The ink that bleeds, p.1
The Ink That Bleeds, page 1
The Ink That Bleeds
Piper J. Drake
Copyright © 2022 by Lalana Dararutana
All rights reserved.
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This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to any person, living or dead, is purely coincidental. Any actual places, products, or events mentioned are used in a purely fictitious manner.
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Also by Piper J. Drake
Mythwoven series
Wings Once Cursed & Bound
* * *
London Shifters series
Bite Me, Sing for the Dead, Survive to Dawn
* * *
Triton Experiment series
Hunting Kat, Tracking Kat, Fighting Kat
* * *
True Heroes series
Extreme Honor, Ultimate Courage, Absolute Trust
Total Bravery, Fierce Justice, Forever Strong
* * *
Stand alone titles…
Siren’s Calling
Red’s Wolf
Finding His Mark
Gaming Grace
Evie’s Gift
Keeping Cadence
* * *
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For Corbin, our very own fuzzy butt.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Wings Once Cursed & Bound
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Chapter
One
Please don’t let anyone be dead.
Ami climbed out of the car and gazed up at the weathered storefront, still the same after decades. Her heart warmed at the sight. “Here it is. The Mystic Bookstore in Wolfsound.”
The bookstore was an actual brick-and-mortar, two-story building on a neatly maintained lot flanked on either side by a wooden privacy fence more than a little taller than her. Of course, she was five foot nothing, so a lot of things towered over her. She was taller than she had been the last time she’d been here, though, and she could see past the tempting stacks of books in the front windows to the bookcases inside. Even though the interior was dark, it felt as though the storefront windows were looking back at her.
There should have been a shadow in there—the silhouette of a kind woman whose face Ami couldn’t remember. Who had let Ami read any book she wanted, as long as Ami was careful with it.
“You weren’t kidding, the place actually exists. It needs a presence on the internet.” Helen pulled a carry-on-sized bag out of the trunk, reached back into the car, then grunted. “You’re going to have to get your massive duffel bag.”
“Yup.” Ami tore her gaze from the bookstore and turned to retrieve her large bag. Between the carry-on and the duffel, she had enough clothes and toiletries to spend a month figuring out what was going on with the bookstore. Maybe her life too.
That might be asking too much.
“So I’ll need to catch a ride back to the ferry before dinner.” Helen pulled out her smartphone, probably to set herself a reminder in case she lost track of time.
“If you miss the ferry, you could always stay the night here with me,” Ami offered. It’d make the first night in a new place a little less intimidating if she had her best friend with her. “We could camp out in the book stacks and read all night.”
Helen laughed, her black curls bouncing around her round face. “Oh no. I’ve got work first thing tomorrow and I will not be able to wake up in time to make the whole journey back to the mainland and down to Seattle in time. Besides, I do not do tiny towns. I came here to make sure this place actually exists and that you have a reasonable place to stay, then I will be just a text message away.”
It was already a huge favor that Helen had come all the way out to the San Juan Islands with Ami. They both used to be based on the East Coast, out of the Philadelphia area. Helen still was and she had arranged her schedule to work out of her company’s Seattle office this month just to be within panic distance if this journey of Ami’s turned out to be a bad idea.
Actually, Ami was sure it was a terrible idea. She just had a soft spot for terrible ideas.
Helen sighed and stepped closer to Ami. “We’ve got most of the day before I need to head back. That’s plenty of time to get you settled, or decide to call it quits and go back to Seattle together.”
True. Ami pulled an envelope out of the sleek backpack she used in lieu of a purse.
“Is that a wax seal?” Helen leaned in to take a closer look. “You told me about this, but we only talked about what it said, not how it looks like a wedding invitation.”
Both the envelope and sheet of paper within were made of heavyweight paper, cream-colored and elegant in their lack of design or patterning. There was only an embossed design: a stylized tree surrounded by words.
The Mystic Bookstore
Wolfsound, WA
The wax seal was a deep red, the color of blood when it first wells up from a vein, before oxygen has a chance to brighten its color. Ami shook her head. Morose thought to have while she was standing in the light of midmorning.
“Definitely not the happy tidings that are supposed to come with a wedding invite,” she murmured. The letter had held bad news only barely softened by a hopeful promise.
Ami would have done without the hope if it had meant the bad news wasn’t true.
“Yeah.” Helen’s tone had turned wry, and she shuddered. “Maybe we’re reading into the wording too much. Maybe ‘gone’ means something happy, like ‘won the lottery and left.’”
Helen walked up to the front door and tried to pull it open. Then she jiggled the doorknob. The door remained closed, despite the sign in the window saying it was open. “Huh.”
“Bookstore’s closed, dears!” a voice called out from across the street.
Ami turned and found the speaker sitting under the shade of one of those large umbrellas set in the center of a round glass tabletop set in a wrought iron frame. Three chairs were gathered around the table, all currently occupied. One of the occupants, the woman, waved, then beckoned. Ami glanced at Helen over her shoulder and shrugged, then made her way across the street.
“Should we grab your bags?” Helen asked.
Ami shook her head. “We can see them. They’re not likely to go anywhere.”
She gestured up and down what was technically the main street of the sleepy harbor town. Just a block from the waterfront, the buildings here were an eclectic mix of some very old, a lot of recently restored, and a smattering of new buildings. None of them were over three stories tall and they all looked as if they went together, giving the town the feel of a very old coin polished to a shine. Few people were out and about in the middle of the morning on a weekday.
“Good point.” Helen quickened her stride to catch up with Ami.
The two of them approached the table, and the woman smiled up at them. She could have been sixty or she could have been eighty, it was hard to tell. Her skin was pale and smooth with just a hint of a blush over her cheeks and forehead, like the petals of a tea rose. The corners of her eyes crinkled as she smiled, and her thin lips were stained berry pink. Her grey hair held streaks of brown and she wore it long, in a loose braid down her back. A riot of escaped wispy strands framed her face.
Her blue eyes were bright and her gaze was sharp as she took in Ami and Helen. “It’s a bit early for tourist season. I’m afraid you’ve got bad timing if you’re visiting. The bookstore won’t be open for a while.”
A memory tugged at Ami’s mind, but she couldn’t quite access it. “We have all day.”
One of the other people at the table shook his head. He was a bit younger, maybe. He was Asian with an oval face. His hair was short and spiky on top, mostly black but fading to a generous salt-and-pepper at the temples and through his neatly trimmed beard. His makeup was subtle, mostly in neutral shades, enhancing his contour and giving him a flawless complexion. Honestly, Ami wished she could do as good a job with her makeup on a daily basis. Mostly, she saved the effort for special occasions.
“Bookstore won’t be open today.” He tipped his head to one side. “Probably not tomorrow either.”
Ami finally looked at the third person in their casual party: Southeast Asian, hair shaved close to his skull, his skin dark and weathered as if he’d been exposed to the sun and sea all his life. The feeling of familiarity tugged harder at her. Dark eyes watched her, waiting. Impulse took hold, and she lifted her hands in front of her chest, then pressed her palms together so that each of her fingers was touching its counterpart. She bowed her head slightly so the tip of her index fingers just barely touched her nose, ben
ding her knees as she did. “Sawasdee ka.”
“Sawasdee ja,” the third man responded in kind. “You’ve been away a long time, Amihan.”
The other two sat straighter in their chairs and started studying Ami. The woman cackled. “Well, I don’t know how you recognized her all grown up, Det, but here she is. Maybe the bookstore will open soon after all.”
“Wait, wait, wait.” Helen held up her hands and looked from the three of them to Ami. “So, if you remember her from when she lived here way back when she was a little kid, then you’ve been here a while and you can tell us if this letter is for real.”
Ami’s stomach jumped up and twisted inside her. If anyone would know, they would. She remembered now.
“Please, tell me no one died to leave me this place,” she whispered. “Maybe they retired or moved away?”
She placed the letter on the glass table between the three of them. They all leaned in and read the letter, though it was the woman who picked it up and held it back out to Ami. “I’m sorry to say it’s true, dear. You’re the new owner of the bookstore.”
“So the previous owner did die then.” Helen placed a comforting hand on Ami’s shoulder.
“Oh yes.” The woman looked up at them both, nodding. “She was murdered.”
Lucien Allard scowled as he stalked toward the main street of town. One or two retirees out watering plants or tending their lawns glanced his way and waved but didn’t try to stop him for a chat. Maybe it was his purposeful stride and no-nonsense expression. More likely it was because he’d only just moved back to the island and he’d been gone long enough for the locals to still feel he was an outsider—especially the humans.
It was just as well. He didn’t have time for this anyway, but he also wasn’t going to run down his . . . guest in broad daylight either.
He paused and took a deep, slow breath, noting the scents in the air and sifting through the information they gave him. Taffy might have a solid head start, but he didn’t need to have his target in his line of sight to follow the little jerk.
He was faster, stronger than Taffy, and had opposable thumbs in at least two of his forms. He should be more than a match for one questionable witness. Yet here he was.
It wasn’t like it was that hard to guess where Taffy was going anyway. He’d be less irritated by the little guy if said witness wasn’t also far too stubborn for his diminutive stature to back up.
Voices carried toward him as he turned onto the main street of town, just a couple of blocks down from the bookstore. Laughter and expressions of admiration. Of course. Taffy was popular. He made friends instantaneously—basically the opposite of Lucien.
“Oh, aren’t you adorable!” a distinctly feminine voice exclaimed.
Sure. Most people reacted that way to Taffy. Lucien was the only person on the island who wanted to toss Taffy into lockup and maybe tie him up to keep him where he was supposed to be and not running loose in the streets of town.
Not that there was that much traffic at this time of day during this time of year. Tourist season would have been a different matter. Still, it was hard to protect a witness who was determined to constantly return to a potential crime scene. The fact that Lucien was responsible for said protection was also a sore spot because Lucien was not what represented law enforcement in this town. At least, not human law.
“Hello.” A different voice, equally as feminine. Even at a distance, this one did things to him. “Are you supposed to be out here all alone? No leash?”
There was a darker timbre to that voice that teased his ears, and he wanted to hear more. Besides, rather than just being charmed by Taffy, the speaker was obviously possessed of a practical mind. He lengthened his stride and saw Taffy, not at the bookstore like he’d anticipated, but across the street at the witch’s apothecary.
Lucien also took in the number of people around Taffy: two standing and three sitting. The three town gossips were in their usual morning location, which was no surprise. Some things didn’t change, even over decades, especially when it came to long-lived supernaturals. Normally, Lucien would have avoided them at all costs. It wasn’t that he didn’t like the three of them. It was just that he didn’t enjoy having his business all over town faster than the speed of social media. And each of them had a knack for digging up any bit of information a person wanted to hide.
He didn’t let any of that break his current forward pace, but damn, he was not looking forward to this. Instead, he focused on the two people currently showering Taffy with affection. The cheeky corgi was jumping up on his hind legs, resting his front paws on the rather shapely thigh of one woman. As she crouched down, the little bastard actually tried to crawl into her lap.
“Oh, that’s just Taffy. He’s a local,” Bridget said. The human witch waved a hand gracefully in the direction of the corgi while leaning back in her seat at the table with the other two town gossips. “He’s such a good boy, there’s really no need for a leash.”
“Still.” The woman looked up from her crouch, holding the wriggling corgi in her arms as he did his best to lick her jaw. “With no owner in sight, a dog really shouldn’t be loose and off leash. Even if he has perfect recall, there’s no one to recall him if he gets into something dangerous. A leash can be as much for the dog’s safety as for anyone else.”
She wasn’t wrong, though there were plenty of people who might argue with her.
It was Det who saw Lucien first, the old trickster’s gaze locking on with an impact Lucien could feel even from this distance more than a block away. A corner of Det’s mouth lifted in a smirk. “Here comes the person responsible for Taffy now.”
Oh no, the old serpent had not just thrown Lucien under the bus that way.
The woman straightened, keeping Taffy cradled in her arms as she stood. The corgi had stopped squirming, at least, apparently content to remain in her embrace and pant. She was from out of town and so was the person at her side, presumably the one who had exclaimed earlier and now muttered, “Hello, Naughty Dog Owner. Did you bring a leash? You don’t have to put it on the dog. I promise.”
“Helen,” the other woman whispered, sounding scandalized.
He smirked. Couldn’t help it. He did have a sense of humor, contrary to what most of the town might believe.
The breeze carried her scent to him. Everything inside Lucien sharpened and told him to pay attention. Light notes of plumeria flowers tickled his nose with their almost fruity fragrance, then the deeper aroma of ylang ylang took over his olfactory senses with its earthy richness.
Helen must be the one who had asked if he’d brought a leash. She smelled of sugared violets and tart plums. Both of the women were human.
He settled his gaze on the woman carrying Taffy. Her brown eyes were the shade of burnt umber, and only her widening pupils gave him any kind of sign that she was less than confident about his proximity. She had the situational awareness to sense the danger he represented even if she probably didn’t know he could be anything but human, and he liked that.
She also didn’t show any signs that she might make some fake excuse and scamper off to remove herself from an uncomfortable situation. He liked her even more for it. Helen remained to one side, a steadfast friend, but didn’t step up to meet him head-on.
No. It was Taffy’s new best friend who held her ground despite the big bad wolf approaching.
“Luc, these nice folks just arrived,” Bridget said brightly. She brushed a few brown and silver strands off her forehead, the movement attracting his attention for a split second. It was enough to break the building tension between him and the newcomer holding Taffy. “You remember Ami, don’t you? She and her family lived here on the island for a while. You two might’ve gone to school together. Ami, do you remember Luc?”
