Tattoo Read online

  “Like what?” Annabelle asked, examining my facial expression carefully.

  “I don't know,” I said, completely aware that I was the world's worst liar. “You didn't hear any voices or see or feel anything strange?”

  All three of them stared at me blankly.

  “All righty then,” I said, glancing away. Maybe I really was going crazy. Since they were still staring at me, I did my best to pull off a smooth subject change. “I must just be a little light-headed is all,” I said. “Maybe I need something to eat. Ice cream?”

  “We just ate,” Delia said, at the exact same time that Zo spoke up with a huge grin on her face: “Thought you'd never ask”

  Delia cast a longing glance at the sale rack, and Annabelle looked at me, her eyes searching, before she glanced back down at her own feet.

  “Maybe we should,” she said, lifting her eyes to meet Delia's. “Get Bailey some food, I mean” She shifted her gaze back to me. Annabelle had a way of watching people that was subtle if you weren't looking for it, but I knew her well enough to know when she'd gone into observant mode—right now, she totally knew something was up. She just hadn't figured out what yet.

  She comes. She comes. To fight, to live, she comes.

  I heard the words, and I didn't. They were there in my head, whispered into the back of my mind over and over again, but somehow, I couldn't quite process what they were saying.

  “Come on,” Zo said, standing up with a grimace. Now that ice cream had entered the picture, she was all business. “If I don't get out of this dress pretty soon, I may have to hurt someone”

  Delia narrowed her eyes at Zo. “Did I ever tell you that you have absolutely no vision whatsoever?” she asked. “Because you don't”

  “Just change your clothes,” Zo ordered, “so that the next diva wearing a lime green corduroy mini-whatever that passes by can use your room to try on her size-two hot pants”

  “A corduroy lime green mini?” Delia huffed as she went back to her own dressing room. “Now that would be a travesty”

  Annabelle stifled a grin at Delia's overdramatic tone, but kept her brown eyes locked onto mine, searching.

  Ready for an escape, I slipped back into my dressing room, my head still ringing with words that I couldn't grasp and the image of Kane, his hands on my hips, still fresh in my mind.

  “Finally,” Zo said five minutes later when the rest of us had finished paying. “Let's—”

  “Do you have this in a size two? This four is just waaaaaay too big”

  The high-pitched, look-at-me-look-at-me voice carried across the room, and the four of us turned in unison to look at the familiar redhead standing there. Alexandra Atkins was swimsuit-model thin with a super-sized chest and an attitude to match. She was also wearing a corduroy lime green miniskirt so short that any of the rest of us could have worn it as a headband.

  Freaky, I thought. Delia was right. That skirt was a travesty.

  Alex continued lamenting the fact that they didn't have the hot pants she was looking for in a “non-massive” size, and the rest of us attempted to stop our eyes from rolling out of our heads.

  “I mean, hello, why would a size eight even want to wear these pants?” Alexandra huffed.

  Hey! I thought. I was a size eight.

  “Are you sure a four is the smallest size you have?” Alex pouted.

  “Tell you what,” Zo said, taking a step forward, her impulse control (or lack thereof) kicking in as she practically leaped to the salesgirl's rescue. “Go eat something,” she told Alexandra loudly. “Anything”

  “Excuse me?” Alex asked, her voice cold as she turned around, miffed that we'd interrupted her poor-me-I'm-a-size-two speech.

  “Eat something,” Zo said, enunciating the words. “Then maybe you'll be a size four, and you can try on the pants” This coming from Zo, who, despite the fact that she inhaled food the way most people took in air, was more or less a size negative two.

  “Did I say you could talk to me?” Alex asked. “I don't think so. Why don't you and your “ The redhead trailed off when she saw Delia. “Dee-Dee,” she squealed in that fake-sweet voice popular girls always use when they see each other outside of school. Delia and Alex knew each other just well enough for Alex to know that Delia didn't let anyone (except Zo) call her by a nickname.

  “And these are your little friends,” Alex said, like she couldn't reconcile the fact that Delia was friends with the rest of us, just because she was pretty and a cheerleader and …well …Delia.

  “I guess Zo is kind of little,” Delia admitted with a candid grin, responding to Alexandra's “little friends” comment without so much as batting an eyelash. “But then again, you'd probably kill to be a size zero, huh?” Delia's voice was so pleasant that it took a few seconds for Alex to process her words.

  Girls like Alexandra Atkins made me sick, and as she and Delia batted back and forth, pretending to play nice, I couldn't help but notice the way Alex threw barbs haphazardly at the rest of us.

  When she made a comment about Annabelle being “adorably antisocial,” I opened my mouth to say something, anything in my friend's defense, but A-belle just shook her head with a kind of quiet dignity, and in response to the look in her eyes, I shut my mouth. I also reached out a hand to restrain Zo, who didn't respond very well to people insulting her cousin. As I stood there, literally holding Zo back and basically letting Alex say whatever she wanted, frustration built up inside me. My body warmed, the heat spreading outward from the small of my back in gentle, cycling waves, and a single wisp of gray smoke rose up from the carpet.

  Blood of the Sídhe.

  More words I didn't understand permeated my brain, my very skin buzzing with the sound of their rhythm.

  “By the way, have you seen Kane?” Alex asked Delia as a kind of grand finale.

  The way she said his name broke me out of my trancelike state. Kane and Alex? God, I hoped not.

  Alex measured my reaction and then smiled. “Well,” she said flippantly, not bothering to wait for an answer to her oh-so-strategic question. “Shopping calls”

  Zo snorted very obviously. For some reason, I found that snort strangely comforting.

  Alex, however, did not. “Some of us care about this kind of thing,” she told Zo. “Not that you'd understand. Your sense of fashion is.”

  “I'm waiting,” Zo said, her voice challenging and unaffected. Zo would let Delia get away with insulting her fashion sense from now until the next millennium, but Alex wasn't Delia, and Zo hadn't forgotten that the perky girl had insulted Annabelle.

  Alex narrowed her eyes. “Well, actually,” she said lightly, “your sense of fashion is kind of motherless, you know?”

  My entire body exploded in fury as I watched Zo absorb the comment, her chin thrust out. Heat spread down my neck and into my arms, racing along my spine. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up one by one, and a second wave of heat rolled out from the small of my back, where I'd applied the tattoo. Objectively, I knew that the heat should have burned me, but something about the way it pulsed through my body made me long for more. Sweet, burning anger. Heat.

  The air sizzled, literally, and Alexandra Atkins's shoe burst into flames.

  I watched in a daze as Alex started screaming; watched as Zo took a flying leap to tackle the popular girl and beat her foot against the ground; watched as the flame subsided almost as quickly as it had come; and the entire time I watched, the strange words repeated themselves over and over again in my head.

  Blood of the Sídhe.

  Alex, in shock, finally shut her mouth long enough to give Zo a chance to speak. Zo stood up and dusted her hands off, fighting an ecstatic grin and failing miserably. “Your foot's not on fire anymore,” she said, beaming. “My work here is done”

  I forced the jumble of foreign sounds out of my head and processed Zo's words. Alex's foot had been on fire. She'd mentioned Zo's mother, I'd gotten angry, and then her shoe had exploded into flames for no apparent
reason whatsoever. I tried not to remember the feeling of heat scouring through my body; tried not to think about the way my blood had turned to fire: intoxicating, surging fire; and all that time, I'd been thinking about Alex and what she'd said to Zo.

  My lower back throbbed slightly, and in the back of my mind, I heard words I'd heard before, two voices speaking as one, terrible and wonderful to listen to at once.

  Fire burn

  Desire bleed

  -As we will, so mote it be.

  Fire burn. As I stared at Alexandra, my hand went to my lower back. The tattoo was warm to the touch, and as my fingertips brushed over it, my head filled with new words.

  It's in the blood. Things of power always are.

  Great, I thought weakly, my ears ringing with this proclamation. Not only was I insane and quite possibly inadvertently homicidal, but now, apparently, there was going to be blood.

  Annabelle looked at Alex. “Did it burn through the shoe?” she asked. Leave it to A-belle to make sure that Alex was okay, even after the “adorably antisocial” comment. “How's your foot?”

  “How do you think my foot is?” Alexandra hissed, clamoring to her feet. “It was on fire, that's how my foot is!”

  Annabelle took a single step back. Instinctively, I reached out for Zo, who was a microsecond away from literally leaping to her cousin's defense. The last thing we needed right now was for Zo to shove aforementioned foot up Alex's…

  “Let's go,” I said, my mind echoing with the word “fire” and with the feeling and the power that had preceded it. We headed for the door, and Delia, who'd remained suspiciously quiet through the whole ordeal, looked sadly down at Alexandra's shoes as we left. “It's such a shame,” she said on our way out the door. “Those were great shoes” Then, because she could never tell half of a fashion story, Delia continued: “But that green mini was travesty city”

  I barely heard Delia's proclamation, lost in thought as I digested what had just happened, and trying not to look directly at Annabelle, who was staring at me with the strangest expression on her face.

  As we walked toward the exit, my fingers found their way again to the tattoo on my back.

  She comes.

  To fight, to live.

  It has begun.

  We decided to forget about the ice cream.

  I didn't say anything the entire walk home, but with every step we took, I saw in my mind images of Alex's foot and the fire I was becoming more and more convinced I had started. The small of my back throbbed, and I pushed down the urge to reach back and touch my tattoo—every time I touched it, I was filled with questions I couldn't understand, let alone answer.

  Who was coming? What had begun? Why did touching the tattoo feel mildly like sticking my finger in an open socket?

  As we walked, Annabelle snuck looks at me, trying to figure out my thoughts from the look on my face, and since Zo had become uncharacteristically mute after the whole Alex debacle, Delia was forced to fill the silence by giving us the verbal Cliffs Notes of this month's Cosmo.

  By the time we reached my room, I couldn't keep it all in any longer. I'd never in my life managed to keep a secret from my three best friends, and with the way Annabelle was looking at me, the little wheels in her mind turning, it was only a matter of time before she started asking the right probing questions to get me to spill this one.

  “Ummm …guys?” That was a brilliant start. Where was I supposed to go from there? Ummm …guys, I think I might have fire powers, and I just used them against Miss I'm-So-Perky-and-My-Boobs-Are-Too?

  “Bailey,” Annabelle said, rolling her eyes. “That fire was not your fault. You didn't start it”

  Delia and Zo stared at her.

  “What are you talking about, A-belle?” Zo asked. “Like Bailey actually thinks she started that fire. Not that I wouldn't have totally approved, because honestly, I think that might have been one of the high points of my life so far”

  Annabelle frowned, wrinkling her forehead. “Weren't you listening?” she asked Zo, genuinely confused. “Bailey just said that she thought she had fire powers and that she'd set Alexandra's foot on fire”

  “Would you like a side of crazy with your Bailey-so-did-not-just-say-that?” Delia asked.

  They were right. I hadn't said it. I'd thought it.

  “She did say it,” Annabelle insisted. “Just a minute ago”

  “No, Annabelle,” I said, “I didn't”

  Annabelle stared at me as though I'd just told her I was planning on tie-dyeing my dachshund.

  This so wasn't happening.

  “What isn't happening?” Annabelle asked, truly baffled. “And why would anyone tie-dye a dachshund?”

  My mouth dropped open.

  Annabelle, I thought, can you hear me?

  “That would be a yes”

  Annabelle, watch my lips.

  Annabelle turned to look at me.

  Are they moving? I asked her silently. Are my lips moving?

  Slowly, Annabelle shook her head.

  Am I making any sound? I asked.

  She shook her head again.

  “Oh,” she said finally. Most people would have been cursing like crazy, but all Annabelle had to say was a very restrained “oh” “I'm hearing your thoughts, aren't I?” she asked weakly.

  “A-belle, you're starting to scare me”

  “She really is hearing my thoughts, Zo,” I said. “Just like I really did accidentally set Alexandra's shoe on fire. Something weird is going on here”

  She comes. This time, it wasn't a voice speaking in my head. It was me, remembering the two words I couldn't manage to forget. Someone, something was coming. The knowledge sat there in the back of my mind as Annabelle and Zo went back and forth.

  “She doesn't believe us,” Annabelle informed me. Then she turned back to her cousin. “Zo, think of a number between one and fifty million”

  Annabelle paused for just a moment. “Chocolate,” she said finally, her voice barely more than a whisper as she intercepted the thought from her cousin's head and the reality of the situation settled in. “Zo, that's not a number between one and fifty million”

  Zo's mouth dropped open. “Trick question”

  “Now do you believe us?” I asked.

  “Two things,” Zo said. “First, yes I believe you. Second, A-belle, if you don't stay out of my head, I'm going to have to hurt you”

  Annabelle shrugged, completely unimpressed by Zo's empty threat.

  “Am I the only one here who is like totally confused and more than a little bit wigged out?” Delia asked. “I mean, so Annabelle's all psychic, and you're all fire-y, Bay …the little freaky alarm inside my head that goes off when freaky stuff happens is going wild. This is just strange and “ Delia trailed off, looking for the right word.

  “Freaky,” Annabelle, Zo, and I supplied at once. Delia nodded.

  “Things like this don't just happen,” Delia said. “I mean, one minute Annabelle's a boring, run-of-the-mill genius who doesn't talk much and has an average fashion sense, and the next she's psychic. How does that work?”

  “I'm not a genius,” Annabelle said automatically. For a second, I wondered at the fact that she hadn't objected to being called boring, but I had bigger things to think about.

  “I think I know how it works,” I said. “Or at least, I know when it started”

  How to explain it to them? The feeling I'd gotten from the tattoo package. The way the air had morphed when Delia had applied her tattoo. The surging heat and the dizziness when they'd applied mine, and the voices …how was I supposed to explain the voices I'd been hearing and the words they'd said? Fire burning, someone coming, desire bleeding, Sídhe green. How did a person explain all of that, especially when it was becoming harder to remember any of it by the second?

  “You explain slowly,” Annabelle said, taking pity on me and going into scholarly Annabelle mode, “and possibly with charts” As quiet as she was the rest of the time, when it came to something
that required organization of knowledge, Annabelle lit up like a Christmas tree.

  Zo groaned. “I hate charts”

  Annabelle paused for a moment. “I guess we don't have to have charts,” she said in an almost comically sad voice. A-belle talked about charts the same way Delia talked about nail polish. “But Bailey's thoughts are just so complicated that I thought maybe …you know …charts might help”

  I was about to take pity on her and say we could have charts when the implications of what she was saying hit me. Annabelle was psychic, and in my wondering how to tell them everything that had happened to me since applying that stupid tattoo, she'd caught it all.

  Annabelle took a deep breath. “It all started,” she said solemnly, still mourning the sacrifice of the charts, “with the tattoos”

  Annabelle told them everything. It was the most I'd ever heard her say in one sitting, and when she finished, she gave in to the urge to grab some paper off my desk and started taking notes on what she'd said. I leaned forward to try to read what she was writing, but couldn't make out a single word.

  There was a distinct chance she was making graphs.

  “What I want to know,” Zo said, “is why you're fire woman, and chart girl over there”—Zo jerked her head toward Annabelle, who appeared to be color-coding something—”is Little Miss Psychic, and Delia and I got a whole lot of nothing. I mean, we put on tattoos, too” Zo, leaning back on my bed, held up her bare foot and dangled it in front of me.

  I stared at her tattoo for a moment, the blue-green color jumping out at me as if it had been made of pure, bright light.

  Silver-blond hair. Blood. Dead, blue eyes. It has begun.

  “I don't know,” I said, closing my eyes. My head pounded. Why was it that I was the only one who got dizzy just looking at the tattoos?

  “I don't know,” Annabelle said, answering my silent question and consulting her notes. “It could have something to do with the fact that you're the one who actually bought the tattoos. They were yours, and you just shared them with us”

  “Like the tattoos know who owns them,” Delia said skeptically.