“No. More often the avatars take the form of ancient, elemental deities. Phoenixes for those linked to fire. Merfolk for those with a tie to water.”
He sounded sure, reasonable, making her doubt herself and believe him. Did it matter if the Dragon was real or imagined manifestation?
Gift and magic were inextricably entwined. She already knew the cost of denial.
When the call to ink had come, and with it, the need to touch others, to turn skin into canvases for her art, she’d answered it with a feeling of rightness, of absolute certainty that this was her purpose in life. Sometimes she’d placed images found in her dreams on those who wanted tattoos. Other times she’d drawn based on their preferences, content with the chance to hone her skills. But that heady time of happiness was short-lived by the start of conflict with the captain. And the trouble at home was compounded when the parents of her tattooed classmates threatened lawsuits and demanded reimbursement for the expense of removing the ink.
She’d tried to stop tattooing and failed. The need for a steady stream of canvasses became a natural gravitation toward rougher and rougher kids, and experimentation led to the discovery that drugs buffered the pain of being a disappointment and shielded against the captain and Parker’s disapproval. It was a vicious circle whose shadow entangled her still, making the two men who’d once been the center of her world see darkness in her rather than light, failure rather than success.
Eamon’s gentle pull and twist of her nipple returned her to the present. “Does the Dragon guide your actions?”
Yes. No. She couldn’t deny there was a cause and effect, but it was easier, and more reassuring to say, “It doesn’t tell me what to do.”
“It will. Today only my presence prevented another changeling from killing a human boy.”
“What happened?”
Fear slid into her veins and traveled down the ink in her arms to settle in the eyes on her palms like ice as he told her about his visit to the fishing boat and how Farrell had become the unreasoning vessel for wild, raging elemental magic. She balled her hands into fists against masculine thighs, chest so tight she could barely breathe. There had never been any real doubt that the killer had been aware of Vontae because they both wore her ink, but now she whispered, “What if I’m responsible for the slaughter. What if because of the ink—”
“Bullshit, Etain,” Cathal growled.
“Unlikely,” Eamon said, abandoning her nipple to take her hand and straighten it from its tight fist. “Magic does flow through your ink. That is why many would kill any human wearing it. You empower humans with your art, giving it a specific focus. Doing it siphons away magic, which is perhaps another reason the barrier against the memories you’ve taken has grown thin. But I don’t believe humans wearing your ink will hear magic’s voice or be victim to it in the same way we are.”
He carried her hand to his mouth, pressed a kiss to her palm. “There are sigils of shielding, of deflection and channeling, as well as one to produce the glamour that will become necessary to hide what you are after the change.”
“Spells?”
“No, more like mental patterning taught from a young age because of the complexity of the sigils and the difficulty in memorizing their shapes.”
“Do you know any of them?” Cathal asked her. “Did your mother hide them in a game maybe?”
She remembered all the times she’d traced the tattoos on the backs of her mother’s hands and curling around her wrists, the sigils she now knew were hidden there, asking,
“No.”
“Start tonight,” Cathal said. “I’ll go to the club for a while and work. I can’t lose you, Etain. That seizure… Jesus.”
He leaned in, kissing her. Lips and tongue working in sensual persuasion, the hand on her breast creating an ache for explorations of a different kind.
She murmured “Okay,” when his mouth lifted from hers, standing when he did, pressing her mound to his rigid length, teasing him, the prospect of arduous, mental exercise making her say, “If I have to suffer, you do too.”
Cathal’s laugh verged on a pant. “And that’s fair somehow?”
“Who said life was fair?”
Sean glanced up as Quinn ushered Derrick into the boat’s cabin. “I hope you’ve got good news. I called Cathal but it went directly to voicemail. He hasn’t gotten back to me yet.”
“Good news and then some,” Quinn said, heat creeping up his neck as he made the introductions even though he didn’t use the word boyfriend, not that he needed to, considering the show on the dock and the cameras he hadn’t been able to care about.
His mind shied away from imagining what it was going to be like introducing his family to Derrick, and the conversation that had to precede the event.
“Derrick stopped by Cathal’s place. Etain seemed fine to him, not that any of them mentioned the seizure. She brought him up to speed and sent him with some goodies.”
“Excellent.” Sean motioned toward a counter between the desk he was working at and the one he’d given Quinn. “Let’s see what you’ve got, Derrick.”
Derrick pulled the drawings from his jacket pocket, carefully unfolding six sketch-pad-sized pages and lining them up on the counter. Twelve faces in all. Some were identified by legal name, others by street name, all of them included at least one picture of a tattoo and a note about body placement.
Sean whistled in admiration. “Damn. I wish she worked for me. These are good enough to run through the facial recognition program.”
Pride surged into Derrick on Etain’s behalf. “She’s incredibly talented. These are nothing compared to what she can do on skin. Has Quinn showed you the artwork she put on him?”
“Not up close and personal, but I got a good look at it when he met up with you on the dock.” Sean’s smile was deliciously wicked, and totally at Quinn’s expense.
The blush returned. Derrick couldn’t resist saying, “So you watched?”
“Hey, I gave Quinn fair warning. Guess he forgot in the heat of the moment.”
Derrick preened. “When you’ve got it, you’ve got it.”
“True enough. Your friend Etain definitely has it, enough for Cathal to be willing to risk his life for her, but more telling, enough for him to overcome his social conditioning and share her with Eamon.”
Surprise had Derrick gaping. “You knew?”
“Not until earlier today.” Sean moved over to his desk, swiveling the computer monitor toward the counter then picking up the keyboard and returning. “Let’s see what shakes out by running the names first.”
Within minutes they ruled out five of the men.
Sean cut a look in Derrick’s direction. “All in prison. All gangbangers. She hung with some rough kids.”
Derrick felt defensive on her behalf. “These aren’t all people she was tight with. Some are known acquaintances of Vontae, one of the dead bikers. And others…” His chin went up. “She traded art for drugs. It’s not something she’s proud of, the acting out, the rebelling when things got rough at home. But you’d understand why it happened if you’d ever met the nasty stepmother and equally atrocious stepsisters.”
Sean laughed. Quinn said, “I take it you have?”
Derrick shuddered dramatically. “A horrid accidental encounter at the de Young Museum and not one I’d like to repeat in this lifetime. You’d think Etain and I were unwashed winos off the street from the looks we got and the whispered conversation that followed. Bitches, and I don’t mean that in a friendly way. Not that Etain will talk about
