Inkchanger

7: Inkchanger

"Hey, c'mon," she said soothingly. The early-morning fuzz in her brain softened her edges, making her feel magnanimous. She reached out on impulse and took one of his hands. "Don't know what you heard about me, but smacking folks isn't really my thing. I'm much more of a silent-treatment kind of girl." She quirked half a smile at him.

Dave didn't see the joke. His hand trembled, making her wonder.

She said, "You came all the way down here at six thirty in the morning to give me presents and ask me for a favor, but you can't look me in the face?" She squeezed his hand and took a step closer. "C'mon, Dave. What's going on?"

He squirmed a little but didn't retreat again. "I saw what happened last week in the cafeteria," he said. "We all did. Most of us stayed up all night talking about it, and everybody wants to know if it'll work on them. I waited until the sun came up, but I couldn't wait anymore."

When he looked up at her for the first time, she could see something odd in his eyes. Fear mixed with hope? No one had ever looked at her like that before. There was a crowded moment of silent exchange between the two of them, the artist and the supplicant. And then the dam broke, and all his words rushed out in one long, breathless sentence.

"Mom and Dad didn't like that I kept failing my classes and my teachers all said I was broken and no one wanted to help me and no one would listen when I told them the words were all messed up and that I'm not stupid but they didn't care and would just whoop me with the belt when my report card came and one day the nurse saw and Dad got in trouble with the police and then it was the buckle when I got home and so I ran away and ended up here and I just want to be fixed so I can learn right and they'll love me again."

By the time he finished, gasping for breath, both of them had tears in their eyes. Zara didn't know what to do – she stood there, frozen, with his hand in hers, unsure of what to say. Thankfully, he filled in the gap for her.

"Zara, could you help me like you helped Sofi? Can you fix me with a tattoo?" It could've been the intense magnification of his glasses, but Zara would've sworn his eyes grew three sizes.

She hesitated.

Sofi was one thing, that was just a test run and no one could've foreseen those results. Would it be a good idea to work on other people? She'd consumed enough pop culture to know that magic gets out of control when shared with the wrong people. Bad shit happens.

She shouldn't have looked down into Dave's watery horn-rimmed eyes at that moment. If she hadn't done that, she could've said "no." But his story was etched in his retinas, inescapably true and pitiful. It cried out to her like the runt in the Free Puppies box outside a grocery store, begging to be swaddled up and cared for lest it be thrown in the dumpster.

Shit.

"Of course I'll help you," she said, her voice wavering only slightly.

The dark eyes lit up, and he let out an excited hoot, flinging both arms around her in a spontaneous hug. The moment solidified awkwardly – he wrapped around her, she rigid with shock – before he realized what he'd done. He broke off, blushing and muttering apologies as he backed away.

Zara stood there in Sofi's eye-searingly blue robe, still holding the offering of pastels as he skipped his way down the stairs, wondering exactly what she'd gotten herself into.

+++++++++

Meanwhile, six stories up from the Big Room, Agent 24 had been drooling onto a stack of classified documents. When the newest red light went live, a blaring siren sprang from his computer and slapped him out of a not-safe-for-work dream, the desk erupting in a flurry of damp paperwork as he flailed to shut off the alarm.