A Perfect Blood. Ким Харрисон

someone could see it, there wasn’t much point to it as far as he was concerned.

      “I’d like this on the back of my neck, high and almost behind my ear so my hair covers it most of the time,” I said, taking the drawing from Emojin. “And the detached fluffs coming around the front somewhat. One on my neck by the main piece, one on my collarbone where everyone can see it, and a third where you think appropriate.”

      I looked up, fixing on David’s eyes. “If someone knows it’s a pack tattoo, they’ll recognize it flat out. And if they don’t, then they won’t need to see the larger one.”

      David thought about that, and Emojin took the paper back. “Like an open secret,” she said, pleased. “Rachel, this is good. I’m so pleased that you came in. This is going to be one of my more satisfying pieces.”

      “Why?” Wayde asked, his stance belligerent. “Because she’s been such an ass about it?”

      Emojin stopped, turned, and nailed him with her glare. “Because she’s making this one piece all she’ll ever need to show the world who she is instead of coloring her body with random images and needing thirty expressions to show her soul.”

      My lips parted, and I stared as she paced to him, looking as if she wanted to smack him.

      “She might have come in sooner if she had had something to mull over other than you men telling her it isn’t going to hurt, because she knows it is, and to believe otherwise is stupid.”

      Wayde backed up another alarmed step as the shorter woman faced him. “I told you to bring her by for a drawing session first,” she said. “Rachel may have been an ass for standing me up, but she did come in.” Turning, she made a last huff, then smiled at me. “Men,” she said as she took my arm and led me to the brightly lit room. “They forget we need to see the outcome of pain before we willingly put ourselves through it. How else would we suffer nine months to have a beautiful child? We already know we have guts. Getting a tattoo to prove it means little. You’re going to like this. I know it.”

      She patted my arm again, inviting me to follow her into her small/big world of ink and needles and expression of soul. And this time, trusting her, I went.

       Seven

      Isquinted, trying to tilt Ivy’s hand mirror just so and keep the damp hair off my shoulder as I stood with my back to the bathroom mirror so I could see my tattoo. It was a sunny afternoon, but not much light made it into the old men’s room that had been converted into a laundry and bath. Exhaling loudly, I dropped my hair to turn on the light.

      “Hey!” Jenks complained as he darted out of the way, but I wanted to see it, too.

      “What do you think?” I asked as the bright fluorescent light flickered on, and I pulled my hair back again. The mirror was foggy from my shower, and it took me a second to get the hand mirror lined up with the cleared spot, but then I eyed the back of my neck in the small mirror. Jenks’s wings were a cool draft, and he hovered behind me spilling a silver dust. His hands were on his hips, a garden sword on his belt, and a dirty jacket on his back. He’d been in the garden all morning strengthening the security lines and was probably trying to get his afternoon nap in. He’d finally cut his hair, and I felt better knowing he’d gotten over that stumbling block. It had grown long in the months that Matalina had been gone, and it was nice seeing him getting back to normal.

      “I suppose it’s okay,” he said, being of the mind that no one should subject themselves to injury for vanity’s sake, though in my case, it hadn’t been vanity, but a real need to show affiliation. “If you like that kind of thing.”

      “Okay?” I shifted to get a better look at it. “I love it. I shouldn’t have waited so long.”

      “Sure, it looks good now.” He cocked his head and tugged his garden jacket up where it belonged. “But it’s going to peel soon. And what about when you’re a hundred and sixty? Those flowers are going to look u-u-u-u-ugl-y-y-y when your skin gets all saggy.” I frowned at him through my reflection, and he added, “Did it hurt?”

      Dropping my damp hair, slick with detangler, I turned to face him. My eyes were drawn to the tuft on my collarbone. The shower water had burned, but I didn’t think that’s what he’d meant. “It hurt like hell,” I said, meeting his gaze. “I passed out.”

      “You?” Jenks hovered backward until there were twin pixies in my mirror.

      Nodding, I set Ivy’s mirror on the dryer and looked through my drawer for my comb. “It was weird. I could take the pain okay. I could’ve taken more, but I passed out.” Finding one, I tried working the detangler through my hair some more. “David panicked. Emojin told him that it only meant my mind was stronger than my body.” Which was about par for me. It had always been that way. I was tired of people overreacting when I had a minor problem that would work itself through. So I had passed out. So what?

      Jenks snickered, wings clattering as he dropped down to take a closer look at the seed tufts.

      “I’m glad you got your hair cut. Did Jhi do it?” I asked.

      Darting back, Jenks’s face was aghast. “Jhi?” he yelped. “No. It was, uh—”

      He hesitated, and I winced as I found a knot in my hair. “Who? Bis?” I guessed, the thought of the somewhat clumsy gargoyle near Jenks’s head with a pair of scissors kind of scary.

      “It was Belle,” he admitted, his feet landing on the faucet’s knob.

      I looked at him, surprised. “Belle?” I thought he hated the fairy.

      Jenks’s wings were a bright red, fanning into motion though he didn’t move at all. “She cut it for me when I got it tangled in some burrs. She said that only babies have short hair, but if I was clumsy enough to catch it on something, I needed to cut it.”

      “Short is probably a good idea,” I said. “Fairies can’t move as fast as pixies, so they don’t have to be worried about snagging it. Personally, I like the way men look with long hair.”

      “Really?”

      I glanced at him, thinking about Trent’s wispy hair. His wasn’t curly like Jenks’s, but it had been oh-my-God silky as I had run it through my fingers. Stop it, Rachel.

      “Short looks better on you, though,” I said, shaking away the memory.

      He squinted at me in mistrust, probably wondering why I wouldn’t meet his eyes. “It won’t tangle in the garden now,” he said cautiously. “I don’t know how the girls deal with it, but theirs isn’t curly.”

      I switched sides, carefully going through my hair as I tried to plan my day, thinking that seeing Jenks get back to normal was a quiet relief. The tasks that Matalina had performed were slowly being picked up by Jenks’s kids, and now Belle, apparently. I never would have guessed that that would happen, but maybe because she was a fairy, she could do the matronly things Matalina had done without threatening Matalina’s place in Jenks’s mind.

      I didn’t quite know what to do with myself today. It was Saturday, and usually I’d be in the ever-after. The amulets that the I.S. had were either not working or they weren’t telling us what they’d found. We’d probably hear nothing new until I got the amulets I’d made yesterday invoked and out to the FIB. Setting down the comb, I picked up the cream that Emojin had sent me home with and dabbed a bit on, starting with the little fluffs at my throat. Weres would recognize even this small bit as part of a pack tattoo, and humans wouldn’t care. It was perfect.

      Jenks noticed my wince, and he rose, wings clattering. “Does it still hurt? You want a pain amulet?”

      I squeezed a small amount onto my fingertips and reached for the fluff in back. “No. I wouldn’t use one anyway. Pain is apparently part of the mystique. That’s why vampires don’t get tattoos.”