The Tattooed Heart (Messenger of Fear 2)

“Yes, there is good in the world,” Haarm said, “but it’s not enough.”

He looked warily at me like I might punch him again. But honestly, he was right, wasn’t he? The man with the beard, and the old woman at the mission, and now this woman with the phone and the gift, they were powerless to stop the destruction of this young girl.

Was it partly Graciella’s fault? Had she been foolish? Had she made mistakes and taken wrong turns? Yes. But she was just a kid with talent wanting to find a way to express that talent. She wanted to be someone, someone other than the object of her mother’s guilt and her father’s insidious abuse.

She wanted to be a musician, a songwriter, a performer, not the bruised and bloodied victim of brutal rape carried out on the orders of a greedy man in the employ of a ruthless Nicolet.

I felt sick and sad and helpless watching Graciella walk away. Somehow she looked so much less of a person without her guitar. Just another sad street kid.

I hated the world. I hated what it did to gentle people. Blessed are the meek? Maybe in ancient Israel, not on the streets of Austin or Memphis or the shooting galleries of Nashville.

“You can’t help people who won’t help themselves,” Haarm said. Maybe if I’d had the energy I would have punched him again. But he wasn’t wrong.

“Maybe we can’t save her,” I said, “but we can hurt for her.”

“What?” Haarm seemed to be trying to tone himself down, and tried to make himself sound as if he was concerned for me, but the mockery came through. “Seriously, you have time to feel the pain of everyone you’re going to encounter in this job?”

“We are meant to feel their pain,” I said. “That’s why we wear the marks.”

“The marks? What marks?”

I stopped walking, tilted my head to get a better look at him. “Do you really not know?” I glanced at Messenger, who seemed content to attend passively. Of course he was judging me, it’s what he did, watching his pupil to see whether I had learned the lessons he taught me. I didn’t know if I had or not. I was sure that Haarm either had learned nothing from his master, or learned a very different set of lessons.

I rolled up my sleeve, and when that didn’t work, I tugged down the neckline of my shirt to reveal a bra strap and the tattoo.

Haarm stared at it, fascinated. “It . . . I think . . . It almost looks like it’s moving! Where did you get that?”

“You really don’t know,” I said. “He doesn’t know,” I said to Messenger, seeking some guidance.

“Teach him,” Messenger said.

“This is the mark I received for my first case. Derek Grady. He had a deeply buried terror of burning alive. I watched him burn. I smelled him burn.”

Seeing disbelief in Haarm’s eyes, I did something I probably shouldn’t have done. But he looked smug and so sure of himself. So I reached over and in unconscious imitation of Oriax, laid my palm against his cheek. Flesh to flesh contact.

I am not to be touched.

His eyes opened wide, he gasped, sucked in air, batted my hand away, took several stumbling steps back. “What? What? What the hell!”

“You don’t know that physical contact between our sort causes memory transfer? Didn’t your master teach you—”

Haarm, for the first time in our brief acquaintance, seemed genuinely horrified. Something had finally penetrated that wall of smugness.

“He is new to his apprenticeship,” Messenger said blandly. “He has not yet reached beyond the earliest training.” He narrowed his eyes and looked at Haarm as if weighing him up and finding very little of substance there.

But when I saw the shock in Haarm’s eyes, I admit to feeling a little guilty. I reminded myself that this is a strange world we now inhabit; the messengers and the apprentices and maybe Haarm was just raising defenses against all the pain that comes with the job.

“Let us witness the final turning point for Graciella,” Messenger said.

Once again, I did not know where we were. It was a city. That much I could see around me, but which city, and when? I never did find out. It didn’t matter, I suppose. Maybe it was Nashville, where I had first seen Graciella OD. Maybe not.

Loud music throbbed from a row house on a street of row houses. It was not a gentrified neighborhood, rather one of those places with serviceable old buildings that might someday attract the young professionals and the retired couples looking for something with an urban edge. Someday all those folks would arrive and begin remodeling kitchens and painting facades and parking their Priuses and BMWs on the street, but that had not begun yet, not on this block.

Graciella, wearing clothing that marked her as what she had by this time become, approached the door, trying for swagger and achieving only an awkward balance on too-high heels. She knocked on the door, too softly to be heard above the insistent bass. She knocked again, more forcefully this time, then stuck her knuckles in her mouth.

The door flew open. Inside was an obviously drunk and way too happy boy in a T-shirt, shorts, and flip-flops. He looked no older than Graciella, but something about him, maybe just the way he carried himself, the confidence that escaped past the blur of drink, marked him as a boy who came from privilege.

“Hey there, young lady,” he said.