Tattoo Read online

  Success.

  “Mom, we gotta go,” I said. “Delia's meeting us over there, and if she gets there before we do, she'll probably redo Zo's entire wardrobe or something”

  Zo's eyes lost all glint of the humor they'd shown at my mom's not-so-subtle boy talk. For all we knew, Delia was already over there transforming Zo's worn-out boys' sweatshirts into tube tops.

  My mom took one look at Zo's stricken face and laughed out loud. Thirty seconds and two promises to call if we needed anything later, we were out the door.

  “I swear, if she touches any of my stuff with those change-happy fingers of hers.” Zo cut off as Delia came out of her front door and met us on the sidewalk in front of Zo's house.

  “Miss me?” she asked teasingly

  “But of course,” I replied. “Now, let's get re-searchy”

  Zo and her dad lived alone in the house across the street from mine and had since the big mom fiasco eleven years before. Luckily, her dad usually went to his favorite sports bar on Saturday nights, so we didn't have to worry about adult interference for a while.

  Zo, thinking of food (big surprise there), made a beeline for the phone as soon as she got into the house, and the rest of us made a beeline for Zo's dad's study. More specifically, we made a beeline for Zo's dad's computer.

  Annabelle sat down at the keyboard, and before I could so much as blink, she pulled up a search engine. “How do you spell Adea?” she asked.

  “Don't search for that first,” I surprised myself by saying. “Search for Sídhe” Without being asked, I spelled it out for her. “S-Í-D-H-E”

  “Whatever you say,” Annabelle said. I'd told them what Valgius had gone to great pains (from the sounds of it, literally) to tell me about our cryptic and currently vague enemy, but I don't think the enormity of it had hit them the way it had hit me.

  In my dream, Valgius had said he was Sídhe like it was the first thing on his list of defining characteristics. Like if I was making a list, and female and good friend and decent student and horrible dancer were all on there, all of that would have been below whatever was as important to me as being Sídhe was to Valgius. Then, boom, he'd told me that whoever this nameless evil being was, she was Sídhe, too.

  It killed him to say it, even discounting the difficulty he'd had making me hear it.

  Annabelle's hands flew across the keys, and she'd made it through several links by the time Zo walked into the study.

  “Pizza will be here in no time,” she said. “One cheese and one supreme with extra pepperoni”

  One guess as to which one Zo was planning on eating.

  “You guys find anything interesting?”

  “We're looking up Sídhe,” I said. “Since that's what Valgius and Adea are, and since that's what Val said this bad thing was, I thought it would be a good place to start”

  “Val?” Zo asked, raising an eyebrow at me. “As in Valgius?”

  “We both know I'm totally too lazy for three syllables,” I said, and a private look passed between the two of us. There was a reason Zo was Zo and not Zoe-Claire (other than the obvious what-were-her-parents-thinking thing), and I was that reason. Was it any wonder I'd earned her eternal loyalty?

  “Here we go,” Annabelle said finally, interrupting my trip down memory lane. “ ‘Sídhe: in Celtic mythology, a royal race of fairies, led by—' “

  “Wait a second,” Zo said. “Just back up the babbling wagon, there. Fairies? Royal? Royal fairies? Are you trying to tell me that this awful, world-ending, us-destroying thing we were given these powers to stop is some kind of royal fairy?”

  I thought about the way Valgius had referred to the it as a she. It was hard to think of it as a person. Or a Sídhe. Or whatever.

  “A fairy princess,” I said out loud, and I could completely understand the incredulous expression on Zo's face. All this doom-and-gloom, world-at-stake hoopla over a fairy princess? Something about that seemed wrong on so many levels.

  “It might not be a fairy princess,” Delia put in thoughtfully. “It could be a fairy duchess, or a fairy countess, or a fairy viscountess “

  For a brief time in seventh grade, Delia had been obsessed with British royalty in all its forms.

  “… or a fairy lady or a fairy dowager duchess, or a fairy dowager countess “

  “It says here,” Annabelle said, as Delia prattled on about all the glorious royal fairy possibilities, “that the Sídhe were thought by some to be a race of warriors”

  Annabelle's hands flew over the keys, and she hit another link with the mouse. “This one says that ‘sídhe' with a lower-case ‘s' refers to a hill, or a fairy mound”

  “More fairies,” Zo grumbled.

  “These fairy mounds were thought to be passages to the Otherworld, especially at certain times of the year. It was at these times, such as Samhain on October thirty-first, that the Tuatha de Danaan were thought to pass from the Otherworld into our realm”

  “The whosit de what?” I asked.

  “Tuatha de Danaan,” Annabelle replied, wrinkling her forehead as she read on. “Another name for the Sídhe, I think. It means ‘Children of Dana.' “ Annabelle paused and read on. “Some kind of ancient earth goddess or something to that effect”

  “Bad flashbacks of seventh grade and Greek mythology,” Zo said. “Did I mention how much I hated our unit on Greek mythology? Because I did”

  Delia poked Zo in the side with a playful grin. “You only hated it because we spent most of our time on Aphrodite and the Muses and they were too girly for your tastes,” she said.

  “No,” Zo said. “I hated it because the other section got to do a unit on samurais, and we were stuck talking about who gave fire to who and who was kidnapped to the underworld by who” Zo wrinkled her nose. “I swear, Greek mythology is the ancient equivalent of a giant cosmic soap opera. I kept waiting for Aphrodite's twin sister to come back and push her down a well in order to try to take over her life”

  “Somebody's been watching soap operas,” Delia said in a singsong voice.

  “Have not,” Zo said, a little too quickly. Delia kept on grinning like a Cheshire cat.

  “Guys “

  I turned to look at Annabelle. Her eyes flitted back to the screen.

  “What?” the rest of us asked at once.

  “The Sídhe were known for their spell-casting ability”

  We stared blankly back at her.

  “Those words you heard when we applied the tattoos, Bailey,” Annabelle reminded me. “Do you think it might have been a spell?”

  “Sure,” I said. “It makes sense” A horrible thought occurred to me. “If Adea and Valgius are Sídhe, and they can cast a spell that gives us these powers, then what exactly can this third evil Sídhe do?”

  “I don't know about you guys,” Zo said, “but I have a little trouble being intimidated by a fairy princess. What's the worst she can do?”

  Delia's mouth dropped open, and she smacked Zo. “Haven't you ever seen a horror movie?” she demanded, hands on her hips. “That's exactly the type of thing people say right before something horrible happens”

  For a moment, the three of us sat there in silence.

  Ding. Dong.

  “Aaaaahhhhhhh!” I yelped despite myself.

  Zo, Annabelle, and Delia broke into a fit of giggles. “Doorbell,” Annabelle said mildly, her eyes still laughing.

  “Right,” I said. “Doorbell”

  Zo jumped up and sauntered out of the room. I followed her.

  “This is where the axe murderer comes in,” Delia said, on my heels.

  I turned around and glared at her.

  “What?” she said. “You've seen as many horror movies as I have. I speak the truth”

  Zo ignored both of us and flung open the front door.

  The pizza delivery boy stared at us humorlessly I didn't exactly blame him. Chances were, if I was a pizza boy, I wouldn't be too chipper, either.

  “That'll be sixteen seventy-five,” he said in
a bored voice.

  Zo turned to me. “The money's on the counter,” she said. “Can you grab it?”

  I didn't have to ask to know that while I was getting the money, Zo would be inspecting the pizza. There were few things in life that Zo took more seriously than pizza.

  I'd been in Zo's house so often that I could have walked the path from the front door into the kitchen blindfolded. I knew exactly where her father usually left money for food.

  “Not here,” I yelled back.

  “Try in the first drawer,” Zo yelled back. “Maybe it fell in or something. Look under the blue notepad”

  I opened the drawer and picked up the blue notepad, ignoring the makeshift shopping list Zo's dad had put together, and grabbed the twenty that sat underneath it. By the time I got back to the front door, Zo had eaten half a slice of pizza, and Delia and the pizza boy were laughing and staring holes into each other.

  I handed him the money. “Thanks,” he said, never taking his eyes off Delia. Or, more precisely, never taking his eyes off Delia's chest.

  “Guys?” Annabelle's voice rang down the stairs. “You need to come check this out”

  “Pizza,” Zo yelled back up the stairs.

  “This is important, Zo,” Annabelle yelled back. For someone as quiet as she was, A-belle had a heck of a set of lungs on her.

  “More important than pizza?”

  “Yes”

  Zo sighed. “Come on,” she said. “The practical one calls”

  Delia batted her eyelashes at the pizza boy one last time. I wasn't really sure why she bothered with the eyelashes. He was so entranced with her breasts that I doubted he could even see her eyes.

  “Maybe I'll see you around,” Delia said.

  The pizza boy gazed adoringly at her. “Sure,” he said, a huge grin on his face.

  “Bye,” Delia said.

  “Sure,” the boy repeated, his eyes still locked on her chest.

  Delia giggled and gave us a helpless grin as Annabelle told us to hurry again. After another five seconds of the pizza boy not getting the hint, Zo took matters into her own hands.

  “Allow me to demonstrate something,” she said. She pointed to Delia's face. “This is Delia's face” Zo's hands moved downward. “And I can see you're already acquainted with her breasts. Believe it or not, her face just said goodbye, so I'm afraid you and her breasts are going to have to cut this little moment short”

  Without saying another word, Zo closed the door on him. She grabbed another slice of pizza and headed up the stairs.

  “Zo!” Delia shrieked.

  Zo didn't even turn around. “You can thank me later”

  Delia huffed, but I knew for a fact she didn't mind it. If it wasn't for Zo, Delia would have spent her entire life trying to get guys to look at her face. I wondered if the boy was still standing on the front porch, staring at the spot where Delia's chest had been a moment before. I wouldn't have been surprised.

  “So, what's the four-one-one?” I asked Annabelle as soon as the three of us had made it into the study. Annabelle opened her mouth to answer, but Zo preempted her.

  “I come bearing pizza,” Zo said solemnly, handing her cousin a piece as the four of us crowded around the computer screen.

  Annabelle accepted the pizza gracefully, and, satisfied with her research prowess, began to nibble on it as the rest of us took in the information she'd dug up.

  “ ‘Daughters of Adea,' “ I read out loud. It took about three seconds after I'd read the words for me to figure out what I'd said. “Daughters of Adea?”

  “It's a New Age group,” Annabelle said. “I googled Adea, and this is what I got. That is how you spell it, isn't it, Bailey?”

  I nodded. “I think so,” I said.

  “That's it?” Zo asked between bites of pizza. I had a feeling that in the battle of pizza versus Annabelle's breakthrough, the pizza was on the verge of winning more of Zo's attention.

  “I haven't gotten to the best part,” Annabelle said. She scrolled down the page.

  There, staring back at us, was a very familiar symbol: two overlapping crescents. Without a word, Annabelle lifted the hair off her neck. “They're nearly identical,” she said, rubbing her thumb gently over her tattoo.

  “Okay, now we're talking near-pizza-level impressive here” High praise from Zo.

  “Wow,” Delia said, her eyes lighting on something else on the page. “Way impressive”

  “What?” I asked. A moment later, my eyes found what Delia had seen.

  “A retreat?” I asked.

  “Not just any retreat,” Annabelle said. She clicked on the link and a new page was opened. “A retreat held in celebration of Mabon” She paused for a moment. “At the Richmond Hotel”

  My eyes widened. “Amber,” I said. “She was there with her mom for some retreat, and remember, Annabelle picked up on all of those New Age vibes”

  “Are you telling me we spent all that time at the university, and the answer was at the Richmond all along?” Zo asked.

  We were silent. Somehow, I had a feeling I knew what we were going to be doing the next day.

  A pale green light filled the air from behind me, and I turned around.

  “You so did not just transmogrify pizza into a salad,” Zo said, absolutely horrified. “That's like sacrilege”

  “House salad with balsamic vinaigrette,” Delia confirmed.

  “That is just wrong on so many levels,” Zo said, holding her piece of pizza closer to her, protecting it from Delia's transmogrifying fingertips.

  Annabelle giggled at the look of pure horror on her cousin's face, and then, to cover it up, she raised her pizza slice in the air. “To tomorrow,” she said, and then we toasted: my half-eaten crust clinking with Zo's fourth piece of pizza and Delia's newly transmogrified salad fork.

  To Adea, I thought, wondering what secrets the next day would bring.

  “To pizza,” Zo said, sneaking a bite from a piece that seemed to have just appeared in her other hand.

  “To us,” Delia corrected. “For being so utterly fabulous”

  Even Zo had to grin.

  “To us”

  Come, come, to fight, to live, she comes.

  I opened my eyes to the sound of water falling on stone. I turned over and ran my hands over the stone seal beneath me, feeling its crevices. Even staring directly at it, I was overwhelmed with the sense that I wasn't really seeing; that I couldn't see it.

  “You see more than you think you do”

  “Adea” Her name escaped my throat before I even knew I'd opened my mouth.

  “There's power in a name,” she said. “Power to the one who says it”

  I stared at her, trying to comprehend. “Trust me,” I said. “I don't have any power”

  Except for that whole pesky fire thing, I thought.

  “You have more than you think,” she said.

  “In the blood”

  I whirled around to see Valgius standing behind me, his hair glowing a true black underneath its soft but brilliant blue sheen. “The power is in the blood,” he said.

  A green mark, so dark it was almost black, slashed across his forehead, marking the otherwise perfect tawny skin. Without thinking, I reached up to touch it.

  “You're hurt,” I said.

  His eyes stared over my head at Adea.

  “Aye, child,” she said. “He's hurt”

  “It's nothing,” he said, every inch the warrior Annabelle had said the Sídhe were thought to be.

  “We know war,” Adea said sadly, lifting the thought from my mind, “but we aren't meant for it. Not anymore” For a moment, her eyes glazed over with memories, but she shook her head slightly, her ruby black hair shaking as she did. “She's free now, and the balance grows weaker. We grow weaker” She touched my shoulder softly. “She cannot know you're here, cannot know that you've seen the Seal”

  “She knows humans,” Valgius said. “That was her choice, to live among you, to steal your power so that she
might destroy us”

  “You are her playthings,” Adea spit out, anger clear in the lines of her face.

  Valgius's voice stayed calm. “She knows humans, and do not be fooled, daughter, she knows you”

  Me? She knew me?

  “She doesn't know what you've seen. She doesn't know the powers you bear, but she knows you”

  Adea caught my chin in her hands. Soft hands, cool to the touch like the stone itself.

  “She knows you. Never forget that”

  I could feel a sob rising in my throat, and I wasn't sure why. “What do you want from me?” I asked. “What do you expect me to do? I don't even know what she's trying to do, let alone how to stop it. I don't even know who she is” Tears ran down my cheeks. “Who is she?”

  With gentle hands, Adea wiped the tears from my face.

  “I don't even know her name,” I whimpered. “You said names have power. How can I stop her if I don't even know her name?”

  The tears she'd wiped from my face clung to her fingertips. Reverently, Adea brought her lips to her hands and blew my tears off her fingers. They fell, like raindrops out of the sky, onto the stone we were standing on; onto the Seal.

  Instantly, a wave of power shot through the room, extending out in a circle from the Seal.

  “May your tears keep us safe,” Adea whispered.

  “Safe from what?” I asked.

  “Alecca”

  “Alecca” I woke with the name on my lips and groped around in the dark for something to write with. I couldn't forget the name. Names were power.

  “Alecca,” I said under my breath. “Alecca”

  “With those shoes?” a sleeping Delia murmured incredulously. “You have got to be kidding me”

  “Alecca,” I whispered the name again, and when I finally found a pen, I breathed a sigh of relief.

  With each letter, I said the name aloud. “Alecca. Alecca. Alecca”

  It didn't sound particularly evil. Honestly, it sounded kind of like a fairy princess name.

  I looked down at the paper, and as I stared at the name, I felt a chill spread up my body. My limbs went cold, and I found myself absolutely unable to move.

  She knows you.

  I shook the memory of Adea's words from my mind and forced myself to move. Slowly, the heat came back into my body. My left arm throbbed, and I looked down. Even in the dark, I could see the cut, shallow and thin, spread across my skin.