Sins & Needles (The Artists Trilogy #1) (5 page)

“So,” he said, removing it and wiping at his chin. He leaned back in his chair. “So then I became a tattoo artist.”

I realized I had been totally spacing out for most of our conversation. That wasn’t like me at all. Then again, he was a guy from high school, not a mark.

“Really?” I asked, and my eyes immediately went to his tattoos. Upon closer inspection I found a method in the madness of shapes and colors. Scorpions, skulls, snakes, wings, and pin-up girls all met each other on blue ocean waves. Tiny inscriptions ran throughout.

“I take it you never heard of my tat business?”

“Should I?”

He nodded at my arm where I had a band of music notes inked all around. “Where did you get that?”

“Some parlor in Mississippi,” I said, then quickly clamped my mouth shut.

But he didn’t ask me why I went back to the state I lived in before I moved here. Instead he said, “It sounds familiar. The tune.”

“Did you just hum it in your head?”

He beamed at me, looking proud over impressing me and lazy at the same time. If he could have leaned any further back in his chair, he’d be on the ground. “I told you, I play guitar. What song is it?”

“It’s nothing,” I told him. “Anyway, so you’re a tattoo artist. I’m guessing you got pretty big.”

“Big enough,” he shrugged with false modesty. “I was one of the top artists in LA. I was even on LA Ink. Ever watch that show?”

“I only watch Netflix.”

He nodded, as if he could deduce something about me from that. “Well, you weren’t missing anything. You know I’m going to keep humming that tune and eventually I’ll figure out the song. Maybe then you’ll tell me the meaning.”

I frowned at him. “I think you overestimate your skills of persuasion.”

“I got you to sit down and have coffee with me when you were ready to bolt out the door.”

Yes, well it helps that you’re hot
, I thought. “So what are you doing here if your business is in LA? Visiting the ‘rents?”

From the way his eyes shifted—changed—I could have sworn a cloud passed over the sun, putting the whole shop in shadow. But it was only in his eyes and it disappeared as soon as he smiled.

“No. Not my parents. Though they still live here. Dad’s still the sheriff, you know.”

How could I forget? He ran my parents out of town.

“I actually have my business here. I own a tattoo shop. Sins and Needles,” he said. “It’s just coming into town from the east. Maybe you saw it? It’s in an old house with replicas of Bela Lugosi and Swamp Thing on the porch.”

Charming. 

“My shop’s downstairs, I live upstairs.”

“And you make enough to live on?” Despite the proximity to LA and the facelift, Palm Valley still wasn’t a place for culture, or sub-culture as it were.

  His smile went from charming to shit-eating. “I sure do. You’d be surprised how much money a tattoo shop can rake in.”

I would have found his cockiness to be off-putting, but the truth was I knew nothing about tattoo parlors. All the ones I’d been to looked half-dead, with an artist who looked like he’d been regulated to piercing young girls’ ears in order to keep the lights on.

He pulled his phone out of his pocket and glanced at it. “In fact, I have an appointment in twenty minutes. Want to come see me in action?”

Normally, the thought of watching someone get jabbed with an inky needle would have turned me off, but there was something so earnest and open about his handsome face that I found myself nodding. There was also the whole guilt thing over how horrible I was to him in high school. And, let’s be honest here, I was curious to see how successful this guy was.

In my business, you had to stick to successful people like glue.

CHAPTER THREE

Twenty minutes later, I was pulling up Jose in front of a quirky, two-story house, Camden McQueen at my side. The drive was short and he alternated between pointing out what had changed since I left town and cooing over the car.

“How much was it, if you don’t mind my asking?” he asked as the wheels crunched to a stop over loose sand.

A smile tugged at my lips as I took the keys out of the ignition. “I wouldn’t know. I borrowed it.”

He opened the door and paused, giving me a suspicious look. “Borrowed it like you used to borrow the teachers’ books before a test?”

I matched his suspicious look, wondering how much Camden knew about what I did. After my parents became fugitives, everyone in Palm Valley knew they were con artists. People used to point at me and whisper, and I figured it was either over my injury (which was usually the case) or they were placing bets whether I was in on the con. I hadn’t been, not at that time. That didn’t stop me from pulling a few tricks in high school, but they were just minor things. I’d never gotten caught—teachers just looked the other way when they saw me. I think it’s because they felt sorry for me and they were right to.

“I always gave them back,” I told him and got out of the car. The sun had somehow gotten hotter. On days like this, I hated that I couldn’t wear shorts.

He was staring at me, his hand shielded over his eyes. I’d forgotten how much he used to stare. Now it was a bit easier to take since I didn’t think he was going to pull the rug out from under me, but it was still unnerving.

I turned my attention back to the house. It was clapboard and a bright yellow with cobalt blue accents. There really were life-sized replicas of Dracula and Swamp Thing on the porch as well as an intricate wooden sign that said “Sins & Needles.” The garden was of your standard rock, brush, and cacti variety, something that lazy people like myself would fall back on. It was a hell of a lot cheaper than maintaining a lawn in the desert.

“Like what you see?” he asked, his gaze following mine. “The house was built in the 1950s. I think it used to be at the air base, then they moved it over here when the town got started up. It even has a bomb-proof bunker.”

“Seriously?”

He nodded. “Well, Audrey will be here soon.”

I guessed she was his client. I followed him up the path, stepping only on the stones as if the ground was lava, and had a nice view as we climbed the creaking steps to the porch. Camden sure had one hell of an ass. That was something I thought I’d never say.

He unlocked the door and flipped over the “open” sign as we stepped in. The place was kitschy as anything. It was like walking into Graceland if it was owned by Jon Waters. The walls were an obnoxious green, the suede couch was orange, and the coffee table was pink and made out of alligator skins. I had to do a double take. A 1930s scuba diving suit hung in the corner by a paper maché Speed Racer. There was a stack of shiny guitars underneath a flatscreen TV that was showing
Who Framed Roger Rabbit
with Asian subtitles.

But for all the visual diarrhea, I couldn’t help but add up the dollar value of the place. He wasn’t kidding when he said he brought in the dough. As ugly and campy as half the stuff was, they’d be worth a pretty penny to purchase.

“Can I get you a beer?” he asked. There was a small, retro fridge beside his tattoo chair and when he opened it, it glowed glass green from all the Heineken.

“Please,” I told him. Probably wasn’t the best idea since my stomach was still growling and I was strangely nervous, but I could never pass up a free cold one.

He nodded at the couch. “Why don’t you take a seat? Here.” He reached over and handed me a stack of binders. “That’s all my art in there. You know, in case you have a change of heart and let me ink you.” His eyes twinkled mischievously.

“I don’t recall you giving me the chance to turn that idea down,” I said wryly, taking them from him and sitting down on the couch. For all the orange suede, it was really comfortable. While he busied himself getting ready for the client, I flipped through the pages.

His art was beautiful. From soaring owls to photograph-quality portraits and strange symbols, Camden looked like he could do anything. All of his work had a certain shadow, a certain dark quality about it that instantly reminded me of art class. Back when he and I were friends, back when we’d sit next to each other in Mrs. Slevin’s class, he’d doodle page after page of his sketchbook with these highly detailed and intricate drawings, all with a skinny black pen.  One day I let him draw all over my arm, from my knuckles all the way to my shoulder before Mrs. Slevin yelled at him, throwing around big words like “ink poisoning. “ I had worn those drawings with a perverse sense of pride like the freak I was.

I peered up from the pages and watched him. He was sitting in his chair, p
repping his station, brows furrowed and bright eyes in clear concentration. The package may have changed, but his eyes were still the same. Even now they were as engaged and coaxing as ever, like he was trying to get the ink to tell him its secrets.

“So what do you do for work, Ellie?” he asked without meeting my eyes. He knew I was staring at him.

“I work odd jobs,” I said, and went back to flipping through the book.

“You never went to college?”

“Not unless you count the School of Hard Knocks.”

“Still funny, I see.”

“You gotta be something.”

I felt him pause, a heaviness at my back. The hairs on my neck felt like they were being tugged. I was reminded of the electric shock he gave me and I slowly turned my head. He was staring right at me, his expression unreadable. Something strange passed between us, but it felt foreign to me and I didn’t know what to make of it.

Finally he said, “Audrey’s here.”

I turned in time to see the door opening and a girl in her early twenties enter, doing her best Dita Von Teese impression with black retro waves and polka dot dress. Her arms were covered in tats, a full sleeve on her left and half of one on her right. It was just an outline of cherry blossoms, the color missing.

“Hi Camden,” she gushed. She trotted over to him in her minxy heels, pausing only to give me a dirty look. I was reminded of the way I must have appeared when I first saw him, before I learned who he was to me.

“Audrey, babe,” he said and got up out of his seat. He embraced her good-naturedly and patted the chair. “Take a seat. Oh, this is Ellie by the way. She’s going to watch me color you up, if you don’t mind of course.”

She gave him a half smile which turned fully fake when she looked at me. For Christ’s sake, she even had one of those fake beauty marks on her face. “No, I don’t mind. She your girlfriend, Camden?”

I almost snickered but caught myself just in time.

“No, she’s an old friend, just visiting,” he supplied smoothly. “Or are you staying in Palm Valley now, Ellie? I can’t remember.”

“Um, just passing through,” I said, getting to my feet. I felt that itch to get out of there. Why was I even in his tattoo studio to begin with? One minute I was at the coffee shop and suddenly I was here, hanging around someone I didn’t know. I mean, it felt like I knew him, but not really. We weren’t the people we were when we were teenagers. God, I hoped we weren’t those people.

Then I realized why I was really there. What my subconscious was working away on. I found my eyes resting on the cash register.

He started dabbing cleaning solution on Audrey’s arm and noticed my wayward eyes. I tried to cover it up but he just held my eyes and said to Audrey, “Ellie is actually looking for work. Do you know of any openings at the boutique?”

Audrey shook her head politely. “We’re full up.”

“That’s too bad,” he said. “Are you paying with cash or credit today?”

“Oh, cash,” she said, and he waited while she fished out a wad of bills from her wallet. It looked to be at least $200. I supposed that was enough to get by on if you had one customer a day, but it would barely pay your bills let alone all the cool stuff in the place.

“Thank you,” he told her, rolling over in his chair to the till and punching in a few numbers. “I’ll get you a receipt after.”

The register opened with a loud chime and my jaw unhinged. It was loaded with cash. And I mean loaded to the brim. There’s no way the shop could bring in that much. He must keep it for show or something, though I couldn’t fathom why. Maybe if he was the lovestruck boy he was back in the day, I could say he was trying to impress me, but he didn’t even know I’d be around.

I must have been staring at him with a stupid look on my face because he shot me a coy glance that said
I told you so
.

All right, fine. So he brought in a lot of money. Now that the shock had worn off that the geeky, emo teenager had done well for himself, I started wondering exactly how much money he was bringing in.

And if he’d miss it if any of it disappeared.

The buzzing of the needle snapped me out of my musings. It was crazy, anyway. I told myself I was going legit and I needed to stick to it. More than that, I’d done enough to the poor man all those years ago. On the other hand, he didn’t seem to be any worse for wear. He looked like a hot, successful, lady killer. Maybe the past didn’t matter if you were making a killing in the present. Living well was the best revenge, wasn’t it?