Broken Souls (4 page)

Green Wizard Tattoos
on the Venice Beach boardwalk sits in the back of a medical marijuana dispensary with a glowing, green neon cross out front, above the security guard with the conspicuous baton in his hands. Nobody’s toking up inside, but the smell of so much pot in one place makes my eyes water. The place is clean with a Zen retreat vibe, dark wood wall panels, bamboo in planters. I make my way past a whiteboard on the wall showing the store’s prices, a glass counter holding pipes, lighters, jars of Grape Ape, Blueberry Kush, Sour Diesel, half a dozen others. An orderly line of people filling their prescriptions goes out the door.

I step through a beaded curtain at the back of the shop and get a face full of patchouli. Whether they’re burning the incense to cut down on the pot reek from out front or just to up their Deadhead cred, I can’t tell.

The shop’s pretty standard. Nothing special. Flash on the walls, stuffed into binders on the counter, buzz of tattoo needles. Guy at the front looks up at me as I walk in, sees my suit and tie. Confusion crawls across his face. “Can I help you?” he says.

“Got an appointment with Stacy.”

“I got it, Nick,” Stacy says, coming through a beaded curtain leading to the back of the shop. Black, almost six feet tall, hair in dreads, ring in her nose. Stacy’s one of the best tattoo artists I’ve ever met. And the only one in L.A. who knows a damn thing about the kind of tats I need. First ink I got was from her, a hamsa, one of those hands with eyes in the middle for warding off evil, on my left shoulder. It works better than you’d expect, but then that’s Stacy’s knack. She does with ink what I do with the dead.

“Eric Carter,” she says. “Goddamn. You look like hell.”

“Next to you I’ve always looked like hell,” I say.

She laughs. “Yeah, that’s true. Man, it’s been, what, fifteen years now? Never thought I’d hear from you again.”

“To be honest, neither did I. Thanks for seeing me on such short notice.” Last time I saw her was a week before I left L.A. By that time I had about a dozen tattoos that she’d inked. Nothing big. Small charms and wards, things to help me take a punch, keep cops from looking at me too closely. I didn’t know a lot of magic back then. Enough to get into trouble, not enough to get back out again.

“You know I normally have a six-month backlog for my services,” she says, “but you’re special.”

“Like Jerry’s kids. You know, your name comes up a lot back east, actually. I’d hoped to catch you at a show in New Jersey a couple years ago, but I was busy.”

“In Secaucus? I remember that show. What were you doing out in Jersey?”

Getting my ass handed to me by a pair of demons who were murdering hobos and prostitutes. I finally got them, but I paid for it. “Work,” I say.

She looks at me like she’s expecting more but I don’t give it to her. “Fair enough. You said on the phone you needed something touched up and a new one?”

“We might want to go in the back to talk about this,” I say.

“Oh. Right. Sure, come on.” She leads me through another beaded curtain and behind a partition at the back of the room with a tattoo table, a stool and her equipment on a counter.

“I’ve had some more work done since I saw you last, and I need to get some of them touched up.” I hand her the bottle of ink. “Got this today from MacFee down in Torrance. Remember him?”

“God, he’s still around?” She uncorks it, takes a whiff and her eyes cross from the smell. “This must have cost you a fortune.”

“And anything left when we’re done is yours if you want it. It’ll keep.”

“Deal. Show me what you got.”

Her eyes widen when I get my shirt off. She gives a low whistle. “Damn, Illustrated Man, when you said you had some more work done you weren’t kidding. What do you need touched up?”

“Anything with a scar through it.” I point out a few spots where I’ve been cut, burned, stabbed or shot. Then to a circle of ravens on my chest. “And this one. Doesn’t need ink so much as a little oomph to recharge it.”

“Okay. And the new one?”

I hand her the rolled up paper. She unties the ribbon and looks the design over. It’s kind of like a triskelion, but there are tiny fractal patterns in it, spikes and jagged edges that are there on purpose. She studies it, frowns. “I’ve seen designs like this.” She gives me a hard look. “What are you hiding from, Eric Carter?”

“Nothing that’ll come after you,” I say, hoping I’m right.

“Well, this one’s going to cost you. You want this design to work I’m gonna have to pump some serious mojo into it. Ten thousand.”

“Done,” I say. I figured it would be about that much so I came prepared. I pull an envelope full of hundred-dollar bills out of my coat pocket and hand it to her.

She blinks. “What, no haggling?”

“I live cheap and make a lot of money. There’s fifteen in there.” This is not the kind of tattoo one fucks around with.

“All right, then. Lie down and we’ll get started. I can turn the lights down if it’s too bright in here for you.”

“Sorry?”

“Sunglasses?”

“Oh, no, I’ll keep ’em on. Thanks, though.”

“Suit yourself.”

Having an ink mage work on you is an experience. They don’t direct the spells; that’s what the designs are for. Instead they power them, give them life. I can feel the magic burning into the ink as she runs the needle over the designs broken by scars. It’s not painful, the needle hurts more, but it’s an awareness of the magic as it tries to bind with my own. It’s delicate work. Get hamfisted about it and not only does the spell not work, but it can backfire and lash out at the artist. Depending on what the design is supposed to do, that can be deadly.

I’ve got so many spells inked into my skin by now that I can’t remember what half of them do. But when she finishes touching one up there’s a slight burn through the design and I can feel the shape of each spell. Three of them ward against bullets, one against knives, one to keep mosquitoes away. The drone of the tattoo needle always makes me sleepy, but my paranoia keeps me awake. Especially when she puts on the new tattoo.

We finish up about three hours later. By the time we’re done I’m covered in little bandages from the touch-ups and a couple larger ones over the ravens on my chest and a small patch under my ribcage on my back. The ravens always feel a little weird when I get them touched up. They move around on my chest and for the first few hours they don’t settle down. I won’t feel them by this time tomorrow.

But the new design is a different story. I can feel its magic already. New tats always take a few days to sink in, their magic settling into my skin, becoming part of me. I’ll feel that one for a week, easy. It’s only a couple inches wide. The size doesn’t matter. The magic stored in it does.

“Do I need to go over the aftercare instructions with you?” she says.

“I think I got it by now, thanks.”

“Where’d you get that design, anyway?”

“The new one? Guy MacFee knows. Never met him but I’ve worked with him before. I trust his work. Usually.” If I got what I paid for, and it does what it’s supposed to, this design Stacy just put on me should make it a lot harder for Santa Muerte, or anybody, to track me magically. It won’t do anything for someone following me who has line of sight, but it should help keep me off cameras. Of course, I won’t know if it works until I use it.

I had a series of spells set up once to make it really hard for anyone to find me, but Alex cracked it when he tracked me down to tell me about my sister’s death. I’d thought about putting it back in place, but it has downsides, too. Made me hard to find, but also interfered with my own ability to track someone down. Made my life a lot harder than it needed to be sometimes, but I thought it was worth it at the time. Couldn’t have been more wrong.

“I know some of what’s in that design,” she says. “You’re hiding from something big and unpleasant. Do I want to know what it is? Is it gonna come looking for me for putting that mark on you?”

“No,” I say with as much conviction as I can fake. I don’t really know if Santa Muerte is going to be a problem for Stacy or not, but I needed to get this done and she’s the only one I know in town who can do it.

“I’m gonna hold you to that,” she says.

This tattoo is more selective than the defenses I had in place before. This is specific to most magical tracking like divinations or location spells with some extra bits that should keep gods like Santa Muerte off my back. Should make me fuzzy on their radar, if not downright invisible. It’s not tailor-made for Muerte, but it’s open-ended enough that it should include her. ‘Should’ being the operative word here. She’s got hooks into me that I can’t even see. This just might be like locking the door after the serial killer’s already gotten inside the house.

“Appreciate the help on such short notice,” I say, buttoning up my shirt.

“Fifteen thousand dollars buys a lot of goodwill. Now go home, leave those bandages alone for a couple hours and get some Aquaphor on them. They’ll heal faster than normal, but the skin’s still going to be raw for a couple of days. And for fuck sake don’t pick at the scabs.”

“Thanks for doing this, Stacy.”

“Don’t let whatever’s chasing you catch you, Carter. I hate to see my work go to waste.”

___

The drive across L.A. to Alex’s old bar in Koreatown takes me a couple hours. I take the surface streets, since the 10 is jammed as usual. I don’t know if the bar’s still open, or if Tabitha is even working there, but it’s the best lead I’ve got at the moment.

It takes a little while to find it. I haven’t been here in months and I’m looking for a nondescript black storefront with a single door and no signage. When I finally figure out where it is it’s no wonder I missed it.

It’s still a bar, but it’s changed. A lot. Simple black has been replaced with bright pink with blue trim. Got a flashy new sign to go with a flashy new name: Kandy Kitty.

It’s hideous. I start looking for a parking spot, spy one on the other side of the street. I split across lanes between a FedEx truck and an F-150 with a bed full of day laborers. If it wasn’t for how out of place it was between those two, I might not have seen the white Bentley coming up behind them.

L.A.’s a car town with more luxury vehicles than just about any other city, but even here a Bentley’s a rarity. Maybe I’m just hypersensitive to it because of last night. Is this one Kettleman’s? If it is what the hell is it doing here? Coincidence? The new tattoo should be blocking any new tracking spells. Or maybe the magic just hasn’t had time to set. I can still feel it sinking into my skin.

I’m probably just being paranoid, but paranoia has kept me alive more times than I can count. The Bentley’s a couple cars behind me, and I can’t see through the tinted windshield. I slow down to give it a chance to catch up to me. If it’s the guy from last night I want to know and the only way I can think to do that is to see if he does something to give himself away. Looks like I’ll be giving the bar a pass.

I hang a left onto a side street and slow down to see if the Bentley keeps up. It does. That doesn’t prove anything, so I head a couple more blocks, make another left and another. Sure enough the Bentley’s right there behind me. After a few minutes the driver doesn’t even try to pretend he’s not following me.

I don’t know for sure if it’s the guy from last night, but the odds that I’d have a run-in with two different white Bentleys are
pretty slim. And if it’s the same guy, how’d he find me? I take a few more twists and turns, head east on Normandie then cut up toward Wilshire. What I need to do is get him off my ass, figure out how he tracked me down later. But that might be harder than it sounds. Traffic is heavy. Slow going.

I’m not sure I’m going to be able to shake the Bentley in it when I hear Alex’s voice say, “You’re not going to lose her in the car.”

The Mercedes swerves and I almost take out a guy on a bike before I get the car back under control. This time, instead of some disembodied voice whispering in my ear, Alex is sitting right there in the passenger seat, wearing the same clothes he died in.

“You don’t say.” My heart hammers in my chest.

“Yep. Too much traffic. No room to maneuver. I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know.”

“No, you’re not. Are you even real?”

“What do you think?”

I don’t know what to think. I reach out a hand to touch him and stop just short. He’s not pegging any of my ghost radar. What if I touch him and he’s solid? What if he’s not? I’ve lived my entire life able to see things no one else can. But I’ve always been sure that they were there, even if I didn’t know what they were. And this is no different.

“I think it doesn’t really matter at the moment,” I say, turning my attention back to the road. “You said I can’t lose ‘her.’”

“Did I? Whoops. Should I have said ‘spoiler alert’ first?”

“So you’re not me having a psychotic break.”

“You sure? How do you know you didn’t catch a view of her in the rearview and your subconscious just suppressed it?”

“And why would it do that?”

“Self-loathing? Guilt? The fuck should I know? It’s your subconscious. I think it’s guilt. You did put a bullet in my brain, after all. Remember? It looked like this.”