Her question lay heavy with me. She'd been targeting me all along. She knew what the others wanted. She knew that Zo wanted her mother, and yet, she'd targeted me. Why?
“Because, little one, blood is drawn to blood. Like recognizes like” She paused. “You're Sídhe enough to want deeply, human enough to die”
I felt pressure on my neck, an invisible hand closing over my throat and pushing me back and toward the unberable heat of the fire.
“I wanted once,” she said, advancing on me even as she forced me into the flame. “Wanted deeply, wanted badly, and because of you, because I know humans, I thought I loved”
So she had been in love with Valgius, I thought.
The vise around my neck tightened and I choked.
“I was wrong”
No air. I couldn't breathe, and the heat of the blue-green fire played with my skin, tearing at it with scorching claws. I would have cried out, but there was no air, no voice with which for me to cry.
“Fruit punch!”
As if from a great distance, I heard Delia's cry, and the flame around me dissolved into a massive wave of fruity red liquid. For a moment, Alecca was distracted enough that her mental hold on my throat relaxed, and desperately, I breathed in, swallowing the air and choking in desperation to breathe it all in at once.
Alecca frowned the way people frown when they've discovered a speck on their carpet. She turned a mildly annoyed look on Delia.
Delia stepped forward, no trace of fear on her face. “You think you're bad?” Delia asked her. “I've seen worse. I'm on the cheerleading squad; I know what real evil looks like”
“If you mess with Bailey,” Zo said, her voice quiet and deadly, “you mess with us all”
Alecca laughed merrily. “How precious,” she said. “You think you can hurt me, little one? Will you throw your crystal at me? It would take something far more ancient and far more powerful than that trinket to hurt me”
My mind raced. With the Seal broken, she wasn't invincible. There had to be some way, some weakness we could attack.
I stumbled to my feet, and Alecca knocked me off the Seal and across the room with a careless gesture. My head made a sickening thunking sound as it hit the floor, and pain ripped across my skull like dull, aching fire. I reached my hand to the back of my head, and when I brought it back, it was coated in blood.
The world blurred in front of me, but I fought the dizziness and the unforgiving throb in my head.
Alecca shook her head. “I do detest bloodshed,” she said for the second time. “What a pity”
Zo, furious and fearless, looked about five seconds away from telling Alecca exactly what she could do with her pity. There she was, more or less powerless, and yet pyrokinetic me was the one lying on the floor, bleeding.
Alecca stepped toward me.
Hoping Annabelle would catch my thought, I put all my concentration into the words: Keep her on the Seal.
Annabelle nodded. “There are things that can hurt you,” Annabelle said. “Ancient things. Things of power that were made to stop one such as you”
Alecca stopped advancing on me and turned toward Annabelle. “There are no others like me,” she said. “I alone have lived with you. I alone have felt the power of the human soul. I, and I alone”
“Egotistical much?” Delia had Alecca whirling around.
“Understatement of the year,” Zo muttered. “I and I alone,” she mimicked.
Fury creased Alecca's otherwise flawless face and she turned her wrath on Zo, who stood her ground, never flinching, never moving back.
Zo. She should have been afraid. I wanted to get up, to save her, but I couldn't. Luckily, Delia Cameron was on the job.
“Is that your natural hair color?” Delia asked, drawing Alecca's attention. “Because I have to tell you, I think it's a bit overdone. No subtlety” As Delia talked, she pulled her choker off her neck. Alecca didn't notice, but since I knew for a fact that Delia didn't part with accessories unless under major duress, the movement caught my eye.
In a single movement, Delia tossed the necklace to Zo, who looked at it as if it was a squashed slug.
Annabelle narrowed her eyes at Delia, and then comprehension hit.
“Zo,” she said. “Throw it”
Zo moved lightning fast, flicking the choker directly at Alecca, who turned to see it a moment too late. As if pulled by an invisible force, the choker latched around her throat. Alecca clawed at it, but the choker merely tightened until it cut into her neck. A thin line of blue-green blood welled to the surface of her white skin.
“Something more ancient than this, huh?” Zo asked, holding up her crystal. Alecca stood, frozen to the Seal, her fingers madly tearing at the choker. “I'm guessing that's a little more ancient”
Delia stepped forward. “It's ancient,” she said. “In fact, I'd say it was retro and cutting, wouldn't you, guys?”
Alecca's blood dripped onto the Seal, and it exploded, shattering down the center. The next instant, it collapsed in on itself. The ground split beneath the Seal, and the growing crevice engulfed Alecca. Before I could so much as blink, she was gone.
Cautiously, Annabelle tiptoed over to look down at the hole in the ground that had opened beneath the Seal. “She's gone”
My head swam with her words.
“Bay, are you okay?” Zo asked, and in an instant, all of them were by my side. “It's gonna be okay, Bailey. It's over. You're going to be fine”
I thought of Adea and Valgius, thought of the balance the Seal protected, thought of our world and theirs, and I shook my head, my whole body ringing with the motion of it. “It's not over,” I said, pulling myself along the ground toward the Seal.
It was then that I realized why it looked so familiar. “Our symbols,” I said. “The Seal”
“It's our tattoos,” Delia breathed, seeing the same thing I did.
“That's what you get when you superimpose all of the symbols,” Zo said.
“Balance” Annabelle provided the translation I already knew, and knowledge seeped over me.
“I have to close it” It was what I'd been born to do.
“Whatever needs to be done, we're in it together,” Zo said, and she pulled me to my feet. “Lean on me”
In the next instant, Delia was on my other side.
“Take her to the Seal,” Annabelle said softly, lifting the desire from my mind.
“But, Bailey, it's broken, and no offense, but you've got to be crazy to want to step on that thing,” Delia said. “It just ate Alecca”
“Please,” I said. Together, the three of us walked to the Seal, and Annabelle followed, her hand on Zo's shoulder.
To fight, to live
We two of three bestow this gift
To see, to feel
To stand upon the ancient Seal
The words came to me, ghosts of things I'd heard Adea and Valgius say when we'd first applied the tattoos.
“We're standing here,” I said tiredly, my head spinning. “We're standing upon the ancient Seal. Now what?”
“Bailey, you're bleeding!” Delia's voice was horrified.
That wasn't exactly news to me, but as I heard her words, blood dripped off the back of my head and onto the Seal below me. It quaked beneath my feet, but I stood firm.
It's in the blood. Things of power always are.
And then, I knew.
“My blood” I whispered the words, my voice hoarse. Adea and Valgius had given us their blood, and now I was giving the Seal mine.
“To fight, to live you two of three bestowed this gift”
I altered the words of the original spell to make it my own. After a moment, Annabelle picked up on my thoughts, and her voice joined in with mine.
“We see, we feel
We stand upon the ancient Seal “
When Zo and Delia joined in, I knew that Annabelle was somehow silently feeding them the words.
“From earth she came from air she breathed “
The words to the spell were changing more now, but instinctively, I knew what to say, and with every word I spoke, the others echoed me.
“From deep within her hatred seethed
Fires burned
Desires freed
And as we will.”
I felt Zo's grip on my side tighten as we spoke the final words: “So mote it be”
The words sounded foreign to my ears but felt right on my lips, and as we spoke them, holding on to each other as if we would never let go, the earth beneath us shuddered, and the Seal fell gently back into place, piecing itself together moment by moment, until it was whole.
Rays of light burst from the stone markings, flooding us with warmth, and I could feel my head healing itself. In my last conscious moment, I lifted my hand to touch the back of my head, then brought my fingers to my eyes.
My hand was covered in blood. Blue-green blood.
I struggled to open my eyes.
“Rest, child” The voice was soothing, but I recognized the power in it, the ancientness of it, and I struggled to open my eyes. If I'd learned anything in the past three days, it was that voices like that weren't to be trusted.
The first thing I saw when I opened my eyes was the ocean. It was all around me. I yelped when I discovered it was beneath me. I was sitting on the ocean's surface.
“You need not fear harm here” The rhyme was pleasant, as was the voice that spoke it. It was a familiar voice. I turned slowly toward the speaker, bracing myself against the water beneath me.
“You,” I said, and it came out like an accusation.
The woman smiled. “Yes,” she said. “Me”
I'd seen her blue eyes before, when she'd sold us the tattoos. “We went back,” I said, “to find you, to ask you about our powers, but the sign on the booth said that it was closed in preparation for Mabon”
“A hint,” the woman said. “As much of one as I could give you to draw your attention to the equinox and the events it would bring”
“And the booth?” I asked.
“For you and you alone,” the woman said.
I should have known from the blue eyes, and for that matter, it should have occurred to me that they didn't typically sell destiny-altering magical accessories at the mall. “You knew we'd be there?”
“I knew the time was coming,” she said. “Your Alecca imprisoned herself in my waters millennia ago. I knew the time for her release was nigh”
“So you gave us the tattoos?” I asked.
“Those were not of my doing,” the woman said.
“Adea and Valgius” I'd thought as much.
The woman nodded. “It took others among the Sídhe much longer to realize that the worlds had been breached, that the trio had been broken, but from the moment she stepped foot in my waters, I knew. Her anger, her power seeped into the water like toxin, and I sought out the other young ones to offer what help I could”
I stared at her for a moment. Had she just referred to Adea and Valgius as young ones?
“To me, they are young,” the woman said. “My tie to your world and your people predates the necessity of their birth”
“Oh” There didn't seem to be an appropriate response to that.
“The two who remained with the Seal were in a horrible position,” the woman said. “They could not leave, and they could not indefinitely stay. To venture forth from the Seal would surely rip it apart and sever the power of the Sídhe and perhaps all mortal life, but to stay meant to offset the balance: two in the Otherworld, one in this”
“You're darned if you do, you're darned if you don't” I couldn't believe I'd just said that. I might as well have said “nifty” and “gee whiz” while I was at it.
“Something like that,” the woman agreed, “and so, with my help, they did what they could to prevent the collapse of the Seal. They sent their blood and the blood of the other Sister into the world, carrying with it the powers they held most dear, so that when the battle came, those who would fight it would be armed”
“Us” That part was easy enough to follow. “They gave you the blood, and you made the tattoos,” I said. “The symbols, that was you?”
The woman smiled. “Another hint”
I waited, sensing there was more to this story.
“They also sent with me something of greater value, and there is little the Sídhe value more than Sídhe blood” She paused. “They sent with me the child Adea carried in
her womb, the child born from their love. I took the blood and the child to the place where they would do the balance the most good” She looked at me. “This world”
Wow. A fairy/Fate love child. Zo had been right all along. This whole thing was just a giant inter dimensional soap opera.
“Their hope, my hope was that the child would live among humans, would have her own children and their children after that for years and years, so that when Alecca broke free, when the power shifted toward her side of the imbalance, there would be a child on this side who could fight her” The woman looked at me. “A child who would be drawn to the blood they'd given me, a child worthy of the fight”
She stopped speaking, waiting for me to say what was becoming more and more clear. “Me?” I squeaked.
I'd just gotten used to the idea that my ancestors had been blessed by the Sídhe, and now she was telling me that my ancestors were Sídhe?
“You,” the woman said. “You chose the tattoos; they chose you. I guided your friends toward those items I thought could best protect them and serve them. This was never meant to be a mortal fight, so I gave them all that I could”
I asked a question that had been bothering me for days. “Did I find the tattoos because Alecca was getting ready to rise, or did Alecca rise because I found the tattoos?”
“Good question, child. Applying the blood awakened
the power that slumbered in you, the power that had slumbered in this world for thousands of your generations, and this power shifted the balance toward this side of the Seal”
“And Alecca woke up”
“You could say that” The woman looked at me, lifting the rest of the questions easily from my mind. “The necklace your friend wore was forged from this sea long before Alecca spun her first human life. It is raw, pure, and contains a great deal of silver, which is poisonous to the younger ones of our kind”
“And the blood?” I swallowed hard. “Her blood, I mean, and then my blood. “ I wasn't making much sense, but it didn't matter.
“She took herself from the Seal long ago, and by taking a human soul, she weakened it until it cracked. Her blood, when shed upon the Seal, atoned for the imbalance, and the Seal itself consumed her” She smiled softly. “Your blood righted things, in more ways than one. You were Sídhe enough to fight her, Bailey, and human enough to win. You are a balance unto yourself: mortal and fairy, human and Sídhe” She paused. “You invoked the Seal, and it answered your call and your blood.
“The balance has been restored”
Somehow, it seemed as though things had ended a little too neatly. After the three days I'd had, I was more than a little skeptical.
“Alecca is gone?” I asked. “Isn't that going to screw up the whole three Fates thing?” I mean, even when the evil, ominous fairy of doom had been playing hide-and-seek in the ocean, there had still been three Fates. And now that she was gone…
The woman looked at me and lifted a hand to caress the side of my face, breaking me from my thoughts. “All things said and done, the balance has a way of taking care of itself” she said. “Now that Alecca's hatred is gone from this world, things will right themselves. You will see”
“Okay. Death gone,” I said. “That can't be too bad, right?”
The woman laughed. “Foolish child,” she said affectionately. “Have you not eyes to see? Your Alecca was not who you assumed her to be”
“No?”
“No. Of Sister Life and Sister Death, she was the former. You mortals always think that Death is t
he enemy. Who better than the spinner of life would know how to spin your intimate desires into a deadly web? Who better than Life would understand you? Who other than Life could have known you as she did?”
We'd assumed Death was the evil one for obvious reasons …death equals bad, right? And yet, Alecca had matched my pyrokinesis and she'd messed with my mind, had made me see things that weren't there. Annabelle had been right. Sister Life did have the psychic and pyrokinetic powers. We just hadn't figured on fighting Life.
“No one ever does,” the woman said. “Enough questions, Bailey. It's time for you to return to your world, and I shall return to my sea”
I looked at the ocean beneath me and ran my hands along its surface. “Who are you?” I asked, unable to help myself.
“I am Sídhe,” the woman said. “One of the first. I have been known by many names. Poseidon. Neptune. Triton. Among my kind, I am called Morgan”
And with that, she was gone.
I opened my eyes and found myself smack in the middle of our school gymnasium. I glanced around, half-expecting the others to be looking down at me, worried expressions on their faces, but as I sat up, I realized they were doing the same.
“Wow,” Delia said. “Alecca …just wow. That was pretty unreal”
I snorted. If she thought that was unreal, wait until she heard about the little chat I'd just had with yet another Greek god/fairy hybrid.
It took me a full fifteen minutes to tell them the story.
“So Adea and Valgius are like your great-great-bazillion-times-great-grandparents?” Delia asked. “Freaky”
“Sweet,” Zo said simply. “Does that mean you get to keep some of your powers?”
I opened my mouth and then closed it again. Did I?
“Speaking of powers,” Delia said, “according to that clock, we only have our powers for like four more hours, and Zo, so help me Gucci, you're going to scry for some hot guys before you lose your divination for good”