Comes the Night by Norah Wilson
Excerpt from
Enter the Night
Book 2 in the Casters Series
Ink
Maryanne
Oh crap, are we really doing this?
“Oh geez, am I really doing this?” Maryanne Hemlock mumbled.
Great. Back in Mansbridge less than three hours and she was already talking to herself again. Not that the habit had left her over the Christmas holidays, but one could always hope.
Brooke—the only one within earshot at the moment—turned to shoot her a grin as they neared the tattoo shop. Alex was way ahead of them, already inside and no doubt staring up at the walls lined with designs. They paused outside, looking in through the window.
“Yep, we’re really doing this,” Brooke said.
It had been Alex’s idea, the tattoos. Well, actually it was Alex’s belated Christmas gift to them all, happily announced when the three of them had reunited at the Fredericton airport.
Maryanne’s flight had been the first to touch down. And like a kid with her nose against the glass, she’d waited there for her friends to arrive. She’d stuffed her hands into her sweatshirt pockets, then pulled them back out again. Repeatedly. She sat down, then jumped back up over and over again. She watched the clock on the wall.
Then they announced the flight from Halifax.
Alex had chosen to fly back. As Maryanne watched her plane taxi up the terminal, she realized just what a feat of courage that must have been for her friend. The plane was a puddle jumper, just right for the short hop from Nova Scotia to New Brunswick. But Maryanne had had the dubious pleasure of flying in one years ago, and knew how claustrophobia-inducing it could be. From the outside, the aircraft basically looked like a cigar tube with wings. From the inside... well, it pretty much felt the same. Just one seat on each side of a narrow aisle, with the aircraft’s roof curving close above your head.
She’d watched Alex appear in the aircraft’s doorway, pause and draw a deep breath. Then Alex had descended the plane’s stairs and crossed the short stretch of tarmac. By the time she’d entered the tiny airport’s arrivals area, she wore a victorious grin. Maryanne had been so glad to see that confidence after what had happened to her. They’d all been affected by the horrors they’d unearthed at Harvell House, but Alex more than the rest of them. Of course, Alex didn’t know how much Maryanne knew about what had really happened to her.
Half an hour later, Brooke Saunders had arrived on her flight from New York via Toronto, stepping off the plane like she owned it and the airport too.
They’d hugged and high-fived in arrivals. Then they’d driven back to Mansbridge in Brooke’s rental, which she’d left in the airport parking lot over the holidays. Dumping their bags off at Harvell House, they’d headed straight for the tattoo shop.
Yep, the girls were back in town. The three musketeers.
No, they were more. The three caster sisters.
“Yeah, a tattoo,” Brooke said. “My mother will be so mortified. Bonus! It’s a gift that keeps on giving.”
Maryanne laughed. That was so... Brooke.
Yes, it was good to be back together—the three of them. And she couldn’t wait until they were casting out again! Standing before the blue-eyed Madonna in the attic window... But too, Maryanne was just glad to be back in Mansbridge. Her smile faded as she thought of those long days over the Christmas holidays back home in Ontario. Her parents had tried. They’d done their best to make it a good Christmas. As always, her mother spent way too much money, but this year the gifts weren’t over-wrapped with the usual amount of glittery ribbons and bows. Her father had cooked up a storm. There were enough mincemeat pies and shortbread cookies for half the neighborhood, and then some. But Maryanne knew it was just therapeutic for him. Something to keep him busy rather than thinking about Jason.
But of course, he’d thought of the little boy. They all had, while carolers sang their way along the block, but skipped the Hemlock house. They’d thought of Jason while Frosty the Snowman played on TV, knowing this would have been the year he’d have loved it. And the artificial tree wasn’t hauled out of the basement till Grampy Webb had come and done it himself on Christmas Eve. Maryanne had taken it down again on Boxing Day.
They all missed Jason—her little J-bug.
“You’re not chickening out?” Brooke was staring at her, obviously taking her lost-in-the-past moment for apprehension.
“No,” Maryanne said. “I’m still in.”
To emphasize the point, she opened the door of the tattoo shop for the both of them.
The shop was clean and spare. Hardwood floors, track lighting, and the hospital-like smell of disinfectant. The walls were largely covered with art. Tattoo art. A glassed-in cabinet displayed jewelry, presumably of the piercing variety.
The room felt welcoming. Awakening, somehow. Of course, that might have been the eggplant purple walls. All in all, not the hole-in-the-wall establishment she’d feared.
Alex was scanning some designs on the walls. Brooke and Maryanne joined her.
“Is this all they have for flash?” Brooke asked.
Alex glanced at her. “It’s a custom design shop. What flash they have is made here by the artists, not that generic crap.”
Maryanne looked at a page of smiling skulls and shuddered. Way, way too dark and scary for her tastes. Her gaze went to another page. Too masculine. The next sheet—ack—too naked. The fourth, fifth and sixth sheets, thank goodness, were more appropriate, although none of the roses or fairies or cute little owls called out to her. Besides, they were all too big. While her folks might be okay with a small tattoo, they’d definitely not be thrilled to see their daughter coming home with a large peacock on her arm or a flock of birds on her back.
“I know what I’m getting,” Alex announced.
“Let me guess,” Brooke said, moving closer to Alex so she could look closer at the artwork on the wall. “That one.” She pointed.
Alex did a double take. “The bunny?”
Maryanne looked at the cute, flower-holding, cartoon bunny and snorted a laugh. Not exactly what Alex needed to go with the snakebite piercings, the jagged black scene hair and heavily lined eyes. Nor did it fit in with the existing bleeding rose nestled below her collarbone.
Brooke rolled her eyes. “No, not the bunny, dumb-ass. The one beside it—the dark star. That’s gorgeous. Hey, we could all get one.” Brooke looked at them hopefully.
Okay, that made sense—a dark star. And in the silent few seconds beyond Brooke’s suggestion, Maryanne knew it was making sense to Alex too. Dark star. Dark nights. Dark casters.
Alex said, “I like it. But maybe for another time. No, I’m getting those vines.”
There were two artists behind the counter. One looking totally bored with her nose stuck in a book, and the other a well-muscled guy with more metal in his face than Iron Man, who watched the girls avidly. Not lecherously, Maryanne realized. It was like he was anxious to get going.
“I see you’ve picked something,” he said, coming forward.
Alex swiveled to smile at him. “Yeah. The vines.”
“What were you thinking? Around the arm or the ankle?” He pushed his sleeves up even farther on his muscular arm exposing even more ink. Maryanne couldn’t help but stare. His name was Zeek. At least that was the name burned in the wide black scroll on his arm.
“Neither,” Alex answered. “I have a tat here.” The guy watched impassively as she unbuttoned two buttons, pulled her black bra strap sideways to expose the bleeding rose tattoo.
“Good work,” Zeek said, admiring the artwork.
“Thanks.” Alex nodded. “Halifax last summer.”
“And you want the vines added to this?” Zeek pushed the edge of her shirt back to get a better look, but he did so as clinically as a surgeon might wield a retractor. “Do you want them bleeding too? I can do that. Just a matter of—”
“No,” Alex said. “Not bleeding. Live and healthy ones. Buds and leaves and... li
Zeek nodded, cocking his head to the side. “So is that life going into or coming out from the rose?”
Wow, what a profound question. One Maryanne herself would never have thought of. Maybe that’s why Zeek was the tattoo artist and she wasn’t. Well, that and the fact that he could draw.
Alex thought for a moment. “Both.”
“Brilliant.” Zeek nodded. “Okay, come with me and I’ll sketch something for your approval.”
Alex bit her lip, glancing toward Brooke and Maryanne. “Will it take long to draw?”
“Twenty minutes, maybe. Once you’re happy with it, we’ll put it on transfer paper and get down to business.”
“Go on,” Brooke gestured for Alex to go with Zeek. “If we’re done first, we’ll wait. Don’t sweat it.”
Alex tossed a grin over her shoulder as Zeek led her to the back of the small shop and swung the leather curtain across. All Maryanne could see of him now was his black army boots as he presumably sank into a chair.
It was great to see Alex so excited. And the vines! New life... now that was something to celebrate. “I think she made a great choice.”
Brooke gave one of her patented shrugs. “Beats the hell out the cartoon bunny.”
Maryanne laughed.
As if pulled up by strings—or maybe she’d just finished the chapter she’d been reading—the second clerk stood. She set her book on the counter. Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov. Not exactly light reading.
“Either of you ready?” she asked, casting her glance between Maryanne and Brooke.
Maryanne drew a breath. “I’ve decided.” And in the few minutes she’d stood there looking, she had, without even knowing it. Or maybe she’d decided before she’d even walked into the shop
“This one,” she said, pointing to what she wanted, which actually was just a tiny detail occupying a corner of a larger tattoo design.
“Oh come on!” Brooke jeered. “That’s not a tattoo. That’s a frickin’ mole. A freckle. A—”
“A bug,” Maryanne said. It was her J-Bug. She wet her lips, drew a breath. It wasn’t that she’d been looking for something quite so... micro, but once she’d seen it, she knew it was what she wanted. Something to memorialize Jason—his short life, and her part in his death. It was never far from her, this grief. Now it would be even closer. A constant reminder.
And a constant punishment.
“Bottom of the foot,” Brooke suggested. “Then you can tell people it’s just a tiny pebble that got stuck there.”
Maryanne ignored her. “Over my heart,” she told the artist.
“What color?” the woman asked.
“Blue-grey.” Jason’s eyes had been blue-grey.
“Any other modifications?”
“I guess it could be a bit bigger. Like... fifty percent bigger, maybe?”
The clerk nodded. “Give me a minute,” she said, and disappeared back to where Alex and Zeek had gone.
“What about you, Brooke?” Maryanne asked. “Decided?”
“Still thinking,” she said.
But Maryanne knew better. She could tell by the look on Brooke’s face that she’d already made her decision. But in true Brooke-esque fashion, she was keeping it secret for now.
Well, that was okay. Everyone had their secrets.
“You know, this might be the record,” Brooke said. “Even if they enlarged that... dot... by two hundred percent, it might still go down as the smallest tattoo ever.”
“No doubt,” Maryanne acknowledged.
But while she might be getting the smallest tattoo of the three of them, it would almost certainly be the heaviest. This memorial to her little brother, the one she’d lost.
The one she’d killed.
Maryanne swallowed hard past the sudden lump in her throat. She needed to cast. Desperately.