Page 18 of Pulling Strings

She glanced around, her dark eyes ringed in kohlliner. “Yes, it’s fine.”

Donovan stepped back to allow her room to pass, but she turned to him next. “Get comfortable, Donnie. We’ll be here a while.”

Realization dawned on his face the same moment it struck me. “You mean I get my Hex mark?” he asked, beaming. “Right now?”

Her head bobbed affirmation. She ushered Donovan toward the chair on which Grimm had first stood, then dragged over a seat for herself. When she set her case on the floor, it opened to reveal a full tattoo kit: ink pots, gun, and all. A thin sheet of transfer paper laid atop the rest, drawn with the same design she’d put on my hand years ago.

Still standing, and suddenly slack-jawed, I caught her gaze. She quickly looked away, lining up supplies on the nearest table.

Had she known about this earlier today? When I was in her bed giving breathless confessions about my fears for Donovan’s future when my head wasn’t between her legs? If she’d known then, why hadn’t she told me?

“Shall I take that to mean we’llallbe here awhile?” Avery didn’t bother to keep the complaint out of his voice.

Grimm didn’t respond. Instead, he returned to the booth and sat beside Vinton, retrieving his neglected glass of wine. Avery sighed and started dealing another game of solitaire.

The cigarette burned down between my fingers while the other men settled in. Isha and Donovan chatted quietly.

After a moment, Donovan waved me back. “Sit down, Fitch, you’re making me nervous,” he said with a laugh.

From the adjacent booth, Grimm’s chilling eyes bored through me. He, too, wanted me to relax. To applaud this defining moment. Doing anything else put a target on my back because why shouldn’t I be thrilled to see my brother succeed? What was best for the gang was best for everyone in it. So I’d been told over and over for the last twelve years.

“I’m gonna get a drink,” I said. Or several. Enough to forget the way Grimm glowered at me as I walked past on my way downstairs or the fact that Isha wouldn’t look at me at all.

They could make their own assumptions about whether or not I would return. I had no intention of doing anything that would make it harder to ignore the voice in my head begging someone to stop this or to deafen the sound of the tattoo gun as it drew the first line on my brother’s hand.

7

Ride to Nowhere

Twelve years earlier

My hand ached like I’d grabbed a hot pan out of the oven and was left with a blister. Only this wound was on the back of my palm, seeping black ink and blood.

I stared at the design: a skull with thorny vines growing through its eye sockets. It stretched from my fingers to my wrist, throbbing. They all wore the same mark—the men who killed my mom and dad. They would have killed me, but I stumbled into a loophole.

While they committed murder in my home at three in the morning, I committed murder, too.

I thought it was an accident but, as my memory became clearer, I decided it wasn’t accidental at all. I wished another man dead—the ugly one with scars on his face. The one who gripped my little brother like a wild animal clutching its prey.

I had to save Donovan, to protect him the way my father always said I should. He was younger than me. Weaker. He needed me. And, when I saw that man shaking the life out of Donovan’s eight-year-old body, I wanted to rip his arms off.

That thought consumed me. It was fueled by fearand anger until something… happened.

The man split into thirds, howling as blood gushed out. Everything turned red. The walls, the floors, and Donovan’s body huddled on the ground. I tried to run to him, but the other men stopped me. They were furious, ready to tear me apart like I’d done to their friend. But the long-haired one, the leader, looked at me with an odd amusement.

“Aren’t you a marvel?” he’d whispered.

They carried me out of there that night, the same way they’d carried me down here, to the basement of the tattoo parlor. They shoved me down the stairs after I’d sat strapped to a chair for what must have been hours, crying and begging while the tattoo gun drew dark lines on my hand.

Now that it was over, I huddled on the cold concrete floor, cradling my disfigured hand. I wanted to cut it off.

The tattoo artist stood at the base of the stairs. She’d been silent while she worked, and the men talked, and I struggled uselessly. She was silent now, too, her arms folded and her eyes fixed on me.

“Keep him here till he cools off, will you?”

That’s what they’d asked her, and she agreed.

Leave me in the dark with my thoughts and pain until everything went numb. It had happened before.

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