Tattoo

by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

  “I'll be okay,” I said, barely able to manage a whisper. I sat there for a while, putting all my concentration into breathing.

  Apparently, Delia's power wasn't the only one that took a lot out of a person.

  As I sat there, I stared out at the ocean. The waves crashed down, and as I watched, the water became a brighter and brighter shade of blue-green that I was all too familiar with. Mist the color of our tattoos rose off the ocean from as far as I could see in any direction, and as I watched, I heard their voices again in my head.

  From earth she comes

  From air she breathes

  From water, her prison beneath the seas

  The blue-green color flashed so bright that I had to shield my eyes, and then the rhymes were gone and my head was silent. I wasn't as logical as, say, Annabelle, but I was going to go out on a limb and guess that the ominous “she,” whoever she was, had come.

  Biting my bottom lip, I grimaced and put my hand to the tattoo on my back.

  Safe.

  For once, the voice in my head was giving me good news instead of cryptic rhymes or warnings about blood. I breathed a sigh of relief a second too soon.

  With the day in majority, the light will block you from her. Do not venture out after nightfall, child. She will find you. She will destroy you and all that you know.

  Great, I thought as Adea's voice quieted in my head. World-endy goodness, here we come.

  It was a full hour before the girl we'd saved came out of her hotel bathroom. Apparently, honey wasn't the easiest thing in the world to get out of hair. I had to wonder what Delia's thing was with gooey, nonsolid food substances.

  The girl opened her mouth and then closed it again, looking at each of us in turn.

  Zo was lying on the couch, completely absorbed in the soccer match that was blaring on the TV. Delia had helped herself to the contents of the fridge and was sipping on a canned mocha. Annabelle was sitting primly in a chair, quietly examining a book lying on the coffee table in front of her.

  And me? I was still curled up in a fetal position on the floor. Every now and then, I brought my hand to my tattoo, hoping to hear something useful, but all I got was a whole lot of nothing.

  “No offense, but who are you people?” the girl asked.

  Delia took a sip of her mocha. “Delia,” she said. She was one of those people who liked to believe she could survive on only one name, like Madonna or Cher.

  “I'm Bailey,” I said, scampering into a sitting position and trying to look less sketchy. “That's Zo”

  Zo, her eyes locked on the screen, didn't seem to have any intention of shifting her gaze from the game to the girl standing in front of us. As far as Zo was concerned, we'd saved her, and that was that.

  “I don't mean your names,” the blond girl said, wrapping her arms around her waist. “I mean what are you doing in my hotel room? And what was up with the fire? And the honey?” She paused, and her eyes narrowed. “Did my mother send you?”

  Her mother? What kind of mother did this girl have, anyway?

  “You don't really need an explanation,” Annabelle said soothingly. “But we'll tell you what we can”

  “That's okay,” the girl said immediately. “I don't really need an explanation”

  Zo grunted, eyes still on the television, a not-so-subtle warning to Annabelle to refrain from ever pulling the mind mojo on the rest of us.

  “Why don't you sit down?” Annabelle asked the girl.

  “Then we'll talk. You'll have to excuse Zo's manners. She was raised by a group of indigenous swamp wallabies and is at times uncomfortable conversing with civilized humans”

  Now that we'd gotten Annabelle talking, she wasn't showing any signs of stopping, and I had to bite my bottom lip to keep from laughing at her completely bizarre insult. It sounded so adult and intelligent and Annabelle.

  Zo sat up. A-belle finally had her attention.

  The blond girl plopped herself down on the couch, following Annabelle's “request” to a T, and I touched the tattoo on my back, wondering if the big voice people had anything to say about her.

  Nothing.

  “Look, it's like this—” Zo started to say, but then she interrupted herself. “Swamp wallabies?”

  Annabelle arched her eyebrows and stared back at her cousin, her face completely serious. “Your heritage is nothing to be ashamed of, Zo,” she said. Without giving Zo a chance to respond, she turned to the girl. “Why don't you tell us your name?”

  “I'm Amber,” the girl said. Her voice was cute and way peppier than any fifteen(ish)-year-old's voice should have been. With her white-blond hair pulled into a high, wet ponytail, she looked like an Amber.

  “And what are you doing here, Amber?” Annabelle asked.

  “I'm here with my mom,” Amber said, rolling her eyes. “She's here for some retreat thing, and she brought me with her. She thinks it's good for me”

  “You didn't want to come,” Annabelle said softly. “Because of the circle”

  Amber's eyes widened and then she scowled. “Don't tell me you're with them,” she said. “I can't take any more freaks right now”

  “Freaks?” I asked.

  “I don't want to talk about it,” the girl said.

  Delia, Zo, and I looked at Annabelle, waiting for her to convince the girl that she did in fact want to talk about it, but Annabelle remained silent.

  “What were you doing out on the balcony?” Zo asked. “Do you remember what happened?”

  “I was just watching them …the other kids my age here,” the girl replied. “And then all of a sudden, you were all there, and I was surrounded by fire and then the fire turned into honey and …I'm going insane, aren't I?” The girl paused. “Ohmigod,” she said. “You're not even real, are you? I'm hallucinating. I told my mom coming here would traumatize me, and it did”

  “We're real,” I told her. “Trust me”

  The girl looked at me suspiciously, and without another word, she reached out and poked Zo.

  “You want to lose that finger?” Zo asked.

  The girl shook her head.

  “Then don't poke me again”

  “Ahem” Annabelle cleared her throat, and Zo shut her mouth. “Do you remember anything after watching the others?” Annabelle asked softly. “Think back. You were humming, and then you were looking at something”

  The girl bit her bottom lip. “I was just thinking about what it would have been like, you know, if things had gone differently” A look came over Amber's face, and I wondered if she was starting to become suspicious of the little mind meld Annabelle was working on her. “I said I didn't want to talk about it”

  I thought about the words Annabelle had muttered on the elevator. About the girl having broken a circle; about the others (the people playing volleyball?) being mad at her. About wishing things could be like they were.

  So how had she gone from thinking and wishing to being lassoed by a bunch of freaky smoke tentacles?

  I met Delia's eyes, and I knew that she was thinking pretty much the same thing, minus the visual of the freaky smoke tentacles.

  I leaned forward and sat my chin on my hands, waiting for someone to break the silence.

  “Sweet tattoo,” Amber said, her eyes on my back. Self-conscious, I pulled my shirt back down over it, only to have it ride back up again. “Is it real?” Amber asked.

  “No,” I said. “Just temporary” At least, I hoped it was just temporary. At this point, who knew?

  “Still pretty sweet,” Amber said, filling the silence. “What is it?”

  “Not sure,” I said. “Some kind of sun, maybe”

  “You know,” Amber said thoughtfully, “it almost looks like some kind of language or something”

  Delia leaned back, showing off her tattoo as well.

  “Awesome,” Amber said. “You both got one?” She squinted her eyes at Delia's stomach. “Is that one of those Japanese symbols? What does it mean?”

  Annabelle practic
ally jumped out of her chair. “Amber, we have to go”

  The announcement surprised me, but one look at Annabelle's eyes told me all I needed to know. She knew something the rest of us didn't.

  Annabelle hesitated for just a second as she looked at Amber. “You're not crazy,” she told her gently. “There really was fire and there really was honey, and you were just a part of something that is a whole lot bigger than us”

  Amber nodded. “Bigger than us,” she echoed.

  “Just remember not to tell anyone,” Annabelle said. “And give the circle another shot. The others will forgive you if you ask them to” Annabelle looked at the rest of us. “We should probably get going”

  I was suddenly overcome with an incredible urge to get going. Zo was already halfway to the door before she realized what was happening. “Annabelle!”

  I giggled at the look on Zo's face.

  “You think this is funny?” Zo asked me. “Next thing you know, we'll be alphabetizing our DVDs and—and using little day planners and color-coding things that other people wouldn't even write down”

  Oh, the horror, I thought, but since I didn't really want a repeat of Zo putting me in a headlock, I kept my mouth shut. As I stepped into the hallway, I glanced back over my shoulder at Amber. Her blond hair was drying quickly, and she still looked more than a little dazed.

  “Do me a favor,” I said. “Don't hum again for a really, really long time”

  Amber gave me a strange look. I didn't blame her. The request didn't make much sense, even to me, but it had just sort of come out of my mouth. I hadn't planned on saying it.

  “Okay, sure,” Amber said finally. “No humming”

  “Goodbye, Amber,” Annabelle said.

  “Watch yourself,” Zo said. “And stay off the balcony”

  “Thanks for the mocha,” Delia said. “And you might think about layering your hair. I think it would do wonders for your cheekbones”

  And with that, we were gone. As soon as the elevator door closed behind us, I turned to Annabelle. “What's going on?” I asked. “Where are we going?”

  “And what was she thinking?” Zo asked. “What wasn't she telling us?”

  Annabelle was silent for a moment. “That thing she regretted, the circle she kept talking about, I wasn't getting a clear picture, but I think it had something to do with some New Age group she'd joined” She paused. “Her mom's really into that stuff, I guess, something about her heritage. Amber didn't want us to know. She thinks it's freaky”

  “Like the floating flames turning into honey isn't?” Delia asked.

  Annabelle looked away, carefully avoiding our eyes. “She sort of doesn't think that's all that weird anymore,” she said guiltily. “I …uh.”

  “Gotcha,” I replied, saving her from having to explain. She really hadn't had much of a choice about the mind control. The last thing we needed was a curious Amber in the middle of all this, whatever all this really was. I could just imagine her popping up, all clueless-like, at the most inopportune time.

  The elevator stopped on the fourth floor. When it opened, the same two teenage boys stared back at us. Taking one look at Zo, they made a beeline in the other direction. As soon as the door closed again, the four of us starting cracking up.

  “Zo has that effect on boys,” Delia said in a mock-serious voice.

  Zo elbowed her in the stomach, a grin on her face. “So where are we going again, A-belle?” she asked, changing the subject.

  “To the university,” Annabelle said plainly, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

  “As in the place with all the professors and college students?” I didn't quite understand the logic there.

  “As in college boys?” Delia asked, a huge grin spreading across her face.

  “No,” Annabelle said. “More like the university, as in the place where my mother works, and the place where I know practically the whole linguistics department”

  “Linguistics?” I asked. Sometimes Annabelle was a little hard to follow.

  Zo caught on first, which I guess made sense. After all, Annabelle was her cousin. “You think the tattoos actually mean something?” Zo asked. “That Amber was right and that they are some kind of language?”

  “Right now,” Annabelle said, “I don't think we have much else to go on”

  “It can't hurt,” Delia said. “I mean, it's not like we're crunched for time unless Zo gets another one of those oh-my-Gucci-someone-is-dying things”

  “Visions,” Zo corrected tersely.

  I glanced over my shoulder at the ocean as we began to walk toward the bus station. The university was on the other side of town, and my feet were already killing me from walking so much today.

  My tattoo throbbed as I watched a wave crash into the shore and remembered what I'd seen earlier. None of my friends had quite known what to make of it, or the thing I'd seen trying to hurt Amber.

  I brought my fingers to my tattoo.

  Dark. Coming. To find you.

  Great, now the voices were speaking in creepy fragments. Like they weren't already hard enough to understand.

  “Uh …guys?” I said. “There's a slight chance I might have forgotten to tell you something about that ‘all the time in the world' thing” I tore my eyes away from the ocean and looked at my friends. “We sort of can't be out after dark, and it's, like, four-thirty now”

  “What?”

  “Long story,” I told them.

  “Bailey” All it took was a single word from Zo, and I spilled my guts.

  “You know that freaky green mist stuff and the whole ‘she comes' thing that I told you about? Well, whoever's coming, she's coming after dark, and beats me why, but we want to be at home when that happens…“

  All three of my friends engaged in some quality synchronized staring in my general direction, so I took a deep breath and started again.

  Four-thirty. T-minus two hours until sundown, and we were taking things one step at a time.

  “Hello, Mom”

  Annabelle's mother looked at the four of us for a moment before replying. “Hello, Annie” Dr. Porter always confused me. She had A-belle's subtle way of studying people, and she had the same quiet, sensible air, but she also somehow managed to be so incredibly scatterbrained that half the time sensibility never came into the picture.

  “Is Lionel around?” Annabelle asked. “I have something I want him to take a look at”

  If Annabelle's mother thought it was strange that her fifteen-year-old daughter had something she wanted a professor of ancient languages to look at, she didn't say anything about it. Then again, knowing A-belle, she'd probably grown up asking the adults around her all kinds of obscure academic questions.

  “Lionel's in his office,” Annabelle's mom said fifteen or twenty seconds later, once she'd remembered we were standing there talking to her. After a beat, she turned to Zo. “Staying out of trouble?” she asked.

  “Why, Aunt Sarah, I'm shocked that you would even ask such a question,” Zo replied, doing her best Annabelle impression.

  Annabelle's mom grinned.

  “Mom, don't you have a phone call to make?” Annabelle prompted.

  After another conspiratorial wink at Zo, Annabelle's mother disappeared back into her office.

  “Tell me you didn't just pull your mind meld mojo on your mom,” Zo said.

  Delia whistled softly. “I think maybe I got the wrong power,” she said. “Mom mind control. Now that could take sneaking out to a whole new level”

  “I've never snuck out,” Annabelle said defensively. “And besides, she really did have an important phone call to make. She'd completely forgotten about it. I just fiddled around in her mind until I found what it was she was forgetting. Nothing”—Annabelle put her hands up to her forehead and made squiggly fingers as I had earlier—”about it”

  “In that case,” Delia said, “I'll keep my transmogrification, thank you very much. Now, who wants highlights?”

  “N
ot I,” I said immediately.

  Delia turned to Zo.

  “So help me, Delia, if you bring those evil little fingers of yours anywhere near my hair, you're going to need to transmogrify yourself a body cast. And, hate to break it to you, but given the whole supernatural curfew thing, shouldn't we, you know, be doing something that's not discussing highlights?”

  Ignoring the two of them, Annabelle walked down the hallway and knocked on an office door. “Come in,” a voice called back. I didn't recognize the accent. Something Slavic, maybe?

  Annabelle turned to us. “Can the three of you behave long enough to talk to Lionel?”

  “Hey!” I said. “I didn't do anything”

  “Says the girl who set Alex on fire yesterday,” Delia shot back.

  Annabelle put her finger on the doorknob to Lionel's office and gave us each a warning look before she twisted it and opened the door.

  “Annie,” the accented voice boomed. “You never come to visit an old man anymore”

  “I don't know any old men,” Annabelle replied, smiling. She paused. “I've brought friends to see you, Lionel”

  “You have friends?”

  Zo grinned at Lionel's mock-shocked voice as the three of us approached the office. “I think I'm going to like this guy”

  “This is Bailey,” Annabelle said, setting about making the proper introductions. “The one thoroughly inspecting her nails is Delia, and—”

  Zo cut Annabelle off, probably worrying that her introduction was going to include something about being raised by wild monkeys. “I'm Zo,” she said sweetly. “Annabelle's cousin”

  Zo gave Annabelle a pointed look, and Annabelle rolled her eyes.

  “So, why do you visit me today?” Lionel asked from his spot behind a large mahogany desk. He was a big man, with sparkling eyes and a beard too big for his face.

  “I have something I'd like you to take a look at, Lionel,” Annabelle said. “It's a symbol, perhaps something you might be able to enlighten us on” Now that we were in a university setting, A-belle had switched abruptly into full-on academic mode. To me, she sort of sounded like a robot.