if you tell a goddamn soul I swear I’ll give you something to fucking worry about.”
Chang’s dark expression eased a little as he stared at me, possibly weighing what he knew of me. I had been going to Chang for several years after being introduced to the old man by my tattooing mentor Atticus Sparks. It should have been no surprise that I would end up with a tattooing mentor who liked to color outside the lines of what was legal from time to time. And Chang’s goodies definitely wouldn’t have been on TAPSS’s list of approved ingredients for potions.
I never said one word to Chang about being a warlock. He’d sold me things to get past suicidal vampires and crazed warlocks. He’d even helped me escape the Grim Reaper once. I thought we had a good understanding, but the fact that he believed I could willingly return to the Ivory Towers hurt. It hurt more than I would have thought it could.
“Come on,” he grumbled, motioning for me to follow him as he shuffled along a winding course through his massive warehouse of unique goods. I smiled faintly when we walked over the flying carpet still pinned down on each corner by a stack of books. Apparently Chang hadn’t been successful in getting rid of it yet.
As we walked, I filled Chang in on what had happened in the Towers that saw me returning to the fold, as it were. He nodded, his free hand absently touching his various treasures as he passed them, as if their presence comforted him. Chang moved a little slower than he usually did. He looked older too, as if he’d aged a few years since my last visit, at the end of summer.
On the last turn, we stepped into a large open area that had a little kitchen setup, with a refrigerator that looked like it was straight out of the fifties. Off to one side sat a small dinette set with four chairs arranged around it. A heavy sigh slipped from Chang as he sank into one of the chairs and stretched his legs out in front of him.
“You doing okay, Chang? You’re not looking so hot.”
The old man snorted and looked me up and down once. “You’re not looking so hot yourself,” he said irritably.
“Trixie left,” I murmured as I sat in the chair that put me on his left.
Chang nodded. “Not surprised. It’s dangerous up there,” he said, motioning toward the ceiling. Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out a slightly crumpled packet of cigarettes. While not a smoker, I was surprised that I didn’t recognize the label on the front. The picture was of a woman who looked like a Bettie Page pin-up girl holding a cigarette and smiling. But instead of perfect white teeth, her mouth was full of sharp fangs. Holding one cigarette between his thin lips, Chang started to pat down his pockets as he searched for either a lighter or matches.
With a little grin, I snapped my fingers on my right hand, creating a teardrop of a flame on the tip of my index finger. As I held it out to him, Chang leaned forward and took a couple draws, getting the cigarette lit. Satisfied, the old man leaned back and smiled at me. “How long have you been waiting to be able to do something like that in front of me?”
“I haven’t been,” I said, waving my hand to extinguish the flame. “Smoking is bad for you.”
“Not as bad as you’d think,” he murmured cryptically. We sat in silence for a couple minutes as he puffed pensively on his cigarette while I tried to ignore the acrid smoke hovering in the air around us. I appreciated the companionable silence. Too much had happened recently to fill the void with needless chatter. Chang also knew that he wasn’t going to be able to sell me any of his random knickknacks today.
When he was half finished, Chang ground out the cigarette in a little black plastic ashtray in the center of the table and pushed to his feet. “More is wearing on you than your girlfriend troubles.”
“There’s this crazy bitch killing pregnant women for a reason I can’t even guess,” I said, watching as he pulled open the yellow door of the rounded refrigerator and started digging through the drawers. “And then there’s this other psychopath. He’s killing kids and . . . and . . .”
“Death Magic,” the old man murmured. He straightened, holding oranges