Bound by Ink (A Living Ink Novel) (27 page)

Isa looked into the golden jaguar eyes of the moon goddess. “That’s what my trip into Xibalba was about, wasn’t it? Teaching me to face my duty and my fears all in one go.”

The goddess bared her fangs in a feline grin.

“Choose to change, then,” her cousin said, climbing to his feet as if every bone in his body ached. “What will you do?”

She drew a deep breath of sweet desert air into her chest. She was warm. All the way through.

The healing had worked. It had driven the evil spirit out of her wounded soul. But he’d taken a member of her family when he’d gone. His mistake.

She smiled.

Her friends recoiled.

“I will do what I have been trained to do,” Isa said. “I will gird my soul for war and I will go after them. Both of them.”

Rule twenty: Mess with a magic user’s family at your peril.

“Good.”

It wasn’t that simple. Isa needed an actual, mundane door that knew where Murmur’s world was in order for her to physically go after him. She knew of only one place that met that criteria.

Steve insisted on remaining at her side while she sent Jaiden to the airport from the doorstep of Daniel’s building. Even if Steve thought it, he didn’t suggest leaving Murmur to Uriel.

Isa took his hand.

Steve curled warm fingers tight around hers and stood taller.

“Thank you,” she said to her cousin. “I appreciate everything you’ve done. Your songs should close the way to the Skinwalker now.”

“The breach I came to close is healed,” he confirmed, “and it left an even bigger wound behind. I am sorry.”

“Not your fault,” she said. “Have a safe trip home.”

“Will you visit, do you think?” he asked.

Steve moved closer and settled an arm around her shoulders.

She leaned into the comfort he offered and nodded. “I might. I have a great deal to repay.”

“Do you need to go?” Steve asked her as Jaiden’s cab pulled away. “To deal with the Skinwalker?”

“They don’t need me. The Navajo have been handling Skinwalkers for centuries,” she said. “It was Uriel’s access into the heart of the land through me that caused a problem.”

“Master Masatoshi has some suggestions for hunting this Uriel thing,” Oki said. “Let’s get this show on the road.”

Isa and Steve took Oki and Master Masatoshi to Nightmare Ink despite the possibility that the shop would be watched by the AMBI. Isa wanted Oki near containment in case Uriel opened the portal and resumed pulling Ink from people.

Steve alerted Nathalie and Troy. They waited in the basement containment studio when Isa led Steve, Oki, and Master Masatoshi through the door in the alley.

Troy handed Isa an envelope.

She tossed a questioning glance at him.

He shrugged.

No return address.

She tore it open and shook a single photo out. It was a close-up shot of fingernails painted with little palm trees against a fire engine red background. Isa grinned and turned over the photo.

“What happens in Vegas won’t stay in Vegas. Be seeing you. P.”

“Patty,” Troy said.

Nathalie hugged Isa.

“Troy, I need Ria,” Isa said.

“You’re scaring me,” Troy replied and went upstairs.

Within minutes, Troy led Ria into the studio. “He already knew you were here.”

“I expected no less,” Isa said. “Ria, I need help only you can provide.”

“Explain,” Ria said.

She blew out an unsteady breath and plunged ahead. “Daniel Alvarez is dead.”

“Bueno.”

“He died three, no, four weeks ago in the hold of a ship.”

Ria shook his head. “I did not strike a corpse four days ago.”

“Daniel’s body,” Isa corrected. “He’s not in it anymore. My tattoo is.”

He stared at her. “How?”

“When Daniel died, he’d stabbed me,” she said. “Murmur was coming off of me anyway, so he followed the line of my blood to where it mixed with Daniel’s. We think the energy released by Daniel’s death sucked Murmur into the body. I admit that so much was happening, I will never know for certain how or why Murmur ended up in Daniel Alvarez’s body. A little while ago, a demon punched a hole between the worlds and took Murmur out of this plane.”

He chewed on the explanation for several seconds before his flat gaze came back to hers. “What do you require?”

“No one takes my family without a fight from me. It’s time to go hunting.”

A faint smile touched his lips. He nodded. “Where?”

“The big fishing vessel. The one where Daniel died. Is it still here?”

“Sí.”

“Can you get me in there?”

“Sí.”

“Gracias.”

His smile deepened. He very pointedly did not say
De nada
. “Is half an hour soon enough?”

“It is.”

“Use the alley door,” he said and left, taking the stairs two at a time.

Under the watchful eyes of her friends, Isa paced, throwing random items into the backpack Troy had assembled for her and wracking her brain for a workable plan of any kind. Her brain didn’t have one.

The stasis page holding the whirlwind still sat atop her desk. She fished the paper holding the big cat out of her backpack, along with the red notebook she’d been given to see if she could track a teenager.

At the sound of footsteps on the stone behind her, she set the notebook on her desk and tucked both stasis pages into her back pocket. She ought to show them to Masatoshi and let him examine her spell form for the mistakes making the paper starve the tattoos.

Steve brought her around to face him. “Marry me.” He said it so fast it took several seconds for it to sink past the noise in Isa’s brain. She reeled.

Nathalie gasped and clapped her hands to her mouth.

Oki whooped.

Pain stabbed Isa in the heart. She glanced down, expecting to see Uriel’s blade protruding from her chest. It wasn’t.

Troy clapped Steve on the back.

Only Master Masatoshi remained unmoved. Though, possibly, he waited for Oki to translate.

“I know. I know,” Steve said. “Most romantic proposal ever. Best timing, too.”

“I’m the reason you’ve been suspended!” she protested.

“Yes. No. My temper is the reason I’m suspended.”

“Something you don’t have unless I’m around!”

He grinned. “Do you know, the captain said it was good to know I had a weak spot? Every cop does. She’d been wondering when and how mine would hit. She was relieved that it’s you. I want you with me, Isa. Irene. Whatever name you choose . . .”

She put fingers to his lips. “Stop.”

He wilted.

The knife plunged into her heart again. “For now,” she amended.

His gaze met hers. He smiled against the block of her fingers.

“I am walking out of this world,” she said. “I have no idea how I’ll get back.” If it was even possible.

He clasped her hand in his, drawing it away from his mouth. “What aren’t you telling me?”

“I’m scared.”

“Of this—mission?” He chuckled at the word. “I’m in love with a magic commando.”

Love?
The knife twisted. She gasped.

“Whoa,” he said. “Take it easy. Let the concept sink in. I’m not taking it back. Marry me. I’ll prove it.”

“Ask again when I get back,” she hedged. Did that make her a coward? More of a coward?

“Deal. Now. Let’s get what you need . . .”

“No.” Isa pulled away and glared around the room. “I go alone. I need you, all of you, here. Safe.”

Oki, Nathalie, and Troy stared at her, theirs brows furrowed.

“Uriel took Murmur,” she said. “He wouldn’t hesitate to take any of you. Every single one of you can be used against me. All he has to do it threaten you. I’ll cave.”

“We love you, too,” Nathalie said.

Isa flushed.

“If you will allow me,” Master Masatoshi said, “I am an old man. Wiry and hard to capture. I will hold your door.”

Isa gaped at the older man. “You speak English?”

“I am out of practice,” the master said. Dialect changed the shape of the words and Isa had to listen hard in order to comprehend. “I understand more than I speak.”

“Your English is better than my Japanese,” Isa said.

Grinning, he waggled a finger at her. “Never flatter an old man. We’re too vulnerable. Allow me to atone for the mistake that took your tattoo.”

Isa hesitated. More magic users meant more possible weapons available to Uriel’s hand. And she’d left the only living Ink Master in the world waiting patiently for permission he did not need.

“Thank you. I’d be honored,” she said.

He inclined his head briefly. “Then make use of this.” He held up a bottle of her binding ink. “It will serve you where you go.”

Isa shook her head. “I’ll go physically into Uriel’s world. He won’t be Live Ink. I don’t see . . .”

Masatoshi sloshed the jar back and forth, uttering a dismissive noise. “This does not bind Ink.”

“Sure it does. I’ve relied on it too often to do just that.”

“No,” he said, eyes twinkling, his lips curving as if he kept a delicious secret.

“Master Masatoshi, it does. It binds the magic that . . .” Isa broke off on a sharp inhalation, hearing what she’d said.

He put the vial into her hands. “First lesson, apprentice. Learn to see your true gifts.”

“It binds magic,” she breathed, staring at the black fluid. It had bound the hydra, and the Magic Eater. She could use that. Surely, she could turn it into a weapon against Uriel. Somehow.

Masatoshi hefted her last vial of bind ink and tucked it into his pocket.

“Steve?” she said, tucking the bottle into her pack. “On my desk is a notebook. It was stolen from a teenaged girl. She needs it back. She also needs training.”

“We’ll handle it,” he said. “When you get back.”

She nodded. “Would you go upstairs, please? I’m going to break a few Acts of Magic laws I’d prefer you not witness.”

“This is how it starts, isn’t it? My slide into a life of crime?” he quipped, setting foot to the stairs. “I’ll be waiting.”

She summoned power. Molten gold rose to her hands. Isa whispered a chant similar to the one Jaiden had used to blur her magic. She threaded intention into the shield she erected around herself. If she held it properly, she wouldn’t be invisible per se, but other magic sensitives would fuzz out if they attempted to look directly at her. Cameras and electronic surveillance equipment would pick up static. Not Isa.

Masatoshi’s crystal clear magic joined hers, buoying her spell so that it floated, weighing next to nothing in her magical grasp.

Oki nodded and opened the basement door for them.

Isa and Masatoshi strode into a windy, warm spring afternoon. White rags of clouds scudded overhead. A sodden wad of newsprint dissolving in one of the alley mud puddles squished beneath her sneaker.

Someone had a panel van backed up to the open loading dock of the self-storage place that shared the alley. Ria stepped into the open door. Without a word, he gestured to the back of the van.

Emanuel slouched in the driver’s seat, giving no indication that he’d spotted either of them.

Isa and Master Masatoshi climbed into the van via the open back doors and sat down. Emanuel jerked upright.

Ria snapped something in Spanish and closed the doors after them. A moment later, the building’s loading door slid shut. Ria climbed into the van’s passenger seat. “Drive. Do not look. Drive.”

Emanuel aborted a glance over his shoulder, started the van, and pulled out. The potholes in the alley rattled Isa’s teeth.

Master Masatoshi grimaced.

They didn’t have far to go. Within minutes, the van slowed to a stop on gravel that crunched and popped beneath the tires. Emanuel backed the van up, put it in Park, and shut it off.

“No police,” Ria said to the windshield. Without waiting for a reply, he got out of the van, came around to the back, and opened the doors. He grabbed a toolbox.

Emanuel joined him at the back of the van. Seeming to have regained his composure, he picked up a milk crate piled with power tools, dangling cords, and at least one crowbar. His gaze didn’t waver. Turning away, he followed Ria into one of the marinas that lined the shores of the ship canal.

Isa hopped out of the van and held out a hand for Master Masatoshi.

He accepted her assistance.

They followed Ria and Emanuel, the wooden dock rocking and flexing beneath their weight.

The fishing boat Isa had last seen when Daniel and Uriel had tried to kill her was moored at the end of the dock, lines creaking as the metal hulk shifted in the wind. Yellow police tape fluttered on deck.

Ria ducked beneath the police tape blocking the gangway. He stood back, lifting the tape for Emanuel, Isa, and Masatoshi. They replayed the same scene at the door to the hold.

Isa shivered in the chill of the damp hold. Little evidence of the police investigation remained. She thought she detected a smeared chalk outline beside the door.

Ria closed the door. Metal clanged on metal, ringing like a hollow gong.

“Okay,” Isa said.

Emanuel dropped his milk crate.

“Sorry, Emanuel,” she said. Relaxing her shield, Isa strode into the center of the hold, studying the floor.

Masatoshi followed, but halted outside the outer edge of the circle.

“What has happened?” Ria demanded.

“Emanuel couldn’t see me,” Isa answered. “Or Master Masatoshi. I suspect he can now.”

“Yes,” Emanuel said, voice shaking.

Isa nodded.

Daniel and Uriel’s circle remained on the steel floor of the hold in thick, dark stains on the chipping pale green paint.

“Could not see you?” Ria repeated, doubt in the drawn-out question.

“Master Masatoshi and I used magic to shield ourselves,” she said. “Our intent was to hide from other magic users and from cameras. Can either of you see the circle here on the floor?

“Don’t cross into the interior,” she warned as they approached, staring where she pointed.

She didn’t know why Masatoshi had stopped at the edge of the circle, but he’d been practicing magic longer than she’d been alive. With more power than she’d ever encountered in a single human being. She’d respect the fact that he probably had very good reason for staying outside.

“
Sí
,” Ria said. “Here and there.”

Standing in the middle of the inner circle, in the exact spot where she’d been chained four weeks ago, Isa called up power. She directed golden energy into the lines on the floor.

Motes of light rose from the circles, swirling in the dim light of the hold. “Have the circles changed at all?”

“
Sí
,” Emanuel said.

“No,” Ria said in the same moment. The two men traded a glance. Ria looked at her, frowning. “What?”

“You have no magic,” Isa said. “Not the slightest bit. It is power in its own right. Because you have no magic, you could see us when Emanuel couldn’t.”