the design appeared. “That’s… good. To use the knobs, I’ll need to tattoo contact points on the fingers of… oh. That’s these associated disc designs here?”
Nicholson leaned forward. “Uh, yes. So they are.”
“Who did this?” I looked back and forth at Nicholson and Valentine, who looked back and forth at each other. “This is expert work, but I certainly didn’t do it, nor did anyone I know of in the Southeast. Where did you get it?”
“I have my sources,” Valentine said, leaning back in his chair.
“Weeeell,” I said, miming his earlier intonation. “I can’t just ink this as is—”
“I told you so—sorry, am I jumping the gun?”
“Don’t be a dick, old man,” I snapped. “I take my profession as seriously as you do, and I am not going to put a permanent magical mark on the human body without two things: first, you have to get me some virgin flash—meaning unfolded, without lines that obscure the design. And no low-quality photocopies, either. I need something as close to the original as possible or a high-resolution digital image, TIFF preferred.”
“A… ‘tiff?” asked Valentine, looking at Nicholson.
“It’s a… graphics format,” Nicholson said. “Like a JPEG. Not a problem.”
Valentine shrugged, nodded. “Sounds fair,” he said. “We can do that.”
“Second, I need to get it vetted by a local witch,” I raised my hand before Valentine could say anything. “I’m not weaseling. I can ink a known design, but for something this complicated… I need a second eye, someone trained in graphomancy. Normally that would cost some coin, but I can get a witch to do it for free. If—and only if-—she approves, I’ll do your tattoo, and I guarantee it will do what she’ll say it will do. But I make no guarantees about what Mister Valentine can pull off, no matter how skilled a tattooist he is. And if he can replicate my work—” I cracked my neck, then cracked a smile. “Hey, more power to him.”
After that, I fixed my smile and stared straight at Valentine. He stared back at me for a moment, then looked at Nicholson. “Sounds fair, Alex?”
“Sounds fair,” Nicholson said. “Can you get her some better flash?”
“Today, preferably,” I said. “I have an appointment with my witch this afternoon—”
Valentine jiggled in his pocket and pulled out an USB drive on his keychain. He scowled at it for a moment, then seemed to think better of it. “I have a picture on here, but it’s really no better than the photocopy. Can I email you when I get back to my hotel?”
“Sure—it’’s just dakota at rogue unicorn dot net, no dash.”
“Will that take large files?”
“Yes, it just goes to my gmail account,” I said.
“A skeptical witch with a gmail account who wants TIFF files,” Valentine said, jamming his hands back into his pockets. “What is the world coming to?”
“I’m not a witch,” I replied. “I’m just a tattoo artist.”
Valentine was as good as his word—I had the file before my break. I printed out a copy of his “watch” and Wulf’s suspected Nazi flash on the 11x17 printer to speed things up, and dumped his files and my scans on a USB key to meet Jinx. I’m nothing if not prepared.
A distant noise of a leaf blower greeted me as I stepped back to our reception area, and I grinned at Kring/L, a big, beefy bald man with a walrus moustache, going over flash with a young couple over the distant noise of the leaf blower. Unlike me, he did jinxes—lover’s names—so he got work I generally didn’t; but he still felt the same way I did about them, and was trying to sell the kids on matching designs rather than something they’d regret in six weeks.
“You think all the leaves would have fallen by now,” he said, looking up at me, cocking his head back at the muted whine from the parking lot. He was a great artist, and yet didn’t sport a single tattoo. “I thought they did this on Wednesdays.”
“That’s the beauty of global warming for you,” I said. “Blow the leaves around enough with a gas mower, and you get to watch them fall later every year.”
He cocked his head at the two kids—they were actually pretty cleancut, kind of preppy, and had stiffened at my crack. I took the hint and shut up. I slipped out the door, then stomped in my big old boots back to the balcony at the end of the stairs. I was willing to bet I’d see a