Tattoo Read online

  “I don't know,” I said. “All I know is that whoever she is, she's been coming since yesterday afternoon. Right after we put the tattoos on, the little voices were all about ‘she comes' and stuff” I closed my eyes, willing the voices to tell me more, but nothing came. “That's it,” I said. “That's all I'm getting”

  “Try touching the stand,” Annabelle said. “Or the sign. If the person who sold the tattoos to us had something to do with this, maybe they left some kind of, I don't know, some kind of trace or something behind. Just run your fingers over everything and see if you hear anything”

  It was kind of strange, but I was getting used to A-belle taking charge.

  “But if the voices are really just Adea and Valgius talking to me,” I whispered back, careful not to talk too loudly about the voices since I didn't want the entire mall to think I was crazy, “why don't they just tell me whatever it is they want me to know?”

  Annabelle bit her bottom lip in thought. “Maybe they need some medium to speak to you through,” she said. “Like the tattoo. Or like something else in or on this stand”

  I thought for a moment, and then I ran my fingertips gently over the edge of the kiosk. Nothing. I touched the sign lightly, and as I touched the word “Mabon,” the voices filled my head.

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

  Same old, same old, I thought.

  Our lives. Your fight. Both worlds.

  I relayed the new information to the group, and they stared at me, waiting for more than a cryptic suggestion that we might have to fight for our lives sometime soon.

  “Why can't someone else hear the freaky voices?” I asked, feeling completely useless. “Why does it always have to be me?”

  My friends didn't say anything. Zo ran her hand along the sign, and without warning, she gasped, her eyes rolling back in her head and blue-green light that I deeply suspected only I could see streaming out of her face.

  “I guess someone else is hearing the freaky voices,” I said, my voice shaking. “Big yay on that one”

  “I don't think she's hearing anything,” Annabelle corrected softly. “I think she's seeing something” Anna-belle looked at me and swallowed hard. “Something bad”

  “Zo?”

  Zo didn't respond.

  “Okay, now you're freaking me out,” I said.

  “Zo?” Delia's voice was uncharacteristically little. “Come on, babe, pull out of it”

  With no warning, the light disappeared, and Zo fell forward onto the kiosk, gasping for air.

  “What did you see?” Delia, Annabelle, and I all asked at once.

  “A girl,” Zo said. “Really blond hair. Like white. She was singing to herself under her breath, this freaky song that sounded like a mix of a lullaby, a death march, and some kind of twisted nineties boy band. She was standing on a balcony or something, and then her eyes just kind of glazed over, like she was seeing something the rest of us couldn't” Zo paused. “And she just stared at nothing, for the longest time, and then her eyes flashed, like they actually lit up and turned bright blue, and then her pupils disappeared, and I saw her leave her body”

  “Leave her body?” I asked. Someone was sounding crazy, and for once, it wasn't me, but I couldn't be happy about it. Not with Zo standing there, looking as though she was about to burst into tears. Zo, who I'd seen cry a grand total of once since she was four.

  “She just stepped out of it. I saw her body, and I saw her, and she wasn't in her body. And then something pulled her away, and she was gone, and her body was just standing there, and then the blue left her eyes, and her eyes closed” Zo swallowed hard, and I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand up one by one. “And then,” Zo continued, looking down at her shoes, her voice reduced to a whisper. “Then the body fell forward, off the balcony”

  Zo looked up at us, and her voice hardened. “She was on the eleventh floor”

  Her words sunk in, and I couldn't shake the image from my mind. The girl, standing by herself, singing, and then …boom, no more girl.

  “Premonition,” Annabelle said in her I-know-my-def initions voice, “is having visions of the future”

  I squeezed Zo's shoulder. “So whatever you saw,” I said, catching on to A-belle's point, “it hasn't happened yet”

  “We can stop it,” Delia said. When Delia said something in her confident voice, it was nearly impossible not to believe it.

  “But what about the voices?” Annabelle asked softly. “You know: ‘our fight, both worlds'?”

  I shook my head, my eyes still locked on to Zo's. “That fight's just going to have to wait,” I said. “Zo, do you have any idea where the girl was?”

  Zo closed her eyes, her forehead wrinkling as she thought. “Near the beach,” she said. “She could see the ocean from the balcony”

  We lived in a beach town. That description described every hotel and about half the apartments in the whole city.

  “You said she was on the eleventh floor,” Delia said suddenly. “That leaves the Richmond and the Delux” Noticing the impressed look I was giving her, Delia shrugged. “What?” she said. “I can't be useful?”

  “The Delux is on the other side of town,” I said, referring to one of the nicer hotels in the area. “How in the world would we get there?”

  Zo swallowed hard. “Let's hope it's the Richmond,” she said. After that, she refused to say anything, and for the first time in the history of our little foursome's weekly shopping trips, Delia Cameron left the mall in a hurry, without buying anything, the rest of us on her heels.

  Even though it was the off-season, the Richmond was crawling with people, half of whom were wearing sunglasses and a good three of whom appeared to be standing near the front desk doing some form of yoga that involved chanting. Zo tore through the lobby, a girl on a mission, and the rest of us struggled to keep up. The second we stepped outside, Zo froze, her eyes locked on the ocean. The smell of the salt water hung in the air, and the waves crashed gently into the beach, the light sand darkened to brown by the water's touch.

  From earth she comes

  From air she breathes

  From water, her prison beneath the seas

  I looked at Zo, and then followed her gaze and stared back out at the ocean.

  “This was what she was looking at,” Zo said softly. “The ocean, and the way it had about a million different shades of blue and green in it, melding together with each wave” Zo paused. “There were people on the beach,” she said, “playing volleyball” She wrinkled her nose in thought. “One of them hit the ball into the water, and the others threw him in”

  Zo looked back at us, her voice caught in her throat.

  I grabbed her hand and just held it.

  “She wanted to be down there with them,” she said. “She wanted them to forget about…about whatever it was she'd done. She felt bad about it, and she just wanted them to.”

  Zo broke off. “There,” she said, pointing to the building on our left.

  The balconies were small, barely big enough for two people to stand comfortably. The wrought-iron railing was black, each balcony identical to the one next to it. And the one above it. And the one below it.

  “How are we going to find her in time?” Zo asked. “She could be in any of those rooms, and if we wait until she goes out on the balcony …She's on the eleventh floor. We won't make it in time”

  Delia swallowed hard. “What if we already haven't made it in time?” she asked with an uncharacteristic amount of tact in her voice. “It took us twenty minutes to walk here”

  “People probably would have noticed a body falling eleven stories onto the ground below,” Annabelle pointed out, always the voice of reason. She looked up, doing quick calculations in her mind. “There are only seven rooms on each floor that face the ocean, and we know it's the eleventh floor”

  “Well, what are we waiting for?” Zo asked. “Let's get up there”

  This time, Zo took off running, Delia rig
ht behind her like a champ. How in the world was she managing in heels? Annabelle and I were slower, and by the time we'd reached the building's entrance, Zo was already cursing heavily at the door.

  “What's the matter?” I asked dumbly.

  “Locked,” Zo grunted between clenched teeth.

  “I tried doing the change-y thing to this flier to make a key card,” Delia said, “but I don't know what they look like, and it's not working”

  “It makes sense,” Annabelle said thoughtfully. “If you don't have a goal in mind, you can't transmogrify properly”

  Zo opened her mouth (probably to say something she'd later regret), but Annabelle continued thinking out loud. “Instead of trying to transmogrify a key,” she said, “maybe try to transmogrify the lock?”

  Annabelle Porter: problem solver.

  Delia held her hand over the lock. “Tapioca,” she said. An instant later, pudding oozed down onto the floor, and Zo pulled the door open.

  “Pudding?” she asked Delia.

  “Tapioca pudding?” I echoed. “You could transmogrify the lock into just about anything, and you chose tapioca pudding?”

  Delia tossed her hair behind her shoulder. “Don't argue with success,” she said. She tapped her foot impatiently. “Are we here to do the life saving thing or not?”

  Zo made a beeline for the elevator, and we followed her. “Eleven,” she said out loud, punching the button as soon as she stepped into the elevator. “Eleven, eleven, eleven”

  “Zo, I don't think pushing it multiple times helps,” I said.

  “Neither does pushing it harder,” Delia added.

  “You didn't see her,” Zo said fiercely. “You just…you didn't see her”

  The elevator door closed, and we rode in silence. When the elevator stopped on the fourth floor, I thought Zo was going to explode.

  “Sorry. No room,” she yelled full-volume at the two teenage boys standing there when the door opened. One tried to step into the elevator, but Zo shoved him out hard enough that he hit the opposite wall. “No. Room”

  “Was that entirely necessary?” Delia asked when the door closed again. “The one on the left was kind of cute”

  “What if they'd been going to a floor under eleven?” Zo asked. “That's time we might not have—”

  “Be quiet,” Annabelle interrupted, force in her voice. “All of you. Be quiet now” Unused to hearing that tone from Annabelle, we obeyed, and A-belle closed her eyes.

  “They'll never forgive me,” she whispered softly. “I didn't mean to break their stupid circle, and now, they'll never forgive me”

  “Annabelle?”

  “Quiet!” Annabelle brought her right hand to her temple. “I don't see why we even have to come to these stupid things. Mom knows I hate them. I never asked to be a part of their circle, anyway. I never asked to be like this. “

  The arrow above the elevator door pointed to the numbers of the floors as we passed them. Eight. Nine.

  Annabelle kept murmuring under her breath, someone else's words.

  Ten.

  “I just want …want” Urgency unlike any I'd ever heard entered her voice: pure raw need. “Want”

  Eleven.

  “It's gone,” Annabelle said, her eyes fluttering open. She stepped off the elevator onto the eleventh floor, and the rest of us followed her. “I can't hear her thoughts anymore”

  “We're too late,” I said, my stomach turning itself inside out with dread.

  “No,” Zo said forcefully, slamming her fist up against a window. She looked out and opened her mouth. “No,” she said again, this time more softly. “Look. Down there, on the beach. That guy just hit the ball into the water. I've seen this before” Zo looked up at us. “We still have time”

  She took off running and banged her fist against the first door she came to. “Don't just stand there,” she said. “You guys take the other ones”

  When a dark-haired man answered her door, Zo looked him straight in the eye. “Door check,” she said. “Everything's fine”

  Door check? That was the best she could come up with? Realizing that we didn't have time to lose, the rest of us joined in, each taking a door as Zo pounded furiously on her next.

  No one answered my door, and I was about to turn to leave, when I heard the faint sound of humming.

  Hadn't Zo said the girl was singing? Humming was close.

  “Guys, I think she's in here”

  “Delia,” Zo barked out. “Lock. Tapioca. Whatever”

  Delia ran over, her hands held out. “Butterscotch pudding,” she yelled out.

  When Zo yanked the door open, butterscotch pudding splattered onto my pant leg, but I wasn't exactly in the position to spend much time thinking about my favorite pair of jeans.

  “There, on the balcony,” Zo said. I could still hear the faint sound of humming. It grew louder with each step I took toward the balcony. There was something about the sound that just wasn't right, but I couldn't place my finger on it. When Zo threw open the sliding door, I stepped forward, tilting my head to the side.

  Alone on the balcony stood a girl with white-blond hair staring straight ahead, her eyes locked on nothing at all. Without preamble, Zo stepped onto the balcony and shook her. The girl didn't respond.

  The humming continued, and when I really listened to the sound, it hit me like a punch to the stomach. Except for Zo, the girl was alone, but I heard two voices humming. I squeezed out onto the balcony and in front of the girl, following her gaze.

  I saw nothing, but when I turned back to look at the girl head-on, I stopped breathing.

  A thin, almost smoky, cord was wrapped firmly around her body, extending out past the railing and into the air where the girl was staring. As I watched, another wispy string lashed out, wrapping itself around her waist.

  What in the world was going on here?

  One by one, the tiny, nearly transparent cords appeared, wrapping around the girl and encircling her like string-thin tentacles latching on to prey. I watched in horror as the strings passed one another, moving in a dreadful, purposeful dance. Within seconds, thousands of the strings were weaving themselves together, creating a net behind the girl.

  And then, as I watched and as Zo shook the girl, trying to break her from her trance, the net began moving forward, the tentacles flexing and quivering as it did. As the strings moved, so did the girl, only it wasn't really the girl. It was something inside her that looked just like her.

  Something pure.

  “We have to stop the net,” I said, panicked. “It's pulling her out of her body” I stepped forward and tore at the strings, only to have my hands pass straight through them.

  “What net?” Delia and Annabelle asked at the same time.

  “You don't see the strings?” I asked, trying desperately to rip them from the girl. The cords moved steadily backward, and the image inside the girl moved farther and farther out of her body. “She's wrapped up in a net of them, and it's …it's “

  “No!” Zo yelled as the girl's eyes flashed a brilliant blue color.

  This shouldn't have been happening. We got there in time, and we should have been able to save her. Whatever this gray stuff was, it was killing her, and there was nothing I could do about it.

  The panic spread down my body, and with it, I could feel my blood boiling, the heat surging through my veins.

  This wasn't right. It wasn't fair. Something was killing her.

  I knew the exact second the heat left my skin. I wasn't even thinking about the fire or my power, but as I stared at those cords, ripping the girl from her physical form, I hated them. Hated them more than Alexandra Atkins. Hated them more than anything.

  The fire leaped from my body to the cords, scorching them with the intensity of my feeling.

  “Bailey! You're setting her on fire. Stop it!”

  I barely heard Delia's yell. I stared at the cords.

  Burn, I thought. Burn.

  And just like that, the cords snapped on
e by one under the force of my flame, and the girl sank back into her body just in time to realize that she was surrounded by fire.

  “Aaaa-hhhhhhh!”

  I had to give it to the girl. She knew how to scream.

  Delia held her hands out to the fire. “Honey,” she yelled.

  Instantly, the flames dissolved into honey.

  “Aaaahhhhhhh!” The girl continued screaming. Not that I blamed her. For the split second after the scary net of doom had disappeared, she'd been surrounded by flames, and now she was completely covered in honey. Not to mention the fact that the fire and honey had both appeared out of nowhere. I probably would have been freaking out, too.

  “Honey?” Zo asked Delia. “Seriously. Honey?”

  Delia looked down at her nails. “I don't deal well under pressure,” she said.

  “Aaaahhhhhhhl”

  “Will someone shut her up?” Zo asked, but I could hear the relief in her voice that the girl was still alive enough to be screaming at all. “She's going to blow our cover”

  “Stop screaming,” Annabelle said gently. “Come inside. Get washed off, and then we'll talk”

  “Stop screaming,” the girl repeated. Then she looked at us. “Listen, I don't know who you are, but I'm going to go inside and wash this stuff off me. Then, we'll talk”

  I stared at Annabelle. The blond girl didn't seem to have any idea that Annabelle had just worked some kind of freaky mind control mojo on her. Until this moment, none of us had realized the full extent of Annabelle's power, or, for that matter, mine.

  The second the girl was inside, Zo turned to me. “You set her on fire,” she said, awed. “Bay, you wouldn't even set the trash on fire”

  “I didn't set her on fire,” I said. “I set the tentacles that were pulling her out of her body on fire. There's a difference”

  Zo stared at me like I was speaking Indonesian.

  “Never mind,” I said. “I'll explain when we talk” I glanced back at the spot where the last of the tentacles had been a moment before. Nothing.

  “Bay?” Zo's voice broke into my thoughts. “You okay?”

  I could feel the heat draining out of my body, and with the heat, every ounce of energy I had. I sat down hard on the ground.