Page 3 of Spicy Little Curses (Scared Sexy Collection #3)

Three

Petra

Marked by Midnight

I left the tattoo shop in a hurry, but it wasn’t like I had a choice in the matter. Little Miss Sunshine grabbed me by the arm and dragged me out. He slammed the door behind me and yanked the shade down over the window. Two seconds later, the bright-yellow neon Open sign went dark.

It’s a time-tested truth that the best-looking men are always the absolute worst.

The cold rain soaked through my jeans as I hurried down the uneven cobblestone sidewalk back toward my hotel. My shoes splashed through shallow puddles, getting my socks sopping wet, but I didn’t care. My brain was too busy playing a chaotic highlight reel of what just happened.

The strange drawings pinned all over the walls. The cold wind and the feeling of dread. The crackle of electricity when I touched him.

That freaky friggin’ cat . Who names their pet after the Prince of Darkness? I mean, it kinda fit, but still. Weird.

Weirdest of all was that Dax’s ink had moved.

I’m not a believer in things that go bump in the night, but I saw it with my own eyes. I saw it. It twisted and coiled like a living thing beneath his skin.

That wasn’t normal. That wasn’t even para normal.

That was terrifying .

And I’m not somebody who scares easily. I once chased a guy three blocks through downtown Chicago because he snatched my purse.

I spent the night in a crumbling, abandoned asylum in search of a story, listening to things scuttle through the walls.

Hell, I’ve ridden the subway alone at 3:00 a.m. in New York City.

The point is, I don’t get spooked.

But right now, I felt not only scared but also powerless, like the universe had already decided something for me, and I was just playing catch-up.

I yanked my phone from my pocket and called Shane.

“Tell me you’ve got something good,” he answered instead of a greeting. “Because I just spent half an hour arguing with the new intern about why we can’t put a Buzzfeed-style ghost ranking on the front page. ‘Top Ten Spookiest Ghouls of the South’ is not journalism, Petra.”

Still rattled, I sucked in a breath. “I might’ve just found the best damn story I’ve ever come across.”

Shane paused. “You sound freaked out.”

I hesitated, glancing back toward the House of Ink and Blood through the mist. I hoped it was only my imagination that made it seem as if the old brick building smirked back at me.

Freaked out was an understatement.

“You remember that rumor you told me of the tattoo artist who had supernatural ink?”

“You mean the one you laughed at me about and said it sounded like a rejected plotline from a Stranger Things episode? Yeah, I remember. Why?”

“Because I think ...” I couldn’t believe I was about to say this. “I think it might be true.”

Shane was quiet for a moment, then said, “I’m listening.”

I couldn’t sleep that night.

My insomnia was due, in part, to how creepy my room at the Lafayette Hotel was.

At the edge of the French Quarter, the place was grand but neglected, with dusty chandeliers and flickering sconces, the faded purple damask wallpaper peeling away near the ceilings to expose dark wood beneath.

Above the mantel of the unlit fireplace in my room, a portrait of a Victorian woman in black mourning attire watched me with eyes that were eerily lifelike and seemed to follow my movements.

If I stared too long at the speckled antique mirror next to the wardrobe, the image in the glass was a bit delayed, as if it was thinking about mimicking my movements instead of simply reflecting them.

Worse than the creepy room were my dreams.

Every time I closed my eyes, I saw ink.

It slithered across my skin like phantom tendrils, curling around my wrists, wrapping possessively around my ribs and squeezing tight. I kept jerking awake, clawing at my arms to make sure nothing was really there.

By the time I finally rolled out of bed, I was exhausted. But more than that, I was determined to get answers from Dax Rousseau, whether he liked it or not.

He knew my name.

And it wasn’t from the press pass. His shop had been wreathed in shadow, and I had flashed the pass for only a second before stashing it away again.

Nobody’s eyes were that good.

Also, Shane had threatened to string me up by my ankles from the ceiling of the pressroom and let the interns beat me like a pinata if I didn’t get the scoop on Dax, so I was doubly motivated.

I knew he’d make good on his word, too, considering just last month he’d locked me in the archive room overnight for missing a deadline.

In daylight, the House of Ink and Blood looked like any other tattoo shop. The shade was still drawn down in the front window, so I tried the door, which was locked.

Figured. Dax probably only crawled out of his crypt after sunset.

Standing out on the sidewalk, I felt slightly ridiculous, pounding on the door with my fist like a determined Girl Scout trying to sell cookies to a vampire. I was just about to give up when the door flew open and Dax grabbed me by the wrist and pulled me inside.

“Hey!” I protested.

Slamming the door behind us, he released me and spun around, glaring at me as if I were an ex who’d given him an STD.

“What the hell are you doing back here? I told you to get lost!”

Normally, I would’ve had a snappy comeback. But I was stunned into silence for a moment because he was shirtless.

He had a powerful, chiseled chest, each muscle defined with perfect symmetry.

Inked all across his torso were elaborate tattoos that stretched from his collarbone down to his waist. More tattoos wrapped around his broad shoulders and bulging biceps.

Their dark, sinuous lines shimmered subtly under the light as if they were alive, not etched into his flesh but naturally part of it, strange runes and eldritch markings that seemed to bind his body like chains.

It took a second for me to remember how to breathe.

“Boy, that charm of yours could really sweep a girl off her feet,” I quipped, rubbing my wrist where he’d grabbed it. It didn’t hurt, exactly, but there lingered a strange tingling sensation, like an aftershock. “You know exactly what I’m doing here, Sunshine. Looking for answers.”

Dax’s jaw tensed. His dark eyes locked on to mine with the kind of intensity that would’ve made a lesser woman bolt. But I was a journalist, and my job was to chase the truth, even if that truth came wrapped in muscle, mystery, and a dangerously attractive scowl.

Maybe especially.

“Look,” I said, folding my arms. “I get that you’re not in the mood for a Q and A, but at least tell me what all that was yesterday.”

“All what?”

“Oh, you suddenly caught amnesia, huh? Okay, I’ll remind you. Spooky gusts of wind. Strange jolts of static electricity. Slithering ink. ”

I glanced at his forearm where I’d touched him. The tattoo there was now half hidden by a white gauze bandage wrapped around his wrist.

He exhaled slowly, his fingers flexing in that way they did that indicated he was itching to pick me up and toss me out again.

This time, I wouldn’t be budged.

For a long moment, neither of us spoke. From the corner of my eye, I saw the black cat watching us from its perch on the countertop. Hovering just beyond that was a shadow that wasn’t there before. When I blinked and looked more closely, it disappeared.

Finally, Dax said tightly, “You don’t want to dig into this, Notebook. Not everything can be explained with your news articles and clever little words.”

“I’ll use some big words, too, I promise.” I smiled sweetly at him, meeting his murderous gaze without flinching. “Try me.”

His mouth quirked into something that could’ve been amusement, had he owned a sense of humor. Then he exhaled, shaking his head. “You shouldn’t be asking these questions. Some things should be left alone.”

“Like what things?” I pressed.

His voice all smoke and midnight, he said, “Bad things.”

The urge to roll my eyes at him was strong, but I resisted. “You can do better than that.”

When he didn’t respond but only stood there glaring at me with all his brooding intensity and stay away from me energy, I decided to take a guess.

“Your shop is haunted?”

“No.”

“You’re an alien?”

“No.”

“You have a genetic disorder that makes you supernaturally surly and uncooperative?”

As a reward for my sarcasm, I got the quirked lips again.

“I’d rather have that than your annoying-and-mouthy disorder, Notebook. An hour alone with you and even the sanest man would be looking for the nearest cliff to throw himself off.”

Even when he was insulting me, he was attractive. The jerk.

“Lucky for me, you’re not all that sane. But you are ...” I looked him up and down. “A descendant of Bigfoot?”

I was hoping for a smile—if he were capable of such a thing—but instead, he gave me a look of such dark despair that I was taken aback.

“You want to know what I am, Notebook? Fine. I’ll tell you what: the same thing the entire Rousseau bloodline is.”

He leaned in, his voice dropping to a low, warning rumble. “ Cursed. ”

I scoffed, because although I sensed I was actually getting closer to the truth, my core personality trait was skepticism. “Oh no, a mysterious family curse! How original. Do you turn into a werewolf under a full moon? Or maybe your great-great-grandfather made a deal with a swamp witch?”

He snapped, “You’ve got a pretty vivid imagination for someone who claims to only want the facts.”

“I’m just going with the flow here, Wolf Man.”

He ground his molars and glared. “I’m not a fucking wolf. But I am over this conversation. Goodbye, Petra. Have yourself a nice life.”

He moved to open the door, but I stopped him by poking my finger into the center of his bare chest. The second I touched him, he froze and stared down at my hand in horror.

I took the opportunity to press my advantage.

“I’m not going anywhere until you explain what I saw yester ...”

My tongue stopped working. So did my lungs. Because all around the spot where my finger connected with Dax’s skin, his tattoos had begun to writhe.

He jerked back as if my touch burned him. He stared at me with wild eyes for a moment, breathing hard, then pulled open the door and threw me out onto the sidewalk.

Again.

He slammed the door in my face and left me alone in the mist with my heart thudding and my whole world turned on its head.

The mist swirled around my ankles as I staggered back, staring at the door in disbelief, half hoping it would open and prove I’d imagined the way his ink had responded to my touch.

But the House of Ink and Blood remained silent. The door remained closed.

And for the first time in my life, I wasn’t sure if I wanted the truth anymore.

I had the sinking feeling that once I found it, I’d wish I hadn’t.