Valentine shrugged, nodded. "Sounds fair," he said. "We can do that."

"Second, I need to get it vetted by a local witch," I raised my hand before Valentine could say anything. "I'm not weaseling. I can ink a known design, but for something this complicated… I need a second eye, someone trained in graphomancy. Normally that would cost some coin, but I can get a witch to do it for free. If-and only if-she approves, I'll do your tattoo, and I guarantee it will do what she'll say it will do. But I make no guarantees about what Mister Valentine can pull off, no matter how skilled a tattooist he is. And if he can replicate my work-" I cracked my neck, then cracked a smile. "Hey, more power to him."

After that, I fixed my smile and stared straight at Valentine. He stared back at me for a moment, then looked at Nicholson. "Sounds fair, Alex?"

"Sounds fair," Nicholson said. "Can you get her some better flash?"

"Today, preferably," I said. "I have an appointment with my witch this afternoon-"

Valentine jiggled in his pocket and pulled out an USB drive on his keychain. He scowled at it for a moment, then seemed to think better of it. "I have a picture on here, but it's really no better than the photocopy. Can I email you when I get back to my hotel?"

"Sure-it' s just dakota at rogue unicorn dot net, no dash."

"Will that take large files?"

"Yes, it just goes to my gmail account," I said.

"A skeptical witch with a gmail account who wants TIFF files," Valentine said, jamming his hands back into his pockets. "What is the world coming to?"

"I'm not a witch," I replied. "I'm just a tattoo artist."

Valentine was as good as his word-I had the file before my break. I printed out a copy of his "watch" and Wulf s suspected Nazi flash on the 11x17 printer to speed things up, and dumped his files and my scans on a USB key to meet Jinx. I'm nothing if not prepared.