Ink Exchange (Wicked Lovely 2)

I’ve watched this plenty of times; it’s not a big deal. She couldn’t look away, though.

Rabbit did each step silently, as if she weren’t there. He opened the needle package and pulled out a length of thin metal. It looked like it was just one needle, but she knew from her hours listening to Rabbit talk shop that there were several individual needles at the tip of a needle bar. My needles, for my ink, in my skin. Rabbit slid the needle bar into the machine. The soft sound of metal sliding across metal was followed by an almost inaudible snick. Leslie let out breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. If she thought Rabbit would let her, she’d ask to hold the tattoo machine, ask to wrap her hand around the primitive-looking coils and angled bits of metal. Instead she watched Rabbit make adjustments to it. She shivered. It looked like a crude hand-held sewing machine, and with it he’d stitch beauty onto her body. There was something

primal about the process that resonated for her, some sense that after this she’d be irrevocably different, and that was exactly what she needed.

“Turn that way.” Rabbit motioned, and she moved so her back was to him. He smeared ointment over her skin with a latex-clad finger. “Ready?”

“Mm-hmm.” She braced herself, wondering briefly if it would hurt but not caring. Some of the people she’d seen complained like the pain was unbearable. Others seemed not to notice it at all. It’ll be fine. The first touch of needles was startling, a sharp sensation that felt more like irritation than pain. It was far from awful.

“You good?” He paused, taking away the touch of needles as he spoke.

“Mm-hmm,” she said again: it was the most articulate answer she could offer in the moment. Then, after a pause that was almost long enough to make her beg him to get back to it, he lowered the tattoo machine to her skin again. Neither spoke as he outlined the tattoo. Leslie closed her eyes and concentrated on the machine as it hummed and paused, lifting from her skin only to touch back down. She couldn’t see it, but she’d watched Rabbit work often enough to know that in some of those pauses Rabbit dipped the tip of the needle into the tiny ink caps like a scholar inking his quill.

And she sat there, her back stretched in front of him as if she were a breathing piece of canvas. It was wonderful. The only sound was the hum of the machine. It was more than a sound, though: it was a vibration that seemed to slip through her skin and sink into the marrow of her bones.

“I could stay like this forever,” she whispered, eyes still closed.

A dark laugh rolled out of somewhere. Leslie’s eyes snapped open. “Is someone here?”

“You’re tired. School and extra shifts this month, right? Maybe you drifted off.” He tilted his head in that peculiar way he and his sisters had, like a dog hearing a new sound.

“Are you saying I fell asleep sitting up while you were tattooing me?” She looked back at him and frowned.

“Maybe.” He shrugged and turned away to open a brown glass bottle. It was unlike the other ink bottles: the label was handwritten in a language she didn’t recognize.

When he uncapped it, it seemed as if tiny shadows slithered out of it. Weird. She blinked and stared at it. “I must be tired,” she muttered.

He poured ink from the bottle into another ink cap—holding it aloft so the outside of the bottle didn’t touch the side of the ink cap—then sealed the bottle and changed gloves.

She repositioned herself and closed her eyes again. “I expected it to hurt, you know?”

“It does hurt.” Then he lowered the tattoo machine to her skin again, and she stopped remembering how to speak.

The hum had always sounded comforting when Leslie had listened to Rabbit working, but feeling the vibration on her skin made it seem exciting and not at all comforting. It felt different from what she’d imagined, but it wasn’t what she’d call pain. Still, she doubted it was something she could’ve slept through.

“You okay?” Rabbit wiped her skin again.

“I’m good.” She felt languid, like her bones weren’t all the way solid anymore. “More ink.”

“Not tonight.”

“We could just finish it tonight—”

“No. This one will take a couple sessions.” Rabbit was quiet as he wiped her skin. He slid his chair back; the wheels sounded loud as they slid over the floor, like a boulder being pushed across a metal grate.

Weird.

She stretched—and almost blacked out.

Rabbit steadied her. “Give it a sec.”

“Head rush or something.” She blinked to clear her vision, resisting the urge to try to focus on the shadows that seemed to be walking through the room unattached to anything.

But Rabbit was there, showing her the tattoo—my tattoo—with a pair of hand mirrors. She tried to speak, and might have. She wasn’t sure. Time felt like it was off, speeding and slowing, keeping pace with some faraway chaos clock, bending to rhythms that weren’t predictable. Rabbit was covering her new tattoo with a sterile bandage. At the same time, it seemed, his arm was around her, helping her stand.

She stepped unsteadily forward. “Careful with my wings.”

She stumbled. Wings?