She dropped her hands back to her lap and shook her head at me. “I still can’t believe you took that one.”
I sighed, once again forced to question either my sanity or my decision-making process when it came to clients. “I was feeling generous.”
“So, I’m guessing the tattoo hasn’t worked like he wanted.”
“I put a shamrock on the heel of his left foot. Do you honestly think anything good could come of that?”
“Not really. But then, I wouldn’t expect things to go all that bad for him either.”
“Yeah, well, neither did I, but they did. Lost job, car stolen, and wife wants a divorce.”
Trixie let out a low whistle as she leaned back against the set of cabinets above the counter that wrapped around the far wall. “That’s odd.”
“Not really. I put a leprechaun hair in the ink.”
“It go bad?”
“That or it was bad to begin with,” I said with another sigh. This wasn’t how I expected my day to go. “I’ve already called for some fresh, but it’ll be a few days. Just be careful and cut the mixture with something else to counteract it if you happen to use the hair between now and then. Pass the word along to Bronx if you see him before I do.”
“Got it, boss,” she said, hopping down from her perch on the countertop.
“Shall we get started?” I asked, trying to ignore the jiggle of her breasts as she landed lightly on her toes.
“Do you want front room or back room?” she inquired, looking over her shoulder at me as she walked toward the front glass counter and bent down so that I could catch the perfect roundness of her rear in the tight jeans. If I didn’t know better, I’d say she was doing it on purpose. But she was just switching on the music like we did every day.
“Back room,” I bit out, turning to look for the pair of clipboards that held the list of supplies we kept on hand. The front room held the random necessary items such as paper towels, latex gloves, petroleum jelly, needles, and ink. The processing of the items in the front room took less than thirty minutes and an order form was quickly filled out.
The back room possessed all the unique ingredients that we used in our potions. Each container needed to be checked, opened, and assessed as to whether the contents were still good or if we needed more. The back-room check could take up to three hours to process and the order form was even trickier because not everything could be purchased at the local ingredients shop. Some things had to be acquired through a series of back-alley transactions and black-market connections.
“If you need any help, just give a shout,” she offered as I turned toward the back room again.
“I’ve got it.”
“Gage …”
I stopped and turned half around to see where she was standing, one hand on the glass top of the counter in the lobby. “Thanks for not getting shot.”
“No problem. I hear the job market is a killer right now.” I winked at her, a wide, devilish grin crossing my mouth.
“Asshole,” she mumbled under her breath as she turned back toward the stereo she was fiddling with. I didn’t miss the smile that graced her lovely face. Before I could escape into the back room, Beethoven was blasted through the four speakers that were spread around the main tattoo room. I suppressed a laugh when I heard Trixie cursing Bronx’s taste in music. By the time I had shut the door, she had hooked up her own MP3 player to the speakers and Dropkick Murphys was filling the air. Trixie had a thing for both punk bands and bagpipes.
3
ASIDE FROM NEARLY being shot in the alley, it was proving to be a slow night. Trixie and I finished the inventory in record time as the parlor remained dead for the first few hours of the night and I passed the next hour on the phone lining up sellers for the few hard-to-get items that I needed to put back in stock. Nothing that had to be acquired through the black market, but not all were through the most reputable channels. Just people who were willing to take some risks for the right price. One of the things I had learned quickly when I opened this shop was that in order to get the necessary and best resources it was all about the connections you made.
I had finished up my phone calls when Bronx lumbered through the front door and shrugged off the massive black leather trench coat he wore despite the heat. But then, even with the sun down, most trolls had a lingering fear of their skin being exposed to the sunlight. Hanging it on the coat stand near the front door, he grunted once at me in greeting before scowling up at the speakers still blaring the Dropkick Murphys throughout the parlor. I smiled as I leaned down behind the counter and picked up Trixie’s MP3 player. I skimmed through her hundreds of artists and albums until I finally settled on a “Best of” Pink Floyd collection. It was a nice in-between band that both Trixie and Bronx could live with for the next couple of hours before the bickering began about music choice.
“Killjoy,” Trixie grumbled behind me from where she was lying back in one of the chairs with her arm thrown over her eyes.
“It can’t be that bad if it’s on your MP3 player,” I replied as I stepped back so that Bronx could enter the back room.
As I moved back to my position in front of the glass case, the front door flew open and four people rushed inside. By the horrified, panicked expressions twisting their faces, I knew they weren’t in the market for new tattoos. In fact, a couple of them gazed around the lobby for a second, looking confused as to where exactly they were.
“What’s up?” I asked, coming around the glass case to approach the front window where the four people were huddled together, staring down the street. I was trying for easygoing, but my question came out tight and tense. The door opened again and two women darted inside. Beyond the front window, I could see more people running up the street and slipping into any store that was open.
“One of them is down at Cock’s Crow,” one woman whispered. As she spoke, she backed away from the window so that she was nearing the shadows of the far corner of the lobby.
One of them.
At that utterance, it felt as if every muscle in my body tensed painfully. The world lived in daily terror of seeing one of them. Damn warlocks. Fucking witches. Because of them, fields had been dug up for enormous mass graves during the Great War. Because of them, both unicorns and dragons were now extinct, while others dangled on the cusp. Because of them, we all lived in fear.
“Gage?” Trixie’s unsure voice snapped me from dark thoughts, jerking my head around to find her standing in the doorway between the lobby and the tattooing room. She had turned off the music, blanketing the shop in silence. Bronx stood behind her, a heavy hand on her slim shoulder.
“Bronx, take these people out the back door and direct them down the alley.”
“The tunnels?” the troll asked, dropping his hand from Trixie.
“If they want, but I think this is just going to be an isolated incident,” I said with a frown. I knew the warlocks and witches were aware of the tunnels, because I had learned about the tunnels from them. The only good thing was that they didn’t know all the entrances or where all the tunnels led. They
