Free No Hero by Jonathan Wood Page B

know.
    I’m not really sure what I can do with my suspicions. Use them to get stabbed again?
    I look to Clyde, searching for a lead to follow, when I should be offering up one myself. He hoists his shoulders sheepishly and shambles off after Kayla.
    I swallow my pride and follow along. Definitely need to work on my leadership skills with these guys.
    The inside of the tattoo parlor is close and dark. The walls are crowded with pieces of paper tacked there, each bearing some twisting design inscribed in black ink. Skulls leer, women pout, vines creep.
    The artist, a man who knows his audience at the very least, is bent over a chair. In it is a young lad, nineteen, twenty perhaps, shirtless. The artist holds a buzzing needle over his sternum, finishing a vast spiral that stretches from one nipple to the other.
    The kid being tattooed defies the Oxonian stereotype of gawky and bespectacled youth. Instead he is lean and muscled in a way that has always eluded me. His skin is ruddy, and too tan to give the impression he has spent years riffling through the depths of the Bodleian Library.
    He notices us first. His eyes narrow. I guess we probably don’t look like customers. The tattooist follows his gaze.
    “Oh bollocks,” the tattooist says.
    “Hello, Max,” Clyde says conversationally
    “Third strike, you feck,” Kayla says, not so conversationally.
    Clyde puts a finger to his ear. “Large funicular circle. Whole abdomen. Minor thorax involvement. Unilinear.”
    The tattoo, I realize. He’s describing the tattoo.
    “Cross-referencing now,” Tabitha’s voice comes back.
    “I was just copying a pattern from a book,” says Max. He indicates the offending item. It’s on his tray next to his inks. I’ve heard drunken men pinned by their car airbags lie more convincingly about how the wall came out of nowhere.
    That said, the book looks too new to be a tome of ancient magicks. It’s a neatly bound hardcover, with a faux-leather spine. Still has the sheen on it. Something’s not right.
    “It’s just something I sketched out myself,” the student says.
    Beware the painted man’s false promises. Don’t believe his lies. Q, E, bloody D, he did not sketch that himself.
    “If you could just put the needle down, Max,” Clyde says, ignoring the student. “Be a decent chap.”
    “Before I make you, Max.” Kayla’s Scots accent somehow makes the words even more threatening.
    “This is not even close to being f—” he says, and it’s about that point that I realize that if the student is the painted man, which seems fair enough given that Max himself doesn’t have a single tattoo on him, then really we shouldn’t be worrying about him. And it’s also the point when the kid we’re ignoring legs it.
    He moves like lightning. I turn trying to grab him, but his elbow whips out and slams into my gut. I collapse on it like a deflated balloon, air whining out of me.
    Clyde manages to half-turn his head by the time Kayla is fully turned around, but even she is too slow. The kid grabs the notebook as he legs it, uses the momentum of his motion to catch Kayla on the back of the head. She steps to steady herself and he’s already passed her. Then the bell on the door rings and the student’s outside.
    “Feck!” Kayla bellows in the small space.
    I try sucking in an experimental lungful of air. It doesn’t go as well as I’d hoped.
    “What’s going on?” Tabitha says into my ear. I don’t bother trying to reply.
    “You,” Kayla points to Max.
    “Y-y-y-yes?” Any cocky swagger he has put on, any defensive bluster melts in the face of her anger, steams up and evaporates. All that is left is fear.
    Kayla steps forward, punches him. His head snaps back and his legs go out from under him. Kayla looks around at Clyde and I. “Why are you still feckin’ standing here?”
    I feel that I actually have a decent excuse for this one, but I still can’t get enough breath in to explain that, and anyway, Kayla’s