Card turned his hand. The smile that spread across his face was slow and wicked. “I have some of your ink.”
“Looks like it.” I wasn’t upset about it. As a matter of fact I felt happy, good. If my magic was on him, I’d always know where he was in the world.
“That was...more than I deserved, Ricky.”
“I’m tired of keeping score,” I said. “She wasn’t welcome here. You are.”
He stilled. I shrugged. I wasn’t someone who beat around the bush. I was someone who spoke my mind.
“How much of the magic of the Crossroads can you get to through the tattoos?” I asked.
He tipped his head like he was listening for a far-off sound. “Um...not much? Not any? I can get a general...mood? It’s pleased?”
“It is.”
So was I.
“But I can’t hear the spells or magic, or...” He closed his eyes, breathing deep, then letting that breath out. “No. I can’t ask it to bring anything to me. Can’t move anything in the house.”
“And if you touch the ink?”
He pressed his thumb on the shield which had imprinted a ghostly copy across the back of his hand. Nothing changed for me. I didn’t feel more of his will or intent. Didn’t feel the matching ink on my skin flare.
“Huh,” he said. “I don’t think I can access the magic like you can. Which is fair. I’m not a Crossroads.” He gave me a wink and my heart tripped all over itself before finding its rhythm again.
“This is your magic, Ricky,” he said. “I think you could remove it from me.” He held up his other hand where the infinity mark glowed with a ghost light against his palm.
I hummed in agreement. “Can I touch it?” I asked.
He held his arm out for me, and it wasn’t just one ghost tattoo that had marked him. His skin was now almost completely covered in ink identical to mine, though placed on the opposite side of his body.
He carried the mirror twin of my ink.
I pressed my fingertips onto the little picture of a house. It was an almost child-like drawing, just a little square with a triangle roof and a crooked window and door.
I remember laughing when Card had been inking that one. He’d wanted it to look “artsy” but every time he laid down ink, the tattoo shifted and slid into a crooked-looking little house.
It was the Crossroads, and by the time he was inking it, the Crossroads had decided exactly what it wanted its own tattoo to look like on me.
The little house glowed brighter under my finger. Card let out a soft, “Oh.”
I pulled a thread of magic from the Crossroads, just a small one, through that tattoo and felt the connection click into place.
The Crossroads was delighted, reaching out with:mineandmagicandours.
“Okay,” I said slowly. “I don’t know if you can hear that, but the Crossroads is fine with you being...um...connected.”
“How fine?” he asked, turning to look at the building behind us. “Like, will it let me leave?”
And that, I supposed, had always been the question between us. I was content to be here, to build here. He always had to be moving.
Mine, magic, ours,the Crossroads chanted in my head.
I sighed. “Well, it wants to keep you.”
“Aw, it loves me.”
“Tolerates.”
