Bombshell (Monstrous Ink #2)

Chapter 2

“ S o you struck out again, huh?” Cash asked as he took a swig of his beer.

I’d dragged him out of his house after Effie had kicked me out of her place, giving Daphne my best apology, and brought him to the Dive to clear my head.

“I did not ‘strike out,’” I growled, irritated by his jovial attitude. Cash was far too cheerful these days for my liking. The historically somber gargoyle smiled so much that it was starting to creep me out. “I just…”

“You just pushed harder than you should have and are now regretting it?” Cash filled in for me with a shake of his head. “You should have known what would happen. Effie is not a woman who likes to be pushed.”

I slanted a glance in his direction, feeling a mix of irritation and regret as we sat watching the nightlife at the bar start to ramp up.

“Since when did you become such a love guru?” I asked, grumbling into my glass of whiskey. Most alcohol had little effect on me, but at the very least whiskey warmed my body and gave it a little buzz—I always figured it was my Scottish genetics winning out over my monster ones. But even still, I was three glasses in and still felt just as sober as when we’d walked into the bar and Effie’s face when she woke up and asked me to leave was also still just as fresh.

Cash didn’t respond to my jab and instead gave me a firm slap on the back. “As your best friend, I think you’re in the right pushing her if you want more of a relationship with her, but as Effie’s friend I think you’re a dumbass for pushing her while knowing why she keeps you at an arm’s length.”

“Are we giving Dallan love advice again?” the familiar voice of Santi Del Mar cut into our conversation as he dropped off another round of drinks to us.

As a creature of the water, he technically fell under my jurisdiction as the head of such monsters in Port Haven. I’d known the kid for nearly twenty years ever since he and the rest of his family had moved here from down South, and even twenty years in he was still basically just as naive as he’d been the day the tide brought him in.

Just like most days, Santi wore his human skin which made him look like a dark haired surfer with shaggy hair. The look was complete with a brightly colored tank top and puka shell necklace, making the man look much younger than he actually was.

“Santi, are you really asking that?” Cash asked dryly as he glanced between Santi and to where Santi’s counterpart, a shorter blonde woman was busily mixing drinks behind the bar .

Kit was a human who’d come to Port Haven almost a year ago in order to learn freediving from the bar’s owner Randy—a merman with a beer belly who was gruff and rarely ever smiled.

The woman herself also rarely ever smiled, her blue eyes quick to skewer any of the supes who tried to flirt with her in place. She was scarier than any monster I’d ever seen and unfortunately the kid in front of me was completely smitten.

Santi’s cheeks flushed a dark red as he looked over his shoulder at her before glaring at Cash.

“Shut up,” he managed to sputter, his human skin rippling for just a moment to show the inhuman glowing green eyes beneath. “Don’t act so high and mighty just because you’ve got a wife now.”

Cash grinned, clearly happy that he’d managed to get underneath the other man’s skin—quite literally. “But it does make me high and mighty.”

The gargoyle stood and rifled through his wallet for some cash, tossing it down onto the table. “Now, if you boys will excuse me, this man has to head back to his wife before it gets too late.”

Before he left, Cash shot me a look. “If I were you, I’d apologize to Effie before it’s too late. You know she’s the most stubborn person in the entire shop and that’s saying something because you also hired Ambrose.”

With that, the gargoyle pulled the collar of his jacket up and stepped out into the cold February night, leaving me alone with Santi who was still muttering obscenities under his breath .

“Boss,” the kid began, using his nickname for me, “You’ve got to figure out your shit with Miss Effie and knock that rockhead off of his high horse.”

I just shook my head, taking a swig of my fresh beer. “Kid, you know I would if I could.”

Unfortunately for me, I’d chosen the most obstinate woman on this side of the hemisphere.

Well, chosen was maybe not the best word for it.

Fated was more like it.

From the day that I found Euphemia Finch water-logged and miserable sitting at the end of the Wharf with only a small duffel bag full of her things, I’d had a feeling she’d be someone special.

At first, I thought I was just helping her like I’d spent most of my life helping other supernatural creatures.

Before the Accords which allowed us to step into the light and be acknowledged by humans, I’d been at the forefront of protecting those who couldn’t protect themselves. After the Accords I’d moved to Port Haven to enjoy a slower life, bringing Cash and a very reluctant Ambrose with me.

So when Effie needed me, I kept telling myself it was for that reason.

We hadn’t been in our current shop location yet, inhabiting what was once a tiny old tackle shop next door to what was now known as Monstrous Ink. But when I saw her sitting in the rain, her pale green hair hanging around her face as she stared off into the foggy bay, I found myself reaching out to her .

She’d needed someone then and had been so young—only eighteen years old at the time.

I brought her back to the shop and set her up in the tiny apartment upstairs and she’d lived there ever since. I’d even gone so far as to expand her little apartment when the fancy restaurant owner next door sold his place.

The longer I knew her, the more I gravitated toward her, writing the protectiveness off as her just being one of my people.

Then she’d come to me with a harebrained scheme to use my ink in our tattoos to make them last longer.

Inking had always been an embarrassing evolutionary reaction that Cthulhu had when their emotions became too strong. It was like blushing—though we did that too—and I’d never done it in front of her before.

But somehow she’d gotten her mitts on a dusty old tome that wrote about my species’ ink and it had tickled the magical part of her brain to the point of her bringing it up to me.

That day I told her there was no way I was ever going to get angry enough that I would lose control and ink would come out.

Then Effie had lowered her pretty green lashes, her cheeks flushing and highlighting the green freckles on her nose, and she asked what if anger wasn’t the emotion we used to trigger it.

Realization had dawned on me like a damned boulder and I’d immediately rejected her, my mind suddenly filled with naughty thoughts that I never let myself fully consider .

She then continued to bring it up for the next few months, pestering me until I finally gave in, figuring that my ink would be a useless pursuit and we could both get it out of our systems.

I’d been a fucking idiot.

The first night we’d slept together Effie came away with fifteen bottles of ink and I’d come away with the realization that she was my mate. My Anam Cara.

A Cthulhu meeting their soulmate should have been a day of celebration—it was so rare for my species to find the person that was meant to spend eternity with them. That was one of the biggest reasons that there were only thirty or so of us left in the world.

My father had been lucky, spying my mother as she cast spells on a cliff overlooking the ocean. He’d known right away, and when he came shoreside, there was enough magic in my mother’s veins that she felt the click.

Effie carried more magic in her body than my mother ever did, so she must have felt it too. But what my mother didn’t struggle with was a beginning that was fraught with abandonment and feeling like an outsider everywhere you went.

My little nymph wore her status as a halfling like physical scars and now as I swigged down another glass of whiskey, finally feeling the alcohol making my mind start to go fuzzy, I realized that I should have pushed her much sooner.

I’d been content for too long with our arrangement, figuring we’d have forever and I could nudge her into accepting what we were to each other eventually .

But lately a sense of panic had been filling me every time I looked at her, like she was going to disappear into a puff of green smoke, never to be seen again.

I was also fairly certain her father reentering her life had something to do with it. I loathed Alexander Finch with every fiber of my being. He had every chance to treat Effie right as her father and he’d failed in nearly every single one.

Santi, oblivious to my inner turmoil, just grinned at me. “You just have to romance her. Sweep her off of her feet—better yet you should bring her dancing until she has no choice but to fall in love.”

The Del Mar stepped back from the table and pretended like he was dancing with an invisible woman, and like most aquatic supernatural creatures, the man had two left feet. It ended up looking more like he was strangling an invisible woman rather than the first parts of a tango.

He must have seen the look on my face because he immediately stopped and his hands dropped to his sides as he shot a furtive glance over his shoulder, his tanned cheeks darkening. “Do you think she saw that?”

I leaned around his body to look at the human who had definitely seen all of it, her brows drawn together with confusion as she stared at Santi’s back.

“ Ehh… ” I trailed off, trying to figure out whether or not to lie about it. “No?”

Santi whipped around and I could tell that the two made eye contact because Kit immediately started wiping down the already pristine bartop.

“Oh damn, I literally just got her to stop thinking I’m an idiot,” Santi grumbled, turning to me again. “Should I go over there and try to explain what we were talking about?”

That was Santi’s biggest problem. The kid tried to fill any empty space with endless chatter because he had some serious social anxiety.

“My advice?” I began, feeling a little ironic to be the one giving him pointers, “Tell her you got dizzy for a second and that’s why you looked like you were having a stroke. It’ll make her want to take care of you.”

Santi immediately brightened. “Do you think that’ll actually work?”

I did not. The blonde bartender seemed prickly at the best of times, but I also didn’t have the heart to tell him he may be barking up the wrong tree.

Santi shot me a jaunty wave before hurrying back over to the bar, and while I couldn’t hear what he was saying, I could however see the corner of Kit’s lips turn up into the tiniest of smiles.

Well, damn. Maybe Santi’s chances weren’t so bad after all.

At this point they seemed better than mine at least.

The constant buzz of the needle filled my ears as I put the finishing touches on a sleeve that had been the bane of my existence for the past fourteen sessions.

Its owner, a massive centaur named Ferdinand, hadn’t listened to me after the first session when I told him not to scratch. By the time he came in for his next session his skin had started to scab and scar, making me have to switch up the original plan for the sleeve.

Luckily, the centaur had listened the second time and our sessions over the past six months had been much, much smoother.

Either way, I was glad to almost be done with it, especially because I had a pounding headache that wouldn’t quit and it was all because of the damn excess ink in my glands.

Before Effie started taking my ink all those years ago I only ever needed to express them every three months or so and all that needed was a quick fuck with some random person and then I’d be good.

Now? Now it was near fucking constant and not enough had been taken last night before I’d been unceremoniously booted from Effie’s place.

“You’re starting to make me think you don’t like the tattoo,” Ferdinand, who I hadn’t realized had been staring at me as I glared at his arm in order to finish up, mumbled.

“Not at all, I think it’s a great tattoo,” I hurried to say, worried I was about to make the fickle centaur go and find the nearest witch to remove all of my hard work. “It makes you look powerful. ”

Ferdinand puffed his chest out with pride, his jaw clenching as he gave me a fierce toothy grin.

Centaurs were prideful things—valuing courage and bravery above all else—so stroking Ferdinand’s ego was the best way to cheer the equine man up.

“Good, you know I thought about this tattoo for almost a century before finally coming to you…” Ferdinand launched into the same story he’d told during each and every one of our earlier sessions. I probably knew the damned thing by heart at this point and could make the appropriate noises or ask the appropriate questions at all the important points by now, which allowed me to think about nothing but the tattoo in front of me.

Well—not nothing—now I could hear the sound of Effie’s voice down the hallway as she talked with Daphne in the lobby.

Her laugh echoed down the hallway and I nearly jerked the needle up Ferdinand’s arm, almost dragging the line I was touching up through his bicep.

Focus , I told myself, blocking out the voice and zoning in on the tattoo in front of me as Ferdinand continued to drone on about how he had several tattoo artists draw up the sleeve, but I was the only one he’d allowed to actually do it.

I’d have been flattered if that hadn’t also come with six months of the centaur in my ear backseat tattooing despite never having held a tattoo gun in his very long life .

The girls up front quieted down as the sound of their footsteps going up the stairs to Effie’s apartment could be heard overhead.

It was like the universe was listening in to my thoughts today because I was grateful for the silence as I finally put the finishing touches on Ferdinand’s shoulder.

“You’re all done,” I said, rolling back on my stool and away from the centaur so he could get to his feet from where he’d reclined his huge equine body in the largest room we reserved for some of our bigger supes.

“Are you sure?” Ferdinand asked, lowering his torso so he could look in the mirror, examining the massive scene of a centaur war that I’d inked into his skin. “You’re sure you don’t need to darken any of these lines?”

As the centaur continued to fuss, a wave of something filled the shop, making the picture frames on the walls rattle and even fall, the glass panels shattering as they hit the floor.

“What the fuck?” I heard Heath shout in the room next door where he and Fiero were working on a siren’s full back piece.

Ferdinand sidestepped some glass, frowning down at it as his qualms about his new tattoo were temporarily distracted by the sudden tremors. “I’d heard about California earthquakes, but I didn’t realize they’d feel like that.”

“That’s because it wasn’t an earthquake,” I bit off, my hearts in my throat because I knew exactly what it was.

“Effie!” Daphne’s shout was muffled by the distance between us, but that magical pulse couldn’t have come from anyone else .

It had been years since she’d had a fit like this, but my feet were already moving as I left Ferdinand behind and managed to slide into the hallway at the same time as Cash who was still wearing the magnifying glasses that he always used when he had to tattoo smaller creatures, making his silver eyes look bulbous as we looked at each other.

“Hey! You can’t stop right in the middle!” The stone pixie in his room called after him as he yanked them off of his head and tossed them over his shoulder before he followed me back into the lobby and up the stairs.

When I pulled the door to Effie’s apartment open my fears were confirmed. Her apartment looked as if a jungle had exploded within and vines and plants had taken over the space, crawling out of the pots that she kept everywhere.

In the center was a very panicked looking Effie, her green-freckled face as pale as bone as she sucked in ragged, panicked breaths.

“Daphne!” Cash roared, shoving past me and into the room.

“I’m here!” Daphne’s voice came from next to us where she’d pressed herself up against the wall next to the front door.

“What happened?” I asked, my voice harsher than I meant it to be.

Daphne flinched away from me, her hazel eyes wide as she gave her pink braid a nervous tug. Cash stepped in between us, his lips pulling down into a frown.

“Sorry,” I hurried to apologize as I started to wade through the vines to Effie, every instinct my slimy fish-brain possessed needing me to get to her and make sure she was all right. “Why is she like this? She was fine this morning.”

“I don’t know. We came upstairs because I had some news to share but as soon as I said it this happened.”

I heard Cash sigh behind me. “I thought we agreed to wait, Dragonfly.”

“I’m sorry I just got so excited. I didn’t realize…”

“What news?” I asked, cutting her off and not looking back at them as I sidestepped a grasping vine that was trying to keep me from getting farther into the room.

Daphne was silent for a moment before answering me. “We’re going to have a baby.”

Ah . Now I understood the panic on Effie’s face as her wild green eyes looked anywhere but at us, like she wasn’t even here in the room with us at all.

Because, in reality, she wasn’t.

Out of all of the things Daphne could have told her, this was probably the worst.

“Lass,” I started gently when I got close enough to touch her. I grasped her hands, finding the normally warm fingers to be cold and clammy.

Effie’s attention snapped to me, her eyes filling with tears.

“Dallan…” she began before the overuse of magic finally seemed to catch up with her. Her knees buckled as the plants began to recede back into their homes and I caught her, cradling her close .

“Will one of you please tell me what’s going on?” Daphne asked, sounding like she was about to start crying herself.

I couldn’t blame her. She didn’t know about this part of Effie’s past because the woman refused to talk about it. Ever.

The only reason Cash and I knew was because of her fits—a form of anxiety that culminated in a sometimes disastrous pulse of magic. She’d reluctantly told us after the first one and over the years of us sleeping together she sometimes let her guard down and told me more.

“Effie’s a halfling,” I told her as I scooped the unconscious woman in my arms. Her vines, which were normally curled up against her back, dragged on the floor as I carried her through the beaded curtain and into her bedroom.

It still smelled of the two of us, Effie’s minty scent mixing in with my own.

Laying her on the bed, I gently pulled the blankets up to her chin and turned to find Daphne and Cash standing in the doorway, watching me.

“She needs to hear all of it, Dall,” Cash said, his hand slipping up and down Daphne’s back.

“Why does it matter that she’s a halfling? I know her dad was pretty bad but we’d never treat our baby badly because they’re not fully gargoyle or human.” Daphne looked almost offended as she looked between me and Effie’s sleeping face.

I let out a long sigh. “Effie thinks you’re going to die. Just like her mother did when giving birth to her.”