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assessing—gave him the impression of being more menacing than the men around him. Here was someone to fear.
    Rabbit cleared his throat and pointed in front of him. “Come on. Can’t start with you over there.”
    Leslie forced herself to look away from the image. Fearing— or lusting on —someone who was either old or long dead was sort of weird anyhow. She went to whereRabbit had pointed, put her back to him, and pulled her shirt off.
    Rabbit tucked a cloth of some sort under her bra strap. “To keep it clean.”
    “If ink or whatever gets on it, it’s not a big deal.” She folded her arms across her chest and tried to stand still. Despite how much she wanted the ink, standing there in her bra felt uncomfortable.
    “You’re sure?”
    “Definitely. No buyer’s remorse. Really, it’s starting to border on obsession. I actually dreamed about it. The eyes in it and those wings.” She blushed, thankful Rabbit was behind her and couldn’t see her face.
    He wiped her skin with something cold. “Makes sense.”
    “Sure it does.” Leslie smiled, though: Rabbit wasn’t fazed by anything, acting as if the oddest things were okay. It made her relax a little.
    “Stay still.” He shaved the fine hairs on the skin where the tattoo would go and wiped her off again with more cold liquid.
    She glanced back as he walked away. He tossed the razor into a bin, pausing to give her a serious look before coming behind her again. She watched him over her shoulder.
    He picked up the stencil. “Face that way.”
    “Where’s Ani?” Leslie’d rarely been at the shop when Ani didn’t show up, usually with Tish in tow. It was like she had some radar, able to track people down without any obvious explanation how.

    “Ani needed quiet.” He put a hand on her hip and moved her. Then he spritzed something lightly on her back where the ink would go—at the top of her spine between her shoulders, spanning the width of her back, centered over the spot where Leslie thought the wings would attach if they were real. She closed her eyes as he pressed the stencil onto her back. Somehow even that felt exciting.
    Then he peeled away the paper. “See if it’s where you want it.”
    She went to the mirror as quickly as she could without running. Using the hand mirror to see her reflection in the wall mirror, she saw it—her ink, her perfect ink stenciled on her skin—and grinned so widely, her cheeks hurt. “Yes. Gods, yes.”
    “Sit.” He pointed at the chair.
    She sat on the edge and watched as Rabbit methodically put on gloves, opened a sterile stick, and used it to pull a glop of clear ointment out of a jar and put it on a cloth-covered tray. He pulled out several tiny ink caps and tacked them down to the drop cloth. Then he poured ink into them.
    I’ve watched this plenty of times; it’s not a big deal. She couldn’t look away, though.
    Rabbit did each step silently, as if she weren’t there. He opened the needle package and pulled out a length of thin metal. It looked like it was just one needle, but she knew from her hours listening to Rabbit talk shop that there were several individual needles at the tip of a needle bar. My needles, for my ink, in my skin. Rabbit slid the needle bar into the machine. The soft sound of metal sliding across metal was followed by an almost inaudible snick . Leslie let out breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. If she thought Rabbit would let her, she’d ask to hold the tattoo machine, ask to wrap her hand around the primitive-looking coils and angled bits of metal. Instead she watched Rabbit make adjustments to it. She shivered. It looked like a crude hand-held sewing machine, and with it he’d stitch beauty onto her body. There was something primal about the process that resonated for her, some sense that after this she’d be irrevocably different, and that was exactly what she needed.
    “Turn that way.” Rabbit motioned, and she moved so her back was to him. He smeared