Blood Rock (28 page)

“Oh, hell,” I said, starting the Prius. “At least it’s not a Laura Ashley.”

So it was almost ten thirty when I reached the massive complex downtown that held the Fulton County Courthouse, and ten
fifty
by the time I parked, wound through the metal detectors, found the right floor, and
finally
found the heavy wooden door of the hearing room—closed.

The deputy standing outside held up a hand. “They’ve already started.”

“I’m supposed to be
in
there,” I said. “Please.”

He sighed. “All right, but I warn you she’s in a mood … ”

Judge Maria Guiterrez was a young brunette with a long sweep of bangs that came down over one eye. She couldn’t even have been my age, but a crackling energy flashed in her face when she saw me enter. “Bailiff—” she began, then stopped. “Miss Frost, I take it.”

“Yes,” I said. One table held Margaret Burnham; the other held Helen Yao, my attorney with Ellis and Lee. Helen glanced in surprise at my outfit—cream turtleneck sweater, tailored jeans jacket, and long flowing black skirt—but quickly motioned for me to come sit down.

“I said
tone it down,
not
turn it off,
” she hissed. “Your hair
doesn’t go
with—”

“Miss Frost,” Judge Guiterrez said sharply. “We were scheduled to start at ten.”

“I’m very sorry,” I said, coming to join Yao. “I was unavoidably detained—”

“That will not be good enough, Miss Frost,” the judge began. “In my courtroom—”

“I had
no choice
. I was kidnapped,” I said. And sat down at the table, shaking.

The judge’s mouth just hung open. “Did—did you report this, Miss Frost?”

“No,” I said. “I came straight here, because I was supposed to be
here.
”

Her brow furrowed. “Did you escape?”

“No, I did not
escape
,” I said. “People don’t escape when they’re kidnapped. That only happens in the movies. They’re let go or they
die
. I was kidnapped, terrorized, and left to kick my way out of the trunk of my car on the side of the highway. In
Conyers.
”

A glass of water was suddenly in front of me, and I took it in my shaking hands. “They tore up my clothes. My clothes! Even my vest. I had to shop at a fucking Mervyn’s—”

“Do you have a receipt, Miss Frost?” Judge Guiterrez asked coolly.

I looked up sharply at her. She was leaning her head on one hand, finger climbing to her temple. She would have been great at poker, I couldn’t tell whether her expression held sympathy or disapproval. Scowling, I dug out my wallet and started rifling through it.

“What happened to your wallet, Miss Frost?” the judge said.

“A truck ran over it when they threw my pants onto I-20,” I said, tossing a receipt on the table. “Eighty-nine fifty-seven, counting the manager discount because they took
pity
on me.”

Judge Guiterrez beckoned, and the bailiff took the receipt to her. “This morning. Nine-fifteen,” she said, rubbing her forehead. “In Conyers. And you came straight here—”

“Driving like a bat out of hell,” I said.

“Well,” Guiterrez said, and then a slight smile quirked her face, which she quickly tried to suppress. “Well. This isn’t a traffic court, so I’ll ignore that. Miss Frost, you’ve clearly had an, an experience, and if it’s left you shaken, we can reschedule this hearing—”

“No,” I said. “No, please, I came all the way here to get Cinnamon back. I don’t want to wait. All that matters is that I get Cinnamon back as soon as possible.”

“That won’t happen today,” the judge said. “But I will hear your case—
after
you have a chance to calm down and report your story to the police.”

“But—” I began.

“No buts, Miss Frost,” Guiterrez said, with quiet finality. “Bailiff, bring Miss Frost and counsel to my chambers and call an officer down here to take her statement. Next case … ”

So they dragged me off—not literally—to the judge’s chambers, where a sympathetic female APD officer took down the whole story. After she left, Helen came in and plopped her briefcase down on the table with a weary, wary look. “Damn, Dakota,” she said. “I’m so sorry, but I hope this wasn’t a
stunt—”

“Helen!” I said, then stopped. Then I extended my hand. “Smell that?”

She stared at my hand like it was a snake, then cautiously leaned forward. “That smells like … rubber gloves? Baby powder? Mildew?” Her eyes furrowed. “What—”

“The sick fucks tore up my clothes and put me in a rubber suit because they were scared of my magic tattoos,” I said. “No, I’m not making this up.”

“Well, your tattoos are pretty fearsome,” Helen laughed, a bit forced. “And I believe you, I guess, but this makes things more difficult. We missed our slot. Even with a good explanation, their first impression is that you were late and they had to reschedule. It doesn’t look good.”

“But—” I said. “But that’s not
fair.
”

“Dakota, let me tell you something I’ve learned,” Helen said. “I’m a defense attorney, so I’m biased, but a child custody hearing isn’t a criminal trial or a civil suit. It has its own twisted logic, and anything and
everything
can be used against you. If your child is retarded, then they’ve been neglected. If they’re gifted, then they’ve been coached. If they’re acting up, then you haven’t been setting boundaries. If they’re polite, you’ve been repressing them.”

“Then how does anyone keep their child?” I said.

“Basically, the judge and the prosecution will decide who they think should have the child and twist everything to fit their prejudgment,” Helen said bitterly. “That may not be the law, but it is what I’ve observed from doing this for the last seven years. That’s why it is absolutely, positively critical that you present the best possible picture to the judge.”

“All right,” I said. “All right. What do we do?”

“First,” Helen said, “we’ve rescheduled to Monday. Try not to get kidnapped, ill, or even disheveled between now and then. Make sure you arrive on time, dressed nicely, and that you’ve gone over all the materials we went over yesterday. Hopefully, this will blow over quickly once we get a chance to present our case. If not … well, then we can talk about that then.”

“Don’t keep me in suspense,” I said. “What’s the worst case scenario?”

“Oh, hell, I can’t tell you what the judge is going to ask,” she said, rubbing her forehead. “Who knows what they will want you to address? It may be as simple as documenting a fixed abode, or settling with the Valentine Foundation to show you have a good source of income.”

“I have a good source of income,” I said. “Fifty thousand dollars a year tattooing.”

“Well … ” she said, tilting her head, “that may not be good enough for the court.”

I just stared back at her. “What are you saying?” I said. “You can’t mean—”

“Magical tattooing is an unconventional profession,” Helen said, “and you’re not Cinnamon’s biological mother. If you want to keep her … you may have to give that up.”

I drove back to the Rogue Unicorn early for my shift and talked things over with Kring/L, my defacto boss. The court let Cinnamon keep going to the Clairmont Academy, but it would be days, if not weeks, until I could take Cinnamon home. So I renegotiated my shifts, picking up extra hours in exchange for being able to bail more frequently to deal with the custody case … and the vampires, and the graffiti, and whatever else life was going to throw at me.

As night fell and I finished my last tattoo for the evening, Kring/L came to talk to me. He’d talked to the rest of the staff, and everyone was on my side. By then I had a better handle on my schedule from Helen, and we went over it together.

“We’re going to have to get you a revolving door,” Kring/L said with a grin. Big, beefy, bald, and completely untattooed, Kring/L was our best tattoo artist, conventional or otherwise (no, really, it hurts to say that, but he was) and the unofficial leader of our little partnership.

“As long as I could come back here,” I said. “I’d hate to lose this.”

“Dakota, you’re half our draw,” Kring/L said, following me back to my office. I glanced back at him, and his grin quickly faded. “Dakota, seriously. The rest of us know what you’ve been through. Hell, the publicity has made business better. Why would you even … ”

I told him what Helen had told me, and his face turned red with rage, actually mottled.

“You do what you have to,” he said, “but you are always welcome here. Got that?”

“Yeah,” I said, sitting in my office chair. “Thanks.”

My office phone rang. I glanced at the number, then savagely tore the earpiece off the cradle and snarled, “What the
hell
do you want, Zinaga?”

“To be the bearer of bad news,” she said, and I could just hear that
smirk
in her voice. “Arcturus just gave me an earful. Like I told you not to, you didn’t show, and he’s really pissed. You’re persona non grata now, Kotie, sent straight to Coventry, whatever that means … ”

As she nattered on and on about how Arcturus had said he never wanted to talk to me again, two and two came together in my mind. Arcturus had bawled her out today—so she hadn’t gone to the shop to meet me last night. She’d known I wouldn’t show.

“Fuck you,” I said, and Kring/L backed out of my office, eyes wide. “Fuck you!”

“Hey, don’t blame me,” she said smugly. “You’re the one who bailed—”

“You threw me to the vampires!” I screamed into the phone. “To Transomnia!”

There was silence. “Oh,
shit,
” she said, and then the line went dead.

I slammed the handpiece back into the cradle repeatedly. “Damnit, damnit, damnit!” The phone rang again, and I picked it up. “Haven’t you done enough damage!”

Again the line was silent. “What did I do?” Calaphase asked, all kicked puppy.

I laughed, an odd broken cry. “Oh. Oh, Calaphase. I’m so sorry. I’ve had a bad day, and I thought you were someone else.”

“I’d hate to be them,” he said. “Do you have any news on the graffiti?”

“Oh, hell,” I laughed. “Do I have news, yes. About the graffiti, no.”

I told him everything. At first, when he heard what Transomnia’s goons had done to me, Calaphase looked ready to leap up and go tearing after him—but as I started to explain I didn’t want to pursue Trans, Calaphase
got
it, just like that, and smoothly changed the subject.

And then … we talked. Really
talked.

Not about graffiti or vampires, but instead about Cinnamon and school supplies, about coffee and restaurants, about moving and meanies, about how you always get pulled over for running a red light after you’ve caught yourself getting sloppy about yellows but before you’ve learned to put your foot on the brake earlier.

Calaphase wasn’t a vampire to me anymore. He was a person who happened to be a vampire. I wanted to more than just talk to him. I wanted to
see
him, to go to another stupid coffee house and watch him grimace his way through a mocha.

But why did I need an excuse? We had talked about seeing each other. In fact, we had planned on it, sometime after the hearing was done, but never set a time.

“You free Thursday night, vampire?” I said. “Ready to go out on a
real
date?”

——

Thursday night, I sat on a stool before a full-length mirror, naked to the waist at the center of a magic circle. The tail locks of my hair curled round my neck and dusted my back, resting between two tattooed wings of rainbow feathers that one day would be joined together. My arm curled around me, holding the tattooing gun, slowly inking the outline of a claw.

Once my skin had held a Dragon, a huge tattoo covering me from shoulder to toe, inked by my own hand. I’d released it to save my life, but I couldn’t just let it go. It was my icon, on my business cards and stitched on my jackets. It would be a lot of work to re-tattoo the Dragon: this was my fifth session, and there would be at least twelve more, plus touchups.

Now, seventeen sessions is no little thing. I may be a bit of a masochist, but tattooing
hurts
, and it strangely seems to hurt
more
when you’re doing it to yourself. Skindancers have to tattoo themselves, out of fear that a rival would leave them with a subtle—and permanent—hex. Non-magical tattooists, on the other hand, rarely tattoo themselves because it’s painful, unnecessary—and darn near impossible to get a good inking angle on your own body.

And inking your own back is quite the challenge, even for someone as long-limbed and limber as I am. The outline was barely finished, and already my neck hurt, my shoulder hurt, my back hurt, and I was getting a cramp in my lower leg. But I didn’t care: I could feel the buzzing of the tattooing gun, the insistent scratching that shimmered into a sensual, almost sexual warmth, and the vibration that fed back into my hand, giving me a feeling of power.

The main tattooing room had a wide plate glass window that was usually covered by a screen, but I had it down so potential customers could watch—and there was quite the crowd now. I was turned three-quarters away, my breasts hidden by a long dentist’s bib, alternately inking the line carefully in the mirror and then wiping the blood away with my free hand.

Kring/L opened the door and stared at me, then closed at it behind him. “Annesthesia said you were on the prowl,” he said. “I guess she was right.”

“This is how I
always
do this,” I said.

“Not yourself,” he said. “Not your back, sitting there half naked, blinds down.”

“But … ” I began, then stopped. I did tattoo myself in here, with the blinds open, but always small marks on the arms, never my own back. That I had done back in Blood Rock, with no-one watching. Arcturus insisted that a skindancer ink their masterwork alone.