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“Me too,” Dare added, shooting her a wink.
“But what should we get?” Grace mused, tipping her head back thoughtfully.
I looked at Bullet, surprised to see that he was staying quiet. It wasn’t like Bullet had something against tattoos—he had a bunch of them.
All cards.
No, not just any cards.
All cards he’d been shown on his body in his visions. That was why he was being quiet—he hadn’t seen any new ones to add. Maybe he was feeling some kind of way about it? I was guessing that if we decided on a simple matching design, he’d break tradition and get it too.
But maybe I could extend the olive branch. Maybe instead of asking Bullet to leave his comfort zone, we could meet him in it.
“The cards,” I said in a low voice. “The ones on Bullet’s wrist. There’s one for each of us, right?”
He blinked at me before sliding his sleeve up and extending his arm to show us the five cards fanned out from wrist to elbow.
Grace smiled wistfully at the design, tracing the first card closest to his wrist—a skull wearing a jester’s hat—with her finger. “You designed this, Dare?”
He shrugged, playing it cool. “Sort of? I mean, the cards are what they are, I copy the image on the deck. I just, uh, arranged them, I guess.” Dare frowned at Bullet. “You never mentioned that design had anything to do with me.”
“I didn’t know at the time,” Bullet replied with a slightly strained grin. “I saw the cards first. The faces came later.”
Wild sauntered over, staring unabashedly, while Bullet hummed a tune I now recognized asWait For It, because it was one of his favorites.
“That’s you,” Grace told Wild, pointing at the middle card as Dare and I moved closer. “The Chariot.”
A leaping winged horse made for a pretty badass tattoo. Not that I was complaining about mine—a horned skull with bat wings and a floating crown. I could roll with that.
Wild tilted his head questioningly to the side.
“Control, willpower, determination,” Bullet listed off. “All traits that are very you. Dare, this is you—The World. Completion, integration, accomplishment.”
He tapped the card closest to his elbow that depicted a checkered globe with a sun on one side and a moon on the other.
“Completion,” Dare repeated with a thoughtful nod. “And Riot is the bat devil thing, right? How come Grace is the clown?”
“The Fool,” Grace corrected with a wry smile. “Which sounds worse.”
“Beginnings, innocence, spontaneity,” Bullet listed idly. “The Fool represents the start of a new journey into the unknown. An innocence of the challenges that lie ahead, the sometimes hard-won lessons that must be learned.”
“That… That does sound like Grace,” I replied, giving her an apologetic look since she clearly didn’t love being referred to as The Fool. “Do you hate it? We can pick a different design—”
“I like it,” she said softly, rubbing her thumb over Bullet’s arm. “I like that it means something, that it’s always meant something to Bullet. That it symbolizedus.”
“Then let’s do it,” Dare said enthusiastically, heading back to the case to get set up. “You guys decide who’s going first.”
Bullet and I exchanged a look, a silent agreement not to talk about what our cards symbolized. Mine because I already knew The Devil represented the worst parts of me, the internal battle I’d been waging until Grace came into my life and made putting my demons to rest feel more possible than impossible.
Bullet’s because his card was Death.
“I’ll go first,” Grace announced. “I want it on my right wrist.”
“It’ll hurt a little there,” Dare warned her. “And I don’t have any numbing cream.”
“I can handle it,” she assured him. I doubt it had escaped anyone’s notice that she wanted her tattoo in the same place as Bullet’s. He pulled out his cards, flipping through them with impressive dexterity to find the ones Dare needed to reference.
“You suggested this for me,” Bullet said quietly, coming to stand next to me after he’d reluctantly handed them over, his voice too low for anyone else to hear. “You knew I didn’t want to get one I hadn’t seen.”
