Jack opened the door with a beep beep beep, strolled in and disappeared into a warren of ratty old cubicles. We followed him through, and the door closed behind us. I looked back at the big, knobbly lock. I was sure you could get out without the code, but… it still slowly swung shut with a solid click, and I felt trapped.
In moments I was in a plain white “evidence” room, looking down on a salt-and-pepper haired, Greek-looking officer improbably named Vincent Balducci, seated at a large table in front of a large manila folder. There was a side door to the right, and a huge mirror dominated the rest of the wall. If you squinted you could just see the blinking light of a camera, or maybe a video recorder, and I felt the invisible presence of a dark figure somewhere behind the glass. Maybe I was imagining it, but, come on, I’ve seen this movie before.
“Taller than I expected, Miss Frost,” Balducci said, not moving to greet me as I sat down. My long leather vestcoat shhhed against the tile as I settled into the chair, but after that, the only noise was the hum of the air conditioning.
Rand was seated at the edge of the table, naturally, easily, like an Armani model dressed on a police officer’s salary, but losing none of the class. Finally he seemed to lose patience with Balducci and said, “Show her.”
“This is pointless,” Balducci said. “She can’t tell us anything that—”
“Chickening out?” Abruptly Rand flipped the manila folder open and turned it towards me, then stood and staring at the glass. “What can you tell us about this?”
Curious, I stared at the picture: it was a bad photocopy of a circular design, some kind of braided wreath with a chain and a snake eating its own tail. Big black blotches covered the upper quarter of the design, but after a moment I puzzled out what I was looking at. “This is flash,” I said. At Balducci’s puzzled look, I explained: “A tattoo design, or a part of one.”
Balducci nodded dismissively. “Told you,” he said to Rand.
“And?” Rand asked.
“And… you need to tone the contrast down on your copier?” I said. It was half blotted out… but then I realized it wasn’t a photocopy, but some kind of printout of an image, posterized to the point that it was almost illegible, with large-brush black blotches of a digital pen redacting some of the details. But it still had that distinctive natural look that meant it had started life as a photograph, not a drawing.
“This isn’t flash,” I said. “It’s an actual tattoo.”
“Told you,” Rand said.
As my eyes studied it I became suspicious. The reproduction was terrible, but something about the wreath and chain had the flavor of a magical glyph. What if it was magical? These mundanes would have no way of knowing. But how could I tell from this printout? “Do you have a better picture? No—a different picture?”
Balducci sighed, and slipped another piece of paper out of the folder. A similar shot, similarly degraded, but… I put the two next to each other and planted my hands on the table, staring down upon them. After a moment I saw it: the head of a snake in the design was three links past the belt of the chain in one, and five in the next. It was moving.
“This is magical,” I said. “This tattoo is moving. It’s a magical mark.”
“Told you,” Rand said triumphantly.
“Holy—” Balducci breathed. I looked up, and saw him not looking at the flash, but at my hands. “Hers are doing it too. I swear the fucking butterfly flapped.”
“What, did you think they only moved after?” Rand asked.
“What do you mean, after?” I asked. No one said anything, and my stomach suddenly clenched up. “What do you mean, after? You don’t mean, like, after death—”
“I can’t discuss the details of an ongoing investigation,” Balducci said.
“Why did we bring her here if not to discuss it?” Rand said.
“It was your idea,” Balducci said. “She’s your old partner’s daughter—”
The side door opened.
The dark-suited Fed I had seen in the hall walked out. His crisp goatee and short wavy hair made him look more like an evil Johnny Depp than a laid-back agent Mulder. One hand was in his pocket, the other still holding the cup of coffee. In his dextrous fingers, the Styrofoam cup looked like alabaster.
“Show her,” he said, with unassuming authority. “Or quit wasting