The Masquerade will remain open, for now. The publicity was good for it-as was the death of Mirabilus. It turns out he was behind the land deal that had closed the Masquerade-one of a half-dozen other shady land deals uncovered when Jack Conway finally tracked down the mysterious server failures at APD. Mirabilus, or one of his pawns, had hacked the entire City Hall East network, enabling him to intercept 911 calls, create fake land-use permits, change the A/C settings and God knows what else. Until it's sorted out, the Masquerade stays open. Hooray.
I've made one call to Stratton, South Carolina, to make peace with my Dad. He was pleased to hear from me. I had expected him to give me shit about my tattoos, about never calling; but he had heard through the grapevine all the things that had happened, and just cried and told me again and again how happy he was that I was alive. Apparently he isn't that happy-he still won't get in a car and drive a hundred and fifty miles to Atlanta, to see me. I didn't tell him about Cinnamon yet. It didn't seem like the time to mention his new granddaughter, a weretiger.
Philip is gone, most of the time. He's on some kind of circuit over the Southeast. I never found out what the stealth shape was, that night outside the Masquerade-he just said, "Well, we can't always get the Shadowhawks where we need them quickly enough, it's not like we can haul them on the back of a flatbed." He's similarly tightlipped about who might have given Mirabilus the box as a commission. But when he is in town, once every month or so, I buy him coffee, and he takes me out to the gun range for target practice. We aren't calling it dating yet, but here's hoping we'll start.
Isn't all that great? Doesn't it sound so wonderful? Happy, happy, joy, joy.
But the truth is I still wake up almost every night, sometimes screaming, sometimes crying, always holding my right hand in my left, massaging my first two fingers, reassuring myself they're still there. Sometimes it's Transomnia in my dreams, red eyes gleaming as he snips my fingers off one by one; sometimes it's Mirabilus, blue chips of ice glinting as he strips the skin off my back; and sometimes, I just plain wake up screaming.
When I do, Cinnamon comes and curls up in the bed beside me to comfort me; but just as often she wakes up bawling, holding herself, shivering, and I have to comfort her. And that's when the worst feeling sets in: that I could have done something, that I could have stopped the trouble earlier. That I could have kept Cinnamon out of it. That I could have seen the trap Transomnia was in and helped him escape sooner. That I could have kept Wulf out of that damn body bag.
No, I'm not going to become a police officer, or a bounty hunter, or a detective, or anything like that. I like tattooing, and I'm not going to give it up.
But I have started karate, three times a week. Darren is amazing. He's working with my physical therapist to help design a program to get me up and running as fast as possible. In the meantime, I get to see him run up a wall at the end of every class.
And, in addition to the karate, I have two other new weekly appointments-one with Jinx to school me in graphomancy and help me master the power in my tattoos, and one with Canon Grace, to help me decide what I should do with my powers.
I will not hide. I will not run. I will not live in fear.
Because I'm not just a tattooist.
I'm Dakota Frost, and I'm a skindancer.