“You’re a little bit insane, Marcy. You know that?” She dropped her empty can on the floor and crushed it underfoot.
“Oh, trust me, I’m more than a little bit.”
After another beer each, Lena and I headed the short distance back to where my car waited, a healthy buzz vibrating through us for encouragement. I drove and she directed me. She kept casting me sidelong glances like I might chicken out. She didn’t know me. I didn’t chicken out. When we arrived at the location, it was a freestanding shop with a slanted roof, neon signs, and a mural of a skull and roses painted on the side.
“They’ll be open at this hour?” I asked, following her around to the front door.
“They’re open at every hour.”
A cowbell clanged on the door as we let ourselves inside. Dozens of framed drawings hung on the walls of the store where no one was waiting. I wandered over to study some of the artwork. An assortment of faeries were depicted in a cluster. As I stood examining them, I saw that none of them looked like a typical fairy from a storybook. Black tears ran down their pointed noses and miniature faces. Violent holes tore through the delicate netting of their wings. A shiver raced through me.
“Wren?” Lena called, moving deeper into the store past black leather chairs that reclined like at the dentist’s office. “Wren, are you here?”
I leaned in to see a curved scythe clutched in the hand of one of the illustrated faeries. A thin trail of blood dribbled from the lethal point.
I heard footsteps and turned to see a short woman with breasts that spilled over the top of her shirt and sleeves of tattoos that ran from her knuckles up to her neck. A deep shade of plum painted her lips. Lena greeted her with a hug. The artwork adorning her body moved with her, giving it the appearance of animation.
“So you’re in the market for your first tat?” the woman who must be Wren asked.
“Does anyone have this one?” I tapped the glass covering the faerie with the sickle-shaped sword.
Wren came closer and peered over my shoulder. “Keres? No. Not yet.”
“Is she yours?”
Wren murmured an affirmation. “Do you want her? It’s an interesting choice.” She seemed to appraise me, looking for what damage I must have suffered to want the violent faerie marked on my body forever.
I stepped away from Keres but spared another appreciative glance for her. “Not yet. Maybe someday,” I said. I loved the faerie, but I’d save her for once I’d earned it.
“Okay, then. What can I do for you today?” She crossed the room, pulled a cart of equipment over, and sat down on a stool next to one of the reclining chairs.
I passed Lena and took a seat on the cracked leather. “Just a line for now. Here on my wrist.”
Wren raised her pierced eyebrow. “A line? That’s it.”
“It’s more than that. It’s a tally mark. One for now. More for later. That’s what I want. Can you do it?”
Wren grunted, but took out a silver tool that looked like a gun with a needle on the end. “I’ll try not to take it as an insult to my talent.”
Lena edged closer and put her hand on the headrest behind me. “You can hold my hand if it hurts.”
I didn’t tell her that I wanted it to.
Wren wiped my skin with a swab of alcohol and dipped the needle into a pot of black ink. She flipped a switch and the gun buzzed like a mosquito. The needle plunged into the bulge of veins at the base of my wrist. I gritted my teeth to keep from flinching. The sharp point bit into my flesh. I felt Lena’s sharp intake of breath beside me.
Wren expertly traced a line half an inch long on my wrist and then retraced it. Too quickly it was over. She swiped cotton over the spot and the excess ink smeared and then disappeared. “A line. Just like you asked for.” Her tone was flat. Unimpressed. “Thirty bucks.”
I pulled cash from my back pocket all the while staring at the razor-thin line branded on my skin. One down. Four more to go.
I paid Wren and thanked her. Outside the darkness was dissipating. The lamplight faded into hues of blue. An idea had been bothering me all night. For me, in the days, there was only darkness. It was an unreachable part of me, what happened during the daytime. I was nocturnal and, for the most part, I relished that fact. But it had its limitations.
“Lena, what if I said I needed your help?” I asked.
She froze on the spot. Crickets chirped along a nearby fence and above, the stars were beginning to blend away. “Anything. You name it,” she said.
I realized there may have been more to my seeking out Lena tonight than celebration. I had a task and, as someone who needed assistance for mundane matters that required regular business hours, it just might be worth having an assistant of sorts.
The one standing in front of me was canine loyal, wide-eyed and eager. Perhaps saving her would serve its purpose after all.
“I need you to track down a room on Corbin College’s campus for me.”
ELEVEN
Cassidy