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Because the whole town already knew who I was, I hadn’t bothered hiding the mark on the back of my neck. No one had any comments about the little black rain cloud, treating me like I was any other twenty-something girl with a tattoo.
Except no one was permitted to get a tattoo that resembled the mark of a god. The punishment if you were caught with a false mark was to have it scored from your skin. Literally scratched away until all that was left was a bloody mess where it had been. Any artist who was discovered doing a tattoo of a god’s mark would lose their hands.
Not metaphorically.
Their hands would be cut off.
This was considered a gentler punishment than what it used to be, which was death.
I’m sure there were still people out there with homemade marks, tiny tattoos they kept hidden as a form of rebellion, but no one would be dumb enough to flaunt a fake mark in public. The stakes were too high.
I tended to hide mine because I didn’t want the attention that came along with people knowing who I was.
What I was.
I picked up another slice of pizza and was about to take a bite when the bell over the door jangled and a moment later a chair was pulled up to our table.
Just like that, the pale-blonde teenager who had been spying on me when we first arrived was sitting with us. She stared at me with her inhumanly large eyes, like a child waiting for a magician to do a trick.
I stuffed the pizza in my mouth. Ta-da!
When I finished chewing the bite, she still hadn’t moved. She was sitting on the chair backwards, her chin resting on her folded arms, looking so comfortable I worried she intended to stay for a while.
“Uh, hello?” I was wary of saying too much more.
There was clearly something important on her mind, which usually wasn’t a great sign for me. Expectations were my least-favorite thing a person could put on my shoulders. No matter what happened, someone was going to be disappointed.
My money was on the wide-eyed teenager sitting beside me.
“I’m Sawyer.” She said it so matter-of-factly it almost felt like she was offering it as an explanation rather than a greeting.
When I didn’t reply right away, Leo took the lead. “I’m Leo. The human garbage disposal is Tallulah.”
Sawyer was nodding, her attention entirely for me. “I want your help,” she announced.
I set my pizza on my plate and wiped the grease off my fingers, then gave Leo a quick a little assistance here glance. He pretended not to know what I was silently commanding and sat back in his chair, watching the Sawyer and Tallulah show unfold.
“Look, kid, I’ll do my best, but I’m not sure there’s much I can do for you. I can’t strike down people you dislike with lightning or anything.”
I could. But I wouldn’t.
She made a face, and something told me I’d insulted her with my suggestion.
“I want to come with you. When you leave.”
Leo let out a bark of laughter before I was even able to process what she was saying. “Trust me, kid, you don’t want that. Being on the road with her is not at all the great time you’re imagining for yourself.”
I’d be offended if he wasn’t totally right. “You can’t come with me.”
“Why not?”
“Off the top of my head there are about a hundred thousand reasons. One, I just met you. What if you’re a psycho? Two, you’re a teenager. Go to school. Three, what about your mom?”
“Yvonne? She’s my foster mom. She’s nice and all, but she’s not, like, my real mom.” This sort of information might be painful for some kids to admit, but Sawyer just spouted it off the way some people talk about the weather.
“What about school? Friends? You have a life here.” Again I looked at Leo, hoping he might jump in and save me.
“I want to do what you do,” she said, and the earnestness in her voice almost broke my heart in half.
