Читать книгу Angel’s Ink - Jocelynn Drake - Страница 6

STEPPING INSIDE THE air-conditioned arctic of the tattoo parlor, I kicked the door shut while dropping my bag, along with the gun, on the floor. I twisted around and slid the dead bolt back into place and glanced around the parlor. The lobby had dark hardwood floors covered in ancient area rugs with worn floral patterns. An old ceramic fireplace stood against one wall, its mouth covered to hold in the heat during the winter and the cool during the blistering summer months. The wall was covered in plastic flip boards that held common tattoo designs we had done in the past to give potential clients some suggestions should they need them. But in most cases, clients didn’t much bother with the flip boards, preferring to rely on the knowledge of the artist. A counter with a clear glass case stood before the doorway to the actual tattoo work space. It held a variety of old books and pictures depicting tattoos from the earliest of days, when only sailors were among the clientele. They had been handed down to me by the man I had apprenticed under when I decided to open my own shop.

A faint hint of antiseptic hung in the air from where Bronx had sterilized most of the surface areas in the back before closing up the night before. Underlying that was the smell of stale magic, which always made me smile a little. It was a distinct smell that only the experienced magic user could pick up, and I had more experience than I was willing to admit to anyone.

I leaned down and threw back the largest of the area rugs near the center of the room, revealing a pentagram deeply etched into the wood floor. Stepping into the center of the pentagram, I closed my eyes but still hesitated. I reminded myself that this type of magic fell under the self-defense clause. Besides, it was a rune spell and the guardians couldn’t pick up on that kind of magic very well. Energy flowed around me, beating against my skin while trying to push its way into my brain. I started a low chant while keeping my arms lifted slightly at my sides. Magic energy coursed through me for a few seconds before shifting throughout the front room and flowing to the back room and down into the basement, completing my bidding.

After a second, I dropped my arms back to my sides and narrowed my eyes as I stared at the front door. A slight blue glow that only I could see clung to the opening. The spell was a small one, allowing me to see through anyone’s glamour as they entered my tattoo parlor. You never knew who was going to walk through your door and I wasn’t taking any chances. I had to recast the spell every day before opening the shop, but it was a small price to pay. Besides, security systems didn’t come cheap, and getting one that included magical defenses was even more expensive since it involved finding a warlock or a witch willing to do a little menial labor. Not fucking likely.

The deglamour spell had proved itself time and time again, and very few could sense it when they walked through the door. Bronx had before I hired him—I remembered seeing him open the door and pause at the threshold. I had been sitting behind the counter at the time, and I remember seeing the troll narrow his eyes at me before he stepped boldly into the room. I doubted whether he could tell what the spell was exactly, but he knew it was there. I simply smiled and shrugged. The Asylum Tattoo Parlor wasn’t in the greatest neighborhood, and I had every right to protect myself and any colleagues. Bronx never said a word about the spell and I think that was part of the reason I hired him. That, and he had some of the most impressive shading skills and creative line work I had ever seen. His potion-stirring skills hadn’t been the strongest when he had been hired, but he proved to be a fast learner.

However, the greatest revelation had come from Trixie. She had given a little shudder when she stepped into the tattoo parlor, but by her expression, I could tell that she had simply waved it off as a cold chill. The spell had instantly stripped away the glamour spell she had been using, leaving it as little more than a hazy shadow over her tight, lithe form so that I could see she was truly an elf. I had never told her that I knew exactly what she was and had no intention of mentioning it. She was cloaking her true presence for a reason and I had no desire to go digging into something that wasn’t any of my business.

Besides, Trixie was good for the parlor. Her long slender legs, revealed by a pair of short shorts during the summer, and her dainty tank tops filled out by perky breasts and topped off with a gorgeous face drew in more than a fair share of repeat male clients. Her sweet, outgoing personality and her skill with a needle made her an amazing package I preferred not to lose, so her secrets were her own.

Stepping out of the pentagram, I kicked the rug back and made sure that the corner lined up with the bit of masking tape on the floor I used as a guide to ensure that the rug hadn’t been moved. No one needed to know about the pentagram. As far as anyone else was concerned, I was just a tattoo artist and didn’t know shit about real magic.

I grabbed my gym bag and slung it over my shoulder. The front door was locked and the spell was back in place. It was time to get to work.

In the main room of the tattoo parlor, I flicked on the lights and let my eyes travel over the white counter space, the three large chairs, and the rainbow of ink bottles that lined one wall. Everything was neat and tidy, ready for another day. But then, Bronx was very organized and neat when he worked. He had no problem cleaning up the shop before he left at the end of the night. The only one who might have been more organized and clean conscious was a vampire, but I preferred not to have one on staff. I didn’t need to worry about a staff member taking a nip at someone while in the middle of a job.

I crossed the room and headed down a narrow hallway to a windowless back room. This was where we completed some tattoos while offering clients privacy should the tattoo be in a place that was more than a little revealing. There were other, darker reasons for using the back room for tattooing, but then I always figured it was the decision of the tattoo artist to go down that path. I didn’t ask too many questions, particularly since I used this room the most often of the three of us.

Shutting the door behind me, I went over to the floor-to-ceiling wood cabinet that covered one wall and pulled it open. Thousands of bottles, vials, plastic containers, and yellowing envelopes filled it. This was where we kept the main ingredients to stir into the potions needed for the majority of the tattoos people came to get. Sure, some customers just wanted a little ink. But most wanted something extra. They wanted the tattoo to do something for them, and whether it was a burst of good luck, a dollop of true love, or even a hex on an ex, we could get it done—for a price.

After scanning the vials for a second, I pulled down the one that held the leprechaun hair and glanced at the date on the side. It wasn’t that old and shouldn’t have gone bad on me already. It had to be the source of the hair that was less than … prime. In my limited experience, some leprechauns were just plain evil, running more toward their cousins the imp and the hinky-punk than their more compassionate faerie cousins. I had to be careful stirring with this ingredient or I was going to end up shot. Good luck spells were fairly common, though I generally relied on the leprechaun hair only for the cheap asses.

All the same, I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket and dialed Lana’s number down at Curl Up & Dye. After a few minutes of mindless chatter and harmless flirting with the stylist, I got her to promise to bring me down a new tuft of leprechaun hair, from a different source this time, in the next couple of days. For now, I was stuck with what I had and we needed to be careful with it.

Slipping my cell phone back in my pocket, I walked over to the back of the room and pulled up the trapdoor in the floor with only a whisper of a creak. Most of the time, a chair was left on the trapdoor to make it look like it was unused, but I suspected that my coworkers were aware of my occasional disappearances down into the basement.

Despite the overwhelming darkness, I easily grabbed the pull chain on the single bare bulb in the basement and jerked it on before touching the dirt floor. Lined up along three of the walls were additional wood cabinets holding more volatile and rarer items. Some I had been lucky enough to inherit, while others were purchased on the black market. All of them were for my exclusive use, and they were what made me the most successful tattoo artist in town. When you wanted something done right and had the cash to pay for it, it was all about the ingredients in the ink rather than the design on the skin.

On the one bare stone wall was another pentagram spray-painted in black. This one held the power to attack any intruders. I glanced over the items one time and did a quick check on the spell to see that it was still intact and cast by me. No one had been down here without my knowledge. The same tension that coiled in my stomach every day I walked into the shop finally unwound and I breathed a sigh of relief. The basement held other spells, cloaking special items from view, protecting both them and me. There were things down here that people would kill for and ones that were an automatic death sentence for possessing without being a witch or a warlock.

Overhead, I heard the sound of the front door opening and slamming shut followed by the heavy pounding of heels across the hardwood floor. I knew that cadence. Trixie was in early.

Hurrying up the stairs, I shut the trapdoor behind me and dropped my bag on it to keep it partially hidden from view. It was time to get to work.

“Is there a reason a gun is lying on the floor?” Trixie asked casually as I met her in the main tattooing area.

Shit. I’d forgotten about the gun. It was now sitting quite obviously on the floor, beside the front door where I had left it. Not exactly the best thing to leave lying around a tattoo parlor where any of your more unstable customers could pick it up.

“Rough afternoon,” I muttered, but the words didn’t come out sounding as indifferent as I had hoped; then my eyes fell on Trixie’s outfit for today. Instead of her usual shorts, she wore a pair of jeans with some strategically placed holes and tears. Her top was a black leather bustier that accented the swell of her breasts and left a broad swath of her flat stomach bare. Her long blond locks were pulled back in some twist thing that allowed some thick strands to frame her face. As she turned to drop her bag on the counter, I could easily make out the butterfly-wings tattoo between her shoulder blades. Somehow, they seemed to sparkle in the light as she moved.

Clenching my teeth, I ducked my head as I walked out into the lobby and picked up the gun. She was going to be the death of my sanity. I positively ached to touch her, to run my hands along skin I knew would be as smooth as satin, and bury my nose in her neck to drink in her sweet scent. I knew better than to mix business with pleasure. It NEVER worked out. Never.

To make matters worse, Trixie had gone out of her way to disguise the fact that she was an elf when it was well-known that some of the best artists in the industry were elves. They had the patience and the natural talent to not only learn to stir a good potion, but to also learn the art. Trixie was hiding, and that wasn’t good under any circumstances. It had been on the tip of my tongue to ask her about it on more than one occasion, but I wasn’t exactly sure how to start that conversation without giving away my own abilities and dark past. Among humans, the only ones who could identify a glamour spell were warlocks and witches. My hands were tied.

For now, I kept my mouth shut and my eyes open, content with her working five nights a week.

“What are you doing here so early?” I asked as I came back into the tattooing room with the gun. I opened one of the cabinets on the far side of the room with the toe of my worn black boot, removed the magazine from the bottom of the grip, and threw the gun and magazine in with the others that I had collected over the past few years. This was a somewhat dangerous business even under the best of circumstances. Luckily, having a troll on staff helped to keep the scuffles to a minimum.

“You said today was inventory day. I thought I would come in early and help,” she said with a bright smile.

I made some nondescript noise in the back of my throat as I kicked the cabinet door shut, mentally plucking the wings off the butterflies that took flight in my stomach. After working with her for roughly two years, I would like to think that I could get through a workday without acting like a hormone-filled idiot.

My shift at the Asylum usually ran from the middle of the afternoon until midevening, while Trixie came in a few hours after me. Bronx didn’t show up until a couple of hours after the sun set and stayed until a couple of hours before dawn. Oddly enough, these were typical hours for tattoo parlors. No one worked mornings. Who the hell wanted a tattoo first thing in the morning with their coffee?

“Are you ever going to do anything about those guns? Or are you just collecting them as mementoes of your past conquests?” Trixie continued.

One corner of my mouth lifted before I could stop it and I shook my head. “Would you rather I called the cops so I could hand them all over like a good boy?”

“And then try to survive the barrage of questions that would accompany that armory?” she scoffed. “I’d like to stay below the radar of all the local law enforcement.”

“Agreed. I’ve got some contacts. I’ll start asking around to see what I can get for them. We could use some new equipment,” I said, letting my eyes skim over the work area while carefully avoiding Trixie. We could always use some fresh ingredients, and some of the tattooing equipment was starting to get worn in such a way that we were making personal modifications just so it kept working through a tattoo. I had made some nice cash from this business over the past few years, but it was obvious that it was time to start reinvesting.

Walking over to the counter opposite where Trixie was currently perched, I turned on the small television linked to the security camera that looked over the lobby of the parlor. It allowed us to see who came through the door when we were all busy with a chair. It wasn’t completely foolproof—some creatures didn’t show up on camera—but it caught most who wandered through our door.

“So are you going to tell me what happened?” Trixie prodded after a moment of silence had stretched between us.

I shrugged as I turned to face her. “Nothing important.” I finally raised my eyes to look at her again, feeling as if I had better control over myself following the initial shock of her outfit.

“Nothing important, but it involved a gun,” she said, crossing her arms over her bosom. “Come on, Gage. Spill it or I’ll get Bronx to sit on you when he comes in and we’ll crush it out of you.”

“Russell Dalton caught me on my way into the parlor this afternoon. Seems he’s a little pissed regarding the results of his tattoo.”

“Dalton? I don’t remember him.”

“Came in a couple of weeks ago wanting a good luck charm. He had only fifty bucks on him.”

“Oh, that idiot!” she gasped. She dropped her hands back to her lap and shook her head at me. “I still can’t believe you took that one.”

I sighed, once again forced to question either my sanity or my decision-making process when it came to clients. “I was feeling generous.”

“So, I’m guessing the tattoo hasn’t worked like he wanted.”

“I put a shamrock on the heel of his left foot. Do you honestly think anything good could come of that?”

“Not really. But then, I wouldn’t expect things to go all that bad for him either.”

“Yeah, well, neither did I, but they did. Lost job, car stolen, and wife wants a divorce.”

Trixie let out a low whistle as she leaned back against the set of cabinets above the counter that wrapped around the far wall. “That’s odd.”

“Not really. I put a leprechaun hair in the ink.”

“It go bad?”

“That or it was bad to begin with,” I said with another sigh. This wasn’t how I expected my day to go. “I’ve already called for some fresh, but it’ll be a few days. Just be careful and cut the mixture with something else to counteract it if you happen to use the hair between now and then. Pass the word along to Bronx if you see him before I do.”

“Got it, boss,” she said, hopping down from her perch on the countertop.

“Shall we get started?” I asked, trying to ignore the jiggle of her breasts as she landed lightly on her toes.

“Do you want front room or back room?” she inquired, looking over her shoulder at me as she walked toward the front glass counter and bent down so that I could catch the perfect roundness of her rear in the tight jeans. If I didn’t know better, I’d say she was doing it on purpose. But she was just switching on the music like we did every day.

“Back room,” I bit out, turning to look for the pair of clipboards that held the list of supplies we kept on hand. The front room held the random necessary items such as paper towels, latex gloves, petroleum jelly, needles, and ink. The processing of the items in the front room took less than thirty minutes and an order form was quickly filled out.

The back room possessed all the unique ingredients that we used in our potions. Each container needed to be checked, opened, and assessed as to whether the contents were still good or if we needed more. The back-room check could take up to three hours to process and the order form was even trickier because not everything could be purchased at the local ingredients shop. Some things had to be acquired through a series of back-alley transactions and black-market connections.

“If you need any help, just give a shout,” she offered as I turned toward the back room again.

“I’ve got it.”

“Gage …”

I stopped and turned half around to see where she was standing, one hand on the glass top of the counter in the lobby. “Thanks for not getting shot.”

“No problem. I hear the job market is a killer right now.” I winked at her, a wide, devilish grin crossing my mouth.

“Asshole,” she mumbled under her breath as she turned back toward the stereo she was fiddling with. I didn’t miss the smile that graced her lovely face. Before I could escape into the back room, Beethoven was blasted through the four speakers that were spread around the main tattoo room. I suppressed a laugh when I heard Trixie cursing Bronx’s taste in music. By the time I had shut the door, she had hooked up her own MP3 player to the speakers and Dropkick Murphys was filling the air. Trixie had a thing for both punk bands and bagpipes.