Anthony Francis - Frost Moon

He held up his hands. "We got it."

"Same goes for you, old man," I said to Valentine. "This isn't a stage magic trick you get to expose. You pull some James Randi shit and leap up to start sprinkling Styrofoam chips on me when I'm working, I tattoo you a new working asshole in the middle of your forehead."

Valentine blinked, then his brow furrowed. "Sure, but we'll have to test-"

"The test is that the tattoo will move when it's done," I said. "Normal tattoos don't do that, do they? They're just pigment plaques in the dermis. How could a tattoo move?"

Valentine's mouth just hung open. "Uh… "

"I have never done this particular design before, so as an extra bit of insurance, we're going to do this in two stages," I said. "First, I will ink it on myself and make sure it works-"

"Didn't you have a graphomancer review it?" Valentine asked.

"Did I leap up on stage in the middle of your performance at the Masquerade?" I said, smiling at him. "Give me an allowance for theatrics here. To win this challenge, I need to make it absolutely clear that the tattoo works by magic, and since Alex is not a skindancer, I'm going to tattoo it on myself first and show you. Then, and only then, I'll put the design on Alex."

"Then why'd you wipe down my hand?" Alex asked.

"You're pretty, and I wanted to touch your warm skin." I watched him squirm. "Do I need an another excuse? But seriously, don't go rubbing your hand in mud or anything. It was just convenient for me to pre-prep you; the reasons will become clear later."

Valentine leaned forward. "Isn't it unusual for a tattooist to.. . tattoo themselves?"

"Very unusual," I said, "for normal tattoo artists. For magical inkers, it's practically required. Magical marks can go bad, and when they go bad they can actually kill you or mess you up for life. In the old days, inkers sometimes did that to each other deliberately, leaving their magical competition jinxed. Historically, there's not a lot of trust between magical inkers."

"Charming," Alex said.

"That was the old school, this is the new one," I said, pouring encircling mix into my hand. "I do my work with ethical pride, employing expert graphomancers, and with state licenses, at least in Georgia, California and New York. You have nothing to worry about."

"What is that?" Valentine said, staring suspiciously at the sparkling dust.

"A mix of kosher salt, quartz granules, cinnamon and ginger," I said, "with a little plain old glitter thrown in for visibility. Nothing special-unless you happen to believe in magic."

I said a little prayer over my cupped hands. Someone like Jinx would probably go in with a bunch of Wiccan nonsense about protection from this and invocation of that. I don't believe in all of that stuff. There are spiritual forces of evil in this world, just waiting to take residence in anything even remotely magical, and the 'circle'a blessed ring of crystals layered over a flat plane, preferably of living earth but in this case a disc of cut granite set into the floor-did help to keep them out. But you didn't need elaborate rituals: you just needed to look within, to whatever spiritual force you believed in, and call on it, letting your own aura blossom forth and charge the crystals to life.

My prayer finished, I poured the mix into the circle around us, murmuring. As the circle closed, I could feel our auras mingle with the mana built up in the pigments as a tingling rippled through my tattoos, something I'd never felt when I was unmarked. Some lucky people could feel mana anyway-Alex squirmed in his chair, the nurse looked at us eagerly, and the director with antsy concern. Valentine and the cameraman remained unmoved.

"We're now encircled. This ring will help repel any stray magic or 'evil spirits'," I said, putting my hands up in scare quotes. "Or whatever. Regardless, this is a part of the procedure. No one crosses this line. Not for any reason. Clear?"

When they nodded assent, I began wiping off my left wrist with alcohol, then soap. "Stage two in inking a magical mark is imprinting the design." I picked up the acetate sheet of the flash. A thin stick of blessed pitch rubbed across the design had made it sticky, so all I had to do was press it carefully to my wrist, where Cinnamon's butterfly had once lived, rub it a few times, and then peel it off. "If this was an ordinary tattoo, I could just start inking it. But I'll check the tattoo out against the instructions of the graphomancer to make sure I got the design right."

I pulled out the ruler and calipers and had gotten halfway through the list of resonant points when someone finally noticed the obvious.

"The design is backwards," Alex said.

"You mean, 'mirror reversed,'" I said. The director leaned in with a handheld camera; he was assisting the other cameramen by providing candid shots, and I lifted my hand so both his camera and Alex could see more clearly.

"Yeah," Alex said. "Won't that affect-"

"Yes and no," I said, measuring the distance across the design. "Normally I wouldn't reverse it, but in this case it is necessary."

"But when you start to tattoo it-"

"Do you ink magic, Alex?"

"Uh… no," he said. "But if this works I'd like to learn."

"Good," I said, grinning, making a small correction according to the instructions in Jinx's list. "But until then you're going to have to take my word that I need to reverse it."

I stuck a palette knife into some Vaseline and rubbed it on my wrist, then rubbed it onto my hands. "This will make the machine work more smoothly," I said. I checked over my pigments, the needles, the design, my skin. I inserted the tube holding the seven needle into the tattoo gun and started the machine. It began buzzing. I was ready. "And now, I begin."

I touched the needle gently to my skin, the first sharp prick erased almost immediately by the thrumming vibration of the needle puncturing my skin, forty times a second. The hot, spreading warmth and vibration were sensual, almost sexy, and the noise faded into the background as I began chatting.

"First I'll do the outline," I said, curling the needle deftly round my hand. "On an ordinary tattoo, I'd do the outline, take a short break, and then fill in the linework. For a magical tat, I'll stop when the major outline is done and check my resonant points. A magical tattoo is like a circuit, though it obeys different rules; you have to get all the components right or it won't work. A stray line or too much pigment would be like a short circuit or a bad resistor-"

"What does it feel like?" Alex asked, leaning down over my hand. He was supposed to provide color commentary while I worked, but inking myself had thrown him.

"Feels hot," I said, grinning, my eyes never leaving my hand. "Nowhere near as hot as your firespinning at the Masquerade, though."

I reached the end of an arc and lifted the needle. Alex's eyes sparkled back at me. "Fire is life," he said, "and I love life. It shows in my spinning."

"In other things, too, I bet," I said, setting the gun in its stand briefly, wiping the blood off my wrist, then picking up the gun and returning my eyes to my work. "I'd have sworn that you weren't just spinning-it looked like fire magic. What would the old man say?"

"He knows what I do," Alex said. "Thinks it can all be done with chemicals. In fact he says he'd have challenged me already, except he's afraid he'd set his hair on fire."

"Ah, no big loss, that?" I said, reaching the end of another arc and winking at Valentine.

"You kids," Valentine said, waving his hand feebly.

"But seriously," Alex said, as I started again. "How does it feel on your skin-"

"Kinda scratchy. It's intense, but a manageable intense. I've had worse paper cuts and less intense orgasms." I finished an arc and looked up at him. "Of course, that depends on who's giving me the orgasm."