“He’s not in today. Just Haley and me.”
“All right.” I sighed. “Last night, a woman named Jade Roberts came in for a tattoo. Were you helping her?”
“No, that would’ve been Haley.”
“Get her up here, then.”
“She’s in the middle of a project.”
My ears burned. Surely smoke was coming right out of them. My skin was on fire. I threw a couple of twenties on the counter. “Get her up here. I need to talk to her.”
The guy played with his lip ring and took the cash. “Haley, there’s a guy up here who needs see you.”
“I’m busy,” a voice called.
Baldy lifted the corners of his lips into a smirk. “I think he’ll make it worth your while.”
A couple seconds later, a Goth girl with tattoos everywhere appeared. “Yeah? I’m Haley.”
“A woman came in here last night wanting a tattoo. Jade Roberts?”
Haley nodded. “Yeah. Uptight businesswoman type, but she was wearing leggings. Go figure. I was really surprised she wanted a tat.”
“You’re the artist she was working with?”
Haley nodded again, popping a wad of gum.
“She wanted a particular image. A phoenix. Can you tell me where you got that image?”
“She found it in one of our books. It wasn’t anything I had done before, but I was pretty easily able to copy it for her. We were about to get down to business when she got a phone call last night.”
Thank God Marj had called her. If Julie hadn’t shown up at my house last night, Jade would have that damned thing on her back right now. Permanently. I shook my head. I never thought I’d be thankful for my sister’s meddling.
“Listen, I need you not to do that tattoo on her.”
“Dude, I tattoo anyone who wants me to tattoo them. It’s kind of what I do for living. You know, how I pay my bills?”
I pulled a couple hundreds out of my wallet and set them in front of her. “Is this enough to convince you not to tattoo her?”
“Well, it’s enough to convince me not to tattoo her once. I charge about two fifty to three per tattoo.”
Was she serious? Three hundred bucks to draw on someone’s body? Unreal. Time to attack this from a different angle. This woman wasn’t the only tattoo artist in Colorado. Hell, she wasn’t even the only tattoo artist in Snow Creek. I knew Toby. I could go straight to the top and tell him not to tattoo Jade. Of course, that would piss Jade off. I seemed to be good at that.
“Okay. Yu can keep that. It’s for your time that was wasted last night. What I need you to do now is show me the book where Jade found that phoenix tattoo.”
“No prob.” Haley pulled a couple thick books onto the counter. “Phoenixes are under mythological creatures, and there might be some under birds. Take a look. I gotta get back to work. I’m in the middle of a tat.”
I nodded. “Understood. Thanks. I’ll take a look at these.” My heart beat rapidly as I started thumbing through the book. I turned to the birds section. A psychedelic peacock nearly jumped off the page. There was even a chicken and a turkey. Who the hell tattooed a turkey on himself?
No phoenixes, though. Why hadn’t I begun with mythological creatures? I found the requisite section and began perusing, my fingers sweating. Some of the dragons were pretty cool. I slowly turned pages, finding nothing.
A couple minutes later, Haley trotted back up front. “Dude, I forgot. I wrote down the page number of the book when I drew the image. It should be on page 307, mythological creatures.”
Page 307… Ice penetrated my skin.
I gripped the sides of the book, my knuckles whitening with tension. The red bird, colorful wings ending in orange and white-blue flames… My stomach dropped, and acid crawled up my throat.
Identical, or nearly so…and the photo was of a forearm.