“No syringe,” she said. “I think we need a substantial amount in there, plus we have to make sure it gets into the dermis. That’s the next layer of skin below the surface one.”
“Okay,” I said, thinking I understood. I had a feeling the “dermis” definition had been for me alone. “You need more ink in there. How are you going to pull it off?”
Another knock at the door startled us, and Jackie moved toward it. “Ah, that would be Malachi.”
I did a double take. “Did she just say–”
There was no need to finish because she flung open the door, revealing our unstable former self‑defense teacher in all his eye‑patch glory. He jerked his thumb behind him. “Hey, darling. I got the tattoo apparatus in my van. Where do you want me to set up?” He squinted inside at us. “Oh. Hey, kids.”
Jackie took him to the garage, and I tried to pick my jaw up off the floor as I turned to face Sydney. “He’s your tattooist?”
She shrugged. “When I told Ms. Terwilliger I needed to do a tattoo, she told me he had his own machine. I guess he does all his own tattoos.”
“I’ve never seen any.”
“Maybe they’re in places most people don’t see,” she said.
I winced. “Thank you for sending my imagination to a place it can never return from.”
“Whoa, hold on here.” Trey pointed down the hall, where I could hear Wolfe regaling Jackie with some crackpot tale of daring. “That guy’s going to be using a high‑powered needle on me? He has one eye! Do the words ‘depth perception’ mean anything to you?”
“Ms. Terwilliger swears he knows what he’s doing,” said Sydney. “And since the ink doesn’t have any color, it’s not going to show. So as long as everything’s sterile, and he has some competence, the artistry won’t matter. We just need the gun to deliver it. But if you’re interested . . .” A small smile played at her lips. “It’d be easy enough to add some dye to it. I bet Wolfe could do a Chihuahua on you.”
Trey shuddered. “No thanks.”
Sydney suddenly frowned. “Your Warrior tattoo is just a tattoo, right? No powers?”
“Nope. Tattoos don’t have to have amazing abilities for us. Decoration is enough.”
“Okay,” she said. “That’ll give me a good cover story for Wolfe. Don’t worry–whatever I say, nothing will happen to your current tattoo.” Trey didn’t look reassured.
I pondered that. “Doesn’t he need a special tattoo, though?” I asked. I didn’t elaborate in front of Trey, but the whole point of this experiment was to see if her ink could deactivate Alchemist ink.
She nodded, catching my unspoken question. “Yes, but we’ll worry about that after this, once I get some of those materials. Then we’ll do a second tattoo.”
Trey’s mouth dropped, but he didn’t get a chance to comment. Jackie and Wolfe returned just then, and he rubbed his hands together eagerly. “Okay, so what’s the late‑night emergency? You two getting your names tattooed on each other? I can do a pretty nice Courier font.”
Sydney had been about to speak but faltered a moment. Wolfe had no evidence of our relationship, but he’d always assumed there was one, even before there was. She quickly recovered herself and laughed off his comment, like it was a funny joke. Trey, understandably, seemed too transfixed by the idea of a one‑eyed man tattooing him to have really noticed.
“The opposite,” Sydney told Wolfe. “We actually want to remove my friend’s tattoo, and we’ve got some special ink that’ll eventually make the old one fade over time.”
He grunted. “Really? Never heard of that. I thought laser removal was really the only way to get rid of one.”
“It’s a new technique,” she explained easily, giving a small nod to Trey. “His parents are visiting soon, and they’ll kill him if they see it.”
I blinked in surprise. She was so convincing, I nearly believed her story, and I knew the truth. Wolfe certainly bought it. It was something I tended to forget about: Alchemists were excellent liars. If Sydney ever wanted to lie to me, I’d probably be none the wiser.
“Where is it?” Wolfe asked.
Trey didn’t react right away. I think he almost believed Sydney too. Turning away from us, he pulled off his shirt and revealed a sun tattoo on the back of his shoulder.
Wolfe leaned forward to study it. “So, what? Your parents see you shirtless a lot?”
Sydney winced at the flaw in her logic. “It’s just better if it’s gone when they visit, sir.”
“Yeah,” agreed Trey. “Sometimes we do family trips to the beach.” I had to give him points for playing along.
Sydney explained how Wolfe only needed to deliver the ink into the existing tattoo. He looked disappointed that there’d be no chance to test his artistic skills, but I think he was happy enough about a late‑night visit to Jackie to not be too put out about the time and effort.
Although Wolfe’s equipment looked professional enough, the garage setup gave the whole operation a kind of sketchy feel. I didn’t know the fine details of tattooing, but Sydney examined everything with a critical eye, asking about sterilization and seeming pleased that Wolfe used new parts on some of the equipment each time. Jackie looked as helpless as I felt and stood near me and a wide‑eyed Trey, whose tanned skin had paled at the approaching feat. Even Sydney looked a little uneasy, however, when Trey lay facedown on a bench so that Wolfe could get to his shoulder with the needle.
“I’m sure he’s very skilled,” she said. It was hard to say which of us she was trying to convince.
“Damn boy,” said Wolfe, poking one of Trey’s huge triceps. “What sport do you play?”
“All of them.”
“Oh yeah? You ever done speed‑skating‑javelin‑throwing?”
“Speed‑skating what?” asked Trey.
All of us could tell Wolfe was on the verge of a story, and Sydney cleared her throat. “Um, sir? We should really get moving.” She went over her instructions one last time, and then Wolfe set to his task.
I’d never seen tattooing before. It sounded like a dentist’s drill, and although I was no stranger to blood, seeing that high‑powered needle go to work made me squeamish. It had to hurt, but Trey took it stoically, never twitching a muscle. Sydney supervised everything with a sharp eye, and I had a feeling that if Wolfe did anything even remotely irresponsible, she’d throw herself in there to stop him. She was literally and figuratively watching Trey’s back.
I moved closer to her, careful not to touch but also not really leaving any space between us. “Okay. Presuming Wolfe doesn’t accidentally impale Trey, what’s the next step? I get your logic about giving him a tattoo with Alchemist ink later to see if this one will protect him, but how exactly are you going to get their ink? Doesn’t that require vampire blood and earth compulsion? Those aren’t things you have lying around your room.”
A faint smile played at her lips. “No, nor are some of the other ingredients. And they’re not exactly things I can order off the internet either or use regular Alchemist channels for. I’ll have to think of some other way to get them.”
“But you still wanted to do this first?” I nodded toward Trey.
Whatever fleeting smile she might have had vanished on the wind. “Yes. I had to, after seeing Keith today. Maybe this is preemptive. Maybe I should’ve held off until I had Alchemist ink, but when I think about Keith . . . I have to do something now, Adrian. I can’t let them do that to other people. I’ve been talking about replicating this stuff in hypothetical terms for a while now, and I couldn’t stand the thought of waiting for Marcus or the ideal procedure. This puts us one step closer. Trey’ll be ready for when I get some Alchemist ink, and once we prove this works, Marcus will disperse it.”
I resisted the urge to cup her face in my hands. What she was suggesting wasn’t a bad plan. Would it have been better if she and Marcus had managed to tattoo one of his disciples with an Alchemist compulsion tattoo and then see if this stuff worked like Marcus’s indigo ink? Sure, that would’ve been the ideal plan. And that was the thing. Sydney usually went with ideal. She was meticulous. She wasn’t the type to rush stuff or settle for the second‑best option. But she’d rushed now. She’d let the optimal order for her experiment be altered in order to speed things up. It was something anyone might do. I would. The fact that Sydney had done it, however, told me something crucial. She’d acted on impulse and emotion, which was out of character for her. Sydney was scared.