In the end I lay in bed, alone, staring at the ceiling.
Someone out there wanted the skin off my back.
And I just might be doing a tattoo for him.
5. Trust but Verify
In the morning light I felt better. The timing of Wulfs request was creepy, coming right on the heels of Rand's warning, but I didn't think a tattoo killer stalking a victim would arrange a meeting with a witness present. In fact, I had no reason to believe that the killer was after me personally, other than Rand's mothering; if he'd had even a whiff of evidence that I was the target, Rand would have put me in overprotective custody faster than I could blink.
My clients were another thing: scattered all over Georgia, with some of the best magical tattoos in the Southeast on their bodies, and without relatives on the police force who cared enough to track them down and warn them. I needed to figure out how to get the word to them-in my discreet line of work, clients didn't often share their email addresses or cell numbers-but there was some time before the full moon. First things first-Spleen.
The little rat had extracted a thousand promises from me to meet him "the very next day," to go over the contract for Wulf s tattoo, and I'd agreed-though he'd have gotten the same effect just by showing up for my shift at the Rogue Unicorn.
One of the glories of being a tattoo artist, other than having God's finest canvas at your disposal, is that I rarely need to get up before ten. Like most high-end shops, the Rogue doesn't open its doors to the public until noon, though I and the other artists are usually there by eleven for consultations and prepwork.
So despite yesterday's excitement I was able to sleep in, stroll to the Flying Biscuit cafe-after the breakfast crowds had died down, but before the towering, eponymous biscuits had lost their freshbaked, morning fluffiness-and still putter in by ten-thirty to meet Spleen.
As I buzzed off of McLendon onto Moreland, I smiled. Little Five Points is the true heart of Atlanta. Forget the bigger Five Points, forget Buckhead, forget Midtown-it's only in Little Five Points, in that vortex of alternative culture whirling through the colorful pile of eclectic shops at the crux of Euclid, Moreland and McLendon, that Atlanta truly lets itself be Atlanta.
The main square is a parade of dudes hanging out with yuppies, homeless people harassing executives, hot young gay men and cute old lesbian couples, consignment shops for New Age crystals and recycled old duds, bookstores and bondage shops, teahouses and tattoo parlors, protesters crying, "No blood for oil!" and vendors crying, "Get some hot pizza!"
Glorious.
If you look closer, you can see more-pale, gothy boys whose high collars hide the bites on their necks, tough butch chicks trying to disguise that bit of wolf in their eyes, and New-Agey grandmothers pretending not to be as hale and hearty as their potions made them. Plus a whole carnival of firedancers and piercers, taggers and tattooers brimming over with magic and trying to hide nothing at all. In the Southeast, Little Five Points was the center of the Edgeworld, a brand new subculture rejecting the secrecy of magical tradition and defying centuries of religious oppression, dragging magic kicking and screaming into the light.
Even more glorious.
The Rogue Unicorn wasn't the largest tattoo shop in Little Five Points, but it was the best-and one of only two licensed to ink magic. Catty-corner from the giant skull that marked the Vortex Bar and Grill, the Rogue occupied most of the top of a converted Victorian whose sprawling bottom floor housed the quite decent Make a Wish clothing shop.
The sign for the Rogue was easy to find-a brushed metal unicorn, rampant, that we'd gotten in a deal with the city a few years back when they were trying to push a new artist-but getting into the shop itself was quite the trick: you had to park in the back, climb rickety wooden stairs, and worm round the balcony to the Herbalist's Attic. But-for the view alone-the trees, Little Five, the skull of the Vortex-it was worth it.
And I had the best view. My office was small, but streetside, with a broad front window whose dark-slatted blinds were always cracked to give me the aforementioned view of L5P. A glass, L-shaped desk held my computer, scanner and papers. A narrow bookshelf put all my books and tapes within easy reach from the desk… or from the sturdy marble workspace of the butcher's block, whose locked glass cabinet held my precious magical supplies.
I started the scan and leaned back in my chair, regarding Spleen, who'd arrived right on time. He bounced back and forth in the little space like an animated garden gnome, rattling the cabinet periodically. "Wulfs one of my best clients," he said. "I swear it, if you could just do this for me-"
"Hey. I said I'd do it." I shagged my hands through my hair, trying to shake my deathhawk back to life after being pinned under my helmet. "So stop trying to persuade me, or I might change my mind." The scanner whirred to life, and I kicked up my feet, staring out over Little Five. Something was wrong. Spleen was nervous, damp, almost sweaty. Damp and sweaty weren't new, but-"Should I change my mind?"
"N-no," Spleen said. Another lie. Not that he never did it, buteven more charming. At my scowl he turned away, stammering; but it was too late; I had him.
"What is it, Spleen?" I asked.
"Crap, Frost," he said. "What can I say? The design is fucking Nazi."6. The Accursed Flash
"It's what?" I said, falling forward in my chair to look as the scanner finished its pass and the image popped up on the screen. The contrast was all fucked, but a moment's tweaking in Photoshop brought the contrast back up, along with all the nice German letters and genuine swastika printed on the bottom of the singed photo.
"It's Nazi, Frost," he said. "I don't mean neo-Nazi or skinhead or anything. It's a genuine fucking World War Two buzz-bombs-andlost-arks Nazi tattoo design."
"Holy… crap," I said, staring at the image on the screen. Then, gingerly, I raised the scanner cover, hoping nothing would leap out and bite me. The photograph was very old, yellowing, and quite singed. Half the wording was gone, but a rescan at 600 dpi and a bit of fiddling would recover it. No amount of fiddling would bring back my forgotten high school language classes… but with what was left, I recognized the words as unmistakably German.
"Look, look, look," he said, wheedling. "Wulf s one of my best clients-"
"For how long?" I asked.
"The last six weeks-"
"Hell," I said, disgusted. "What have you gotten me into?"
"He says he needs the discipline, or he's going to lose it at the next full-"
"Next Sunday, I know," I said, staring at the tattoo, at the German words I could no longer read. "I don't know how I feel about inking some Nazi… occultism. If I was Jewish I'd probably throw this in your face."
"I wanted to chuck it at first," Spleen said, a bit bashfully. "But Wulf says he looked for years and couldn't find a better design. And he paid me a lot of money-"
"Slide," I said, standing, and Spleen moved so I could unlock the cabinet that held my supplies. I pulled out a long, plain wooden case and opened it slowly. The inside was divided into two long compartments, one holding a glass tube containing a fragment of a long spiral horn, and the other holding ten compartments for tattoo needles, six of them empty.
I held up the fragment and examined it. "Enough for the needles, I think-"
"Is that-" Spleen breathed, eyes gleaming, reaching out for the horn.
"Yes," I snapped, "mitts off. It's naturally shed, vestal gathered. I need needles made from untainted horn to ink a white charm-this is a white charm, isn't it?"
"A… Nazi… white charm?" Spleen asked, perplexed.