Ink Magic (Ink Sorceress Chronicles) (4 page)

Cheers erupted in the hall and I caught sight of Daniel’s jubilant face. I smiled at Margot expecting her to be gracious in defeat, but instead she just looked at me. She didn’t let me up and slowly a hush fell over the group.

“
So, is she in?” Daniel asked, breaking the silence.

The Guardian didn’t say a word, after a long while passed she stood. She didn’t offer her hand to help me up and wouldn’t look me in the eye. Instead she stared at the tattoo and the slight blue tinge that remained.

I knew then what I’d done wasn’t normal, even for an Ink Mage.

“
Don’t worry about her,” Daniel said, as the crowd filed out of the hall behind the guardian. “She’s just miffed you bent her sword. How did you do that by the way?” he asked.

There was something weird about the way Daniel looked at me. He couldn’t seem to look me in the eye. I followed his gaze down.

“
Hey, Daniel. I’m up here,” I said, pointing to my face.

He managed – with difficulty – to drag his eyes up toward my face, until he got caught. He was mesmerized by my bare midriff. I pulled my ripped shirt together.

“
Lucy,” he said, in a weird, breathy voice. “You know you should wear . . . less more often.”

“
I should wear less clothes?”

“
Yeah.” He grinned. What do you know? The unflappably, cool Ninja actually blushed.

I felt more powerful now than when I’d bent his guardian’s sword, enjoying having those exotic, Asiatic blue’s all over me.

He seemed to snap out of it suddenly, much to my disappointment. “So, anyway. You didn’t tell me how you managed to bend that sword.”

I didn’t want to tell him how my tattoo had shone blue before I somehow magically managed to bend her sword with my hands. I knew he wouldn’t like to hear the truth.

“
I guess it had something to do with turning into a vampire,” I said, though I didn’t have vampire powers at the time.

“
Her sword is unbreakable.” He said in hushed tones, though we were alone. “Her power is unrivalled.”

Until now.

“
I don’t know how it happened,” I spoke more to myself.

“
Neither do I,” Daniel said. “Think of what could happen if you could control your powers.”

That’s exactly what I feared most.

Several days had passes since my run in with Margot Peterson and I hadn’t seen Daniel, or the rest of his friends since. I was almost dreading running into him, not wanting to explain how I’d managed to break an indestructible sword. I also expected him to come looking for me, and not just to find out some answers. Maybe I was wrong about the fire I saw in his dark, blue eyes when he looked at me.

I took my sweet time walking to my first class of the day, though I told myself it was best not to see Daniel until I had some answers, I couldn’t make myself walk quickly. I nearly made it to math when a low, moaning stopped me short. It sounded like one of the bad singers auditioning for American Idol. That, or someone suffering from chronic food poisoning. I followed the noise to an empty classroom and pushed the door open a fraction.

Kirsten Glass sat in the corner and she appeared to have Tim Long beneath her. He let out another moan and I nearly died on the spot. It wasn’t bad singing or food poisoning then. The couple was taking the opportunity to…express their feelings for each other.

I was about to discreetly close the door behind me when I noticed something strange about the boy. He looked deathly pale and, though I know Kirsten is no lightweight, I didn’t think that accounted for how ill he looked.

I stepped in for a closer look just in time to see Tim’s entire body lift off the ground beneath her, and convulse for several minutes.

“Get away from him!” I didn’t know what she was doing to him, but I felt certain it wasn’t the romantic moment he’d been hoping for.

She pointed her finger and an explosion of electricity burst out at me. I barely managed to dodge the lightening bolt before she fired another my way. I stared at the place on my arm where the tattoo remained hidden beneath my shirt, willing it to kick into action. I managed to dodge another lightening bolt, and still my tattoo remained dormant.

I felt being shot by lightening would be a good time for me to exhibit powers, but it seemed my tattoo didn’t agree.

The next shot made contact, and I flew back against the wall, the current racing through my body as it exited through my shoulder felt like an explosion of fire bursting out of me. Kirsten walked toward me, her hair standing up around her head. Thin, silver slivers moved across her skin. Electricity sparked out, shooting toward the ceiling.

“Get out of here,” she suggested.

“No, Kirsten. Listen. I know you’re angry. Maybe you and Tim had an argument and things got out of hand,” I said, knowing how ordinary emotions can get out of control. “But he needs a doctor.” I looked at Tim lying completely motionless.

Kirsten unleashed a ball of lightening. We learned about these events in science class. Lightening balls are rare, so I guess should feel lucky. However, a large ball of lightening could kill, but so long as you avoided them they tended to fizzle out. Except this lightening ball only seemed to grow in size and given the way it followed me around the room, I guessed I was about to get some intense Electro Convulsive Therapy.

I dived under a table, scrambling between the chairs. Chairs made of metal, I realized, belatedly, before scrabbling out from under the table. Daniel might have a point about my not being very good at taking on supernatural enemies.

The ball of lightening, now the size of a small farm animal, came at my face and all I could think to do was raise my hands, that and close my eyes. I know; not exactly the best plan.

I waited for the ball to strike and waited. Then I waited some more.

I opened my eyes expecting to be blasted, and saw Kirsten thrown back several feet across the room. At first, I thought she’d been hit by her own lightening ball, but then I saw a dark figure fly toward her.

The blur looked familiar. With his night-black hair, and neat, muscular frame, I recognized Daniel instantly. As he performed a leaping sidekick that would have garnered him an Olympic long jump record, my heart skipped a beat. I know. Kirsten had just injured Tim, perhaps mortally, before trying to kill me, so this wasn’t the time for lusty moments. But, just seeing Daniel in the heat of battle made my temperature rise.

Kirsten staggered to her feet, and threw a lightening ball at Daniel, following it up almost instantly with two more. Daniel ran up the wall and ended in a back flip. He back flipped three more times and Kirsten’s lightening balls bounced off the wall, but didn’t die. Instead they continued to chase Daniel, while she added more lightening balls.

While they had fun with their death match, I took the opportunity to check on Tim.

I couldn’t tell if his was breathing, but the fact that his chest no longer rose didn’t bode well. He did have a pulse, albeit faint. I willed his heart to keep beating, and was about to give him mouth to mouth, when I felt my tattoo snaking down my arm. It had that blue tinge that told me I had unwittingly chandelled a magical spell again. This time my tattoo moved across Tim’s skin, snaking over his face.

Nothing happened and I wondered if it was too late, but then Tim gasped, taking in a deep breath. He panted, gasping for more air, trying to fill his oxygen-starved lungs. He took in too many breaths and started to hyperventilate. I willed him to calm down, to take deep, slow breaths, and my tattoo on his face shone blue.

Slowly his breathing calmed and his mouth relaxed.

“Oh, thank goodness! He’s alive,” Kirsten said, dropping to my side, as if she hadn’t just tried to turn him into a set of human Christmas lights.

A huge gash across her arm told me Daniel had given her something to think about. She also had a red mark across her face that looked suspiciously like a slap from the sword.

“I believe you’ve come under attack from an Ink Sorcerer,” Margot Peterson, Daniel’s guardian, joined the group. I hadn’t seen her arrive. She didn’t look at Kirsten when she spoke.

Margot continued to stare straight at me. So single-minded was she in her interest, Daniel couldn’t fail to notice. He frowned, looking back and forth between us.

So, I was getting tired of her staring at me while she talked about a new Ink Sorcerer on the loose. I didn’t know what an Ink Sorcerer was, but I guessed by their reaction, it wasn’t a good thing.

“An Ink Sorcerer made me do this?” Kirsten said, I couldn’t tell if she was relieved to be absolved of responsibility or frightened by the prospect of being controlled.

“Yes, it could be anyone,” Daniel agreed, putting emphasis on the last word. I couldn’t tell if he was trying to steer her away from blaming me, but I hoped so. For some reason the notion of being defended by him felt good. Way too good.

Tim sat up and started to groan. He had a bump on his head from where he fell. No one seemed interested in him, so I decided to give him a once over.

“Don’t touch him,” Margot said, so sharply everyone gasped.

“She saved my life,” Tim mumbled. “I wasn’t awake and I felt her tattoo coming up my arm.”

Kirsten frowned and even Daniel looked worried. Margot just looked smug, like she was glad the others also suspected me, though I still didn’t know quite what I was meant to have done wrong.

“Is this true? Can you make your tattoo go onto people?” Daniel wanted to know.

I didn’t know what to say. Yes, my tattoo had moved onto Tim’s skin, but I got the distinct impression this wasn’t something that happened to most Ink Mages.

“I . . . I don’t know what happened.” Not a lie. “I just wanted to check for a pulse and I couldn’t hear him breathing and then he just took a breath.”

“Come, Tim. We’d better get you to a hospital. Kirsten, I want you to come with me until your guardian arrives. He can determine if you’re still under the Ink Sorcerer’s powers. You two, get back to class.” She started to lead Tim away before she halted. “We’ll meet at the gym after school to discuss what happened. I want to see all of you there.” She didn’t look at me this time, but I could tell this was directed at me.

I couldn’t believe it. I still hadn’t been told exactly what it meant to be an Ink Mage and it looked like I might be something more, something worse. I tried to catch Daniel’s eye, but he pointedly avoided looking at me, hurrying off to class instead.

Daniel didn’t seem like the type to just roll over and do as he was told. He wasn’t racing to class to be subservient; he was trying to avoid me. That more than Margot’s scathing looks worried me to death.

Chapter Five

I had to get Daniel alone. I suspected his guardian thought I might be an Ink Sorcerer and I wanted to know why. I’d somehow used my tattoo to heal Tim, but I didn’t see why that made me so frightening.

Carrie agreed to meet me for lunch at the backfield instead of our usual spot on the main lawn. She didn’t seem to mind. Might have had something to do with how the sporty guys tended to strip off their shirts. Our position in the stands, under the shade of pine tree, gave us a perfect view of the field.

“
Check out the guns on that one,” Carrie observed.