Protective Ink (Urban Fantasy) (4 page)

“But putting yourself in danger can’t be the answer,” Lissa argued. “I can give you another tattoo for more protection.” Her mind immediately started working on a design and the kind of infusion she’d have to do to make it work. And it could work. It was something that had been passed down in her family.

“Do it, Garrett.” Dory gripped his hand until her knuckles were almost white. “Do it for me.”

He glanced between Dory and Lissa. Lissa knew she couldn’t force him to take her up on her offer, but she was willing to try if he didn’t make the right decision.

In the end, there was no need. He agreed to come in the day after tomorrow for a tattoo that would give him protection.

It was the least Lissa could do. After all, she had made him this way.

* * *

Jackson left the others behind. Lissa was staying to sketch out her new tattoo for Garrett. He hoped it worked. In the meantime, Jackson was determined to find out who had brought Garrett down and then left him in that abandoned house. Something wasn’t right and Jackson was going to figure it out before it blew up in their faces. Of course, he also needed to make sure there was nothing linking Garrett to the scene. He ran home to change out of the clothes that were stained with Garrett’s blood and threw on a pair of camos and a T-shirt. Then he headed back to the scene.

So, it was Friday night and he was yet again crawling around in some godforsaken alley in the dirtier part of town. Cleanup—it wasn’t glamorous, but it was necessary, particularly when you spent your time with a superhero.

Using a hand brush, Jackson did a quick dusting of the dumpster where Garrett had been jumped to make sure his friend hadn’t touched it and left behind fingerprints. It was as clean as a dumpster could be, but Jackson put some of his own fingerprints on there just in case. He was a construction company owner and local all-around good guy, as far as most were concerned, and as long as he kept up that façade, he could be anywhere and do anything.

Jackson wondered for a moment about his new power, but he shook away the thoughts. He didn’t have time to entertain them now. There were too many questions and not enough answers.

He followed the trail as Garrett had described it, leaving the alley and heading down the street and to the left. The quiet, tree-lined neighborhood looked peaceful enough, but someone who had hidden here—maybe someone who was
still
hiding here—had attacked Garrett. Hopefully he’d find some hint of who was at fault.

But despite looking in every nook and cranny, he was left with a whole lot of nothing. And his new tattoo was a constant throb on his shoulder—a reminder of all that had changed and all that was still to change.

* * *

“I don’t want a tattoo, Garrett. How many times do I have to tell you that? You’re the one who needs protection, not me,” Dory called out from the bathroom. She had taken out a first aid kit and a huge pile of bandages prior to their arrival, but hadn’t needed to use any of it.

Lissa was about to step in to say she didn’t know if that was advisable when Dory reappeared and sat on the couch next to Garrett. He looked at her intently, his hunter green eyes serious. “I want you to get a tattoo to protect yourself. I’d feel better if I knew you had one. With everything that’s been going on lately, I worry. I don’t want to hurt you if I take in too much darkness and can’t control it.… I’d never be able to forgive myself if I hurt you.”

“I get it, Garrett, I do. But you and I have been together for over a month now. You’ve never even spoken to me crossly. I don’t need a tattoo to protect me. Not from you. And I have you to protect me against everyone else.”

He opened her curled fist and kissed her palm, the gesture so reminiscent of what Jackson had done to Lissa after his tattoo that it was like a sucker punch to the gut.

“Will you at least think about it? Talk it over with Lissa?” Garrett asked. “At least keep an open mind. She runs a clean place. She won’t steer you wrong.”

“I’m right here, Garrett, you don’t have to talk around me,” she reminded him from the chair directly in front of the couch. Dory smiled at her and Lissa felt the sudden hope that they would become friends, real friends, something she’d cut herself off from over the years.

“So, when do you think you can fit Dory in for a tattoo?” Garrett said in the next breath.

Lissa waited for the explosion and wasn’t entirely disappointed when it happened. She would have done it bigger than Dory, but then she could already tell she had a more mercurial nature than the quiet woman at Garrett’s side.

“Don’t answer that.” From what Lissa had been told, Dory was not at all a violent person, but she looked as if she was barely resisting the urge to smack her boyfriend.

“I’m trying to protect you.” He frowned at her as he took her hand in his, tracing the delicate veins below her knuckles.

“And I told you no, Garrett,” Dory retorted as she stood and walked away from the black leather couch.

“Oh, ho, ho, the kitten has claws, Garrett, better watch out.” Lissa reached over and punched him lightly in the arm.

Garrett’s forehead creased into a frown. “Fine, we’d like to talk about perhaps getting the good Miss Dory a tattoo. Maybe.”

It wasn’t much better, but at least he didn’t already have her in the chair with the needle buzzing away. Lissa tried not to snicker, especially when she saw the thunderous expression on Dory’s face.

She leaned toward him. “I don’t know what it will do to her, Garrett. There’s no telling if it would hinder the way she can heal you. I’m not willing to take that chance and send you back to the chair.”

“See, Garrett? I’m not willing to take the chance, either.” Dory said. “You’re just going to have to trust that I know what I’m doing and that you won’t hurt me.”

Poor guy. Lissa knew how hard it was for Garrett to trust. After all, his own mother had encouraged him to use his talents to do horrible, unspeakable things.…

“Dory.” Garrett tried to take her hand, but she shook him off.

“I’m not going to do it. If Lissa can’t guarantee it won’t affect my ability to heal you of the darkness, there’s nothing you can say to change my mind. Don’t you understand?” She stilled her twisting hands by locking her fingers.

“I want to know you’re protected, dammit. I’m drawing in too much darkness with all the shit that’s been going on.…”

“And what exactly
is
going on? No one will tell me.” She zeroed in on Garrett, her hands clasped at her waist. “I want information, Garrett. You and Jackson are constantly having private conversations. And you’re gone almost every night, but you won’t talk to me about it. From what you have deigned to tell me, crime has been escalating in the past few weeks. That’s literally all I know. How do you think that makes me feel?”

“Dory, the whole sharing thing isn’t natural for me.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know. Man of Steel in his Fortress of Solitude. I’ve spent plenty of time reacquainting myself with your comic books when you don’t come back home for hours. But when you do, you’ve never hurt me, and I’m not potentially taking away the one thing I can do to help you.” She huffed away to the door. Before she left, she shot Garrett a look over her shoulder that made Lissa wince. “And I am not getting a tattoo. You’d know I already have one if you’d ever take me off this darn pedestal.”

With that, she stomped out of the apartment, leaving Garrett with his mouth wide open. Poor guy.

“Well, hon, that is not one happy trouper.” Lissa sat down next to Garrett and tucked her legs under her.

“Yeah, thanks.”

Lissa hooked her arm around his shoulders and gave him a squeeze. “She’ll be fine. Take her some flowers or something and apologize. Your little girl won’t be bent out of shape for long, I’m sure.”

“She’s not my little girl, Lis. She’s a woman.”

“Then why don’t you treat her like one, space cowboy?” Her voice got quieter, which always spelled trouble for everyone involved. “I don’t know exactly what’s going on between you two, but you need to mend it. Now. She’s the best thing that’s ever happened to you.”

Giving him a pat on the arm to offset her harsh words, she left, stopping by Dory’s nearby apartment on her way out to say goodbye. She wasn’t overly surprised when Garrett appeared on the landing seconds after she did.

“Going somewhere?” she asked.

He ducked his head. “To get some flowers,” he muttered.

* * *

Twenty minutes later, Lissa let herself into her second floor apartment then closed and locked the door behind her. She leaned back against the door, thanking her lucky stars that she’d decided years ago never to get serious with anyone. She didn’t need the complication of thinking of someone else when she was still trying to figure out how to live without the guilt she’d carried around for almost twenty years. It wasn’t going to be a fast process.

Lissa dropped her keys and purse onto the retro phone table with its built-in seat. Despite this little blip, she was certain that Dory and Garrett would weather things just fine. Garrett was happy and, after all these years of watching over him, that made Lissa happy, too. There were only two years separating them in age, but he felt like her responsibility…always had.

She lifted her mass of curly hair off her neck then let it drop as she stretched her arms over her head. Tomorrow was her first full day at the tattoo shop so she needed to eat something and then get to bed soon. She wouldn’t want to do any botched jobs just because she hadn’t gotten enough shut-eye. Every one of the appointments had been made by a repeat customer, which was gratifying—she was twenty miles away from her last location, yet her clients were willing to come to her. And then the official grand opening party was set for tomorrow night.

This evening had been a disaster and then some, but that didn’t necessarily bode poorly for her whole venture. Still, she kept flashing to what had happened with Jackson’s tattoo and what it might mean for him…and for her and Garrett, too. She shook her head. Instead of thinking about him, she should be focusing on the new protection tattoo she was going to do for Garrett and how to make it work.

Her heart jumped into her throat when she turned into her small efficiency kitchen. “What the hell are you doing here?”

Jackson gave her a wry grin. He was leaning against the sink, arms crossed over his chest, ankles crossed, too. Dressed in camo pants and a tight black T-shirt, he looked like he should be out in a desert somewhere.

“Nice to see you, too, Lissa.”

“It is not nice to see you in my kitchen this late. Uninvited and smelling like a dumpster. How the hell did you get in, anyway? You almost gave me a heart attack, you jerk.” She flicked on the tap then shoved a teakettle under the streaming water. Here she was trying to banish him from her mind and he popped up like one of those unlucky pennies. She shook her head and slammed the tap off.

Using her elbow, she moved him out of her way to put the kettle on the small three-burner stove. She cranked the gas knob too hard and it came off in her hand. Damn. With her back to him, she discreetly put it back on before starting the flames under the pot.

His low chuckle told her the knob incident had not gone unnoticed. Well, he could go to hell.

“So, midnight. Uninvited. To what do I owe this not-so-distinct pleasure? I thought you were pissed at me about the tattoo.”

“My, my, we are in a mood this evening.” He hadn’t moved an inch. Lissa fought down the swift vision of him as a panther waiting to spring on unsuspecting prey. But she was suspecting and never prey.

“Not until I came home and found an intruder. I’m just getting back from Garrett’s. Now, what are you doing here? And I mean it, how did you get in? I didn’t hear an alarm.”

The half smile dropped from his face, and he resembled a man on the hunt even more than before. “I used a handy-dandy thing called a lock pick. Your place isn’t as secure as you seem to think. We can fix that later. For now, I searched the house where we found Garrett from top to bottom and there was nothing, no indication of why someone had taken him or of who they were.”

“Did you think they were going to leave you a driver’s license and social security card? Maybe a utility bill?”

“Of course not. Do you think I’m stupid?” He grabbed her arm when she turned away from his anger.

She slammed her hand on the stove. “What do you want from me? You’re the cleanup guy. You and Garrett are the ones who figure things out. I’m just the one who ruined his life by tattooing him. And now I’ve done the same thing to you.”

“What?” His grip slipped and she shook him off.

She busied herself with watching the thin stream of steam coming up from the kettle. He had effectively blocked her in the kitchen by standing in the doorway to the living room. She would not touch him or ask him to move after that piece of her scarred soul had escaped her lips.

“What in blazes are you talking about?” He gripped both her upper arms this time, his gaze intense in the shadowy kitchen. “Answer me.”

“You have more important things to do and so do I. I’m tired. I didn’t mean it, okay? It’s been a long day. You should be out looking for bad guys and I need to go to bed. You let yourself in, so you can let yourself out.” She walked away with a small teapot and a cup, heading for the sanctuary of her bedroom. She wasn’t surprised when he didn’t follow. Jackson did not do personal confrontations. While he would always stand up for the underdog and help his friends, when it came to emotional situations, he ducked out. It was another reason she didn’t want to depend on him more than she already did.

She heard her front door open then close and did not feel any satisfaction in being right.

Chapter Four

He shouldn’t have come. The grand opening of Wicked Ink was in full swing, lights blazing in the front windows, people milling around. The noise was loud enough to be heard from across the street where he stood on the curb.

Catching a glimpse of her as she crossed in front of the storewide plate glass window didn’t make him feel any better. She glowed like a dark fairy in a dress as black as night. It fell halfway down her thighs, ending in some kind of froufrou hem. Her pale skin glinted in the overhead lights, the same lights that shot blue-tinted streaks into her midnight-black hair. She looked like she was having the time of her life.