Tattoo #1: Tattoo (7 page)

"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 S�dhe 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 S�dhe, and they can cast a spell that gives us these powers, then what exactly can this third evil S�dhe 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 de- manded, hands on her hips. "That's exactly the type of thing people say right before something hor- rible 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 sec- onds 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 lit- tle 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 sur- prised. "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 re- treat 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 sac- rilege" "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" Onbekend 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 per- fect 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 S�dhe 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 weak- er" 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. "The Blood of the S�dhe" I whispered the words before I realized what I was doing. "Bailey?" I turned to look at Zo. Her blond hair was a mess from her sleeping bag. "You okay, Bay?" I glanced down at my arm. The cut was gone. "Bay?" "I'm okay," I said softly, careful not to wake the others. Zo crawled over her sleeping bag toward me and then, without a word, she threw her arms around my shoulders. "You know I've got your back," she said. "You know that, right, Bay? No matter what. It's you and me" "I know," I said, and all of a sudden, I was in kindergarten again, and Zo, blond pigtails waggling in fury, was demanding to know who'd made me cry so that she could make them eat dirt. Literally. "Pleats?" Delia whimpered in her sleep. "No pleats" Zo's expression never faltered. "I'm not gonna let anything hurt her, either, Bay," she said. "Or Annabelle" Zo, in her pajamas, was ready to take on the world for us, armed with nothing but premonitions and what every teacher she'd ever had had defined as an "attitude problem" I loved her for it. "You look tired," Zo said. "Go back to sleep" From the tone of her voice, I inferred that I'd been given my orders. Obediently, I lay back down, and I was nearly asleep when I noticed that Zo was still sitting up, and her eyes were open. She was watching me. Guarding me. Guarding all of us. I closed my eyes again and hoped that Zo would soon do the same. "You're beautiful" "No," I said, staring back into his eyes. "You are" He laughed then. "You surprise me," he said. "Everything about you surprises me" I could feel his breath on my face, and it made my skin heat up. "Your eyes surprise me every time I look into them and they're looking back at me" He brought his hands gently to the side of my face. "Your mouth surprises me, because you always seem to smile more with one half than with the other, like part of you knows a funny secret that none of the rest of us, not even your other half can guess" He brushed a finger over my lips, and I sucked in a breath. This was so right. It all felt so right. "You surprise me, Bailey Morgan," he said. We swayed to the music, and the tune filled my head. This was so right, and I wanted it with all of my being. Wanted him. "Kane," I said. There was so much to ask him. He could have any girl. Why me? He hadn't even re- ally known my name, and now I was surprising him? "Just dance with me," he whispered back. "That's all I want, Bailey" He paused. "You. Me. Right now" We continued dancing, moving as one to the strange music that coursed through our bodies and into the air. His hand moved from my face and down my arm. I winced. "You're hurt," he said tenderly. I looked down at the red scratch on my left arm. Where had that come from? I couldn't remember. Without another word, he brought his lips to my arm, and silently pressed them to the cut. "There," he said, "all better. " And when he said it, everything was all better. There was nothing to worry about. There was just me, and Kane, and our dance. He brought his lips close to mine. "All better," he said again. "Just the way it should be" "The way it should be," I repeated, and my lips gravitated toward his. And then, he was gone. "You wake me up at the crack of dawn, but you won't even let me throw a pillow at her?" "She might be dreaming something important" I recognized Annabelle's patented "I am sensible, hear me roar" voice. "I was dreaming about Juicy Couture," the first voice replied. "And you don't think that's impor- tant?" Groaning slightly, I rolled over onto my side and opened my eyes. "Morning, sunshine," Zo said. "Good
afternoon's more like it," Delia grumbled. "Did you know that they got me up at seven, Bai- ley? Seven!" Delia was clearly scandalized that there were people in this world who got up at seven o'clock, let alone that one of them would have had the audacity to wake her up at that ungodly hour. "We wanted to maximize our use of daylight hours," Annabelle explained to me. After a full night's sleep, she seemed more in academic mystery-solving mode than ever. Zo cleared her throat. "Fine," Annabelle admitted. "I wanted to maximize our use of daylight hours, and Zo wanted to go for a run and then eat what, as best I can tell, was the majority of a very large pig" "So you woke me up why?" Delia asked, not letting go of it. "Because you take five times as long to get ready as anyone else, and we wanted to be ready to go when Bailey woke up," Zo said, answering for Annabelle without any psychic prompting. "What time is it?" I asked. "A little after noon," Delia said. "I've been ready for three hours, and I couldn't exactly go back to sleep after I got dressed" I got up from my sleeping bag and gave Delia a small hug. "Would it make you feel better if I let you give me highlights?" I asked. Delia's eyes lit up. "Maybe," she said. "Can I give you colored contacts, too?" "I don't wear contacts," I said. Delia rolled her eyes. "You know what I mean," she said. "Well, can I?" I sighed, but thinking of Delia up at the crack of dawn, and poor Annabelle and Zo listening to her complain while they all waited for me to wake up from another Kane dream, I had to give in. "Fine," I said, "but we put it all back like it used to be before my mom sees me" "Agreed," Delia said. "You get dressed, and I'll warm up" I didn't ask how exactly she was going to warm up to changing the color of my eyes. I was pretty sure I didn't want to know. Moving quickly, I slipped on a pair of jeans and a white T-shirt. "Okay," I said, feeling as if I was about to face a firing squad. "Just get it over with" Delia looked at me and then nodded. "Honey blond and amber streaks," she said, running her hands over my hair. "Amber," I remembered, the second Delia said the word. "The retreat" Delia snapped her fingers to get my attention. "Eyes first," she said. "Now don't blink, or you're go- ing to end up with really weird-looking eyelids" "You know," Zo mused, "that could come in handy. You're in class, and you're sleeping, only your eyelids look just like your eyes, so." Annabelle shook her head. "Only you," she said to Zo. Zo grinned. My eyes were starting to sting from holding them open for so long. "Done," Delia said. She turned me toward the wall, and with another wave of her hand turned Zo's soccer poster into a full-sized mirror. "You didn't...now, that's just wrong, you can't...soccer ...mirror " I barely even heard Zo's words. There had to be some trick to this poster-mirror. I was pretty sure that that couldn't have been me in the reflection. The highlights brought out the blond tone in my hair, but at the same time, made the brown parts look darker, more dramatic. My skin practically glowed next to my new hair color, and then I looked into my own eyes. They were blue. Shockingly, unapologetically blue. Delia examined her work. "A little more dramatic than what I had pictured," she said, "but all in all, I think it's stunning" I couldn't tear my eyes away from my reflection. My hair shined as it had never shined before, the colors blending together to make me look ...almost... "Pretty" Annabelle lifted the word from my mind. I looked at Delia. "I love it," I said, "but the eyes might be a little much" "I'll trade you the eyes for a different shirt," Delia said. "What's wrong with my shirt?" "Don't make me go there," Delia said. "I thought this whole transmogrification thing was supposed to make her really tired," Zo said, still in shock over the loss of her soccer poster. Delia grinned. "I think this power is growing on me," she explained. "Or I'm growing on it" She lifted her hands to my face and imperiously commanded my eyes to return to their normal color. Then, before I knew what was happening, she turned an appraising look on my shirt. She held her hand over it and whispered something I couldn't quite hear. Almost immediately, my shirt began melding itself into something else, right there on my body. "Delia!" I yelped. "This isn't a shirt. This is like two-thirds of a shirt, max" Zo, who'd finally managed to stop looking where her poster used to be, clapped me on the shoulder. "Take one for the team, Bay" I gaped at her. Zo Porter, queen of the boyish sweatshirt, was telling me to wear this low-cut, belly- showing, almost see-through number to "take one for the team"? Annabelle giggled and then cleared her throat. "We should be going," she said. "We're already down to barely seven hours of daylight, and we don't know how things are going to go at the re- treat" I was supposed to go out in public looking like this? "So what did you dream last night?" Annabelle asked me curiously. I opened my mouth, but all I could think about was the fact that I felt more or less topless. "It's a statement," Delia told me encouragingly. "And you look fabulous" She wiggled her eyebrows at me. "Let's hope we run into Kane again" "Bailey" Annabelle tried to get me back on topic. "Did you dream?" I nodded. Annabelle nodded back at me. "Can you tell us about it on the way to the Richmond?" I immediately started for the door. "Come on, guys," I said, ready and roaring to get this day under way. "I'll tell you about my dream on the way to the Richmond" Silence fell over the room for about two full seconds, and then, at the exact same moment, Zo and I realized what had just happened. "Annabelle!" Even I had to laugh at the guilty expression on her face, and then, we were on our way for real-- me, my "shirt," my new highlights, and all. Onbekend "Okay," Zo said as we stepped into the hotel lobby. I could tell by her tone of voice that she was practically rubbing her hands together at the thought of interrogating some fairy worshippers, good cop/bad cop-style. "Who's first?" "People skills," Annabelle reminded her cousin. "This is going to take people skills" "I have people skills," Zo insisted. The rest of us remained suspiciously quiet. "We need to be covert" Annabelle tried a slightly different approach. "And " She trailed off as Delia approached a woman to our left. "What can you tell me about Adea and the S�dhe?" Delia demanded. The woman stared at her. Delia spoke again, more slowly this time. "What. Can. You" Delia gestured toward the woman to clarify that last word. "Tell. Me" Another clarifying gesture. "About--" Annabelle snatched Delia's arm and pulled her aside. "You call that covert?" "I'd be glad to tell you about Adea," the woman said. Delia arched an eyebrow triumphantly at Annabelle. "Adea is a state of mind," the woman said. She smiled serenely. "Adea is a philosophy of the heart. Adea is water and earth. Adea is fire and air" I felt like raising my hand and mentioning the fact that I had personally met Adea, and that she hadn't been particularly watery, or airy, or... "But the actual personage of Adea," Annabelle pressed. "Are there stories surrounding her exis- tence?" "You misunderstand," the woman said. "Adea is not a person" "She's S�dhe," I murmured. The woman looked at me strangely out of the corner of her eye. I shut my mouth. "Adea," the woman said. "A Dawn Ever Always" "A Dawn Ever Always?" we all repeated. "The Daughters of Adea believe that a new light is always around the corner," the woman said. "That there is light in nature, and that we must take our place in the light, give ourselves to--" "Invigorating," Zo said. "Excuse us for just one second" There was no doubt about it. She was a charmer. "Okay, so how did we miss out on the fact that Adea was an acronym?" Zo voiced the question on everyone's mind. "A Dawn Ever Always," Annabelle said incredulously. "That's not even grammatical" "Call it a guess," Zo said, "but I'm going to go out on a limb here and bet that no one in this entire place has even heard of the S�dhe, let alone knows anything about the Adea that could actually help us" "You'd be wrong" I jumped about three feet in the air at the sound of a voice that most definitely wasn't one of the four of us. "I don't mean to frighten you" And that, of course, made it all better. I turned around, unsure what exactly to expect. The woman greeted me with a smile. "I couldn't help but overhear," she said. "You're looking for information on Adea" She lowered her voice. "And on the others" "The others?" "Come," the woman said. "We'll be more comfortable in my room. We can speak more openly there" My friends and I glanced at one another. The woman's creepy-serene tone was like something out of a movie, and I couldn't help but think that in the movie, the woman's character would probably be planning on killing our characters and eating us for supper. "All right," Annabelle said after a few seconds. I swallowed hard and then wondered what I was afraid of. There were four of us, and one of her, and I was going to go with my gut and guess that she probably couldn't set things on fire. Plus, Zo's premonitions had to have been good for something other than the occasional Amber saving. If this woman had been, for instance, planning our impending doom, wouldn't some light in Zo's head have gone off? I swallowed again when we reached our destination and the woman opened the door to her room. I touched my hand to my tattoo as I stepped in. No words of advice came into my mind. That was a good sign, right? "Bailey," the woman said as the door closed behind her. "You worry too much" "How did you know her name?" Zo asked, her voice low and steely. When she got into protective mother-bear mode, it could get really ugly really quickly, but the woman's smiling expression didn't change. "The same way I know that your name is Zo," the woman said, "and that the one examining the earrings on the coffee table is Delia" "She knows the same way I know" Annabelle's voice was even, her tone appraising. "Mind reader" Zo's words came out like an accusation. "Unintentional, I assure you," the woman said. "I am Keiri" "Annabelle," Annabelle said. After a split second, she paused. "How is that I knew your name and you didn't know mine?" she asked. Keiri shrugged. "You're blocked," she said. "Fairy magic, I believe" "Forgive me for not speaking fluent freaky," Zo snapped, "but what's that supposed to mean?" "Is that the question you really want answered?" Keiri asked. "No," I said slowly, a million better questions racing through my mind. Fairy? As in S�dhe? What did all this have to do with my very close personal friends, the big voice people? "Coffee?" "Sure," Delia replied immediately. "I like the earrings, by the way," she said. "They're a nice color" "They're soothing," Keiri said, moving to pour the coffee for us as we sat. Tentatively, I took one of the earrings in my hand. The purple stones were small, perfectly symmetrical teardrops. "Amethyst," Keiri said. "It calms excess energy" "Uh-huh" Zo, always the skeptic, leaned back in her chair. "Likely story" Keiri, not at all put off by Zo's skepticism, handed me a cup of coffee. "Things of beauty can have secondary purposes," she said. "I'd think you four would know that by now" So she knew about the tattoos. Rubbing my thumb over the rim of my coffee cup, I wondered how it was that she knew about our powers but hadn't picked up on my intense dislike of coffee. "Can you tell us about Adea?" I blurted out, half afraid that she'd pick the anti-coffee thought right out of my head and take offense. "And not the `A Dawn Whatever Whatever' one," Zo ordered, still playing the tough guy. Keiri clicked her tongue behind her teeth and shook her head. "They mean well," she said. "The Daughters. I found the group online. Imagine my surprise when I joined and found that no one knew of Adea, that none came from Guardian lines" "Guardian lines?" I asked. "Let me tell you what I know," Keiri said, "and then you can ask whatever questions you like" She paused. "My parents died when I was nine. My brother and sister went to live with our uncle, but I went to our grandmother" I brought the cup of coffee to my lips just to keep from asking what any of this had to do with Adea. I took a tiny sip and felt my gag reflex lurch as the coffee hit my tongue. It tasted (not surprisingly) like coffee. I hated coffee. "Long story short," Keiri said, looking at me with an almost-grin, "my grandmother was what most people would call an eccentric" She took a sip of her own coffee. "She didn't get out of her house much, didn't speak to many people" "She saw the future," Annabelle said softly. "And the past" Keiri nodded. "She was a dream seer. Her dreams often came true, and she often dreamed of the past. She'd learned early on to distrust others" And the irrelevant information just keeps coming, I thought. "Don't be so impatient," Keiri told me. "It's the past that she dreamed about that concerns you" She took another long drink of coffee. "Tell me what you know" "Can't you tell us what we know?" Zo asked. "You seem to be good at that" Annabelle shot Zo a long, warning look, and then turned back to Keiri. "We know that we've been given these powers for a reason" Annabelle lifted one eyebrow in question. "I assume you know about our powers?" Keiri inclined her head slightly. "Adea and Valgius, they've been appearing to Bailey since the first night. She hears their voices. We know that there's some kind of evil S�dhe out there, and she's got some kind of grudge against the others. We know that Adea and Valgius want us to stop her. We know that it's dangerous for us to be out after dark" "We know that her name is Alecca," I said. Just saying the name made me nervous. "She's getting stronger, and the others are getting weaker. I think she wants to kill Adea and Valgius and ...ummm ...maybe, you know, get rid of us in the process" After I spoke, there was a long silence. Way to be a downer, Bailey, I thought. After a few seconds, Delia picked up the slack. "We know that all three of them--Adea, Val, and this other chick--are S�dhe, and that S�dhe are some kind of royal fairy warrior witches" Keiri arched an eyebrow at the description. "That is all?" she asked. Were we supposed to know more? I thought we'd done pretty decently for being new to the whole World of Freaky scene. "To begin with, rid your mind of your ideas of fairies. The S�dhe aren't, and have never been, the creatures you imagine them to be. They're human enough in appearance, but magical energy that no mortal mind can truly comprehend runs through their blood. Imagine the ocean during a storm: waves crashing, wind beating down against the water, lightning ripping through the air. That's the kind of power that flows through S�dhe veins. "Theirs is a power of life. Their