Authors: Anthony Francis
Tags: #Fantasy, #Fiction, #General, #Fiction - Fantasy, #Fantasy - General, #Fantasy - Urban Life, #Fiction : Fantasy - Urban Life
“I’m just a big softie,” I said.
“Th-thank you Dakota,” she stammered, as the design sunk into the skin. “I—I—mean,
Lady
Dakota, I overheard Lord Buckhead and I didn’t mean to disrespect—”
“Oh, don’t
you
start,” I said. “If
you
call me Dakota, I’ll call
you
Cinnamon.”
She held up the back of her fist, showing me the tattoo that had once been mine, now brightened by her own super-sunny smile. “Okay, DaKOta!”
I kneaded my brow, falling back into my chair.
I was sure I was going to regret this. But I wasn’t at
all
sure what “this” was.
17. JUNKMAN’S DAUGHTER
After much negotiation, I convinced ‘Cinnamon’ to take a shower—and, with additional effort, convinced her to take it
alone—
and then took her down to the Rogue Unicorn for an impromptu ‘Take Your Daughter to Work Day.’
She wanted to run behind me on the Vespa, but after
another
fifteen minutes of wheedling I convinced her that it wouldn’t do to be caught running down McLendon at forty-five miles an hour in broad daylight.
“Ow,” she said, adjusting her helmet. I hadn’t realized how small she was: Savannah’s old helmet seemed ridiculously outsized on her head. “Can I ditch this? It’s crushing my ears.”
“We’ll get stopped,” I said, and then, being unable to resist, fished for a little information. “You can’t, you know, shrink them, like your claws?”
She lifted the brow of the helmet so she could glare at me, then got back on the back of the bike, wrapping her arms around me a bit fearfully. Ok, more than a bit. Actually—
“Can’t—breathe—” I gasped. “This isn’t going to kill you. I’ll go slow—”
“I can takes anything you caaaan—”
And after some to-go from the Flying Biscuit and a short drive, we got to Little Five and climbed the steps up to the Rogue. Cinnamon’s helmeted head snapped back and forth so fast I thought it would twist off, and finally I told her that she could take it off.
“My ears,” Cinnamon said.
“This is Little Five,” I said. “You’ll be a hit.”
But even Annesthesia was shocked when Cinnamon took off her helmet and then began peering down into it like a fishbowl. I hadn’t noticed, but you could see down into her ears, like you would with a real cat: her weretiger features weren’t just outer-cosmetic, they’d actually changed the structure of her skull. No wonder she couldn’t change. I know I shouldn’t have stared, but when she started scratching—
“I do believe you have
ear mites,”
I said, laughing.
“If you thinks what the Bear King did to that guy was bad,” she growled, “you should sees what happened to the last guy who tried to put
drops
in my ears.”
“Who’s the Bear King?” Annesthesia asked. “And I love your collar, Dakota! Where’d you—”
“Don’t ask, and don’t ask,” I said. “I don’t have the king of Siam and the queen of Sheba waiting on me today, do I?”
“Not yet,” she responded.
We made it back to my office and I pulled up the blinds. “Like the view?” I asked.
“Yeah,” Cinammon said, staring out over Little Five. “I mean, the place is a dirty dump, but the people—and hey,
hey,
that guy’s even a
werekin—
“
“Actually, no,” I said, peering out. “He’s… just a Fiver. But Cinnamon—look around you. This is my office. This is what I do. This is how I pay for my apartment—”
“What, are you trying to
save
me, Dakota?” she jeered, throwing herself down in my chair and spinning around, jarring the computer and watching the screen hum to life. After she spun down, she kind of looked to the side and got sullen. “Ok. I’ll gives it a shot.”
“A shot?” I asked.
“You wants a new apprentice, or something? Need an ‘entourage’—”
“No,” I said. I wasn’t really comfortable with her going back to the werehouse, but I wasn’t prepared to take a weretiger under my wing just yet either. “You don’t have to be my apprentice to hang out with me. Think of today as an outing, courtesy of Lord Buckhead—”
My phone rang again, and I picked it up hastily. “Dakota Frost—”
“Hello, Dakota,” came a smooth voice. “It’s Special Agent Philip Davidson.”
“Philip!” I said, feeling a big grin spread over my face.
“Who’s that?” Cinnamon said, her big, toothy grin mocking my own. “Your
boooy
friend? Wait a minute—”
“Hush,” I said. “Philip, it’s good to hear from you. What do you need—”
“I think I may be able to swing approval on getting some images to your graphomancer,” he said. “Have you had a chance to talk to your clients—”
Oh, Hell.
“No, Philip. I—I haven’t even gotten started. I feel like I’ve let you down, but—” I glared at Cinnamon, and she stuck her tongue out at me “—to be frank I had one hell of an evening working to sort out a complicated tat for a difficult client. And this morning—”
“It hasn’t even been twenty-four hours yet,” Philip responded. “I didn’t expect miracles.”
“Hey, if you’re going to talk to your
boy
friend,” Cinnamon said, “can I go shopping?”
I covered the phone and stared at her. “I’m supposed to keep watch over you.”
“What’s someone going to do, mug me? Unless they gots silver bullets—”
“Oh, all right. Don’t go far,” I said, starting to raise the phone. She stared at me expectantly, and it took me a few seconds to get it. “Oh, you have to be kidding!”
“What?” she said innocently.
I opened my wallet. Typical—I only had hundreds, a five and two ones. “Here,” I said, giving her a single Benjamin. “Don’t go far, or spend it all in one place—”
“Thanks, DaKOta!” she said, snatching the money and darting out.
“Oh, hell,” I said watching her go. What was I doing?
Phil!
“Sorry,” I said. “I’m babysitting today.”
“You? Babysitting?” he said. “I’d pay money to see that—”
“It’s quite the show,” I responded. “But tell me, if you weren’t expecting miracles, what could you expect? I don’t actually know how to go about this—”
We talked for a while, both of us slowly realizing just how hard this was going to be—after all, I wasn’t the only magical tattooist in the office, and a lot of them would be hesitant to talk to Phil, much less fork over their customer lists. A lot of
serious
tattoo collectors are rebels: someone sporting ‘FTW’—Fuck The World—wasn’t likely to cooperate with the Feds. After a bit we nailed down some options and I agreed to at least raise the issue with my team.
And since Cinnamon was gone and the day was just starting, it was the perfect time. I went to Reception: there were a fair number of customers looking at flash, but nobody queued for inking, and we already had two other artists in for their shifts. I made the decision.
“Annesthesia,” I said. “Call Tess and Banner and put them on conference call, my office. If you don’t get them leave messages for them to call me. Kring/L, CJ—come on. Pow-wow.”
“Whatever it is, it can wait,” Kring/L said, kinking his head at a biker-type dude going through the big blue binder. “This one’s serious—”
“It can’t wait,” I said, walking over to the biker. He had a surprisingly friendly face, small beard and big curly hair giving him a pointy, elfin look. “Hey dude, I’m going to borrow your tattooist. Can you hang for thirty minutes? If you have him ink something, I’ll throw in something small for free.”
He studied me, eyes sharp under his dark brows. “Which one are you?” he asked, pointing at the tableau of artists and collectors along the wall.
“Frost.”
The huge brows went up and he grinned abruptly. “A free Frost bite? Sure thing.”
“Frost bite. I like that,” I said, grinning, walking back towards Kring/L. “Satisfied?”
“Damn, you’re serious,” Kring/L said. Then the big, beefy bear-of-a-man started to look scared. “Dakota. What the hell would make you give away a hundred-dollar tat for a freebie?”
“That would be the second hundred I’ve given away this morning,” I said. “Come into my office, and I’ll tell you.”
Behind closed doors, I told Kring/L and CJ, with Banner and Tess on the speakerphone… everything. I mean
everything.
The lid, the killer, Philip, even Wulf. I even gave the short version of what I’d gone through to get Wulf’s Nazi flash checked out, just enough to explain why I was babysitting a mercurial weretiger foundling for the day. But I came back to the killings, and emphasized that every single one of our magical clients could be a target.
“We’ve got to tell those cats up at Sacred Heart,” CJ said. “And Dino’s crew.”
“No argument,” I said.
“How the hell are we going to find all our clients?” Kring/L said.
“Half of them won’t want to be found,” Banner warned over the speakerphone, “especially our one percenters.”
I scowled. ‘1%’ was a tattoo worn as a badge of pride by those that didn’t see themselves as one of the 99% of tattoo wearers ‘who are law abiding.’ I had no patience for ‘1%’ or ‘FTW’—both jinxes I wouldn’t ink. But most of the rest of the crew would. Still—
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