“All right.” He took a paper towel and his squirt bottle. “You’ll have to remove your shirt.”
“No bra.” Though, to be honest, as the dawn approached, I became less and less concerned about nip slips. “Will this work?”
I tugged the hem up my back and pulled it over my head while keeping my arms in the sleeves and my front concealed. I had worn more revealing swimsuits back in the day, but showing this much skin left me feeling vulnerable.
“I can’t tattoo through the band, so this is perfect.” He traced a line from my nape to the center of my back with his fingertips, as though measuring the distance. “Your bones are so pronounced.”
“I’m starting to develop a complex.” I twisted around to face him. “I get it. I need to put on weight.”
“That’s not what I meant.” He retraced the same path with a single finger. “This is going to hurt.” He stopped at the point where I had requested my tattoo. “Will you let me use the—?”
“No sigils.” Dampness swamped my palms. “I want to feel it.”
Pain kept you honest. Hurt made you real. Besides, I had a well-worn path to oblivion tread through my head if I needed a time-out.
The first bite of the needle made me gasp. The others, and there were hundreds more, blended into a pleasant warmth that flooded across my shoulders and up my neck. Between the cool pressure of his hand on my back and the pecking sting heating my skin, I couldn’t help drifting. Not up the stairs into my mind, but to some deeper place where time ceased to exist and all my troubles fluttered away on butterfly wings.
“This is a first for me.” Linus crouched in front of me, his palms cupping my rounded shoulders. He was all that kept me from sliding off onto the floor and curling up there for a nap. “I’m not sure if I should be flattered or concerned you fell asleep in my chair.”
“Flattered,” I assured him, stifling a yawn. “What time is it?”
“Around seven.”
“Are we done here?” I tucked the front of the shirt tighter against my chest. “Can I see it?”
“There’s a mirror in the bathroom…” He laughed under his breath. “But you already know that.”
My bones creaked from prolonged slumping as I stood and cut a path around the stacked trunks to the downstairs bath and its generous vanity. Linus followed, switched his phone’s camera to selfie mode, and passed it to me to use in lieu of a second mirror.
The bold design nestled against my spine, centered at the lowest points of my shoulder blades, right where my bra strap normally sat. The black limbs of the yew tree stretched through a crescent moon. Its tangled roots grew to form a circle that encompassed the topmost portion of the design. The overall effect was one of a paintbrush on skin, lending the design a traditional aspect that spoke to my roots, to all those weekends spent learning the craft at Maud’s knee. Shifting from side to side made the dark glitter catch the light, and I marveled at its beauty.
“I would forget all this heir nonsense and tattoo full-time if I were you.” I met his eyes in the mirror. “This is amazing work. You’re a talented artist.”
“I love it,” he said simply, leaving me to wonder if he meant the act of tattooing or this particular tattoo.
I allowed myself one last gawking session. “Do you need to wrap me up like you did Amelie?”
“Yes.” He waved me back into the kitchen. “Let me wipe it down, and I’ll tape a pad over it.”
While I got cleaned up, I let my thoughts drift next door to Woolly. “Do you think Amelie will hate me when she realizes what I’ve done?”
“I don’t know her well enough to guess.” His icy fingers slid over my skin, smearing ointment. “If she’s anything like her brother…” I felt the shrug in the upward jerk of his hand. “I’m sorry I couldn’t do more.”
He had been hunting her just as hard as Boaz, whether he knew it was her or not in the beginning. “Can I ask you something?”
His exhale skated cool air across my shoulders as he affixed the sterile pad in place. “I thought you might.”
“Why were you hunting the dybbuk? You’re the Grande Dame’s son. Even before her ascension, you were still the Lawson scion. This was a job for the Elite.” I glanced back at him. “How did you get involved?”
“I’m a potentate.”
I scrunched up my face at him. “A who-what now?”
“The Society can’t maintain control throughout the United States with only my mother and the Lyceum to keep them honest. Savannah is a long way from New York or Washington State.” He untucked his shirt and peeled up the hem to allow me a glimpse of tattooed skin. “Some days it’s a long way from Atlanta.” He indicated a city seal inked over his heart. “Atlanta is my city, Georgia is my territory. Savannah has its own security, but it’s within my rights to investigate incidents that threaten the Society or its members.”
“You do teach at Strophalos, right?” I cocked my head. “That’s true? Not a cover story?”
“It’s a little of both,” he allowed. “I do teach, but I have more responsibilities than that.” He lowered his shirt. “It was the price of my freedom.” His half-smile drooped. “You had to suspect there was a cost for living the way I do.”
“I was surprised your mother let you out of her sight.” I stared at his covered chest, remembering the designs beneath, wondering at their meanings. “But I’m just as surprised that she lets you play sheriff like Georgia is the Wild West.”
“Bonding with a wraith wasn’t a step I took lightly, but all the potentate employ them. They’re our only backup in the field.” He scratched his chest like the old ink itched when he thought about it. “I am sworn to the office of the Grande Dame, we all are, and that means I am sworn into Mother’s service for as long as she holds the title. The arrangement suits her at present.”
“I bet.”
This revelation complicated things, and yet it didn’t. I had expected him to report my movements to his mother, but I hadn’t anticipated him to be oath-sworn to do as she commanded. Yet again this made sifting through his layers to the real Linus near-impossible to the point I wondered if there was a real Linus in there at all. Maybe this was all he was—myriad facets that together formed a cohesive whole, true to themselves if not to their entirety.
“I pay for my autonomy every day. Coming back here…” A frown knit his brow. “Mother used you as bait to lure me home. She knew I wouldn’t be able to resist the mystery of you. Everything I’ve worked so hard to achieve hangs in precarious balance, Grier. Never think I take it for granted, and never believe it was handed to me.”
“How many more secrets are you hiding?” I eyed the pockets where his hands most often resided when not drawing. “Where do you keep them all?”
“I am a secret,” he said, a wistful smile on his lips, “bound in a thin skin of humanity.”
“That’s not creepy at all.” I laughed, unsure if he was quoting at me or being earnest. With Linus, it was hard to tell. It could be one or the other, or it could be both. “What does it mean?”
“That I may never tell you the whole truth, but I will never lie to you.”
Omission was still a lie, but I was too tired to argue semantics. “Am I done yet?”
“You’re free to go.” He guided my head through the collar of my tee then pulled it down my back. “Get some rest. We’ll start a new lesson at dusk.”
“No rest for the wicked,” I grumbled.
“Nor the weary,” he agreed.
I wondered which of us was which.
Woolly paid me zero attention when I hit the back porch. I took that to mean she was too busy playing with her new BFF to remember her old one. At least that meant she was also too preoccupied to focus on Amelie. Or on me.
Despite the clawing need to put my eyes on my best friend, I couldn’t screw up the nerve to enter the house. Coward that I was, I decided to circle the wraparound porch and peer through the windows until I spotted signs of life. Or undeath, considering half the house’s occupants weren’t alive in the traditional sense.