Authors: Jennifer Lynn Barnes
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 one 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. "I'll be okay," I said, barely able to manage a whisper. I sat there for a while, putting all my concen- tration 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 be- came 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. Onbekend 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 intel- ligent 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 halluci- nating. 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 tenta- cles? 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 practically 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 gen- tly. "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 go- ing" 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