for the right amount of money. Damn, for the right amount of money, I was positive that I could do far worse, but I tried to avoid getting myself into that kind of trouble, no matter how much green or gold was flashed in front of me. Karma could be a bitch.
Yet, as I stood there, it wasn’t the first-floor cabinet I was picturing, but my wall of cabinets in the basement that was flashing across my brain. In seconds, I was running through the catalog of items, weighing the use, effectiveness, and strength of each one. What was I hoping to accomplish? I knew without a doubt that I couldn’t cure her, but what if I could buy her a little more time? What if I could give her months versus days? Would they be days of agony or happiness because she had experienced more life than she had expected to?
It was only the pounding of Trixie’s heels on the wood floor that made me realize I had been standing transfixed before the cabinet for several minutes, lost in thought. I quickly bent down and grabbed the strap of my bag before shouldering it. My mind was still rattling through ingredient after ingredient. It was a puzzle my brain couldn’t let go of. There was something I could do. I was one of the best tattoo artists in the region, if not the country. I had a past that no other tattoo artist could claim. After all the centuries of torture, bloodshed, and death caused by the warlocks and the witches, there had to be something positive that one warlock-in-training could do to help someone without looking for something in return.
“You okay?” Trixie asked, poking her head in the door.
“Yeah, just thinking about the designs I’ve got to get done tomorrow. It’s too late tonight to sit down at the desk. I’m dead on my feet.”
Trixie arched one eyebrow at me for a second before shaking her head as she backed out of the room and headed into the tattoo parlor. I had to admit that I kind of felt the same way. What the hell was I doing? There were some things in this world that couldn’t be changed, but I wasn’t sure that I was ready to admit defeat on this one yet.
5
AFTER THE LATE hour I’d finished the previous night, it was a little difficult to pull my sorry ass back into the parlor before three o’clock the next day. It meant skipping the gym and packing a quick lunch/dinner, but at least I didn’t have an unexpected run-in with any gun-wielding maniacs in the alley beside the tattoo parlor when I arrived in the afternoon.
I went through my usual routine of checking the spells and resetting everything before I trudged down into the basement and reset the spell there. Trixie wasn’t expected for another five hours and Bronx wouldn’t be here until another hour or so after that. The parlor was mine for a while, allowing me to work in peace.
In one far corner was a designer’s desk with a bright overhead lamp. Sitting down in the ergonomically correct chair, I snatched several pieces of paper and started sketching the wings that I had seen dancing through my brain all night as I slept. This project consumed me like nothing else before. I had had clients come to me with some interesting concepts and art, but there was something different about this. I needed it to be perfect in every detail.
As I worked on the art there was something else eating at me that finally drove me down into the chilled basement of the tattoo parlor. Normally, I worked on all my designs in the windowless back room with the ingredients. But this one had taken on a secretive quality. I felt the need to be close to my personal ingredients, as if they were calling to me, wanting me to use them in the ink when I had already said that I wouldn’t. This was just supposed to be a tattoo of angel wings and yet I felt as if I needed to do more, as if I had to do more. I didn’t know if it was about trying to save one lost soul before it was taken too early. Maybe it was about trying to do something good with all my years of study when all the other warlocks and witches had only looked out for themselves.
After a couple of poor starts, I got down a design on paper that I managed to finish in just over an hour. I decided to go with an exceedingly simple design instead of something with heavy detail. I didn’t want to distract from the sheer purity of the lines. The wings would break from her back and pour forth like a white cascade.
I took the design upstairs and checked the clock one last time. I still had a couple of hours until Tera was due to arrive, and to my surprise, I felt myself growing nervous. I had been tattooing long enough that I was never nervous before starting a piece of work. I had done more than a dozen tattoos in a single night and still gone on to have drinks with friends later. Tattooing was my life, and yet I was suddenly faced with what would probably be the last great act of this woman before she died; I was nervous about screwing it up for her.
Shaking my head at my strange feeling, I started to tidy up the windowless back room where I would be tattooing Tera. Considering that she would be forced to lie on her stomach with her back fully exposed, I thought she might appreciate a little extra privacy instead of being on display for any other customers who might come in. While I knew the tattoo would take close to two hours to complete, I figured that I would be able to finish it before Trixie came in the door and officially opened the shop.
As I prepped everything I needed, I took a long look at the plastic cap that would hold the black ink for her tattoo. It was a large, but simple, thin line tattoo. I wouldn’t need more than a single cap of black ink. Mind swirling and conscience screaming, I tightly grasped the cap in the palm of my hand as I stomped down the stairs to the basement where my hidden ingredients beckoned me.
“Fine! I’m here!” I shouted to no one as I stood before the cabinets. I set the cap down on one of the counters of the largest cabinet before I started pulling open one glass door after another. It was only when I reached the one with the heavy padlock on the front that my mind grasped what I was searching for. My heart pounded and my mouth went as dry as the Sahara. I had never thought to use it. Part of me had convinced myself that it wasn’t real, but then I had acquired it from my mentor and he wasn’t one to lie about the veracity of a particular item. Every potion maker had to understand the potency and capabilities of every item he used. The only problem was that due to its extreme rareness no one knew how this item would react. But this once, I was willing to take a chance as the ingredients that I needed suddenly filled my brain.
Walking back over to the first cabinet, I reached inside and on the second shelf picked up a small vial. With a toothpick, I fished out a few particles of pollen from a white lily that had been sitting on a church altar during Easter mass. I wasn’t the type to go haunting churches and cemeteries for the really interesting ingredients, but sometimes a person had to take some chances to get the good stuff. At least I had waited until everyone left mass and cleared out of the church before I made my own personal collection. The white lily has always been a symbol of rebirth and purity. There was a cleanness to it that appealed to my brain, as if I could use these particles of pollen to wash away Tera’s sins.
Replacing the container in the cabinet, I closed the doors and carried the cap, with one finger over the opening and one below the bottom, to the cabinet with the padlock. Carefully setting the cap down, I fished my keys out of my pocket and, with the infrequently used lock making a slight screech, opened it. The wooden doors groaned as they were opened. Dragging over a stepladder, I climbed up to the last step so that I could reach the top shelf. I removed several items before I could reach a carefully sealed mason jar in the very back that seemed to glow with its own perfect light. The jar contained a single white feather that looked as if it was large enough to come from a giant eagle or condor. After coming down the steps, I walked over to my workbench and grabbed a pair of metal tweezers and a pair of wooden tongs. With shaking hands, I opened the jar and partially removed the feather by grasping it with the wooden tongs. I drew in a deep breath and held it as I used the tweezers to pull a single wispy frond from the feather and curl it in the bottom of the plastic ink cap. It was only after the feather had been replaced in the jar and the lid properly resealed that I started breathing again. I quickly
