“So yeah, I hangs with him, lets him ink me,” she said. “I’m part of the prissy fuck’s ‘entourage,’ and he keeps me safe.” She saw me scowling, and shrugged. “He never once touched my stuff, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“Other people did?”
“Only werekin,” she said. “And mostly boys, ones I already likes to run with. One creepy old geezer tried hitting on me, but the Bear King gutted him.” She grinned abruptly, vicious, feral. “It was sweeet. Some of his intestines flew all the way to the rafters. They says he was shitting blood for a week.”
I felt better, but only a little.
“Cinnamon, if they’re using you… I can’t let you go back there.”
Cinnamon stood slowly, opening her mouth in a feral smile. Fine orange down spread over her face, furring it up like a fast-motion movie you’d see of a growing plant on the Discovery channel. She raised her hands, lengthening them into long, vicious claws.
“You can’t stop me,” she said, hissing with a full mouth of teeth.
I stared at her, then leaned forward slowly until my head hung over hers and she had to crane back her neck. Her eyes widened as I said slowly, “You scratch me—just once—and I’ll be able to do everything you can do, plus this.”
And I let the mana in my hands flow out, quickening the butterfly in her hands until it broke free and began flitting around in the air.
“No! No!” she cried, reaching for it, batting it around. “No no no! Please! Please! Give it back! Please give it back.”
It settled slowly on my hand, flapping its wings once or twice, the light going out of it as it prepared to merge back with my skin. She cried and held her long claws out over it, cradling it, breathing on it like I had, trying to coax it back to life.
“No no no,” she said, as it began to sink back into my hand. “No-one’s ever given me anything nice. Don’t take it away. Please don’t take my butterfly away. Please. Please.”
I stared down at her, then waved my inking hand over the butterfly, bringing it back to life. “Oh, all right,” I said. “Hold up your fist. I want to align it right this time.”
In moments the butterfly was back on her hand, me cradling it, coaxing it into the right alignment to best show off the shape of her hand, even with the claws.
“I’m just a big softie,” I said.
“Th-thank you Dakota,” she stammered, as the design sunk into the skin. “I—I—mean, Lady Dakota, I overheard Lord Buckhead and I didn’t mean to disrespect—”
“Oh, don’t you start,” I said. “If you call me Dakota, I’ll call you Cinnamon.”
She held up the back of her fist, showing me the tattoo that had once been mine, now brightened by her own super-sunny smile. “Okay, DaKOta!”
I kneaded my brow, falling back into my chair.
I was sure I was going to regret this. But I wasn’t at all sure what “this” was.
17. JUNKMAN’S DAUGHTER
After much negotiation, I convinced ‘Cinnamon’ to take a shower—and, with additional effort, convinced her to take it alone— and then took her down to the Rogue Unicorn for an impromptu ‘Take Your Daughter to Work Day.’
She wanted to run behind me on the Vespa, but after another fifteen minutes of wheedling I convinced her that it wouldn’t do to be caught running down McLendon at forty-five miles an hour in broad daylight.
“Ow,” she said, adjusting her helmet. I hadn’t realized how small she was: Savannah’s old helmet seemed ridiculously outsized on her head. “Can I ditch this? It’s crushing my ears.”
“We’ll get stopped,” I said, and then, being unable to resist, fished for a little information. “You can’t, you know, shrink them, like your claws?”
She lifted the brow of the helmet so she could glare at me, then got back on the back of the bike, wrapping her arms around me a bit fearfully. Ok, more than a bit. Actually—
“Can’t—breathe—” I gasped. “This isn’t going to kill you. I’ll go slow—”
“I can takes anything you caaaan—”
And after some to-go from the Flying Biscuit and a short drive, we got to Little Five and climbed the steps up to the Rogue. Cinnamon’s helmeted head snapped back and forth so fast I thought it would twist off, and finally I told her that she could take it off.