Inked

“Because their killer mailed Ernie and me the…mementos…that Samuel and Lizbet had kept in their home safe. A warning, you see. A promise.”
    Her wrinkled mouth tightened with bitterness. “And because Jean told us what would happen for playing with the devil.”

    SUNSET. I fled to the bathroom. Waved along in the right direction by an old woman whose eyes were haunted, knowing. When I walked away, I felt naked, like there was a target drawn on my back.
    The bathroom was small and simply decorated in white tile and a white fuzzy rug on the gleaming floor. Sparkling clean, a faint scent of shampoo mixed with bleach. I shut the door just as I felt the sun slip beneath the horizon—so much a part of my senses that it was easy as breathing to know the time. Survival instinct.
    I leaned on the sink, staring at myself in the mirror, counting down the seconds. Watching my eyes. Remembering countless evenings watching my mother’s eyes, or trying to, at that exact moment of the shift. She had never shown pain. Just smiled and laughed, and acted like it was a game, the old hard game, which would be mine one day, after she died. She had not wanted me to be scared of that future, even though I should have been terrified. She had wanted to keep me innocent for as long as possible—and she had, best as she could. I hadn’t realized then what a gift that was, but I understood now. I understood too well. And there was no repaying that kindness except to pass it on, one day.
    The sun ticked down, swallowed into my body. Zee and the boys woke up.
    I had tried once to explain the sensation to Grant, but there were only so many ways of describing what it felt like to be skinned alive with acid and knives, before a girl felt like a whiner.
    It hurt. It would always hurt. From my toes to between my legs, to my fingernails and nipples and scalp, to the very top of my neck. No part of me unscathed, except for my face. My hands tightened around the rim of the sink. I closed my eyes, unable to look at myself.
    The boys dissolved from my skin in a cloud of smoke and silver shadows, red lightning flickering through the ghosts of their bodies as they flowed from beneath my clothes and coalesced inside the bathroom. I smelled burnt hair and a whiff of something stiff and cold, as though a tunnel had been opened to some cavern miles deep below the earth, where the air was so pure that a person could grow drunk on just one breath.
    My eyes were still closed. Muscles quivered and sweat rolled. Strong arms wrapped around my legs, while two long bodies coiled over my shoulders.
    Zee whispered, “Maxine.”
    I forced a smile on my face and drew in a long quivering breath; several, before I found my voice. “Hey, bad boys.”
    Dek and Mal licked the backs of my ears. I patted their heads. Raw disappeared into the shadows behind the toilet and reappeared moments later with a giant bag full of M&Ms and a six-pack of beer. He handed those to Aaz, and then disappeared again—returning with a bucket of fried chicken, a nail gun, and a plastic bin full of dirty syringes, plastered in orange BIOHAZARD stickers.
    I sat on the edge of the toilet, scratching behind Zee’s pointed little ears as he grabbed a fistful of individually wrapped packages of M&Ms and shoved them, paper and all, into his mouth. Behind him, Raw had picked up the nail gun and was shooting studs down his brother’s throat. Aaz giggled, swallowing each one. Dek, watching them, made a small sound of protest—and I opened a beer, which he fitted his entire mouth over and then knocked back with a sigh. Mal, who had disappeared from my shoulders, poked his head up from within the fried chicken bucket, too much like some crazed demonic gopher. He licked his chops and gave me a toothy grin.
    I nudged the container of used syringes toward Raw. He cracked it open and began popping each one into his mouth like candy bars. Over the crunching sounds of plastic, chicken, paper, and aluminum, I said, “Tell me about the Black Cat.”
    “Bad news,” Zee rasped, licking his claws. “Gave our old mother a hard run.”
    “And that’s the reason three people associated with this woman have been murdered?”
    Zee lowered his hand, sharing a long look with the others, who stopped eating. “Price to pay. No good road from that hunt. Bleed for darkness and darkness gets a taste.”
    Winifred was going to wonder why her bathroom smelled like fried chicken and beer. “Why? Was she a