Ayaz fiddled with the regulator. “How’d you know that’s what it is?”
A memory bloomed inside my battered mind.
I raced up the stairs and flopped down on Dante’s bed. ‘My mom’s working tonight. Can I sleep over?’
Dante buzzed with excitement. He kept tugging at the ring in his earlobe, fidgeting with the stacks of sketchbooks stacked beside his bed, darting back and forth across the tiny room. He didn’t seem to hear me.
I waved a hand in front of his face. ‘Are you listening to me, bro? Is your foster dad home again? We could go to the club instead, if you want.’ Dante’s current foster dad was an alcoholic. He was on the road a lot for his job, but when he came home a cloud descended on their home and dulled the brightness in Dante’s eyes. On those nights, we would either climb into my tiny bed and listen to the water dripping through the leaking roof, or hang out backstage at Mom’s club. The working girls fawned over Dante and begged him to draw their portraits, but I hated being there, having to see Mom go off with strange men only to come back reeking of pot and cheap cologne.
‘Nah. For once, it’s good news. Look what I just got.’ Dante pulled a box from under his bed. He lifted the lid to reveal a medieval torture device.
‘What is it?’ I glared at the vicious-looking needles, the power unit, the tiny box of tools, little colored vials like an ancient apothecary kit.
‘It’s a tattoo machine,’ Dante grinned, dropping it into my hands as he swiped up a bag of fruit. ‘Some guy was selling them behind the school for fifty bucks. I’ve been practicing on oranges all day. Check this out.’ He held up an orange with a lopsided smiley face drawn in short, uncertain lines. ‘How does it look?’
‘It looks unhygienic.’ I held the machine between two fingers and dropped it back in the box.
Dante puffed out his lower lip. ‘You’re no fun. Guess you won’t let me ink you.’
‘You’ll be six feet underground before I let you anywhere near my virginal skin.’ He grinned, and I grinned, and we both let the innuendo pass over us, unacknowledged and unfulfilled.
“My friend Dante had one.” I squeezed my eyes shut, pushing the memory aside. I really didn’t want to think about Dante.Not now. Not tonight.“I repeat, why do you have itnow?”
Ayaz flipped down his cuff, showing me that runic tattoo on his wrist. “This is the Elder Sign – the symbol of the Eldritch Club. I have to place one on your wrist.”
“That’s not happening.” I folded my arms across my chest.
“Hazel, Ihaveto.”
“Dude, I’m exhausted. I smell like a garbage truck. I just found out there’s a demon living under the gymnasium and the entire student body is walking zombies. I don’t need toalsoget a tattoo tonight, especially not from the guy who is sleeping with the high priestess of fuckery.”
“It’s a god, not a demon,” Ayaz corrected, ignoring my comment about Ms. West. “And this is for your protection. This sign marks you as one of the god’s chosen few. If you have it, the other students aren’t supposed to touch you.”
“If it’s for protection, then why did someone paint it on my locker?”
“Duh, to protect you.” Quinn swaggered into the room with a shirtless and sleepy-looking Andre trailing behind him. “For the smart girl, you’re slow tonight. We painted it there. The girls had something evil planned for you that day and we needed to stop them, so Trey painted it there to warn them to back off.”
“More evil than tarring my hair?” I demanded.
“Yeah. We had to let them do that. It was either that or…” Quinn shook his head. “You don’t want to know.”
“But I’m already protected by my pact. Besides, that’s the symbol of your secret club,” I pointed out. “I’m betting only monarchs can wear that, and I’m not a monarch.”
“You are now,” Ayaz washed his hands under the sink. “We decided.”
“Really? You just decided? I get that your word is law in this school, but I feel like Courtney and Tillie and the others will have something to say about me officially becoming part of the gang. Don’t you have to have a secret meeting and sacrifice a goat and dance around in your underwear before you issue a decree like that?”
Ayaz grinned. “I wish. We should make this underwear dance mandatory. Especially now you’re in the club.”
I glared at him. He shrugged. “Sorry. Sometimes my inner Quinn comes out when it’s least appropriate.”
“I resent that,” Quinn quipped, leaving Andre slumped at the table. He leaned over the counter and brushed a finger against my collarbone, smudging a line of mud across my chest. I slapped his hand away before he got too close to my breast. “I’m the height of propriety.”
“Uh-huh.” Wearing gloves, Ayaz filled the reservoir with black ink, unwrapped a liner needle from its case and slotted it into a disposable plastic tube, and then attached the tube to the armature bar. I’d seen Dante do this a hundred times, but it felt strange to see someone else do it, as though Ayaz had stolen something from my memories. “This is ready.”
I balled my hand into a fist and slammed it into the counter. Pain spread across my knuckles.I don’t want this. My first tattoo was supposed to be from Dante. It was going to be one of his beautiful drawings, not some hideous stick symbol of an ancient god.
But Dante was gone. All I had right now was this school and these guys. These three dead bullies who made my heart ache and my body flare with heat.
