a police officer, or a bounty hunter, or a detective, or anything like that. I like tattooing, and I’m not going to give it up.
But I have started karate, three times a week. Darren is amazing. He’s working with my physical therapist to help design a program to get me up and running as fast as possible. In the meantime, I get to see him run up a wall at the end of every class.
And, in addition to the karate, I have two other new weekly appointments—one with Jinx to school me in graphomancy and help me master the power in my tattoos, and one with Canon Grace, to help me decide what I should do with my powers.
I will not hide. I will not run. I will not live in fear.
Because I’m not just a tattooist.
I’m Dakota Frost, and I’m a skindancer.
The Dance Continues
Coming Next
SKINDANCER
Blood Rock
Excerpt
From the outside, my baby blue Prius looks as normal as can be: a streamlined bubble of a car with an aerodynamic rear-hitch bike rack, humming along on a hybrid gas/electric engine. She couldn’t scream ‘liberal soccer mom’ louder if she was a Volvo plastered with NPR stickers. Peer inside, however, and you see something completely different.
In the driver’s seat, yours truly: a six-foot-two woman with a purple-and-black Mohawk, short in front, a la Grace Jones, but lengthening in back until it becomes a long tail curling around my neck. Striking, yes, but what really draws your eyes are my tattoos.
A rainbow of tribal daggers curls under the perimeter of my Mohawk, starting at my temples, cascading down my neck, rippling out over my arms, and exploding in colorful braids of vines and jewels and butterflies. Beautiful, yes, but that’s not why you can’t look away—its because, out of the corner of your eye, you saw my tattoos move—there, they did it again! You swear, that leaf fluttered, that gem sparkled. It’s like magic!
Why, yes, they did move, and yes, they are magic. Thanks for noticing. All inked at the Rogue Unicorn by yours truly, Dakota Frost, best magical tattooist in the Southeast.
Beside me sits a five-nothing teenaged girl, listening to a podcast on her iPod. Normally she’s dressed in a vest and Capri pants, but today she’s in a shockingly conservative schoolgirl’s outfit that clashes with her orange hair and elaborate tiger-striped tattoos.
At first what you see is easy to interpret: an outsider trying to fit in, or a rebel forced to fit in. But then your eyes do another double take: are those… cat ears poking out from beneath her head scarf? Did they move? And is that a tail? My God, honey, could she be one of those… what are they called… “werecats”?
Why yes, her ears did move, and yes, she’s a weretiger. But didn’t your mom tell you it’s rude to point? She has a name, Cinnamon Frost, and she’s my adopted daughter.
Both the Prius and the weretiger in its passenger seat are relatively new to me. I met Cinnamon only two months ago visiting a local werehouse to research a werewolf tattoo, and ended up adopting her after rescuing her from a serial killer who had used her to get to me. I picked up the Prius shortly thereafter, a little splurge after winning a tattooing contest.
The adjustment was hard at first: Cinnamon took over my house and tried to take over my life. But my Mom had been a schoolteacher, and I’d learned a few tricks. In the first few weeks after she moved in I put the hammer down, never smiling, setting clear boundaries for her behavior and my sanity. Finally—when she got past the point of the tears, the “not-fairs,” and the most egregious misbehaviors—I eased up, and we once again shared the easy “gee you’re a square but I like you anyway” camaraderie we’d started with.
Now we were peas in a pod; whenever I went out she tagged along, riding shotgun, listening to her audiobooks while I jammed to Rush. The two of us look as different as can be, except for the identical stainless steel collars about our necks, but one minute seeing the two of us laughing together and you’d think I’d been her mother for her whole life.
But today my sunny bundle of fur was feeling quite sullen.
“Don’t worry,” I said, patting her knee softly. “One of them will accept you.”
“Yeah, yeah,” she said, pulling her leg away and tucking her knees under her chin. Cinnamon claimed she didn’t want to go