Inkless [The Ink Series #1]

Inkless - Chapter 1

Dedicated to zinc369 for too many things they would fill up an entire book but mostly for standing me up yesterday because otherwise, I would not have written this chapter. 

Listen to Are We All We Are by Pink and check out Thea Landry (Willa Holland) in the sidebar.

Chapter 1

There are secrets that are trivial – your crush on the boy from across the street, how you broke your mother's favorite vase and blamed it on the dog or how you cheated on a test in school – and then there are secrets that will lead to unimaginable tragedy if someone else were to find out what they were.

Those are the kind of secrets that people will do anything to hide.

Some will kill.

Some will lie.

Others will sneak out of the house at four in the morning.

I belonged to group number three.

The key turned in the lock with a rusty click and I nervously looked around to check if anyone had heard.

There was only an empty city street, flickering street lamps and locked doors. Everything was as quiet and still as one could expect if you were in the shopping district hours before shop owners even had their morning coffee.

I pocketed my key, quietly pushed open the door to my father's shop – Landry's Party Supplies – and shut the door behind me as silently as I'd opened it.

Once I was inside, I didn't bother turning on the lights. I didn't need them. I'd practically been raised here as a child and, as a teenager, this was where I worked part-time. I knew where everything inside the shop was, from the shelves that held party hats, streamers and birthday candles to the pricier items inside the glass cases that lined the walls.

For instance, I knew that on the second shelf of the fourth glass case along the left wall was what I came here for.

Miller's Paint On Tattoo in Midnight Blue.

I walked up to the glass case, gingerly slid the case open, picked up a bottle and, for the first time since I woke up this morning, allowed myself to relax.

My relief was short-lived.

The sound of my ringing phone almost made me throw the bottle of tattoo paint out of shock. I took my phone out of my pocket, shoved the tiny bottle inside and answered the call.

“Thea?” My dad's panicked voice filled the entire store even though he wasn't on speaker. “Where are you? Are you okay?”

“I'm at the shop.”

“At the –?” Dad sputtered. “First you wake us up by running the shower at an ungodly hour, then you nearly give us a heart attack when we can't find you anywhere in the house.”

I made a mental note not to shower before sneaking out of the house in the future.

“We had to call – and wake up – the Porters just to ask Maren if she knew where you were headed,” Dad continued. In the background, I could hear Maya – my step mother – telling him to calm down. “What could you possibly be doing at the shop at five in the morning?”

“I forgot my history book here when I was doing the inventory last night,” I lied.

“Your history book?” Dad clearly had not calmed down, despite Maya's efforts. “How did you even get there? The car's still in the drive way and the city buses aren't even running yet.”