Keif’s face broke out with a smile as I was talking. “Yeah, yeah,” he said. “ Exactly. Someone who’s been doin’ this shit for years and knows what works and what don’t.”
“All right,” I said, nodding. Between Michael, Keif and Drive, I had learned enough at Emory today to know what I needed to do- without having to go back to the library. I had to go back to school-but not college, this time. “I’ll ask my old master. No promises.”
Keif’s eyes widened. “So you do have an old master,” he breathed. “I knew it, I knew it. There was no way you picked all this up starting from ground zero. What’s he like?”
“He’s no Obi-Wan Kenobi,” I said, “but he is an old-school master, back when ‘master’ meant skindancing, stonegrinding and graphomancy. He inks, he comes up with most of his own designs, and grinds his own pigments from mushrooms and bark he gathers from the woods.”
“Oh, yeah,” Keif said, punching Drive in the arm. “That’s what I’m talking about.”
“He goes by Arcturus,” I said. “Not his real name. He’s real private and real prickly. He prefers personal referrals-so let me put a toe in the water before I introduce you.”
“Fair enough,” Drive said. “So, Keif, if she delivers, you gonna quid pro quo and let her see your blackbook, you damn mooch?”
Keif’s expression froze. “Yeah,” he said, uncertainly. “Sure.”
“Show it to my graphomancer,” I said. “She’s mostly blind, but she’ll get a real kick out of scans of your book. Half the designs I wear are hers-I’m sure she could do a lot for you.”
We talked further, confirming that graffiti magic was even less well documented than tattoo magic, at least in the public literature. I’d need someone like Keif and Drive to help crack this thing-and they needed someone like me, or at least like Arcturus, who could help them develop better pigments. So we exchanged numbers, pressed flesh, parted.
I returned to the Rogue Unicorn like a conquering hero, climbing the rickety steps of the Little Five Points tattoo shop to find three customers waiting for me. Two of them had looked me up on the strength of the YouTube clip leaked from Valentine’s show-and two got tattoos on the spot, which is a better than average batting average for magical tattooing. Some days, even the ‘best magical tattooist in the Southeast’ doesn’t convince anyone to get a tattoo.
Then I tried to repair the asp that had been burned when I tried to save the werecat from the fire. Now that the swelling was down, the damage to the skin itself didn’t look so bad, but a lot of magical pigment was denatured. I cleaned most of it using a skindancing trick-activating a vine and sweeping it over the damaged tattoo to cull out bad pigment. Each time I raised the vine out of the skin, a few more tiny flakes of soot disappeared into the air; each time I sank the vine back it moved through the skin more smoothly. Eventually I cleared enough space to ink a new asp, but it was coiled around a small, Italy-shaped lump of dark pigment I couldn’t lift or move.
I frowned at it. There were a few ways around this, the most straightforward being laser treatments to break up the ink. But that offended my skindancer’s soul. Another tack was to ink a temporary pattern over the burnt ink, allowing it to heal, then lifting it off magically. But if there was enough magic ink left in the burn, I could end up with an even larger curdled mark and no way to remove it. I fumed. I didn’t have enough experience with burns to know what to do.
So I broke down and called my old master, Arcturus. After what felt like a hundred rings, I gave up and called Zinaga, the apprentice next in line after me at his studio. She picked up right away, but rather than putting me through to Arcturus, she called me a deserter and started to rant about how he was better off without me. After a bit, I cut her off and told her why I’d called.
First I described our problems with the graffiti, about its magic, about Keif and Drive and their quid-pro-quo requests. As I talked, she was quiet for a while, until, embarrassed, I told her about my burn. Then she cut me off and went to talk to him; after a few minutes, she returned.
“He says come out here this week,” Zinaga said. “He says ‘I mean it. Do not wait.’”
“Gotta love him,” I groused. The least he could have done is come to the phone. He had to be really pissed. Then it occurred to me that the first time I’d come to Blood Rock looking for the famed Arcturus, I’d been picked up, warned off, and dumped on the side of the highway in Conyers ten miles from my Vespa. “His pet sheriff isn’t going to give me shit, is he?”
“No,” Zinaga said, disgusted. “You really think we’d treat family that way? Now get out here before he changes his mind-or before those burns ruin your ink.”
After she hung up, I checked my email again for any new pictures from my mysterious text-message benefactor. Over the past few days, someone in the APD, probably McGough, had used an out-of-state number to send me pictures of tags from all over the city. Pieces like the one that hit Revy were everywhere, but the ones that hit Tully were focused in Oakdale. And there was a third, cruder set, in Oakdale and Cabbagetown.
The pictures told me a lot about the taggers-I guessed three: a master, a journeyman, and an apprentice or copycat-but not about their magic. I needed to see a master tag moving to figure out how it worked. Still, I emailed Jinx the images and printed copies for Arcturus, who couldn’t tell an email address from a fax machine. One of us would figure something out.
I pulled up into the dropoff lane of the Clairmont Academy to pick up Cinnamon-and hit my brakes so hard the car behind me almost slammed into me. There was a Fulton County Sheriff’s car pulled up on the curb, lights flashing. Oh, God no.
I jerked the Prius over into a visitor’s space and hopped out, running up on Catherine Fremont, who was arguing loudly with a blond police officer and a darkhaired, ponytailed woman. “I’m sorry,” she said angrily, “I’m not authorized to do that-”
“Ma’am,” the officer said, leaning back his head, “I don’t think you understand-”
“I do understand and don’t you ma’am me,” she snapped-and then her eyes caught me and her face relaxed in relief. “Oh, thank God. Miss Frost, we have a situation.”
“Miss Frost?” the darkhaired woman said, checking her clipboard, shrugging a couple times to adjust a faux- fur-lined jeans jacket. “Dakota Frost?”
“Yes,” I said, and the woman smiled. She had a pleasant face, open and expressive, with pencil-thin eyebrows that made her look far younger than she was. “What’s going on?”
“I’m Margaret Burnham of DEE-FAX, the Department of Family and Children Services,” she said, eyes flickering over the tattoos on my temples before returning to her clipboard. “Are you currently in custody of a child named ‘Stray Foundling?’”
“Yes, she is in my custody,” I said, “but she goes by Cinnamon Frost.”
–
“Whatever,” Burnham said. “We’re here to take Stray into emergency custody.”
“You’re what? ” I exploded.
“Ma’am,” the officer said, stepping forward, his hand raised. “Please calm down.”
“What the hell is this, Officer-” and I broke off for a second, eyes scanning him till I found his badge “- Galacci?”
“ Deputy Galacci,” he corrected, body held firm and forbidding, blue eyes distant and stony. “Ma’am, this is a court-ordered action.”
“On what basis?” I asked. The expression on his stony, hard-muscled face didn’t change, and I transferred my glare to Burnham. “For what possible reason?”
“Housing her in unsafe conditions,” Burnham said, checking her clipboard.
“ What? ” I said. “Since when is an apartment in Candler Park unsafe?”
“According to this,” Burnham said, glaring, “Stray’s living in Oakdale.”
“She goes by Cinnamon,” I said, “and Oakdale is where I adopted her from.”
“The address is a condemned factory,” Burnham said.
“It was a werehouse,” I said.
“It burned down.”
“That was arson!”
“I have no info on that,” Burnham said, “but according to the police report, the second police report she
