Title: Earnest Ink
Author: Alex Hall
Publisher: NineStar Press
Release Date: October 14, 2019
Heat Level: 1 - No Sex
Pairing: No Romance, Male/Male
Length: 72100
Genre: Fantasy, LGBT, magic, mystery, trans, Sci-Fi, Ace, Pansexual
Synopsis
While twenty-year-old FTM Hemingway is
making an excellent living as a tattoo artist in a near-future version of
Hell’s Kitchen, the rest of the country is splintered and struggling in the
wake of a war gone on for too long. Technology has collapsed, borders rise and
fall overnight, and magic has awakened without rhyme, reason, or rule, turning
average unwitting citizens into wielders of strange and specific strands of
magic.
Hemingway’s particular brand of magic
has made him a household name. Not only is he a talented artist, but his work
comes to life. Literally.
When NYC’s most infamous serial
killer—the East River Ripper—abducts Hemingway’s best friend, Grace, he has
only days to save her. Hemingway teams up with his stoic cop roommate to hunt
for the killer and rescue Grace before she becomes the Ripper’s latest victim.
But as the duo chase clues to the serial killer’s identity, Hemingway begins to
fear the magic he and the Ripper share might eventually corrupt him too.
Excerpt
Earnest Ink
Alex Hall © 2019
All Rights Reserved
I work without speaking because that’s
the way I prefer it. The vibration of my machine, the softer buzz of the
fluorescent lights overhead, the tap of my foot on the pedal—it’s the best
music in the world.
When I hit a ticklish spot, the girl I’m
working on gasps, jolting in my chair.
“Don’t move,” I say. And then, with a
salesman’s false cheer: “Almost done!”
The girl is sweating down the crook of
her neck. She’s got silver glitter paint on her eyelids and cheeks, a new
fashion trend I just can’t quite get behind. Under my lights the mix of
perspiration and makeup looks like a blurry constellation.
She wanted a bee inked onto her
collarbone, one of those tiny honeybees you find on good tequila bottles.
Easily done, and she met the cash requirement. She’s eager, nervous, and
breathing in and out in little puffs.
I can’t remember her name, but that’s
fine. Customer relations is Eric’s job.
There’s another kid leaning over my
glass counter, watching eagerly as I work. “Does it hurt?” he asks. “When the
magic happens?”
The bee’s fat yellow thorax wriggles
from side to side as it begins to wake, fighting the pressure of my needle,
hungry for life.
“It looks like it hurts,” the kid says.
I ignore him.
One minute more and—thanks to my
peculiar magic—this bee will fly free.
I’m perched on a swivel stool, a wet
paper towel in my hand to wipe away ink. It’s too hot in my studio, even with
the industrial fans whirling overhead and the door propped wide open. Evening
light slants in through the door and the north-facing, floor-to-ceiling window
panes that look out onto West Forty-Sixth. It’s muggy, too warm for New York in
October, and all of Hell’s Kitchen is wilting, including my client.
“What does it feel like?” the kid
demands. He’s leaving greasy fingerprints on the surface of the glass as he
strains to get a better look at what I’m doing. I study him out the corner of
my eye, wiping sweat off my nose with the back of my wrist before it drips on
my customer. He looks like one of the street punks who have taken to running in
packs near the cruise terminals, sleeping in old, abandoned cargo containers
and panhandling up and down the marina.
He’s skinny and tall, hair dyed an
unsettling violet and styled into spikes all over his head. He’s got a silver
ring in his septum and more hoops in his ears; his eyelashes are coated with
purple mascara to match his hair. Green glitter paint sparkles on his lids. His
T-shirt and jeans are torn and dirty, and he’s got a pack of black-market
cigarettes rolled into one sleeve against his upper arm.
“Tattoos hurt. The magic bit? Not so
much. Now get off my counter; you’re leaving streaks.”
That’s from Eric, working customer
relations from behind the shelter of our gigantic, old-school cash register.
The register’s solid brass and built like a tank, and Eric keeps pepper spray
and a butterfly knife in the drawer with the cash just in case. Eric hates
people in general, and New Yorkers in particular.
Before the draft he was an intern at a
law firm in Connecticut. He wasn’t on the front for more than six months before
he contracted Cascades fever and was sent home on medical discharge to die.
While lying in bed one day, he saw me on TV and decided he could make good
money as my receptionist and bodyguard.
Eric didn’t die. He got better, found
his way from Connecticut to New York, crossed the border on a military visa,
and stayed. I hired him because he knows how to sell an idea, keep a tidy
client book, and break an assailant’s neck with one arm.
“Sorry.” The kid jerks away from the
countertop. I lean back over the girl in my chair. He clears his throat. “I
mean, how would I know, right? I’ve never seen magic before. Except on TV. And
you can’t believe everything you see on TV. Some of that shit just isn’t real.”
He’s got a barely noticeable accent, a
strange softness to his vowels. I think he must be Canadian, and I’m surprised.
Most of the Canucks still left in the city keep to themselves, living and
working south of Wall Street in a homogenous neighborhood known affectionately
as Little Montreal. From what I’ve heard, they’re a close-knit, fanatically
private, mostly wealthy group of people, and it seems unlikely one of their
kids would take it upon himself to break with tradition and trade real family
for the rat pack running rampant on Pier 88.
The girl twitches and giggles when I
wipe her collarbone. A lazy breeze sneaks in through the door, along with
shouts and muffled laughter. It’s tourist season, and outside Earnest Ink, the
sidewalks are busy with gawkers from out of town. Mostly they just take selfies
under my sign. If they’re stupid enough to come in without plenty of cash in
hand, Eric chases them out.
I’m guessing the street punk spent his
last handful of dollars on the cigarettes rolled in his sleeve, so I’m not sure
why Eric’s letting him linger.
“This particular ‘shit’ is real as it
gets,” Eric drawls while I smooth petroleum jelly over skin. The ointment’s
pleasantly cold. The girl shivers.
“Can I come closer? Just a little? I
want to see.” Without waiting for permission, the kid bends over the counter,
resting his elbows on the glass.
Eric shifts languidly behind his
register but doesn’t chase him off. Bee Girl is our last appointment of the
day. Eric’s bored and probably hungry, and maybe that’s why he lets the kid
stay—for entertainment. But he doesn’t really want to have a conversation.
Probably he just likes the look of the kid’s hair and eyes. Eric’s in his early
twenties like me, but he acts ten years older. I think it comes from seeing the
front line and living to tell about it. He dresses like a runway model in
secondhand Chanel suits and 1990s-era Givenchy. He keeps up on the latest city
fashions with an eagerness bordering on obsession, and reads literary classics
with equal enthusiasm.
“Okay,” I answer without looking up from
my work. “But maybe don’t talk so much. It’s distracting.” I smile
apologetically at my client, but she only giggles more. Cheap wine has dyed her
lips indigo. I test my machine, squeezing the trigger. It vibrates under the
pressure of my fingers.
“You him?” the kid asks eagerly.
“Hemingway? The thaumaturge?”
I nod. Hemingway’s my surname. It’s what
I’ve gone by since I escaped Ketchum, Idaho, for the big city.
“Huh.” He sounds reluctantly impressed,
but he doesn’t take the hint to shut up. “Did you really do Arctic Fox in their
hotel room before their last show?”
Eric snorts. Bee Girl blushes pink under
her paint. I check my ink cup to make sure I’m not running low before working
the foot pedal again.
“Matching ink, all six of the band
members.” It hadn’t been a very exciting job. They’d been specific and
unimaginative about what they’d wanted and too stoned at the end to react much
when the sailors’ swallows I’d inked onto their biceps spread their wings and
took flight, swooping a few inches into the air, tethered by an invisible
thread of magic to tattooed flesh. “Photos in the red book, there. Take a
look.”
I hear him open the book and flip
through. The tattoo machine sends vibrations through my bones and the girl’s,
together.
“How much, eh?” the kid asks. “For a
small one?”
“You’re not old enough,” Eric retorts.
“Come back in a few years and then we’ll talk.”
“I’m sixteen!”
“Law’s eighteen in Manhattan,” I say
over the buzz of my machine. “I never break it.”
“It’s a stupid law… Are you sure you’re
him? I expected someone…taller.” He’s so lanky he reminds me of a brilliantly
plumed stork.
“License is right there in the window,”
Eric replies, examining his fingernails. “And rules are rules, so take off and
come back when you’ve grown pubes.”
Eric can be a real bitch, but I don’t
mind. Life can be a real bitch, too.
The kid takes his advice and leaves,
stomping his way out of the studio and into the stale afternoon, bony shoulders
hunched.
Purchase
Meet the Author
Sarah Remy/Alex Hall is a nonbinary, animal-loving, proud gamer Geek. Their work can be found in a variety of cool places, including HarperVoyager, EDGE and NineStar Press.
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