. He hovered on the flat spot just below my elbow crease.
“You ready?”
I didn’t know, truth be told. I’d gotten little splashes of ink before; that wasn’t the problem. The conversation-starting sun and moon on my opposing ring fingers that had connected Taylor and me on the streets of Buenos Aires had hurt, but the pain wasn’t stopping me.
This wasn’t a tattoo.
This was a folded piece of paper in the back of my pocket that had allowed me to see the Cheshire-cat smile of a parasitic entity. It was the sigil that had existed above my door for longer than I could possibly know. If Fauna was right, it was the very thing that had let me see Silas even in a basement of nightmares.
Maybe I’d need to bond myself to someone in order to lift the veil and see the things that existed beyond mortal sight…
Or maybe…
“I’m ready.”
“Remind me to make an adjustment to the wards so I can come and go. I didtoogood of a job on your doors and had to sweet-talk your doorman to let me up. On that note, he should probably be fired. He thinks pretty girls can’t be hitmen? Sexist.” It was Fauna’s greeting as she breezed in like a tornado. Her outfit was a little different today—now in a cutoff, oversize band T-shirt that showed most of her midriff and something that might have been mandalas on her pants. They hugged the small of her waist, then tumbled in loose, hemp crinkles over her hips until they reached the floor. She looked like she’d just stumbled out of a music festival. I had no idea where this creature was getting her clothes.
She’d barely entered the apartment, her stolen rose-gold card still clattering to the island, before her eyes sharpened.She sniffed the air once, then fixed her eyes on me with laser focus. She stormed toward me with the threat of a thunderhead, descending on me before I had enough time to do anything other than close my laptop and shove it on the cushion beside me.
She grabbed my wrist roughly and yanked the sleeve up over my elbow. I yelped against the yank of fabric on raw skin. Her eyes froze on the red, raised welt that stung below the fresh black ink. She stared at it for a long while with inscrutable emotion. When her eyes lifted, a small, appreciative smile tugged at the corner of her lips. She was quiet for a while before she said, “Maybe you’re not such a dumbass after all.”
“Will it work?” I breathed, looking from my swollen tattoo to her sparkling doe eyes.
