Bailey Morgan [2] Fate (12 page)

Kiste and Cyna were all too happy to see me depart. I wasn't sure what to expect as I left the mountain and the beings I'd met, but soon all of my questions faded away, because Adea, Valgius, and I were running again, down the mountain, through land and forest, until all I could hear or think or remember was the sound of my own feet hitting the ground and the unadulterated, ecstatic joy of being who and what, where and when I was.

Sidhe. Home.

Nothing could temper the beauty of this place. Nothing could stop the pull I felt toward it, and as Adea, Valgius, and I finally stopped running and the three of us joined hands, I knew deep down that nothing could keep me from coming back. I refused to close my eyes this time, not wanting to cheat myself out of the wonders I might see by keeping them open.

“Think of the Seal, Bailey. Think of the two of us. Think of what it means to be born and to live and to die.”

Birth. Death. Life.

Valgius. Adea. Me.

And suddenly, we were back. Knowing what I had to do, I walked like a zombie to the Seal and let the connection take hold, funneling all mortal souls and destinies into my body and into my hands. And then, because I had to, I wove and secretly wished I was running instead.

“Good morning, Oakridge! I'm Craaaaazy Mike and you're listening to K-K-K-KHITS. It's seven a.m., and I'm thinking about the seven deadly sins. Which one are you? Give us a call here at the studio, and the craaaaaaaziest answers will make it on air.”

I was pretty sure that by “craziest answers,” Crazy Mike meant “people who say lust.” I was equally sure that I wasn't about to stick around to find out. I reached out with one hand, and when I swiped air instead of alarm, I threw my pillow in the general direction of the sound. When that proved useless, I narrowed my eyes and allowed a warm feeling to spread out from my body and attack the offending appliance, which promptly burst into flames.

In retrospect, that probably wasn't a good idea.

“Bailey Mar—
aaaaaaaaaackkkkl
” My mom's drive-by scolding jerked to a stop, and she let loose an ear-piercing shriek. Proving that her completely unsuper-natural Mom abilities were more useful than my superpowers, she almost instantaneously acquired a fire extinguisher from our utilities closet and made quick work of my blazing alarm.

Crazy Mike wasn't going to be bothering me again.

“Are you okay?” my mom asked, still wielding the fire extinguisher like a madwoman, as if the radio might reignite any second.

“I'm fine,” I said, but the words fell flat. I wasn't fine. I was lost. Lonely. Alone. I missed the Otherworld the way I'd never missed anything in my life, the way I knew deep down that I would miss my friends once they went off and started living their exciting post-high school lives.

My mom seemed to sense that I was less than chipper, though she could have never, in her wildest dreams, come anywhere close to guessing why.

“You'll feel better once you have a plan,” my mom said, imparting what passed in her mind for words of maternal wisdom. “You just need to narrow down your list a little and decide where you want to apply. Those deadlines will sneak up on you before you know it, and I think not applying anywhere early is part of what's stressing you out.”

If I took the Otherworld out of the picture, my mom was simultaneously almost right and horribly wrong. The fact that I didn't have a plan for the future
was
stressing me out, but the fact that I hadn't opted for early admission was my one saving grace. At least this way I could still live in denial, much as I was still coming to terms with the fact that I'd spent the night in a world that made the Nexus seem like the redheaded stepchild of mythical places.

“You'd better get a move on,” my mom said, cutting our heart-to-heart surprisingly and mercifully short. “At this rate, you won't even have time to wash your hair.” With those words, she lifted the fire extinguisher higher and squirted it again, just to be safe, and then exited my room, leaving my alarm clock and my dresser covered in weird foamy stuff that made my eyes burn.

This was why it wasn't a good idea to use pyrokinesis in your bedroom.

I took a shower, and as my mom had predicted, I didn't have time to wash my hair. I was moving so quickly that I even forgot to take off Morgan's necklace, and I wondered briefly if this was taking what she'd said about always wearing it a little too far. After I'd lathered and rinsed, I turned off the shower and stepped out. I toweled off and then reached for my body splash, spraying a liberal amount on my hair, just in case.

Despite being in hurry mode, the second I stepped out of the shower, my eyes zeroed in on my reflection in the mirror, and I couldn't help but stare at it, looking for some hint of the person I'd been the night before. My hair was close to honey-colored, but in the most
unremarkable way imaginable. In the Otherworld, it was both brown and blond at the same time, but here, it didn't quite manage either one, and sadly, my trip to the great beyond had done little to give it volume or bounce. My summer tan was already long gone, and even covered in steam, my body didn't let off any kind of glow.

She reeks of mortality.
The words from the night before taunted me, and I wondered whose thoughts I'd inadvertently heard. I wanted to think it was the vampire twins, but I couldn't shake the feeling that it was Eze, that her stony smile didn't reach her eyes for a reason, and this was it. But even thinking that, part of me didn't want to wait until nightfall to go back. I wanted to be there, with the colors and the smells and the tastes and the wonderful, horrible feeling of being near others like me.

I didn't want to be standing in this world, naked and unsure of myself.

A sharp rap on the bathroom door startled me. At first, I thought it was my mom, but then the mystery person opened the door just far enough to thrust in a manicured hand holding my least favorite pair of jeans (they were too tight and made my legs itch) and a V-neck top. “Wear this, and hurry up. If we get to school early, I can bring you up to speed on Geek Watch.”

I knew that I had only a small window of opportunity before Delia charged into the bathroom and took over all aspects of my personal appearance, so I grabbed
the clothes and changed into them as quickly as I could, hopeful that at least I'd be dressed by the time she started her full-out fashion onslaught.

I had the shirt halfway over my head when Delia got restless. The next thing I knew, she'd grabbed a brush and was twisting my hair into some kind of knot that nobody except for Delia and a handful of sailors knew how to tie.

“Your hair smells like Country Apple,” she said.

Astute, was Delia.

Either because I was lucky or as a matter of mercy, she didn't mention anything about the slightly unwashed nature of said hair, and by the time she was done, twenty-eight seconds later, I actually looked halfway decent. Not bothering with my makeup bag, Delia brought out her own trifecta and managed to make me over before I could utter even half of a refusal.

“Okay, let's go. Chop-chop. There are geeks to be watched and flirt strategies to be …” Delia searched for the right word. “Strategized.”

I followed her out of the bathroom, my mind elsewhere, running over hills and drinking the sweet, cool nectar I hadn't so much as brought to my lips the night before. I looked at my feet as the two of us walked down the hallway, my eyes drawn again and again to my own shadow. As I clunked my way down the stairs— sans any grace whatsoever—I suddenly realized that I hadn't seen a single shadow in the Otherworld. Stuck on that notion for absolutely no reason whatsoever, I zoned out and lost track of what Delia was saying right
around the time we headed out the front door. Delia, however, was not a person to be ignored, and when I got to the car, she snapped me out of it, primarily due to the numerous pieces of poster board leaning against the car's side.

“What are those for?” I asked suspiciously. Delia plus arts and crafts meant trouble. There was an incident with poster board when we were eight from which the neighborhood had never quite recovered.

“Trust, Bailey,” Delia said. “That's all I'm asking.” And then, because she was on a roll, she smiled charmingly at me. “By the way, can I drive?”

I didn't even dignify that question with a response. Completely unfazed, Delia picked up the poster board and climbed into the passenger side. As I buckled my seat belt, I caught the barest glimpse of the top of one of the pieces of poster board.

GEEK WATCH 2009.

This was so not good.

“You can't look yet,” Delia told me, hugging the poster board to her chest. “I need to attach the pictures.”

“Pictures?”

Delia smiled. “On a totally unrelated note, I need you to get a picture of the guy from study hall, the one who recognized your tattoo. Just take one with your phone. The quality might not be great once we blow it up, but—”

“Blow it up?” I tried to get another look at the poster board. “You do realize you're crazy, right?”

“Which one of us hears voices?” Delia asked. “Oh. Right. That would be you.” She paused. “And speaking of, what happened last night with the Reckonmawhatsit you told us about at lunch?”

“Reckoning,” I corrected, then nibbled on my bottom lip. For reasons which I couldn't have explained, more words than just that refused to come out of my mouth. Maybe because there weren't any that would describe things quite right, or maybe because there were, but I wanted to keep them for myself.

“It was … interesting,” I said finally.

“Whoa, TMI.” Delia raised an eyebrow. “There is such a thing as oversharing, Bay.” And then, just in case I didn't catch it myself, she leaned a little closer and shared another tidbit with me in a conspiratorial whisper. “Sarcasm is the new perky.”

Delia was probably the only A-lister at our school who could actually manage both.

“I'll tell you more once the others are here,” I promised, knowing that this wasn't something I'd be able to keep from them forever. There was nothing I didn't share with my friends. My brain just wasn't wired for keeping secrets.

“Just tell me this much. Those others you met? The ones you were all nervous about yesterday?” Delia's voice dropped to a reverent whisper. “Were any of them hot?”

James.
His name flashed immediately to mind, and I tried to remember what he looked like. Glowing skin, red-brown hair, blue, blue eyes. He was Sidhe, but
something about him felt human.
Hot
wasn't the right word, and he wasn't even geek chic, but something about him stuck in my mind like toffee in freshly brushed teeth. There was just something about that boy … fairy … Greek god … whatever.

“Oooohhhhhh,” Delia said, interpreting my facial expression with the skill of a professional profiler. “One of them
was
kind of hot. Does that mean you're not still crushing on the guy from study hall?”

I really didn't know how she did it. I hadn't even seen her since physics class the day before, when I'd decided that I might have possibly been interested in That Guy, and yet somehow she'd picked up on it. Probably before I had.

“I'm debating,” I said, but even saying it made me feel a little bit silly, because I wasn't normally the kind of girl who had options in the crush department— especially not options who seemed like they were maybe kind of sort of interested back.

“No moping.” When I snapped out of my reverie, Delia was giving me a very stern look. Luckily, without Zo there, she didn't pursue it further. “Honestly, Bay, when are you going to realize that you are one hot mama?”

I parked the car and turned to look incredulously at Delia. “Did you just use the phrase
one hot mama?”

Delia looked momentarily abashed. “Absolutely not.”

“Liar.”

Zo and Annabelle were already waiting for us in the
parking lot. Both of them took in sharp breaths when they saw Delia's poster boards.

“This cannot end well,” Zo said.

Delia turned to Annabelle. “You're on my side, right, A-belle?”

Annabelle, having not been there for the poster-board incident when we were eight, wasn't quite sure what she was supposed to be taking sides about. “I am Switzerland,” she declared.

“What if I said there were graphs involved?” Delia knew exactly how to tempt Annabelle, who immediately turned to Zo and, with a completely straight expression on her face, said, “I'm on her side.”

“Blood is supposed to be thicker than water.” Zo grabbed her heart in mock betrayal.

“Yes, well, perhaps graphs are thicker than blood.”

Water. Blood.

The memories of the night before were there, just below the surface in my mind, and hearing the right words brought them out. My blood. The water they'd offered me to drink.

“Speaking of blood,” Zo said, sounding disturbingly cheerful, “I told A-belle about the slice and dice with your necklace yesterday.”

Before Delia could pick up on the fact that there was something about our accessories that everyone knew except her, I quickly filled in the gaps with trademark Bailey babble. “Yesterday, I cut my finger on my pendant—you should totally watch out because they're really sharp—and the pendant's mirror showed the
reflection of the blood, only it was Sidhe blue. Blood green. The color of our tattoos.”