“Don’t get too excited,” I said, grimacing. I’m a total weather lightweight-the mercury couldn’t be lower than fifty-five, but I already had goose bumps rippling down my arms. I hoped it wouldn’t interfere with the magic. “I only dance for the magic.”

I straightened, then let my body ripple. There was an art to tattoo magic: my old magical tattoo master had called it skindancing. I bailed on him early, so I didn’t know half the art-but with the little I did know, I could concentrate the lifeforce within my body, the living magic, the mana, hold it within like a growing flame-then let it out to make my tattoos come alive.

Tattooed jewels glowed, snakes slithered, butterflies fluttered-and then my vines curled out from my skin into a coiling thicket around me. My finest tattoo, the Dragon, was gone-I had released it to attack the serial killer that took Cinnamon-but with the dozens of tattoos I had left I had more than enough to make a glowing shield of living ink.

“Holy-” Gibbs said, backing up, and in the corner of my eye I could see the other officers backing up further, even more afraid, faces lit green by the glow of my marks. I was getting better if you could see the glow of the vines even in the bright sun, and I smiled.

Time to show that wall-painter what real magic was.

“Spirit of fall,” I murmured. “Shield my path.”

There is no “spirit of fall,” of course. I do admit there are intangible entities in the world, but I don’t believe in actual spirits, “of fall,” or of any other kind, and I could have used any words for my incantation. For tattoo magic, what really matters is the intent of the wearer-and powered by the intent behind my words, my tattooed vines unfurled into a glowing perimeter that would keep me safe as I rescued Revy.

Or so I hoped. I stared into the churning knot of barbed wire and menacing vines, coiling over each other like a nest of snakes. How the heck did it work? I had never heard of magically animated graffiti. In theory the mana that powered it should have been draining away slowly, but it actually seemed like it was getting stronger. But how?