Inked

eternity collapsing around my body. When I finally saw light again, I was not sick. My head hurt only a little.
    I was outside St. Luke’s. It was night. The same homeless man I remembered from before was still asleep on the sidewalk, in the same position. The girl with the Gatorade was walking away. It had not been that long. Not long at all.
    The boys ripped free of my body, driving me to my knees. I started running, though, before the transition was entirely complete—shedding demons from my skin in smoky waves that coalesced into hard, sharp flesh.
    I found the emergency room, and within minutes was directed to a quiet area in recovery. Grant was there, perched on the edge of his chair—his head tilted toward the door as though listening for something. Maybe me. I skidded to a stop when I saw him. He looked so normal. All of this, normal, familiar. But in that moment all I could smell was mildew, and all I could feel was the heat, and I remembered the sounds of Shanghai at night and the Nazis with their laughter as they smiled at my grandmother.
    “Maxine,” Grant said, staring at me. “Your aura.”
    “Later,” I said softly, staring past him at the old woman resting on the bed. Giving her a good long look that drew readily from fresh memories.
    She seemed so ordinary. Such a sick, wounded, ordinary woman. Wrinkled, shriveled, with oxygen lines running directly into her nose, and heart monitors disappearing up her short sleeve to her chest. It was a miracle she still lived.
    Or maybe not so much a miracle. I saw the truth. I saw it in a way that I never would have, had I not looked the Black Cat in the face. Despite the odds, despite her advanced age, this was not Winifred Cohen.
    The woman lying in the bed in front of me was the Black Cat of Shanghai.
    “This is not who we thought,” I whispered.
    “I know,” Grant replied solemnly, rising with a wince from his chair. “Look at her arms.”
    I had not even paid attention, but I looked. Scar tissue covered her arms; rough, as though an electric sander had been taken to her skin. Or a knife. Something sharp that had cut and peeled.
    “The doctors found those scars everywhere, as though she had been skinned alive,” Grant said, his voice tight with disgust. “They asked me about it, but of course I knew nothing. It got me thinking, though. And then, the longer I was with her, and the more I studied her aura—”
    “That dark patch you saw.”
    “Something…demonic. Buried so deeply, she might not even know it exists. There are many odd things about her aura. Fragments, just…floating. I’m not sure she knows who she is.”
    I did not care. The real Winifred Cohen was probably dead—and if so, this woman had killed her, or paid someone else do it. Set up the others, even as she took over the woman’s life.
    Should have finished the job. Should have finished. I felt my grandmother’s consternation. I shared it, thinking of Ernie. I had not done enough. Not enough, by far.
    I walked to the far side of the bed where the shadows were thick, and tapped my foot on the ground. Zee rolled free, giving me an uneasy look.
    “You knew,” I said. “You must have. You pretended she was safe. Why the hell would you go to so much trouble?”
    “Many reasons,” he rasped, but a nurse chose that moment to approach the room, and he rolled back under the bed—leaving me fuming. The woman who entered took one look at my face—and then my ragged, ill-fitting clothing from 1944—and said sharply, “Is everything all right here?”
    “Just fine,” Grant soothed, a melody in his voice. “If you could give us a moment?”
    The nurse shot him a piercing look that lasted for all of two seconds. She swayed, touching her head. Grant said something else to her, his voice little more than a buzz to my distracted mind. The woman nodded absently, dreamily, and backed out of the room. He shut the door behind her.
    I said, “Can you wake her up?”
    Grant limped close, studying my face, probably seeing all kinds of ugly emotions rising from my heart. But there was only compassion in his eyes. “You went somewhere. Back.”
    “Back,” I agreed. “Can you do it?”
    Grant hesitated, staring from me to the old woman. His eyes grew distant, thoughtful.
    “She’s aware of you,” he said, limping to the side of the bed. “Even unconscious, a part of her is reaching toward you.”
    A chill raced over me. I watched the old Black Cat’s slack face. Remembered