Protective Ink (Urban Fantasy) (2 page)

“You okay in there?”

“Yep, just had to pee.” My God, had she just said that out loud? Her reflection laughed back at her, breaking the seriousness of the moment. This was the guy who had taken in the lost soul she’d helped create. He had taken Garrett under his wing, making provisions in his military contract to almost always have Garrett move with him when Jackson was not in a war. She was grateful to him, indebted to him and
not
in lust with him.

Feeling like she’d regained her cool, Lissa splashed water on her face, washed her hands and jerked the door open. She didn’t even notice Jackson was standing in front of her, bare to the waist with his brawny arms crossed over his lightly furred chest. Nope, didn’t notice how perfectly defined his abs were and the way his jeans hung just below his navel. Nope, didn’t notice one iota as she shooed him back to the chair and got to work again.

The green she was using on his back matched his eyes almost perfectly. She kept herself in check while she finished the tattoo by praying to an ancient goddess whose name had been lost over time. She begged the goddess for help and asked for the strength to finish this job so she could go back to her regularly scheduled life—the one where she hardly ever saw Jackson and only talked with him when she was checking in on Garrett.

And then it was done. The final poke of ink, a swipe of green soap and a smear of antibacterial cream and it was…

“What the hell?” Lissa jerked her hand back and stared at…nothing.

“What? What hell? Tell me you didn’t mess it up. Am I going to have a crooked line on my back for the rest of my life?”

“I, um… No.” She bit her lip and backed up until she felt the solid metal of the filing cabinet behind her.

“Talk, Lissa.” The low growl wasn’t menacing so much as it was commanding, making parts of her tingle that absolutely, under no circumstances, should ever tingle when she was around Jackson. Especially since his voice was coming from thin air—or what appeared to be thin air.
Holy crap!

“I’m not even sure where to start.” She fidgeted with the star ruby ring on her middle finger. He was not going to be happy. Not at all.

“The beginning is good.”

How do you tell someone you can’t see them? Sure, she had plenty of experience giving men the brush-off, but this was a whole different level of not seeing. “I’ll be right back.” And she ran to her office, hyperventilating all the way.

“I’ll be waiting,” he bellowed from the next room. Impatient man.

After grabbing her worry stone from a bowl on the tiny desk in her office, she headed back into the room, feeling more centered with the stone in one hand and a towel in the other. She could do this. She could tell him she’d accidentally tapped into a latent ability of his they hadn’t known about before, one that she hadn’t detected in his aura.

He was going to be incredibly pissed.

“So?” he asked before she had fully made it through the doorway.

“Don’t be so grumpy.”

“You swear and then walk out of here without an explanation after poking me God knows how many times with a needle…and I’m not supposed to be grumpy?”

“Look, you knew poking was part of the process.” Even if she couldn’t see him, she knew he could still see her, so she thrust her hands onto her hips. “And I’m being as gentle as possible.”

“All beside the point. Now will you tell me what’s going on?”

“I wish you’d stop yelling.” And perhaps reappear. Holy crap! She turned away and put her hand into her pocket, sighing with relief when her hand closed around the worry stone.

“I’ll stop yelling once you start talking. Now speak.”

“I’m not a dog, Jackson.”

“Right. Just tell me already. It’s not such a big deal if you made a mistake. You can fix it. Right?”

“I did not make a mistake. I’m very proud of all the work I do. Have I ever made a mistake?” Dead silence. She harrumphed. “On a tattoo?”

“No, but there’s a first time for everything.”

“Well, this is not it.” She fiddled with the stone again. “It wasn’t a mistake, but you’re not going to be happy.”

“I’m not happy now, so out with it.”

“It looks like you have a power after all.” Like ripping off a bandage, it was better to just blurt it out.

“I what?” The growl was back and this one was kind of menacing, especially since she couldn’t see his face or his body language.

“You have, um, a power. Something happened when I put the tattoo on you and you have a power.”

“What exactly happened?”

Clearing her throat didn’t help this time, so she just came out and said it. “You blinked out. I can’t see you.”

“Come again?”

Plopping down into what she had fondly dubbed the “next victim chair,” she rested her chin on her hand. “When I finished the tattoo, you faded under my hand.”

“What the hell?”

“Exactly.”

She heard him rise from the chair and start pacing, his agitation obvious from the sound.

“How did this happen?” He stalked around the already small space, making it feel miniscule in the process, even though she couldn’t see him. “Did you do something to me when you started the tattoo? Put some mojo into it that you didn’t tell me about?”

“Now hold the hell on there, cowboy. I did no such thing! I may have tweaked a natural ability or two, but I haven’t ever done anything major without permission. People come to me for special tattoos all the time, sent through a friend of a friend, and I’ve turned down plenty of them. Why on earth would I change all that for you, you big lug?”

“No, sorry, you’re right. Sorry.”

But he didn’t sound sorry as he continued his stalking. He sounded pissed. Far more than she had thought possible.

“Are you sure you didn’t do this on purpose?”

“I’m positive. Jeez, I can’t just give out abilities like they’re candy, you know. It doesn’t work that way.” She occupied herself with arranging the things on her tray and tried to quiet the alarming fact that her first tattoo in her new shop had gone anything but well.

And then she felt his hand cover hers while he used his other one to tip her chin up.

“I know you didn’t do it on purpose.” He toyed with the star ruby on her finger.

“Okay.” She removed her hand from his before she got those tingles for a second time. But then she didn’t know where he was until he spoke from the far side of the room.

“I’m invisible?”

“You and what you’re wearing. Like that Martian Manhunter guy from those comic books you and Garrett pore over.” She thought she might be sick. She’d enhanced him without even realizing it. What if he had to suffer like Garrett did for his powers? Making someone better at painting or enhancing their ability to spin a good yarn was one thing. An honest to goddess superhuman power manifestation was something else entirely…and she had never wanted to be responsible for another one. She had done the first with Garrett, naively thinking his mother was cool for wanting to enhance his ability to be a warrior. Her own mother had always encouraged her gift, wanting her to be the best she could be when it came to enhancing other people’s talents. So Garrett’s mother had come as a shock to her. She’d had no idea that the woman’s real motive was to turn him into a monster, or she never would have touched him the first time.

“But he’s green.”

Despite her morose thoughts, she snickered because
of course
that was the kind of detail he’d focus on right now. “And you’re not. At least he’s a good guy, right?”

“Well, shit. I guess so. In the Justice League and all…” He trailed off.

She had no idea what he was doing and could only guess as to where he was. How could this have happened, anyway? How could she have made such a glaring error? But then she realized she had been praying while doing his tattoo. Damn. And she had not tapped into him just to make absolutely sure she wasn’t messing with anything. Double damn. Two mistakes she knew better than to make.

She always mentally connected with a person’s energy before tattooing them. She’d avoided several bad situations that way. Once a woman had come in for a tattoo and the hate in her aura had been enough to set Lissa back on her butt. She’d taken extra pains not to enhance it in any way—the last thing the world needed was a hate-addled soul who had the power to turn people to stone with a look.

And to add a cherry to this sundae full of crap, she knew one thing for sure—Jackson her friend was hard enough to resist, but Jackson the superhero might be more than she could turn away from, especially now that they lived in the same town.

Chapter Two

Jackson didn’t feel any different for being invisible. He still saw everything around him in the same old way, smelled things normally, too. His hands looked the same as always when he glanced down at them, flexing and balling his fists. So how did this work and how could he turn it on and off? It would be damned inconvenient if he thought he was invisible in some crucial moment when in fact everyone and their mother could see him.

He’d always been stealthy; it was one of the reasons he’d been given recon jobs other guys couldn’t pull off during his time in the service, but this was adding a whole new dimension to things.…

Asking Lissa was probably the smartest thing to do, but he wasn’t feeling very smart as he circled her with the light tread he’d perfected in the military. She was right there, right in his space, and she had no idea what he was doing. And so he did the one thing he knew he shouldn’t—he stood inches behind her and inhaled the scent that was all Lissa. A mixture of the woods and honeysuckle. It was no different than it had been twenty years ago, and it still triggered something in him.

He raised his hand to run his fingers through the midnight lushness of her hair but stopped himself at the last second. There was stealthy and then there was creepy. He settled for taking her hand in his and kissing her open palm. “Crazy,” he whispered a breath before he apparently popped back into view.

“Oh,” she said, jumping back and knocking into the filing cabinet behind her.

He laughed. “Sorry about that.”

“No.” She cleared her throat. “No, it’s okay. I just wasn’t expecting you to be standing…so close.”

Taking a step back, he removed himself from the temptation to kiss more than her hand. That was the first and last time he’d invade her space.

“We should tell Garrett what happened,” she said, her hand on her heart.

The bottom dropped out of his stomach. Though invisibility was a wicked cool power to have—or at least it would be once he figured out how to control it—there could be some serious drawbacks. What if he had to pay a price? Garrett did, after all.

Grabbing his T-shirt from the back of the chair, Jackson shrugged into it. He was not going to willingly subject himself to the suffering Garrett had undergone for years because of his power. To expel the darkness he needed to transform his tattoos into weapons, Garrett used to strap himself into a self-made electric chair, zapping his body with currents of light. But after Garrett met Dory, his girlfriend, he didn’t need to do that anymore. She was somehow able to dissipate his darkness—no violence necessary. And what a blessing that was.

“Jesus, Lissa, do you know what you might have just done to me?” Jackson said. Rage reared its head, but he shoved it back until he couldn’t feel anything but the edges of it. “Can you take the power back?”

“I can’t.” Lissa stood with her hands behind her back, a frown on her face.

“Can you block it? Do something so I can’t use it? I refuse to suffer like Garrett.”

Lissa’s hands came out from behind her back and plopped onto her hips. “I’ve never seen a power like Garrett’s before.… He’s the only one I’ve ever tattooed with that ability…and its price.”

“Right, and just how many people have you given your ‘special’ tattoos to, anyway?”

“Don’t be a dick, Jackson. How was I supposed to know you’d go invisible on me? There wasn’t any latent power in you the last time I gave you ink. I didn’t want this to happen any more than you did, you know, but I can’t exactly remove the tattoo.” She paced away from him in the confined space. “I’ve only ever tattooed one person with real superhuman powers, but my great-grandmother tattooed a ton of warriors, and none of them had to suffer like Garrett.”

He wasn’t buying it. He needed time to think and space away from her. He put his jacket on in anticipation of the frigid November night. “See you around.”

“You don’t have to be afraid of it, Jackson. Not every power is bad, not everyone has to struggle.” Her fingers glided along his sleeve.

“Maybe not in your world, cupcake.”

Then he was gone, out into the night, away from her. Maybe he’d find Garrett and see if he wanted to shoot some pool. Do something normal for once instead of their endless, unwinnable fight against crime.

Right as that thought crossed his mind, Jackson’s cell phone chirped. It was Garrett’s special ring tone. Digging the phone out of his back pocket, Jackson answered. “Talk to me.”

“I need Dory. I’m fucked up, and I’m cornered. Help.” And then the connection went dead.

* * *

Well, that obviously hadn’t gone quite as planned. Lissa flipped off the lights in her new shop and made her way upstairs to her apartment. When she’d moved into this building four weeks ago, she’d had high hopes for this next phase of her life.

And Jackson’s tattoo was supposed to have been some kind of christening for the shop. She’d thought it would make a nice circle to give another tattoo to the last person she’d inked before giving Garrett his powers. But it had turned into a disaster. Hopefully it wasn’t an omen for how things would go for Wicked Ink.

Two years after Jackson’s first tattoo, he’d returned from his initial deployment overseas. When he’d stopped in to say hello to her and her boss, he’d been older, much more so than a mere twenty-four months could explain away, and his eyes had been haunted. All thoughts of him as a guy—as possibly
her
guy—had fled from her mind. Garrett had needed a savior, someone to teach him discipline and self-control, and who better than Jackson? She had begged him to take the new superhero under his wing. She very clearly remembered begging him. And now she might have inadvertently done the one thing to him she’d never wanted to do to another person after Garrett.…