Ink and Bone(14)

The girls were attracted to negativity, to bad energy. Finley was doing her best these days to stay away from drama. And she was looking to stay out of the kind of trouble that brought The Three Sisters around. So maybe that was part of it.

Or maybe, as she had come to suspect when Eloise revealed that the Good sisters were her distant relatives, that they got what they wanted. Finley was in The Hollows, where they were from, and where she apparently belonged.

Finley brought the bike to a stop in front of the pub. Inside, the lights were already low and the open sign turned off. The street had a quiet, deserted feel. All the shops that surrounded the park in the town square (complete with precious gazebo) were shuttered. The Hollows went to bed early and slept all night. The only twenty--four-hour diner was ten miles outside of town by the highway. You wanted pizza at two in the morning? Too bad. Pop’s, the only pizzeria in town, closed at nine thirty.

She knocked on the red door and after a few moments, it opened. Rainer stood there smiling his crooked smile—oh, those icy blues and wild dark hair. Her heart fluttered a little at the sight of him; it always did. Stupid. Stupid. Because he towered over her, she had to gaze up at him—which always made her feel small (which, in turn, annoyed her a little). He was wide, too, powerful through the shoulders, with big arms sleeved with tattoos—a dragon, a geisha, a python, a panther, Dali’s melting clock, Leonardo da Vinci’s flying machine. Escher’s Relativity traveled over his right shoulder blade, a raven perched on his right pectoral muscle. He was the only one she knew with more ink than she had.

“I didn’t think you’d come,” Rainer said, standing aside so that she could enter. “You didn’t text me back.”

Jake, who was at the till, gave her a friendly wave. He was at one with the wood floors, like a pillar holding the place up. A dartboard hung on a ruined wall, pocked with holes from failed throws. Rows of bottles stood behind the bar; pictures of cops all over the walls. Rainer pulled a cover over the pool table, while Jake gave the counter its final wipe-down for the evening. A scent of sawdust, smoke, and beer hung not unpleasantly in the air. Windowless, dark, Jake’s wasn’t a place Finley would come to hang out. It was mainly cops and construction workers who came here, as far as Finley could see. It had a decidedly male vibe. There was one other bar and restaurant in town, Tipsy’s, where you could get a middling cocktail, a more upscale atmosphere, decent food. But that wasn’t Finley’s scene either. She didn’t need to be hanging out in bars.

“How’s your grandma?” Jake asked. She sat on a bar stool near him.

“Doing well,” she said. “Planning a little trip to San Francisco.”

He was a big man, with a mustache that dominated his face and glittering green eyes. Though he was smiling at her, he had a powerful aura of sadness. So much so that Finley got up almost as soon as she sat down and moved to the wall, pretending to look at all the photographs—Jake as a young cop in New York City, stiff portraits from decades ago, celebrations at the bar, memorials to fallen officers, a picture of the World Trade Center pre-9/11.

“To see Ray?” he asked.

Jake had some kind of history with her grandmother; Eloise had helped him with something once. Finley didn’t know what it was and Eloise wouldn’t say. Then again, Eloise had history with a lot of folks in The Hollows. Good or bad, Finley tried to stay out of it.

“Yeah,” she said. She had to smile a little. Her grandma had a boyfriend, and she was going to visit him. I might be out there awhile. That okay? Finley didn’t really want Eloise to leave, but who was she to stand in the way of love?

“Well, good for them,” said Jake, maybe a little wistful. He was missing someone. Finley could feel that. Someone long gone.

Rainer shifted on his jacket and walked over to her.

“Feel like working?” she asked softly.

“Always,” he said, dropping an arm around her. He turned to Jake. “Okay if I get out of here?”

“Yeah, we’re done,” said Jake. “Good work tonight, kid.”

Rainer walked over to give Jake a high five, and then he and Finley were out on the street where a light drizzle had started to fall.

They walked a few doors down to the plain storefront that Rainer was renting. Called simply Hollows Ink, it was his tattoo shop. Not surprisingly, Finley was one of just a few clients—The Hollows wasn’t exactly a tattoo kind of crowd. But an investor friend had fronted him some money, enough to buy top-of-the-line equipment and get a sign for the window, cover nearly a year of rent. Rainer figured he could make the shop work inside that amount of time. He had a blog with lots of followers, a Pinterest page where he posted his best work. A wealthy couple that had found him online had come in from the city recently, promising to send friends his way. In the meantime, he was working at Jake’s to pay the bills. Rainer looked like a total slacker, but he could be industrious as hell when he wasn’t high. And he didn’t give up—on anything.

Inside, Finley shivered as she stripped off her shirt, her exposed skin tingling in the cold.

“Is the heat on?” she asked.

Rainer was watching her in the floor-to-ceiling mirror that dominated the far wall. When their eyes met, he smiled. Then he turned on the ultrasonic and its hum filled the shop.

“I’ll turn it up,” he said. He rubbed his hands together, his breath coming out in white puffs. “Trying to keep costs low so I’m turning it all the way off when I’m not here.”