She didn’t have any legs, but she was still walking. Like she was some kind of ghost! Who: Leon Orcot and Henry Townshend What: Gambling and ghosts When: Late March Where: A casino Warnings/Ratings: Low/none, other than language and ghosts Status: Complete
Despite having lived in Las Vegas for several months, Henry hadn’t yet set foot inside any of the casinos on the strip. Hell, he hadn’t even set foot inside of any of the casinos off the strip either. Which seemed like an oversight on his part. Gambling wasn’t his thing. He was decent enough at poker, but he seriously doubted he was anywhere near the skill of those who actually played the game with any amount of seriousness. Besides, he didn’t exactly have the funds to ante up to any table. At least, that’s what he assumed.
That didn’t mean that Henry was completely unfamiliar with the casinos that dominated Vegas’s infamous strip. They were impossible to ignore and on more than one occasion, Henry couldn’t help but to take a photo of one or more of the impressive buildings if the light was right, or the sky was just so. There was something undeniably fascinating about them.
Now he stood outside of one, staring up at it (or rather the hotel attached to it) with a look of awe, which made him look like both a tourist and a bit like a country bumpkin.
Leon had grown up in LA, and so even with the grand hotels and casinos and lights, he rarely got that tourist look in his eyes. Besides, it didn’t do to go gawking at things when you were a cop. It made him feel as though he had a target painted on his back.
But catching sight of Henry at the casino, well, maybe it wasn’t such a big target after all. Henry wasn’t the only one staring up at the hotel, so he kind of blended right in. Sure, probably a pick-pockets delight, but at least the pick-pocket would have lots of people to choose from.
“Catching flies?” Leon asked, walking up to Henry and glancing up at the casino. “You’re Henry, right? Leon.”
Henry blinked and jerked his attention towards the voice coming up to him. His cheeks grew a little hot having been caught gawking up at the building. “Yeah,” he said, running a hand through his shaggy hair sheepishly. “I’m Henry. You must be Leon?” He didn’t mean for the last part to come out as a sentence. Who else would it be?
“I guess I kinda look like a tourist, huh?” He went on, still sounding sheepish.
“Kinda,” Leon admitted. “Though, so do all the other tourists around here, so you’re not in too bad of shape. Might wanna check to make sure you’ve still got your wallet though.”
Leon hadn’t seen anyone who looked like they’d been stealing wallets, but it was probably better to be safe than sorry. “You seriously haven’t been to a casino since you moved here?”
“My wallet…?” Henry looked suddenly alarmed. Had someone lifted his wallet while he’d been staring up at the casino’s hotel like an idiot?! Quickly he patted his back pockets and was relieved to find that his wallet was still safe as was his phone. He breathed a sigh of relief, but quickly moved both items to the front pockets of his jeans. Just in case.
“No,” he admitted to Leon with a shrug. “I don’t know how to play black jack or roulette or craps or anything, so I didn’t think I had any business at one.” He looked at Leon curiously. “Have you?”
Leon tried not to smile at the look of panic that had come across Henry’s face as he looked for his wallet. It wasn’t that he took pleasure in freaking people out, but it was kind of funny. He patted Henry on the back, and started to lead him up into the casino.
“A couple times,” Leon said. “Won a hundred dollars at blackjack one time, so I can’t complain. The trick is to set aside a certain amount of money that you’re willing to spend, and just think of it as the cost for a night out. If you win, then fucking a, but if you lose it, well, it’s not so hard. You’re not throwing more money down the drain trying to win it back, you just accept it for the price of free drinks. You don’t want to end up one of those suckers who winds up with gambling debts.”
Especially since gambling debts were a good way to make sure that Leon would lose his job. Cops with gambling debts couldn’t be trusted not to be taking money on the side.
Debt was something Henry was familiar with. He grunted. “Debt of any kind is something I’d like to avoid,” he said as Leon led him inside the casino.
If Henry had been impressed with the outside of the casino/hotel, then the inside was even more impressive. He did his best to not stop and gawk again, though the photographer in him couldn’t help but spot several points of interest, things that would make for gorgeous photos. Damn, he wished he had his camera bag with him. Well, his phone would have to do. After snapping a couple of quick shots, he hurried to catch up with Leon. “Where to first?” he asked
It took Leon a moment to realize that he’d lost Henry, so he paused, hands in his jean pockets, while he waited for Henry to stop taking his photos. Maybe coming to a casino like this with a photographer had been a bit of a mistake. “Careful about that. We’re fine here, so long as you’re not taking photos of people or the tables. But there are a couple casinos in town that are pretty anti-camera.”
Leon frowned at Henry’s question. “I normally head straight to blackjack,” Leon said. “If you wanted to do a couple rounds at the slots first, we could do that. I mean hey, it’s your first time at a casino. Feel like this should be newbies choice,” Leon said, with a bit of a grin.
Henry had probably read somewhere that it was frowned upon to take photos on a casino floor and he had no real intentions of doing so once they got out to the tables and slot machines. But it was good of Leon to remind him, just in case his photographer instincts got the better of him. “Right, sorry,” he said as he slid his phone away in his back pocket.
Then he looked around. “Newbies choice, huh?” He said thoughtfully. Even from where the two of them stood, Henry could hear the sounds of people playing the slots and his attention was drawn in the direction of the flashing lights and attract noises the machines generated to lure people over to them. It was tempting, but not really what Henry was interested in. “Can you teach me to play blackjack?” he asked, turning his attention back to Leon.
“Yeah, of course.” Leon grinned widely, and then took a look around the casino, trying to spot the blackjack tables. He hadn’t really come to this casino before. Once he spotted them, he started leading Henry toward them, making sure to stick close to him so they didn’t wind up getting separated.
“Basically, the goal is to get to twenty-one. If the first two cards you’re given are a ten or a face card and an ace, then hey, you got a blackjack and you win. That doesn’t happen a lot though, so you need to decide if you want the dealer to give you another card or not. If you do, you tap the table next to the cards, but if your cards come out to over twenty-one, then you lose. If you don’t want another card, you wave your hand over your cards like this,” Leon said, demonstrating as they walked. “Ace is worth either one or eleven - eleven if you’re not over twenty-one, one if you are. Whoever gets closest to twenty-one wins the pot. Easy enough?”
That did sound pretty easy. It also sounded incredibly risky, which was probably the point. Henry nodded his head. “Yeah, I get it,” he said. “And the other cards are worth whatever their number is? Like a two of clubs is worth two, right? The suits don’t matter?”
Something at the periphery of his vision caught Henry’s attention -- something that at a quick glance looked out of place. When he turned his head to look, whatever it was had vanished. Or maybe Henry had just imagined it.
“Suits don’t matter,” Leon confirmed. He followed Henry’s gaze when Henry looked away, though he didn’t notice anything. “See someone you know?” he asked, already checking out the blackjack tables to see which one they should sit at.
One of them had two seats available next to one another, and the dealer was a smokin’ hot blonde, wearing one of those cute vests and bowtie numbers, and so that’s the one that won. “C’mon,” he said, leading the way, hoping that Henry wasn’t going to have to go say hi to someone he knew and lose them their seats.
“No,” Henry said, “I thought I saw something.” Though he didn’t know what he’d seen. Everything looked normal, or what Henry assumed to be normal for inside a casino. “Must have been one of the slots flashing or something.”
He joined Leon at the black jack table. He smiled and nodded at the pretty dealer with a polite “Hi.” He glanced down at the table and frowned slightly. “We’re gonna need chips or something, right?”
“They can be distracting,” Leon said.
“Hi,” the blackjack dealer replied back.
Leon nodded at Henry. “Yeah, they can change our cash at the table here,” he said, pulling out his wallet and laying $50 on the table in front of them.
“Fifty dollars,” the woman said, taking the money from the table and then counted the chips back to Leon. She turned to Henry. “First time?” she asked.
The dealer was probably trained to spot an inexperienced gambler, but was he that flipping obvious? Henry had barely said a full sentence since sitting at the table! “Uh, yeah,” he admitted, trying not to sound as sheepish and out of place as he suddenly felt.
He glanced at the chips on the table. Leon had warned him to only come with what he could afford to lose and he’d done so. Still $50 felt like a lot of money -- money he could spend on film, camera parts, dinner…
He looked up at the dealer, who seemed to be pleasantly waiting for him to buy some chips as well. Henry reached for his wallet. $50 wasn’t going to break him tonight and he had asked Leon to teach him. He’d just pulled the bills out when he noticed a young woman dressed in out-dated clothes suddenly emerge from the wall behind the blackjack dealer. As Henry stared, the woman continued walking past their table, through another table and then vanished from sight.
“Don’t worry, I promise to be gentle,” the dealer said, giving him a wink, and Leon frowned at the stab of jealousy he felt. Why couldn’t he have hot blackjack dealers winking at him?
Except then Henry was staring off into space, money in his hand. Leon frowned, following his gaze, and he noticed even the blackjack dealer was discreetly trying to do the same - as discreetly as she could, given that Henry was staring off behind her.
“Hey, man, you alright?” Leon asked, giving him a bit of a nudge. It was going to be a real pain in the ass if Henry was going to want to leave. Leon couldn’t get the blackjack dealer to exchange his chips back into cash.
“Did you see that?” Henry asked.
“What?” The dealer asked, puzzled.
“That woman,” Henry said. He pointed to the wall behind the dealer. “She came out of there and walked across the floor and then disappeared.”
The dealer glanced behind her at the wall then back at the two men. “I didn’t see anyone.”
Okay, maybe the dealer wasn’t paying attention. The woman had come from behind her, after all. Leon surely saw her, right? Henry looked at him. “Did you see her?” He asked. “A woman dressed like she was from the 50’s? She walked out of there.” He pointed behind the dealer at what was very clearly a solid wall.
Leon exchanged a look with the dealer, glad to see that she was just as confused by this as Henry. Maybe Leon would have to call it a day; he’d have to come in a different day to get his chips exchanged back into cash. Or to gamble them away. Whichever.
“There was no one there,” Leon said, his brows furrowed in concern. “Listen, maybe we should just call it a night. It’s been a long day,” he assumed, at least. He didn’t know what Henry had gotten up to that day, “and you probably just need to rest or something.”
Leon was looking at him as though he was crazy and there was a part of Henry that knew he sounded crazy. People just didn’t walk out of walls and then vanish into thin air.
Or maybe Leon thought Henry was putting on an act to get out of shelling out his hard earned money for a bunch of plastic chips.
Henry felt his face getting hot with embarrassment. “No, it’s fine. I’m fine.” He set down the money he was still clutching in his hands. “Chips, please.”
The dealer gave Leon a glance and he shrugged, and then she was scooping up the money, counting it outloud, and then handing Henry his chips.
Leon frowned once more, then leaned in closer to Henry so they couldn’t be overheard among all the machines. “You sure?” Leon asked. “We could always come back some other day, and it’s not hard to get this turned back into actual money.”
Henry glanced at Leon again. He was tempted to look over his shoulder in the direction the woman had gone, but something inside him made him feel as though that was a bad idea. That looking for her would invite trouble. They should leave. It was dangerous here, though Henry didn’t know why and he felt foolish for even feeling that way.
He shook his head to clear it. “No, it’s fine,” he answered back lowly. “It’s just, you know, one of those weird feelings.”
“Alright,” Leon said, not entirely convinced. Then again, he wasn’t not convinced. The last few weeks, he’d had a nagging feeling that there was somewhere he was supposed to be, someone he was supposed to see whenever he was off work. It was ridiculous, really, because everyone he knew in Vegas was either his family or he knew from work - other than Qrow and now Henry, he supposed.
“Well, let’s see if we can’t get you winning on some beginner’s luck then,” he said, with a bit of a grin. If Henry said he was fine, Leon was just going to have to believe him.
Henry nodded. “Right.”
The two of them played a couple of hands of black jack. Leon’s explanation of the game made more sense when Henry saw it in action. It didn’t require the same level of skill as poker, but Henry saw why people enjoyed it. That beginners luck favored Henry a little as the two played and he managed to hang on to his $50.
The most important thing, however, was as they played, the feeling of unease Henry felt after he saw the woman emerge from the wall faded and he actually forgot all about the woman. After a few hands, the two men decided to hit the bar. On the way, Henry caught movement out of the corner of his eye and suddenly that weary feeling was back. Despite his better judgment, Henry couldn’t help put glance back the way he and Leon had come. Sure enough, the woman had emerged from the wall again and was making her way across the floor, practically floating.
“Leon!” Henry hissed, grabbing his friend by the arm. “There she is!”
Leon came away from the table with more than he sat down with - it wasn’t a whole lot, but it was enough to pay for at least some of the drinks he was about to enjoy. Drinks that weren’t watered down like the free drinks they’d been plied with at the blackjack table.
When Henry grabbed his arm, he tensed, nearly expecting trouble. He didn’t have his sidearm on him, not in the casino, but he could probably handle most run-of-the-mill threats without it. “Who?” he asked, following Henry’s gaze, brows furrowed. He didn’t see anyone suspicious.
His mine flicked back to Henry’s claim earlier, of a woman dressed like she was from the 50s. At least, that’s what he thought Henry had said. Maybe he had said there was a woman dressed like she was in her 50s, because he did spot a woman who looked like she was in her 50s, though he couldn’t for the life of him figure out why Henry was so interested in her.
“Her?” he asked, pointing. “What’s so special about her?”
Henry shook his head. “No, not her. That woman there, in the old dress with the hat.” He went to describe the color of both the dress and hat when he realized he couldn’t make out what color either of the articles were. In fact, Henry realized that the woman appeared almost translucent as she glided across the floor, her lower half almost completely non-existent.
Henry lost his voice and stared. His fingers unconsciously tightened their grip on Leon’s arm, as though he was the only thing grounding the young man in reality.
Leon winced as Henry’s grip tightened, and he grabbed Henry’s wrist, wrenching his fingers from his arm. Some part of him wondered if it wasn’t going to bruise, but that was something to worry about later. Instead, he grabbed Henry by the chin, forcing his attention onto Leon’s face. “Hey,” he barked, to get Henry’s attention. “Listen, there’s nothing there. You’re alright, alright? Nothing’s going to hurt you.”
Though, there was something in Henry’s expression that sent a chill down Leon’s spine.
Henry stared at Leon, his brown eyes wide behind his shaggy brown hair. He would have argued with Leon that there was someone there, but his voice still didn’t seem to want to work. And with Leon still gripping his chin, Henry couldn’t even shake his head. His eyes flicked quickly in the direction he’d been looking, but his periphery didn’t quite reach where the woman was. Leon barking at him snapped Henry’s attention back to center.
“But, I saw -- “ Henry was cut off by the sound of hushed voices behind him. He was making a scene and people had started to stare at the two men. Henry’s face grew hot. He shook Leon off him.
Leon let Henry go when he started to pull away, though he was hesitant. He didn’t miss the people who were staring at them. He imagined they’d “Listen, Henry, why don’t we go someplace a little less crowded?” he said.
If there had been a hole in the floor, Henry would have crawled into it to hide. But there wasn’t. He didn’t even have his camera to clutch onto or hide behind. Just him standing in the middle of a casino feeling a mixture of dread and danger. Underneath that was the embarrassment that told him he was acting crazy.
But, getting out of the casino sounded like a good idea. Henry wanted very much to get away from here. He nodded his head in agreement. “Yeah,” he said. “I need to get out of here.”
Leon led the way out, a hand on Henry’s elbow to guide him, more as a way to offer support than any sort of attempt to strongarm him out of the casino. There was a quiet park behind the casino, with a fountain and a quiet walking path. There were people out there, but not so many; not too much to be able to duck away from them and have a private conversation if need be. Once Leon had led them there, he stopped, pulled out a cigarette from the pack in his pocket, offering one to Henry, and lit it.
“Is everything alright?” he asked after a moment.
Henry felt like a child as Leon guided him out of the casino. He didn’t care for the feeling, but he didn’t resist, nor did he try to shake Leon off again. Once they were outside and at the park the feeling of dread and danger lessened considerably, but Henry was still nervous. It was as though he expected something to come after them.
He shook his head at the offered cigarette. When Leon asked him if he was alright, Henry finally found his voice. “No,” he said. “I saw a woman in there, Leon. I saw through her! She didn’t have any legs, but she was still walking. Like she was some kind of ghost!”
“Ghosts don’t exist,” Leon said automatically, though he still shivered. The idea of ghosts had always creeped him out. An image of a burning house, of running into one, suddenly sprang to his head, and he had to shake his head to knock the smell of smoke from his nose.
“I know what I saw,” Henry snapped back. “I’ve seen them before! In an old subway.” Here Henry stopped and stared at Leon. That...didn’t seem right. Henry had been on a subway before back in Boston, but it hadn’t been abandoned. Had it? No, no it hadn’t. And there hadn’t been any ghosts, either. And yet at the same time, Henry felt very strongly that he had at one point come face to face with ghosts on a subway.
Henry put his hands to his head. “I don’t understand,” he groaned. “This doesn’t make any sense.”
Leon frowned a little, and glanced around. “Do you want to sit down?” he asked, nodding toward a nearby bench. Henry was right about one thing: none of this did make any sense. Not unless Henry was having some sort of psychotic break.
He wondered if he should try to get him to a hospital or something.
Henry was wondering the same thing. Not knowing what else to do, he sat heavily on the bench Leon had nodded towards. He sat there a moment with his forehead pressed against the palms of his hands and trying to get a handle on the situation. Then, he slowly looked up at Leon. “I’m sorry,” he said. “This wasn’t the way the night was supposed to go.”
Leon sat down next to Henry, puffing quietly on his cigarette until Henry spoke again.
“Listen, I’m a cop,” Leon said, shooting Henry a bit of a half-smile. “I’m more surprised when my nights go the way they’re supposed to than when they don’t. And shit’s been fucking weird lately.” Seeing ghosts was a little high on the ‘weird’ scale, but it wasn’t like it was there alone.
“You’ve seen ghosts before?” he asked gently.
Henry looked at his feet trying to figure out the best way to answer Leon. Everything that came to mind just made him sound crazy. Finally he sighed and shook his head. “I want to call it a feeling, but it’s more than that.” he said. “Like, I know that I have. But I know that can’t be true because I can’t pinpoint an exact experience. You know, like the ‘I was home alone and the door to my basement opened on its own’, or the ‘the picture on the shelf just flew across the room’ kind of stories? I don’t have any of those.”
Henry looked at Leon sitting next to him. “Despite that, though, I have this idea in my head that not only have I seen ghosts, but that they were a threat, that they chased me. It doesn’t make any sense. It sounds fucking crazy!”
Leon frowned to himself, and after a moment he nodded. “I think I get what you’re talking about,” he said slowly after a moment. “I mean, I’m not -” he narrowly avoided saying ‘imagining,’ and amended it to, “seeing ghosts or feeling like I’ve seen them before. But like, shits weird.” He didn’t know how to explain it. Sometimes he had the feeling that he’d seen people murdered by animals, but when he tried to focus on it it just disappeared.
He shook his head. Nope, he wasn’t going to go believing in weird mumbo-jumbo half-memories. “I’m pretty sure it’s just a movie or something that I saw at some point though just making a weird emergence in my subconscious. You sure that’s not all it is? Some ghost movie that spooked you?”
“Maybe,” Henry said then shook his head. “Shit is weird, though,” he said. “Like everything was fine until about a month ago. Then outta nowhere I get a number on my chest, a friend of mine goes off and gets engaged to a man she doesn’t even know and now this!”
“It’s Vegas, pretty sure people get engaged to people they don’t know every day,” Leon said. In fact, it sounded like the only weird part of that was the fact that they didn’t end up getting hitched as soon as they got engaged.
He debated with himself for a moment, wondering if he really wanted to know the answer, before circling back, “But what do you mean, you got a number on your chest?”
Henry sighed. “It’s gonna sound crazy.” Though Henry was sure he couldn’t sound any more crazy than he already did. “I was talking on the phone one day trying to set up a new gig and all of a sudden it felt as though something had stabbed me. The next thing I know there’s a bunch of numbers on my chest. They all faded away except for the first one. A number 2, right here.” He patted his chest over his heart. “I don’t know where it came from. I don’t know what it means. But...I feel as though I’ve been...I don’t know...marked?”
A small part of Leon wished he hadn’t asked, because the more people who got these tattoos, the less Leon was able to come up with reasonable excuses for it. Not that he’d been able to convincingly do that since he saw Kennedy’s tattoo show up right in front of his eyes, which had happened approximately five minutes after Leon had discovered his own.
“It doesn’t sound crazy,” Leon sighed after a moment where he’d floundered and failed at finding a reasonable explanation for it all. “I got one too. A buddy of mine and a couple people I work with have them too.” He rubbed this side of his head. “This is all so fucking weird, man. I don’t get it at all.”
Henry studied Leon carefully. “You have one too.” He repeated. “That friend I was talking about? She has one, too. Do you know what they mean?” He asked Leon hopefully.
Leon let out a bark of laughter. “I’d be a much better detective than I am if I did,” Leon admitted. Sherlock Holmes level, maybe. “It’d help if there was some rhyme or reason to the marks, but every one I’ve seen has been completely different, and on different parts of the body, and there doesn’t seem to be anything that connects any of the people who get them. Your guess is as good as mine, honestly.”
That momentary glimmer of hope -- the hope that if anyone had any clue what was happening one of Las Vegas finest would have -- died. Henry realized, perhaps too late, that thinking that Leon was any more in the know than anyone else, was foolish. “It was worth a shot,” he muttered, his shoulders slumping.
He sat there quietly a moment. At least he hadn’t seen any more ghosts, and he was starting to think (perhaps also foolishly), that Leon was right and he assumed something had been that really wasn’t. He still couldn’t shake that strange feeling that he’d seen them before. Somewhere.
“What’s yours look like?” He asked finally.
Leon flushed, embarrassed, and choked on some of the smoke he’d just been inhaling. “It’s not important,” he muttered.
Henry looked at him oddly. He wasn’t so sure that it wasn’t important. “They gotta mean something” he said. “If we’re all just getting stamped with some random thing than…” he trailed off. “I don’t know. I guess I’d feel better if there was some kind of meaning behind them than if we were just being branded like a bunch of cows.” A thought struck him out of the blue and he couldn’t help laughing. “Or like a bunch of My Little Ponies.”
Leon’s blush managed, somehow, to deepen when Henry laughed about My Little Ponies, and he buried his face in his hand - the one not holding his cigarette - and groaned.
“Alright man, but you have to promise not to laugh,” he said, peering at Henry from between his fingers.
Henry looked at him earnestly. Why would he laugh at Leon? The guy had been nothing but gracious to him the whole night, even after Henry had made a scene inside the casino and effectively ruined their night. Was his tattoo or whatever it was that bad? “I promise,” Henry said in a tone to match his look.
“Alright,” Leon said, sticking the cigarette between his lips so that both his hands were free. He turned on the bench so his back was facing Henry, and then lifted the back of his shirt.
Henry hadn’t expected Leon to actually show him the mark. As promised, he didn’t laugh. “It’s a butterfly,” he said with a raised brow. Maybe Leon really was a My Little Pony. “At least it’s not on your ass,” he said.
“God, small blessings,” Leon grumbled. Then again, maybe if it was on his ass Veronica and Kennedy wouldn’t have seen it. “I haven’t seen any others that are this terrible yet. Someone out there is having a good fucking laugh at my expense.”
Then again, maybe the people with tattoos as embarrassing as his were keeping their mouths shut about it. Maybe he should stop telling people he had one too.
“It could be worse,” Henry offered. “Mine’s just a number and it’s not even done well.” Since Leon was nice enough to show him his, Henry returned the favor. He pulled down the collar of his shirt enough to reveal the number on the right side of his chest. Unlike the pristine butterfly that adorned Leon’s back, Henry’s 2 looked as though someone with less than stellar penmanship had crudely drawn it on him. “I almost prefer it to be a butterfly or something like that. At least it’d look nice.”
Leon looked at the tattoo and frowned. “Oh yeah, that definitely looks like a scratcher did that,” he said, nodding. The only saving grace about his butterfly tattoo was how well-done it was. It looked realistic enough that it seemed like it could fly right off his skin; he half wished it would.
“I’d still take it over the butterfly tramp stamp, but yeah, I can see why you’d have an issue with it. I’d be demanding my money back if I’d paid for that.”
Henry let go of his shirt. “I wouldn’t want either if I’d been given a choice,” he said. “But, unfortunately, it looks like we’re stuck with them.” He paused a moment, brows furrowed together. “What’s a ‘scratcher’?”
“Yeah, we are,” Leon said, frowning. “Tried to get a tattoo removal, and they couldn’t even see the damn thing. Must’ve thought I was insane.” Hell, Leon was beginning to wonder the same thing.
“Scratchers are those scumbags that get their hands on a tattoo gun and start trying to tattoo people out of their basement without any regard for hygiene or, you know, skill level,” Leon said. He’d busted a couple of them when he’d been a beat cop back in LA; he didn’t really deal with them that often anymore.
Henry made a face at the concept of what a “scratcher” was. It didn’t make him feel any better that his mark not only looked as though he’d gotten only half a tattoo done, but that he’d done it in some back alley. He took a little solace in the fact that it didn’t seem as though anyone else could see the marks. Kind of.
“That’s weird,” he commented, as if everything else they’d been talking about up to this point had been perfectly normal. “I can see it. Does that mean only people with marks themselves can see them?” Henry didn’t know what the hell kind of sense that made, or what it meant in the grand scheme of things. Should they feel better about that or worse? Maybe his feeling of being branded wasn’t so far off the mark.
“I need a drink,” he muttered.
"Yeah, maybe," Leon said, frowning. Kennedy had seen Leon's mark before he'd gotten his own, but since his own mark hadn't been more than ten minutes in coming from when he saw Leon's mark, he didn't think that really counted. Veronica too, though she'd been days before she got her own mark. "Or about to get one, I guess," he said after a moment.
"You and me both," Leon said. That had been Leon's plan for the night since the beginning, but now he really needed a drink. "You think you'll be okay with the ghosts?" he asked.
Henry shrugged his shoulders. “I’m not sure I have a choice,” he said. “I can’t exactly lock myself in my apartment for the rest of my life.” He stood up. “I promise not to make a scene next time, though.”