Previously on Inker: Demonic possession led to devilish headaches for neighborhood co-op clerk Daniel, and Inker Tessa hasn’t been able to stop thinking about the beautiful babe in blue, Detective Dowtry… As much as she is discomfited by the fact that a police officer is out there wondering around with magic secrets. Not just wandering, but wondering—and snooping, probably.
Previous chapters: 1, 2, 3, 4.
After several days of alternating hail, rain and snow, we finally got a partly sunny day. Over the years, spring in Colorado has gotten weirder and weirder. Yet climate change is a liberal hoax.
Cute.
Not.
Anyway, this fine spring day, I’m off to the co-op. I want to check on Daniel, our once-demonic grocery clerk. I also have to get out of my place of business which doubles as my home. I’ve got cabin fever and I’m giving myself a headache, fussing about the shop. I’m giving Trill a headache, fussing about the shop. My Inkshade has no sympathy.
“It’s not that I don’t have sympathy,” ne says to me after that comment, as I walk down the street, Trill tingling against the skin of my shoulder, “I just can’t handle this anxious moping.”
“I’m not moping,” I argue.
Trill hums, a vibration of my very cells as ne shakes the Ink in my skin.
“I’m not,” I hiss under my breath as we pass an older woman on the sidewalk. “I’m just…”
“Moping.”
Yeah, ne’s right. I’m moping. I was so worried that Detective Dowtry would show up in the days after our shared exorcism experience, with back up and a bunch of warrants, maybe some shiny new handcuffs… But she didn’t. And when she didn’t come back to the shop for a whole week, I realized I was actually disappointed. If Trill hadn’t been there, and if I hadn’t continued to check on Daniel and see his improvement… I’d almost think I’d dreamed the whole thing.
As it is, I’m dreaming anyway. Frosty gray-blue eyes, crisp and clean and clear like a mountain pond, catch my mental gaze constantly. No matter the other substance of my dreams, those eyes always find me, and I wake up covered in hot sweat, throbbing between my legs.
No one told me when I was transitioning that women could have wet dreams too. I kind of wish I had the warning, but… It isn’t as if it would change anything.
It has been a long time since I felt anything for another human—anything like this, anyway. Not that I go out of my way to entangle myself with non-humans, I just… I’ve not found anyone that stirred these kinds of feelings in me for… Years. And the last time I did… Well, she died. Understandably, it has been a bit difficult to get out into the dating pool again. And there was that awkward bit in my transition when I looked more like a half-shaved skunk than the woman I knew myself to be inside. I had no desire to be rejected in that delicate state.
I turned my mind away from my own heart as I stepped into the co-op entry way. With a quick glance around, I see Daniel at the register—his usual spot now. He’s changed in the ten days since he woke up in my shop with a hangover strong enough to deck an elephant. There is proper muscle on him again, and his color is better, his hair glossier and fuller. He doesn’t look like he’s wasting away. And he’s vegan again, which makes him very happy.
When I check out, my market basket loaded with fresh spring produce, I examine him with my Sight—the enhanced vision gifted by the Powers That Be through the Inks on my face. The veins and energy lines of his body, the ones I was so worried about before and during the event, are healing nicely. The frayed sections are knitting back together, and his soul has remained clear of infections. No more cordyceps-like demon hanging on for dear death. Really, it is a fine, fine soul.
“Hey, Tessa!” he greets me. “How’s it been”
“Good, Daniel. How’re you?”
“Just peachy!” He grins, and it is like a ray of sunshine. His dimple is so cute. He’s a charming lad, and I bet his mama thinks the world of that smile. “Speaking of fruit, did you see we had…”
He rambles on about the seasonal items, all of which I walked by and some of which I’m purchasing, his mouth going a mile a minute as he rings up my items and puts them back in my carrying basket. (I used to use reusable bags, but I like the sturdy baskets better, so I bought my own.)
“Take care now, Daniel,” I say, accepting my receipt and casually brushing fingers along his hand in a final Sense sweep, a last little look at him, just to be sure… Yep. He’s golden.
“You too!”
☽⚧☾
I take my time walking home, basket over one arm. I don’t want to go back to my shop just yet, though something in my hindbrain says I should. There’s probably a pan-dimensional gaggle waiting for me.
Yay, the perks of being an Inker.
My shop is as peculiar as I am—more so, actually. It straddles space and time, so that sometimes I get customers from planets I’ve never even heard of, as well as strangers off the street. But that’s the magic of Ink too: people find me at the right time, to get the right Ink, when they need it.
This feeling I’m getting now—a little dread, a little worry, a little tingly with Sense—is a warning to look out. It could literally be anything at my door when I get there.
When I unlock the door and step inside, however, I see a friendly, familiar face.
“’Sissy!” I set aside my basket and pull the Witch into a hug. Sissy, short for Narcissus, is one of the transients that visit from time to time, and I notice she’s thinner than last time. I hold her a little longer than might be proper. If anyone needs a little extra TLC, it’s this girl.
“Sorry for barging in,” she murmurs, patting me clumsily. I can smell the burning spice of her magic, a scent that is at once bone dry and greasy with oil slick. “But I need to move fast.”
“Sure, no problem. My back room is yours.” I’ve been helping Sissy move women and children out of bad situations to safer places. She’s been working from the inside to take down a trafficking ring for years, and often she has to use my shop as a waystation between portals.
“This isn’t the usual, though.” She winces. “Do you think I could store ten 100 gallon drums here for a day or so?”
“What?” She’s never asked for me to hold anything for her, certainly not for a period of time, and never something inanimate. My Inky Sense tingles. Something is fishy here. Trill thinks so too, a ne buzzes under the skin of my shoulder. That ne hasn’t come out to say hello is a statement all its own, and I brace myself as I realize it.
She averts her sapphire blue eyes and I know she’s asking me to do something dangerous. “Just overnight. I have to move them, but the timing on the other end is all wrong.”
“Okaaaaaay… Is there anything I need to know about this? Do I need to seal them away?” If I have to put magical wards around them, I need to get started right now. They still take me forever to do.
“No, the contents will be completely stable when it’s here.”
So when is it unstable? Instead I ask, “Is someone coming to get them?”
“I’ll come back for them in the morning. Like I said, I just don’t have an in-between-place to put them for now.”
“Alright. I guess—sure.”
I almost couldn’t keep my word, but we managed a cozy little masking spell at the back of the shop. Most of them are outside, but no one will know they are there unless they walk into them. Which could happen. Unlikely.
“Thanks again Tess,” she says with a sigh of relief and another hug. “See you tomorrow.”
“See you.”
Sissy strides lopsidedly to the front door and opens it onto a black street—not Denver. Probably her neighborhood back home. After the door shuts behind her, purple-gray smoke wafts through the room, and I look at the three drums crowding my back room.
“I don’t like it,” Trill says from my shoulder, and I agree. “They sound like they have thick goo inside.”
I personally can’t imagine what kind of substances, aside from partially solidified grease, would make that glumping sloshing sound as we magically moved them into place. My Sense tells me whatever is inside isn’t good, but I can’t get a solid read on it. There’s sadness, pain, fear all clouding up the base elements of the liquid, but anger is the strongest sensation coming off it.
“No, wait…” I touch one barrel again and dioxine-purple glyphs light up all over it. “Hey Trill, come check this one.”
Trill does, fizzling from the Ink on my shoulder like a cloud of smoke and setting off the glyphs as well.
“Do you feel that?” I ask. “Is it just me or…”
Trill hums an agreement. “Injustice.”
Something very wrong was done to fill these barrels. I know it in my bones, and it hums in the Inks all over my body. Before I can even begin to think what I will do, I hear a deep clang and a squawked “Ouch!” from outside the back door.
“Shit, someone walked into a barrel.” I lunge for the door and open it, ready to bespell and correct my mistakes—
To see Detective Meagan ‘Dream Eyes’ Dowtry patting at the top of a barrel that is invisible but still obstructing her path.
Whoops.
Before I can say anything, she turns that burning blue-gray glare at me and barks, “What the hell is going on here?”
“Come inside, Detective. I can explain.”
Special thanks to Silver.E for helping with this chapter.