rubbed across the design had made it sticky, so all I had to do was press it carefully to my wrist, where Cinnamon's butterfly had once lived, rub it a few times, and then peel it off. 'If this was an ordinary tattoo, I could just start inking it. But I'll check the tattoo out against the instructions of the graphomancer to make sure I got the design right.'
I pulled out the ruler and calipers and had gotten halfway through the list of resonant points when someone finally noticed the obvious.
'The design is backwards,' Alex said.
'You mean, 'mirror reversed,'' I said. The director leaned in with a handheld camera; he was assisting the other cameramen by providing candid shots, and I lifted my hand so both his camera and Alex could see more clearly.
'Yeah,' Alex said. 'Won't that affect-'
'Yes and no,' I said, measuring the distance across the design. 'Normally I wouldn't reverse it, but in this case it is necessary.'
'But when you start to tattoo it-'
'Do you ink magic, Alex?'
'Uh… no,' he said. 'But if this works I'd like to learn.'
'Good,' I said, grinning, making a small correction according to the instructions in Jinx's list. 'But until then you're going to have to take my word that I need to reverse it.'
I stuck a palette knife into some Vaseline and rubbed it on my wrist, then rubbed it onto my hands. 'This will make the machine work more smoothly,' I said. I checked over my pigments, the needles, the design, my skin. I inserted the tube holding the seven needle into the tattoo gun and started the machine. It began buzzing. I was ready. 'And now, I begin.'
I touched the needle gently to my skin, the first sharp prick erased almost immediately by the thrumming vibration of the needle puncturing my skin, forty times a second. The hot, spreading warmth and vibration were sensual, almost sexy, and the noise faded into the background as I began chatting.
'First I'll do the outline,' I said, curling the needle deftly round my hand. 'On an ordinary tattoo, I'd do the outline, take a short break, and then fill in the linework. For a magical tat, I'll stop when the major outline is done and check my resonant points. A magical tattoo is like a circuit, though it obeys different rules; you have to get all the components right or it won't work. A stray line or too much pigment would be like a short circuit or a bad resistor-'
'What does it feel like?' Alex asked, leaning down over my hand. He was supposed to provide color commentary while I worked, but inking myself had thrown him.
'Feels hot,' I said, grinning, my eyes never leaving my hand. 'Nowhere near as hot as your firespinning at the Masquerade, though.'
I reached the end of an arc and lifted the needle. Alex's eyes sparkled back at me. 'Fire is life,' he said, 'and I love life. It shows in my spinning.'
'In other things, too, I bet,' I said, setting the gun in its stand briefly, wiping the blood off my wrist, then picking up the gun and returning my eyes to my work. 'I'd have sworn that you weren't just spinning-it looked like fire magic. What would the old man say?'
'He knows what I do,' Alex said. 'Thinks it can all be done with chemicals. In fact he says he'd have challenged me already, except he's afraid he'd set his hair on fire.'
'Ah, no big loss, that?' I said, reaching the end of another arc and winking at Valentine.
'You kids,' Valentine said, waving his hand feebly.
'But seriously,' Alex said, as I started again. 'How does it feel on your skin-'
'Kinda scratchy. It's intense, but a manageable intense. I've had worse paper cuts and less intense orgasms.' I finished an arc and looked up at him. 'Of course, that depends on who's giving me the orgasm.'
Alex leaned back with a slightly nervous laugh.
More quickly than I thought, the five main magical components of the watch were inked. I set the gun down, wiped off the blood again, and checked the measurements with my calipers. For good measure I sensed the mark with my fingers; everything was right on the money.
'Everything looks good,' I said, slipping the tube out of the machine and discarding the needle in a magical hazards vat. 'That's the major outline of the watch. Now I'm going to fill in the rest of the magical circuit. I have marks to make with three more needles and seven total inks-I'll end up with sixteen different combinations, so this will take a while.'
'Isn't seven by three twenty one?' Valentine asked weakly.
'Obviously she won't use every combination,' Alex said.
'Right enough, and don't be a jerk,' I said, grinning. 'That's my job.'
But Valentine didn't respond, and I looked up to see him leaning back in the wheelchair, eyes closed. I cracked, 'Hey old man, aren't you going to even watch me kicking your ass?'
He flapped his hand even more feebly, with a very noticeable tremor. 'Wake me when you do something interesting.'
The nurse looked at me, anguished, and Alex and I exchanged a nervous glance. Time to get this fucking thing over with.
The rest of the inking went even faster than I expected. I love working my own skin. It's the finest canvas I've ever decorated. It's smooth and soft and holds ink well and heals crisply, with little blurring of the designs. Even better, it's internally smooth-when the designs move, or when I pull little stunts like I did when I transferred my butterfly to Cinnamon, there's no excess pigment left in the skin.
And then, it was over. I wiped my hand clear of blood and stared down at the design, surprised: it was finished-in an hour and forty-five minutes, by the wall clock, and that's with all the inane bantering, plus a few pauses for Alex to talk to the camera.
'That's it,' I said.
'That's it?' Alex asked. The director leaned in. Valentine's eyes cracked open.
'Now, it may not work quite right at first,' I said. 'The skin will be healing and, normally, the tattoo would take up to two weeks to stabilize-'
'Fair… fair enough,' Valentine said. He sounded about a thousand years old. 'You-you told us-to expect as much-'
'Let me finish, you upstaging old coot,' I said gently. 'It can take two weeks to stabilize, but we might see a little movement now.'
Valentine's eyes shot open and he lurched forward, staring, and everyone's eyes all zeroed in on the watch or the monitors. The two hands just sat there, frozen at twelve.
Alex stared down at my new tat, a little disappointed. 'It's not moving-'
I on the other hand, was looking at my real watch, carefully timing it, charging the yin-yang in my palm. 'Give it a moment,' I said. 'It's not noon yet.'
My Timex beeped twelve, and I swept my right hand over the watch on my left wrist in a glimmering shower of mana, right in front of Alex and Valentine and the cameras and everybody. And when my hand had fully passed over the design, the second hand on the watch started moving, keeping time as perfectly as a star-based clock could get.
'Would you look at that,' Valentine said, staring alternately at my wrist, then the monitor. 'Would you look at that.'
'See the motion?' I said, looking at him, at Alex, at the director. 'Can you see it moving?'
'Yeah,' Alex breathed. 'It's really moving. But… backwards.'
'I know,' I said, opening the box on the stool and pulling out the piece of blessed glass that I'd prepared earlier, with the miniature blessed circle inscribed around its perimeter. I scooted the stool closer, like a stand between us, and set the glass upright in the ridge in its box. 'But that's expected. Now we're going to transfer the design to your hand.'
'Sure,' Alex said. 'But… you used all the needles. And where's the flash-'
'Won't need it,' I said, concentrating mana in my inking hand. Then I passed it over the clock and brought it to life.
The clock glowed. Everyone could see its light reflecting off the cameras, Alex's face, Valentine's eyes. And
