I could feel his gaze on me. I looked up, meeting his eyes. “Where’d you say you got these?” I asked, not that I didn’t know, but it seemed like the logical question.

He tapped the photos in his hand another time. “Is it your work?”

“I already said it wasn’t.”

“Did you?” An emotion glimmered in his eyes, determined, dangerous. Like the glint of steel before you see the actual knife slicing toward you.

“If it were my work, I’d tell you.”

“Would you?” His expression said he didn’t believe me.

Smart guy.

I shrugged. “Okay, maybe I wouldn’t, if I had a reason not to, but I didn’t lie. The work isn’t mine.”

This time he nodded in quiet acceptance. “There’s something, though. You know who did it?”

“No idea.”

A short laugh escaped his lips. “And just when I thought we were becoming friends.” Leaning forward, he placed both palms flat on the top of my desk. He was so close I could smell his toothpaste-cinnamon.

“This is serious. This isn’t about slapping a fine on someone for underage tattooing. Whoever did these”-he glanced down at the photos-“knows something. Something I need to know.”

I could feel the intensity rolling off him like heat off pavement. I wanted to help him. Wanted him to find the killer. But what could I tell him that wouldn’t lead back to me?

“They’re the same,” I blurted.

He blinked, maybe startled that I replied-I know I was. “What?”

“These tattoos.” I regretted the words as soon as they were spoken. None of this mattered, wouldn’t help him find his killer because I wasn’t going to tell him what else I knew about these tattoos-that they were done by an Amazon. However, my mind committed, I continued on, let myself get lost in discussing something I loved. I flipped the pictures back up to face us. “They’re done by the same person. Look at the bear. See the thinness here.” I pointed to the delicate stroking around the animal’s muzzle. “The slight upward curve at the end of each line? Now, look at the leopard. The shading, the variation in line width? It’s the same. Whoever did these tats wasn’t just cranking them out. He-” I chose the pronoun carefully, wondering briefly if Detective Reynolds noticed-“put time and dedication into them, blood, sweat, and tears. Good tattooing is more than simple art. More than a drunken lark. It’s ritual, beauty, strength, and power. That’s what you have here-mixed into ink and sketched into some girl’s skin. Whoever did this is good.” All Amazons entrusted with the art were.

His blue eyes grew hard. “A girl? How’d you know these were both girls?”

I pulled back, startled out of my reverie. How’d I know the pictures were of girls? Because I’d seen them firsthand, held their lifeless bodies in my arms. But I couldn’t exactly tell him that, now could I?

“The position. The lower back. Only women get tattoos there, and you already said it was someone underage-has to be a girl.” I tilted my chin upward, daring him to call me on the statement. It was true, lower back was a female-preferred spot. There was no way he could prove there was any other reason for me to know the pictures were of girls.

I watched as he rolled this around for a few seconds. Something battled within him, but eventually he seemed to accept what I said, kind of.

“That’s all you can give me?” He suddenly looked tired, like he’d used up his energy on his last explosion.

I nodded, guilt gnawing at my gut. He was one of the good guys, abrasive as I found him. But I couldn’t tell him what he wanted to know.

He started to turn, then stopped. His hand going again into his jacket, he pulled out a business card. “You call me if you decide you can tell me more.”

His way of letting me know he didn’t believe my story completely.

My fingers reached for the card, but he didn’t quite release it. “How about the breast? That a popular place for girls to get tattoos?”

This time I couldn’t stop the slight tremble in my fingers any more than I could stop the lurch of my heart. “The breast?” I repeated.

“Yes, the breast. A lot of young girls get tattoos there?” He lay his hand over his right pectoral muscle. “Right here. Not big. Probably under a few inches in diameter.”

Breathing through my nose, I slowed my heart rate, willed my mind not to think about the patch of missing skin, the raw flesh underneath. “More women than men. Why?”

“No reason,” he replied. “No reason at all.”

Chapter Six

I couldn’t leave it alone. I’d thought about it all day, tried to convince myself that the police seeking me out was a good thing-that it showed they were seriously working the case. I’d tried reminding myself they were also more qualified to find a killer. Who was I? I was a mother. I owned a tattoo shop. Sure I was an Amazon-but so what? How would that help me to find the killer?

But I couldn’t let it go. The girls, the police, my own guilt-they all ganged up on me and forced my hand.

I had to do something to stop this killer. Another midnight trek. This time to my basement…and Bubbe’s shop. I’d stolen the bear and leopard totems from Bubbe’s workspace when she’d been only a few feet away-out in the main basement area talking with a client.

But now I needed the others, and Bubbe’s shop was locked up tight. I had a key. But my grandmother didn’t just lock up her office. Right after she claimed the space as her own, she’d set a ward on the door.

I’d made fun of her at the time. What, she thought one of her suburban housewife clients or maybe a New Age college student was going to discover an undying need for a bag of bark or a stone carving?

Of course, she’d basically ignored me and wove the spell anyway.

Now, I had to get past it and any other little booby traps my wily grandmother had decided to put in place since then.

I laced my fingers together and pushed my hands out, palms forward in front of me, in my best knuckle-popping, let’s-get-down-to-work safecracker mode. Warmed up, I closed my eyes and let my mind drift, opened myself to feel the hum of magic, to hear the buzz only a destructive ward can emit.

First pass there was nothing-no hum, no buzz, nothing. I gritted my teeth. There was a ward there. I’d seen Bubbe work on it and there was no way she didn’t activate it every night.

Why she’d taken the time to build one so subtle I was having trouble detecting it was beyond me. If she was worried about only stopping a petty thief, she could have slapped any protective spell on here. But this…I opened my eyes, narrowed them as I studied the closed door…this was drawn to deceive, to keep another practitioner from realizing the door was even warded.

Which meant that after I got past the first ward, I’d find something else inside-something scary.

A prickle of unease crept up the back of my neck. Scary for Bubbe? Artemis only knew what that meant.

But I didn’t turn away. If anything, the increased challenge spurred me forward. I needed the totems tucked away inside Bubbe’s workspace, and I wanted to prove I could get to them, could beat my unbeatable grandmother.

This time I didn’t close my eyes; instead, I concentrated on losing focus-on seeing past reality into the magic realm my grandmother had created. Tears began to stream down my cheeks. I resisted the urge to rub away the tired burn that was growing in my eyes. Lines began to weave in front of me, twist and turn. At first I thought it was just exhaustion taking over, but slowly the curving slices of color began to meld, forming a solid, clearly visible shape-a serpent, its tail wrapped around the doorknob, its head hovering a foot above mine as if resting on some invisible branch, stared down at me.

A serpent can bring with it many powers. It can kill silently or warn its victim off with a hiss or rattle. This one just hung there against the door, watching, waiting.