Nightmare Ink by Marcella Burnard

Author:Marcella Burnard
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Penguin Group, USA
Published: 2014-04-14T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fifteen

Isa found Steve waiting in the shop when Troy walked her up from the basement.

Still blinking her eyesight back into this world, she caught sight of a sunny, blue-sky glimmer surrounding Steve. She bit back a laugh. Magic. Of course.

“I’ve got an Ink death,” he said by way of greeting. “My people tell me there’s still magic buzzing around the room, but they can’t read it. Too confused.”

Murmur shifted, interested.

Isa frowned. Troy had been right, in part. He’d said that people needed her to do her job. But it was more than that. Was she power tripping because helping Steve steadied her? Made her feel stronger?

She needed that. “Let’s go. I’ll do what I can.”

Steve drove north past Bitter Lake into a residential neighborhood one block off of Aurora. The neat Craftsman-style cottage stood out on the block. The rest of the homes were bigger. Newer. Cop cars lined the curb.

They pulled in as rain began spattering the windshield.

Murmur rose within her. Since he offered a unique perspective on Ink, Isa didn’t attempt to shut him out, despite the renewed ache in her head.

She caught a whiff of varnish as Steve ushered her through the polished front door. The remains of flat, stale magic inside stopped her cold.

A circle had been inscribed on the satin-finish hardwood floor. Symbols she didn’t recognize lined the interior. Inside a second, smaller circle at the center of the room, a body sprawled, hands outflung.

A tremor of black that hadn’t originated from her shook her body.

“What?” she asked the Ink.

No reply.

Police littered the room, measuring, photographing, collecting specimens and evidence. Steve waded into the thick of the activity, asking questions.

She’d sensed something she couldn’t put a finger on. Normally, she’d be willing to plow through so subtle a warning, but anything that gave her tattoo pause warranted a second look. She opened to magic. The scent of sun-warmed sage caressed her cheek. It carried a hint of leather and sulfur.

Pain sank razor-sharp teeth into her hands. She gasped.

Her magic collapsed.

An impatient, ebony tendril of power, steeped in smoke and leather, commanded her magical eyes open. Murmur crowded into that tier of eyesight as well, as if he required her biology to sift the layers of reality stacked in the house like a cake frosted with death.

He snorted at the analogy.

A rainbow of energy signatures from the investigators crisscrossed the room. Frosty pink magic glittered in the air above the outer circle.

The Ink victim had cast the circle. Had the young man also drawn the symbols? To what purpose?

No. Look. Murmur tried to pull her eye muscles, to direct her gaze into tighter focus on the body.

Headache spiked, then subsided as his grip slid free of her visual control. She studied the dead man.

Go closer. He shoved her.

She stumbled closer to the line. The hair at the back of her neck stood on end. “No way. I can see the tattoo from here. It’s the Infernal.”

An Infernal.

Isa frowned.

He shoved again.

Growling at him as she tottered another two steps, Isa threw his grasp from her motor control.

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