Poison Ink by Christopher Golden Page B

never tattoo it on anyone else. No one else in the world will have it. You can take the design with you when you leave.”
    The other girls all exchanged glances, and the reality of the reason for this visit swept over Sammi again. She could see just from their eyes and from their body language that Dante had persuaded them.
    Hell, he’d persuaded Sammi, too. His design was perfect for them. She felt a tingling pleasure at the idea of having it tattooed on her skin, a silent rebellion taking place in her head. But her parents might never forgive her.
    She’d never felt so torn.
    Letty took a deep breath and looked around at her friends with a nervous, coquettish smile. “I’ll go first.”
    Dante clapped his hands happily. “Excellent!”
    He did not bother to check their IDs or even ask them how old they were. With a playful glint in those pale, wintry blue eyes, he led the way through the door into the back of the shop, and they all followed.
    If the front of the shop existed as the artist’s studio, the room they now entered was his operating room. Sammi took it all in, thinking that it looked a lot like a dentist’s office. On one side of the room sat a heavy-duty reclining chair, and on the other a padded table that looked like something from a doctor’s examination room. Next to both table and chair were separate sets of tools on long cables like dentist’s drills, but Sammi also saw a shelf full of metal instruments. Racks of towels sat on shelves, and there were containers both for hazardous waste and for needles, as if they’d come to give blood.
    The tools of the tattooist were on top of rolling cabinets whose drawers, she imagined, were filled with different inks. Sammi couldn’t look too long at the instruments without feeling a little faint. She glanced away and caught Dante studying her curiously.
    “Now,” the tattooist said, “are you all going to have the same color, or different? And if it’s the same, do you want black or something more vivid?”
    His accent made the question sound exotic. The girls exchanged silent looks.
    “Black is bold,” Caryn said. “If it’s just going to be one color, black makes a statement.”
    T.Q. and Katsuko nodded. Sammi gnawed her lower lip. When Letty glanced at her, she smiled, a mask she put on to hide the turmoil inside her.
    “Black it is,” Letty said. “Where do you want me, on the table or in the chair?”
    Dante spread his hands open. “Where am I going to be working?”
    Sammi arched an eyebrow, wondering how daring her friends might be, or how secretive. If she herself was going to go ahead with this, there were very few places she could imagine hiding from her parents. The tattoo might go on one of her breasts, or on her lower abdomen, low enough that even her lowest-waisted jeans would not reveal it. Either way, she would have to bare part of herself to Dante that she would hide from almost anyone else.
    The thrill of the forbidden tingled through her, now joined by a rush of embarrassment.
    “The base of my back,” Letty said, reaching around to show exactly where. It occurred to Sammi how fortunate Letty was that her parents would be okay with the tattoo. After she’d come out as a lesbian, a small, tasteful tattoo would probably get barely a blink.
    “You want your friends to step out?”
    Letty shook her head. She ran her tongue over her lips, revealing a nervousness that surprised Sammi.
    “All right,” Dante said, as he made his way over to the table and began to spread clean towels over it. “You can leave your shirt and panties on. Lie on your stomach on the table, and we’ll get started. Let me just get the design. I left it up front.”
    The tattooist hurried out, and the girls all exhaled as if they’d been holding one enormous breath. They smiled, a bit uncertainly, but then Letty slipped out of her skirt. She climbed onto the table and lay down on her stomach, as though she expected Dante to give her a massage.
    “You