“The test is that the tattoo will move when it’s done,” I said. “Normal tattoos don’t do that, do they? They’re just pigment plaques in the dermis. How could a tattoo move?”
Valentine’s mouth just hung open. “Uh… “
“I have never done this particular design before, so as an extra bit of insurance, we’re going to do this in two stages,” I said. “First, I will ink it on myself and make sure it works—”
“Didn’t you have a graphomancer review it?” Valentine asked.
“Did I leap up on stage in the middle of your performance at the Masquerade?” I said, smiling at him. “Give me an allowance for theatrics here. To win this challenge, I need to make it absolutely clear that the tattoo works by magic, and since Alex is not a skindancer, I’m going to tattoo it on myself first and show you. Then, and only then, I’ll put the design on Alex.”
“Then why’d you wipe down my hand?” Alex asked.
“You’re pretty, and I wanted to touch your warm skin.” I watched him squirm. “Do I need an another excuse? But seriously, don’t go rubbing your hand in mud or anything. It was just convenient for me to pre-prep you; the reasons will become clear later.”
Valentine leaned forward. “Isn’t it unusual for a tattooist to… tattoo themselves?”
“Very unusual,” I said, “for normal tattoo artists. For magical inkers, it’s practically required. Magical marks can go bad, and when they go bad they can actually kill you or mess you up for life. In the old days, inkers sometimes did that to each other deliberately, leaving their magical competition jinxed. Historically, there’s not a lot of trust between magical inkers.”
“Charming,” Alex said.
“That was the old school, this is the new one,” I said, pouring encircling mix into my hand. “I do my work with ethical pride, employing expert graphomancers, and with state licenses, at least in Georgia, California and New York. You have nothing to worry about.”
“What is that?” Valentine said, staring suspiciously at the sparkling dust.
“A mix of kosher salt, quartz granules, cinnamon and ginger,” I said, “with a little plain old glitter thrown in for visibility. Nothing special—unless you happen to believe in magic.”
I said a little prayer over my cupped hands. Someone like Jinx would probably go in with a bunch of Wiccan nonsense about protection from this and invocation of that. I don’t believe in all of that stuff. There are spiritual forces of evil in this world, just waiting to take residence in anything even remotely magical, and the ‘circle’— a blessed ring of crystals layered over a flat plane, preferably of living earth but in this case a disc of cut granite set into the floor—did help to keep them out. But you didn’t need elaborate rituals: you just needed to look within, to whatever spiritual force you believed in, and call on it, letting your own aura blossom forth and charge the crystals to life.
My prayer finished, I poured the mix into the circle around us, murmuring. As the circle closed, I could feel our auras mingle with the mana built up in the pigments as a tingling rippled through my tattoos, something I’d never felt when I was unmarked. Some lucky people could feel mana anyway—Alex squirmed in his chair, the nurse looked at us eagerly, and the director with antsy concern. Valentine and the cameraman remained unmoved.
“We’re now encircled. This ring will help repel any stray magic or ‘evil spirits’,” I said, putting my hands up in scare quotes. “Or whatever. Regardless, this is a part of the procedure. No one crosses this line. Not for any reason. Clear?”
When they nodded assent, I began wiping off my left wrist with alcohol, then soap. “Stage two in inking a magical mark is imprinting the design.” I picked up the acetate sheet of the flash. A thin stick of blessed pitch rubbed across the design had made it sticky, so all I had to do was press it carefully to my wrist, where Cinnamon’s butterfly had once lived, rub it a few times, and then peel it off. “If this was an ordinary tattoo, I could just start inking it. But I’ll check the tattoo out against the instructions of the graphomancer to make sure I got the design right.”
I pulled out the ruler and calipers and had gotten halfway through the list of resonant points when someone finally noticed the obvious.
“The design is backwards,” Alex said.
“You mean, ‘mirror reversed,’” I said. The director