Tattoo Read online

  “You're here because we've brought you and because you brought yourself. You are here because of the blood”

  “Sídhe blood,” I blurted out, remembering their voices in my head when I'd first seen the tattoos.

  “We are Sídhe,” the man said simply. “And we need your help”

  And just like that, the dream was gone, and I was staring up at my ceiling, my forehead drenched in sweat and the tattoo on my back throbbing as if someone had stuck a knife into it.

  “Breathe, Bailey,” I told myself. “Just breathe”

  Easier said than done. The echo of the man's voice in my head was so loud, so overpowering, that nothing, not even the need for oxygen, could overcome it.

  We are Sídhe, and we need your help.

  “Shee,” I said out loud, trying to match the way the slightly accented voice in my head pronounced the foreign word. “Sheeeeee”

  “Bailey?” Annabelle sat up in her sleeping bag and looked at me, her brown hair mussed and her eyes sleepy. She paused, waiting patiently for me to fill her in.

  “Don't you know?” I asked. “I mean, can't you do your “ I made wiggly finger motions next to my forehead. “Can't you do your psychic thing and just lift it from my head?”

  Annabelle wrinkled her forehead slightly and stared at me with solemn brown eyes. “I can't see anything. Something about a dream, but that's all I'm getting” She paused. “You know, I don't think I ever knew exactly what you remembered the voices saying. I only ever got your thoughts on what they had said” Pulling her legs to her chest, she laid her chin on her knees. “It's like I'm one step removed,” she said. “I can't access anything directly about the voices, only that they scared you and that you're confused” She reached and touched my hand lightly.

  Finally remembering to breathe, I exhaled and blew my hair out of my face. “Scared and confused is a total understatement,” I said. “I had this dream, and “

  As Annabelle leaned forward to listen, she cast a quick but longing glance in the direction of the notes she'd made earlier that night.

  “You want me to write it down, don't you?” I asked.

  Biting her bottom lip and shooting me an apologetic look, she nodded sheepishly.

  A bit light-headed and with my back still throbbing, I stood up and tiptoed around a sleeping Zo to get to my desk. After turning on my desk lamp, I grabbed a sheet of paper out of my printer and a pen out of the drawer and began writing down everything I remembered.

  Adea, I wrote down. The woman's name stuck in my mind, and as I wrote it, I could hear her voice, gentle but commanding, serene but desperate. What was it about their voices? They were so…

  So not human.

  I scribbled down a really lame description of the woman's voice and her glowing black-red hair, and then I moved on to the man. What had Adea said his name was?

  I closed my eyes, trying to remember. With a surge of pain from my lower back, the name came to me.

  Valgius. I wrote it down and stared at it. Had I even spelled that right? Was it a j instead of a g? What kind of name was Valgius anyway?

  I tapped my pen lightly on the desk. What else?

  The Seal. When I'd opened my eyes in the dream, I'd been sleeping on some sort of circular etched stone. Adea had called it the Seal, capital S, and she'd said something else about it. This time even my aching back didn't provide me with the answers. The dream was becoming foggier and foggier, and though I could picture the waterfall overhead and Adea's painfully blue eyes perfectly, I was losing the rest of it quickly.

  Adea had said I was safe there, something to do with the Seal. I scrawled this down onto the paper, feeling stupid for not remembering more. Finally, I added two last items to my makeshift journal entry.

  “Blood of the Sídhe,” I wrote, and seeing the word “Sídhe” written down surprised me. That was how you spelled it? And how did I know that? Had the knowledge just been shoved into my head with Adea's words? Or had I always known?

  Always.

  I shook my head and wrote one more thing.

  “They need our help,” I said aloud as I wrote. “Help doing what?” I glanced back over my shoulder at Annabelle.

  She said nothing, and for a moment, I wished that I'd been given her power. Sometimes it was so hard to tell what Annabelle was thinking, and now she had a VIP pass into all our thoughts.

  “I'm thinking that we can do this” A-belle obligingly filled me in. “Whatever it is they need help with, whoever it is that is coming. You, me, Delia, Zo …we can do this” She looked away for a moment and then took the paper gently from my hands. Even though the only light was the moon shining through my window, Annabelle promptly began color-coding. I wasn't even sure how she'd found her highlighters in the dark.

  “But what about the purple?” Delia said loudly on the bed, her eyes still closed.

  Annabelle and I stifled a giggle. Delia was so going to hear about this in the morning.

  “Goodnight, Bailey,” Annabelle said, putting the paper away and squeezing my arm once before she lay back down in her sleeping bag.

  “Night, A-belle”

  For a long time after that, I lay there, curled up in my sleeping bag, listening to the sound of the blood pumping through my veins and the wind outside my window.

  Know you, the wind howled. Know you.

  I was so close to the edge of a dream that I could barely make out the words, and before I could wonder whether I was already dreaming or not, I fell into a deep sleep, the sound of the wind and my pounding heart fading into the background. My last conscious thought was to wonder why Adea and Valgius had said nothing about the mysterious “she,” whoever she was, and why I had not thought until now to ask.

  “Your hair looks like moonlight”

  On some level, I knew I'd been here before, but his voice

  was so low and sweet that I pushed the thought out of my mind and laid my head on his chest.

  “Moonlight,” Kane said again, and with gentle fingers, he brushed my hair out of my face. This time, I brought my hand up to touch his, and for the longest time, we just touched fingertips. Slowly, his hand worked its way down my arm, and then we were dancing.

  We moved as one, our bodies close together, swaying to music that I almost recognized.

  “I've wanted this for so long,” I told him softly. I almost couldn't remember ever wanting anything else.

  This time, he moved his hand to my face and tucked a strand of my hair behind my ear.

  “I know,” he said. “Know you” He moved his lips toward mine, and when he spoke again, I could feel his breath on my face. “I've always known you”

  And then, he was gone.

  “I'm telling you, Bay. We've got four permits. Five if you count the fact that I have two because my first picture was so hideous that I told them I lost it and got another one. Five permits …that's like two and a half licenses. At least”

  I stared back at Delia. She couldn't honestly believe that I'd let her drive my mom's car, could she?

  “I doubt it,” Annabelle said, answering my unasked question.

  “You doubt what?” Zo asked suspiciously. “I wish you two would stop it with the silent talking” Zo was still a little bit grumpy that I could set things on fire and she just got vague feelings about lime green miniskirts.

  “Delia, you're not taking my mom's car anywhere. We're not taking my mom's car anywhere. We either walk or we catch a bus, but we're not driving to the mall”

  Delia snapped her fingers. “Silly me,” she said. “Did I forget to tell you that I got my license? It's in here somewhere…“ She fiddled around in her purse. After a few seconds, she bit her bottom lip, and green light filled the purse. “Here we go,” she said, handing me her permit, or at least handing me the item that had been her permit five seconds ago, before she'd done her little change-y mojo on it and turned it into a license.

  “And you turned sixteen when?” Annabelle asked, a bemused expression on her otherwi
se serious face.

  “A couple days ago” Delia laughed lightly. “You know me, I don't like to make much of a fuss about little things like birthdays”

  “Four months and three days,” Zo reminded her. Delia kept a running count of the days until her sixteenth birthday and had since she was eight.

  “Two days,” Delia corrected automatically. She sighed heavily. “It was worth a shot”

  I wrinkled my forehead. There was no world in which any of us would have bought the fake license. The scary thing was, arguments like that worked for Delia all the time, no matter how ridiculous they were. Just not with us. Such was the glory of being Delia Cameron.

  Delia's eyes sparkled with mischief. “Want me to turn your permit into a license?” she asked.

  It was a very tempting offer. “Later,” I said. “For now, we have to find a way to the mall”

  Delia stuck out her lower lip in an exaggerated pout.

  “Let's just walk,” Zo said. “What's the good of living within walking distance of the mall if you don't actually walk to it every once in a while?”

  “The feeling you get just from knowing the mall is close by,” Annabelle said as the four of us grabbed our purses and made our way out the front door. Zo and I stared at Annabelle. “Delia's answer, not mine,” Annabelle clarified.

  “I had a dream last night,” I blurted out as we made our way across the street. Something about being around the three of them made me want to spill my guts and then some.

  “A Kane dream?” Delia asked knowingly. “Was he hot? What were you wearing?”

  “No, not a Kane dream,” I said. I could feel the goofy grin spreading over my face just from saying Kane's name. “Well, I actually did have one of those, too, but that wasn't the dream I was talking about” I glanced over at Annabelle. “I dreamed about the voices I've been hearing”

  Even though I knew they believed me about everything, I still felt like I sounded absolutely nutso.

  “I mean, I dreamed about the owners of the voices” I paused. “I think they're real”

  Silence. Absolute silence.

  We walked for a while before I spoke again. “They said they needed our help. They didn't say why, but I think we have these powers because of them” It was all really fuzzy in my mind, and it was getting so much fuzzier as I said it out loud that the inside of my mouth practically felt as if it was growing fur.

  “Do they have names?” Annabelle asked, always the one to ask the right questions at the right times.

  “Adea,” I said. “And Valgius”

  “Why are you whispering?” Zo asked me dryly. “Is it top secret?”

  I so wasn't in the mood for sarcasm. “Don't make me set you on fire,” I said.

  Zo cracked a grin and snorted. “You wouldn't even set the trash can on fire,” she said, slinging an arm around my shoulder. “That's why I love you”

  We'd been friends for so long that sometimes I forgot Zo had a sweet side to her.

  It only took her about five seconds after she'd slung her arm over my shoulder to slip me into a headlock. “Admit it,” she ordered, laughing. “You love me, too”

  Delia rolled her eyes.

  I elbowed Zo in the stomach. In retaliation, she ruffled my hair.

  “Watch out, Zo,” Delia said, laughing despite herself, “Bailey bites” Annabelle and Zo lost it, and I made the mistake of giggling with hair in my face and ended up with a mouthful of hair.

  “Huh,” a voice I so didn't want to hear right now said. “Bailey bites?”

  Zo let loose of me, and I straightened up and stared in horror at the owner of the voice.

  Your hair looks like moonlight.

  Kane sat behind the wheel of his black SUV, looking down at us with his perfectly gorgeous eyes.

  Why was it that whenever Kane saw me in real life, I was always stuck in some kind of awkward position? In the past twenty-four hours, he'd seen me sprawled across the ground and in a headlock, choking on my own hair.

  And now he thought I bit people. It was official. The love gods hated me. And wanted me to suffer. And…

  “Don't worry, Kane,” Delia said with a wicked grin. “Bailey doesn't bite hard”

  My mouth dropped open. “Delia,” I hissed.

  Kane laughed out loud. “I don't bite too hard, either,” he said. He paused for a microsecond, staring at me, and my cheeks burned.

  No burning! I thought frantically. The last thing I wanted to do was set Kane on fire. Somehow, I was pretty sure that would take playing hard to get a little too far. I breathed in, forcing my blush down.

  “You ladies need a ride somewhere?” Kane asked.

  “Hallelujah, he has a car,” Delia said.

  “We'd love a ride” Annabelle interpreted Delia's response.

  Thirty seconds later, I was sitting in the front seat, with Delia, Annabelle, and Zo squeezed into the back behind us.

  “Where you guys going?” Kane asked.

  “The mall,” I replied.

  “Always a good choice,” he said, and I couldn't decide whether he was making fun of us or being serious.

  I opened my mouth and then closed it again. What was I supposed to say? He was Mr. Important, and I was Bailey, Queen of Nothing.

  “Are you going to the dance on Monday?” Delia asked from the backseat. She never had any trouble talking to guys.

  “Probably,” Kane said.

  “Bailey's probably going, too,” Delia replied. She was clearly a girl on a mission.

  I turned around in my seat and glared at her. First she makes me sound like I'm into biting people, and then she practically throws me at him? I was going to kill her. I was so going to kill her, and all that would remain would be a pile of designer clothes covered in Delia ashes.

  I stared out the window, determined not to look Kane in the face. Obviously, he hadn't thought too much of Delia's proposition. We pulled up to the mall about two excruciating minutes later.

  “Thank you for the ride,” Annabelle said.

  “We'll see you at the dance” Delia winked at Kane. “All of us,” she added with a meaningful look in my direction.

  Dead girl walking, I thought as I stepped out of his car.

  “I'll see you,” Kane mumbled. Delia gave him a hard look. “I'll see you at the dance,” he corrected himself with a grin. “And Bailey?”

  He'd actually gotten my name right. It was a miracle.

  “Yeah?” It wasn't exactly a brilliant reply, but at least I managed to say something instead of just standing there staring at his gorgeous blue eyes. And the way a smile tugged at the edges of his lips when he looked at me. And…

  “Save a dance for me”

  Those words actually came out of his mouth.

  “Okay,” I said, completely unable to manage any multiple-word sentence.

  “Okay,” Kane repeated, and our eyes met for a second, caught up in another silent moment.

  “I'll see you,” he said.

  “Yes”

  “Yes?” Delia asked the instant Kane pulled away. “The guy you've been head over heels for since you were eleven says he'll see you and you say ‘yes'?”

  “I can't believe you did that!”

  Delia gave me an innocent look. “What?”

  “You practically threw me at him,” I said.

  “You can thank me later,” Delia said. “For now, we have some serious tattoo business to deal with”

  I would have smacked her, but since I was grinning like an idiot, I couldn't bring myself to do it. Kane wanted to dance with me.

  Your hair looks like moonlight. I remembered my dream. Know you, know you. Maybe I'd gotten a little bit of Zo's premonition along with my fire power.

  “Why would you think you have premonition?” Annabelle asked me curiously.

  I was starting to see Zo's point about the downfalls of this whole Annabelle-is-psychic thing.

  “Just this dream I had,” I said, surprised that she hadn't picked up on it. I'd
barely thought of anything else all morning. “Never mind,” I told her when she opened her mouth again. “It's not important”

  The three of them stared at me, grinning.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Bailey's in lo-ove” Zo expertly made love into a two-syllable word.

  “Shut up,” I said, but I couldn't wipe the grin off my face. This wasn't love. Exactly. This was…

  “Can we just do what we came here to do?” I said.

  Delia hooked her arm through mine. “Bailey's right,” she agreed.

  I gave her a grateful look.

  “We can talk about her love life later. Now, let's go” With the expertise of someone who could make it through the mall blindfolded faster than we mere mortals could with our eyes open, Delia navigated the way back to the stand where I'd bought the tattoos. When we got there, we saw a sign. CLOSED IN PREPARATION

  FOR MABON.

  “Mabon?” Delia said. “What's Mabon? It sounds like a brand of makeup”

  “It's a fancy name for the autumnal equinox,” Annabelle said. We stared at her. How in the world did she know this stuff? Annabelle blushed. “I read it somewhere,” she explained, and I had the distinct feeling that Mabon was a few minutes away from getting added into her handy-dandy color-coded notebook.

  “Well, this sucks,” Zo said, never one to sugarcoat things. “Now we're back where we started”

  “Touch your tattoo, Bailey,” Annabelle told me suddenly.

  “Why?” I asked, but my hand was already moving. I looked at Annabelle, alarmed. “Are you moving my hand, or am I?”

  Annabelle looked at me, stricken. “I—I don't know”

  I shook my head to clear it and then let my fingertips graze the tattoo on the small of my back.

  She comes. Angry, vengeful. She will stop at nothing to destroy us. She comes.

  I repeated the words out loud to my friends.

  “And who's this chick who's supposed to be coming?” Zo asked.