The Lost Queen by Jenn Stark

Author:Jenn Stark [Stark, Jenn]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Elewyn Publishing
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Sixteen

It took Gamon only a half hour to get Svetlana to give up everything she ever had the misfortune of knowing about the location of the vessel witch, and even then, we didn’t have a name, only the confirmation of what we already suspected.

Where else would a prophecy look to make one unknown, hardworking witch a superstar but Los Angeles, California?

While Danae got to work securing our introduction in to the LA coven, Nikki and I needed to track down another person of interest, the rapper who’d nearly died within the last week, whom we suspected had been targeted by the vessel witch. There was no guarantee that Richard Zachariah knew how close he’d come to a date with Myanya’s darker side, but if he could help us identify his attacker in any way, it was worth having a chat with him.

The LA Ink Emporium Tattoo Convention had drawn a record crowd this year, with more than two hundred tattoo artists lined up in booths throughout the convention center perched just a few miles away from open ocean. It drew an eclectic crowd, featuring some of the hottest artists in the world, and drawing everyone from the virginally skinned to those covered in ink from head to toe. There was a straight-up tattoo contest, a pin-up contest, and a Miss Ink contest, with the winner getting a tattoo from the hottest designer at the convention.

Death.

Nikki and I loitered three aisles over from where the artist most people knew as Blue was bent over a first-timer whom she’d apparently picked out of the crowd, a middle-aged woman with light brown hair and a long, lithe figure. The woman, who’d clearly never gotten a tattoo in her life, was blushing bright red as one of the oldest members of the Arcana Council pressed a needle gun into her arm.

Death cut a decidedly recognizable image as well. Slender and muscular, her hair bleached white and spiked on one side of her head, shaved on the other, today she was wearing her usual working outfit of ripped jeans, shit-kicker boots, and a muscle shirt that bared her cut biceps. One arm was untouched by ink, the other was completely covered in a sleeve of intertwining tattoos. At this very convention, there was an entire coffee table book dedicated to the artwork on Death’s arm, captured with surreptitious video, found footage, and a few rare up-close and personal photos. The book was being sold by a third party, with the most popular rumor implying that the original chronicler was spending an extended stay in rehab after finally publishing the book. Needless to say, Death had offered no comments on the work, and most were afraid to ask her about it.

“You know, I think that’s gotta hurt,” Nikki observed. We’d been in LA only about three hours, and she had elected to go full Marilyn for our first day, from her platinum-blonde wig to her beauty mark to her trademark white dress and platinum pumps. She wasn’t the only Marilyn in the crowd, but she was by far the best.

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