Cash shrugged, his face perturbed by the shock he must have also felt. “It’s how they all treat me, after over two hundred years of it I’m used to it.”
“Yeah, but aren’t you doing him a favor by giving him a tattoo? Effie said you’re the only artist who can work with stone skin on this side of the country. You’d think he’d be a little nicer,” I insisted.
“I’m Wingless. So, to them, I don’t exist. It’s honestly progress that they acknowledge my skills at all,” Cash pointed out.
I scoffed at that. It seemed bad enough that they’d taken his wings, but I knew how awful it was to be ignored by the people who were supposed to be your family.
Mike had spent the better part of our marriage doing that to me and it grated against my skin like sandpaper.
“That gargoyle in there must be doing some crazy mental gymnastics then, who does he think is going to tattoo him? A ghost?” I asked stubbornly.
The corner of Cash’s mouth turned up into a smirk. “No ghosts make terrible tattoo artists.”
I frowned. “Why? Is it because they can’t hold the tattoo gun?”
“No, it’s because they have trouble boo-king appointments,” Cash said, completely stone-faced.
It took me a good fifteen seconds to realize that Cash was making a joke and not a very good one at that. “That was just awful,” I told him with a shake of my head.
Cash’s smirk broke into a wide grin and I was immediately dazzled by it. Then, as soon as it appeared, it was gone and Cash was serious again.
“I can handle Brendan, he’s on the nicer end of the gargoyles that come in to get tattooed by me, so don’t worry.” Cash turned to duck back through the beaded curtain, but stopped and glanced over his shoulder at me.
He looked like he wanted to say something, but was unsure about it.
Finally, he offered me another, less-blinding smile. “Thanks for worrying about me, little dragonfly, if I ever need a knight in shining armor again, I’ll know where to go.”
With that he entered the long hallway that would lead him back to his suite, his tail swishing languidly behind him, showing that my words had pleased him.
I watched him go, still feeling not only conflicted, but also protective. Something had shifted this morning when we were working together to free Roger the goat and there was no putting the nearly seven-foot, gray genie back in the bottle.
Before, Cash was the stone-faced acquaintance who was helping me out, but now? Maybe we were slowly starting to become friends.
I haven’t made friends since my college days—at least not on my own. The wives of Mike’s friends had been my ‘friends.’ But I could never tell them my true feelings without worrying about them telling their husbands who would then tell mine. So I spent most of my lunches with them sitting quietly until Mike or his mother picked me up to take me back to the house that had become my prison.
“That guy is a total asshole,” Effie said as she stepped back through the curtains, looking as irritated as she had when Brendan had walked into the shop.
“He didn’t even fill out his intake forms,” I told her as I collected the clipboard from the coffee table where he’d dropped it.
Effie shrugged a green freckled shoulder as she flipped the shop sign over to close down for lunch. “Doesn’t matter since after this tattoo I’m going to talk to Dallan about banning gargoyles until they can learn some fucking manners.”
She turned to face me again and blew a frustrated breath between her closed lips, sending the wisps of her green bands fluttering. “I need a change of scenery before I hex someone, I’d ask you to get lunch, but…”
I winced at her sudden shift in tone. I’d rejected her twice already and it made me feel guilty to see that she was starting to distance herself from me.
Effie had been nice enough to take a chance on hiring me, a twitchy human with a spotty work history, and I’d repaid her by putting up walls.
How much would it hurt to be a little bit friendly?My inner voice whispered.If you can be friendly with the gargoyle, why not her too?
“Actually…” I began, hoping I wasn’t making a huge mistake by doing this, but it was too late now. “I think I will take you up on your lunch offer today.”
Twelve
“You need to make sure to spray this on the tattoo for the next few weeks so that the ink doesn’t fade,” I told Brendan, showing him how to spray the enchanted aerosol spray that functioned like a clear coat on his new tattoo.
Stone skin, while not truly stone, was still difficult to tattoo. No two supernatural creatures had the same kind of texture or thickness.
Golems, depending on what they were made of, were tricky to tattoo as it required an electric chisel and pigments that were enchanted by Effie. I always had to be careful not to completely puncture their shells, so as not to risk releasing the magic that gave them life.
