Nightmare Ink Read Online Free PDF

executed died of autoerotic asphyxiation. At least, that’s what it was made to look like. The bullet casing was just to rattle you.”
    She clasped shaking hands. “Worked.”
    “Let me get your coat,” Troy said. “You should get off that leg.”
    No. She should take her mind off the moral conundrum inking teardrops on a psychopath represented.
    Since she couldn’t manage the stairs to the basement studio where Steve and his unit were investigating Kelli Solvang’s death, she limped through the snow, around the building, to the open basement door, and hobbled in.
    “Ma’am! Ma’am, you can’t be here! Crime scene investigation . . .” a young man in uniform said, attempting to bundle her out the door.
    “Ow! Knock it off!” She planted her feet. “This is my place of business. Your investigation is in my studio, not out here.”
    “Ma’am,” he countered, pinning her with a glare. “My job is to secure this investigation site. You’re a breach of security. Don’t make me arrest you.”
    “My job is to make a new batch of binding ink so that the next time you guys send me someone strung out on magic, I can do something about it.”
    He scowled and reached for the cuffs on his belt.
    “Would you please check with Detective Corvane, at least?” she prodded. “I’ll wait right here, I swear.”
    “You’ll do what he says?”
    “No. Him I can argue to a standstill.”
    The cop barked a laugh, stuck his head in the door of the studio, and asked for a word with Steve.
    “Isa, I don’t have time . . .” Steve stomped out of the studio, his shoulders high and tight. He aborted his “don’t have time for this” declaration when he met her eye.
    She lifted an eyebrow in challenge.
    “You aren’t supposed to be moving around on that leg,” he amended.
    “Nice save, Detective,” she noted.
    Her bland tone had no appreciable impact on his scowl. “What is it you imagine you’ll talk me into letting you do?”
    “Making a new batch of binding ink,” Isa said. “You and I don’t want me to be without.”
    His shoulders climbed an inch higher.
    “You’re right.” He sounded grudging. “But—”
    “I don’t need in there,” she interrupted, tired of having to ask permission to work in her own shop. “Technically, I should be, but since everyone in the city who could arrest me for working minor magic in an unshielded location is in there with you, I’m comfortably certain you might overlook the infraction this time.”
    “What do you need?”
    “A few herbs, pigments, stuff I’m not willing to talk about, and my slow cooker back there.” She pointed at the darkest corner of the basement tucked up under the stairs.
    His frown deepened. “Anything illegal?”
    “Not unless someone’s outlawed sage or sweetgrass in the past twenty-four hours.”
    “Not that I’m aware. No cracks about ignorance and bliss, now,” he cautioned her and the grinning cop who stood watching them. “And Isa,” Steve said, shifting his shoulders and settling them lower. “Get off that leg before you break open the wounds again. I really don’t have time to drive you to the emergency room. I’d ask Davis to take you.”
    “Better than the AMBI,” she muttered.
    “Yeah, they have more questions, too,” he called as he turned and stalked into the studio.
    “Freaking yay,” she said, turning her back on the young cop’s smirk.
    She shuffled to her scarred wooden workbench. A bare lightbulb illuminated shelves stacked with bottles of reagents charged for making magic ink. Isa stuffed the slow cooker full of ink ingredients, a dab of magic, and a liberal splash of high-test white rum.
    Then, since most of Seattle PD’s Acts of Magic unit was in her studio expecting her to use unshielded magic, Isa brought up power for an experiment. Warmth shimmered inside her body in answer.
    Halfway between normal and the otherworld existed a place where the two overlapped. She’d learned to access it years