I cover his tattoo with ointment and plastic wrap, give him the sheet of aftercare instructions although I'm sure he knows what to do, take his payment, congratulate him on his daughter's accomplishment (I don't necessarily think communion is that big a deal, but clearly he does), and send him on his way.

I copy his little magical symbol into a notebook where I keep new and interesting and hopefully useful charms and sigils and signs, with his name and an explanation of what the symbol is supposed to do. I have a lot of charms committed to memory, but every so often I want or need something I know exists, but that I can't immediately bring to mind. Sometimes a client will want a protective charm or a charm for money or talent or love or faithfulness or any one of a hundred things, and I can bring out the book and talk to them and figure out what would work best. And if they want me to ink something on them that I've never seen, or that I've maybe seen once and not memorized or written down, I can make a note of it if I think it will be useful.

( Nila called it my spellbook and laughed at me. )

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“My mom did,” the client says. “She's an artist. I got a couple more that she designed, on my leg” - he lifts his foot - “and the back of my neck. That one's for pride. She doesn't want me to forget who I am and where I come from. It's so I keep my head up.”

I make a mental note to ask if I can see it when I'm done with his chest. His mother sounds like a neat woman, and a good mother.

Kona wanders off and continue inking. The client and his friend have a conversation about some fraternity party in a couple of weeks, and they talk about football, and they talk about their classes and a girl the friend is interested in. I listen with half an ear. If they want to include me in the conversation, they will, but there's nothing that says I shouldn't be listening.

After I'm done and the client's new tattoo has been shown off and covered with gauze, I ask if I can see the tattoo on the back of his neck. He obligingly pulls down the collar of his shirt so I can get a good look. It's small and triangular and I don't recognize it. Not that I've seen a lot of that kind of charm, but I've seen my fair share, on people and in books, and I'm always surprised when I come across one I don't know. I shouldn't be, because there are as many little charms and magical sigils as there are cultures and people who want them, but I am. Call it arrogance, I guess, and the conviction that I know what I'm doing more than you do.

( I take the opportunity to show Kay what I want him to do )

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“You're very considerate.” I smile at him. “I saw when I got home. I don't mind.” A pair of cat ears appear on his head, as if he's wearing them attached to a headband, and then they blink out of existence. I glance at Diego, completely oblivious from his position on the table. It's the first time I've had a vision around Kay, and I'm a little relieved that I think I can interpret it. Although if he ever shows up with actual cat ears on an actual headband, I will be really, really surprised.

"I have time to go to the farmer's market before work," I go on, completely changing the subject, "you can come if you want, and after that you should come to the studio with me because I've had a terrible idea."

"I'll go to the farmer's market," Kay says. "What's your terrible idea?"

( I have to pay you under the table. )

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"I don't know. I guess. I should probably tell someone, and you're not gonna... judge me, or whatever the house is gonna do." He sits up, shifts a little - Diego doesn't even move - and says "I started seeing things everywhere. Not just, like, a little thing for ten seconds next to a guy at the bus stop, but everyone. Everyone had a, a hallucination, a vision, whatever they are. I was seeing things all the time and I didn't know what any of it meant. I couldn't go anywhere. I couldn't even stay in the house because there's eight of us and that was just... that was too many people. There's no one at Grandpa's place but him. He sent me some money for the bus and I, I left. I'm sorry I couldn't tell you."

"Why couldn't you tell your friends? You even live with them."

"I don't know. They don't always believe me, that sometimes I see things. They kind of, um...." He snaps his fingers, apparently trying to remember. Diego wakes up, turns in a circle like a dog, and goes back to sleep. "Patronize me. Is that the word? Like they're just humoring me. So what could I tell them? I was hallucinating everything everywhere, around everybody? Putting all of us in one room was too much. Right before I went to my grandpa's, I couldn't even leave the house - any, any kind of crowd just gave me a headache. You know what kinda helped?" He chuckles. "I found someone's sunglasses at the house. I probably looked really stupid at night, wearing these sunglasses, but they kinda made it better."

( So why did you come back? Did it get better? )

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"Ok. Thanks." He hangs up and I go back to my client, who seems to have gotten a grip on himself. He's not quite as pale as he was. I touch his arm to calm him before washing my hands and putting on fresh gloves and getting back to work.

He doesn't pass out, much to my relief, but he clearly wasn't expecting it to hurt as much as it does. I have some sympathy - the inner arm is a painful place to get a tattoo, and this is his first one - but not much. It's supposed to hurt.

I give him the aftercare lecture when I'm done, tape gauze over his tattoo, take his money, and send him on his way.

"I'm going to get Kay," I tell Maya. "I'll be back in an hour."

( An hour? she repeats. )

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"He's doing really well," I tell her.

"I haven't passed out yet." He turns his head so he can grin at Maya, who grins back.

"Usually if someone's going to pass out," she says, "it's going to be a guy."

"It's true," I add. "Women have a higher pain tolerance."

I can practically hear the client shrug. Men don't tend to think they can't handle pain like women can, but in my experience, they can't. I've had women feel faint while they were being tattooed, and I've had to stop so they could recover, but in all the years I've been doing this, and I started my apprenticeship the summer I was twenty, I've only had one woman faint, and it turned out that she was so nervous about being tattooed that she hadn't eaten all day.

( But I can count the men who've passed out in my chair on two hands. )

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I spend my unoccupied free chunk of time that afternoon driving around town, trying to think of places Kay might have gone, and then going into them myself to see if he's been there. I don't have any luck, but if Alene was right and he's been missing a week, that can be a long time to remember one customer out of many, especially when the one customer looks like so many other college-age kids, and is pretty quiet and unassuming to boot.

What can I tell people about him, to make them remember? He's about average height, skinny in a slightly underfed kind of way, he has medium-brown hair that could stand to be cut, he's quiet in both the "doesn't say much" way and the "doesn't speak very loudly" way, and he's considerate and quiet and likes cats and puts sugar in his orange juice and has a little bit of magic that he probably won't tell strangers about.

And at least two of his friends are worried enough that they came to Suzume Tattoos to practically yell at me for not knowing he was missing.

( I look up animal shelters on a whim )

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"Ok, ok," I mutter "I'll feed you."

Kay is still fast asleep, so I slide out of bed as quietly as possible, make a pit stop in the bathroom, and go into the kitchen to feed and water the cat and make myself some coffee.

I've never needed a lot of sleep, and most mornings I don't need the caffeine, but I like to ease into my day, and sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee is a good way to do that. I consider breakfast, decide I should probably wait until my houseguest is awake because it would be rude to eat without him, and then lean down and pick Diego up and put him on the table. He sniffs my coffee, sneezes, and jumps back down to the floor. He sits on my feet. He's fuzzy and warm and heavy.

( You're a weird cat, I tell him. )

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I say goodbye to Liliana and Kelly, wish them a safe trip home, promise if I'm ever in Atlanta I'll give them a call, and wave them off. I fetch my car and drive to the studio, thinking ahead to my clients and what other things I have to accomplish today.

One of the most important things I don't need to do is clean up any more leaky sinks. The cookies have done the trick and the little studio spirit is pleased. Sometimes I wish it would do some good, rather than just not do something bad, but most of the time that's the way it is with magical creatures - they do what they want to satisfy their own interests. They're not a lot different from people that way.

A client has to cancel so I have a big chunk of free time in the middle of the day, and I take advantage of it to go home and see how Diego is doing by himself. He's asleep in the middle of my bed, and it looks like he's eaten some food and had some water, so he must be doing just fine. After having been terrorized by Alicia's cat, he probably relishes the solitude.

( I pick some tomatoes )

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But first, a cup of Maya's chai, and then tattoos. Today's work includes a couple of hours on a Japanese-woodcut-inspired sleeve, an Alice in Wonderland based on John Tenniel's illustrations, a shoulder full of bat silhouettes, and a protection charm in French wound around the client's arm.

I'm halfway through the Japanese woodcut sleeve – and from the way the boy in my chair is breathing, I think I might need to give him a quick break – when someone comes out of the bathroom and announces that the sink is running.

"Do you need help catching it?" Maya asks, and snickers.

( It won't turn off, the person continues. )

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