Lady Renegades (Rebel Belle #3)(22)

“Because you’ll miss my face?” Ryan teased, and I acted like I was going to throw my marker at him, making him laugh and jokingly duck.

“No, because we’ll miss your magic,” I replied.

“That’s a good point,” Bee said, chewing on her lower lip. “Blythe has some, sure, but it’s not like we can trust that.”

Ryan scrubbed one hand up and down the back of his neck, nodding. “Yeah, that’s the only thing. I almost wish . . .” He sighed, dropping his hand. “It’s stupid.”

“Stupider than going off on a road trip with a girl who tried to kill me?” I asked, drumming the marker on my desk, and Ryan huffed out a laugh.

“Fair point. Okay, what I was going to say is that I wish there were some way to put a ward on the two of you. A . . . a protection mark or something.”

Bee had sat back down on my bed, one leg folded beneath her. “Can you do that?” she asked. “Ward a person?”

“A magical tattoo,” I mused, and Bee’s head whipped toward me, eyes wide.

“Whoa, you mean like a permanent ward?”

Ryan shrugged. “Don’t see why not. At least there’s nothing I’ve ever seen saying you can’t.”

I didn’t exactly relish the idea of getting a tattoo, trust me. It was right up there with blue hair.

“Do it,” I said, holding my arm out to Ryan, whose auburn eyebrows had disappeared under his shaggy hair.

“For serious?”

Taking a deep breath, I looked at the unmarked, pale skin of my inner wrist. My parents were going to lose their minds over this, but if Ryan couldn’t come with us, it made sense to at least bring the best part of him, aka his magic. Okay, maybe not the best part of him—that wasn’t exactly fair. But the most useful part for sure.

Ryan paused for a moment, then turned to get one of the Sharpies from my desk.

“You sure about the arm?” he asked. “Might make sense to get it somewhere harder to see.”

I rolled my eyes. “Oh my God, I am not getting a tramp stamp. I would literally rather die.”

Ryan snorted softly at that and then tapped the end of the Sharpie against the back of my hip. “Here, then. Not right in the middle, still easy to hide with clothes.”

Downstairs, I could hear my parents watching TV, the distant sound of a tennis match drifting up to my room. Next to me, sitting on the edge of the bed, Bee was fiddling with the hem of her shirt, worrying her lower lip between her teeth.

“All for one, one for all?” I suggested, and after a moment, she nodded.

“Might as well.”

Ryan drew the looping mark on my back, a series of whorls and twists that didn’t mean anything to me. But while I might not have been able to recognize what he was drawing, I could feel the power coming off the mark. If it felt like this when it was drawn in bright pink marker, how would I feel when it was permanently tattooed on my skin?

“This is for protection against Blythe,” he said as he drew and I tried not to feel embarrassed, “and I’ll give you my rose balm. For when you need to be . . . persuasive.”

“We’ll get these in white ink,” Bee suggested as Ryan moved on to draw the mark on her hip. “The power would still be the same even if it doesn’t show too much, right?”

Ryan nodded, his wavy hair falling in his eyes a bit. It was cute, and I could tell Bee thought so, too. It was there in the little smile that spread across her face, the way her eyes crinkled at the corners. Once Bee’s mark was done, Ryan sat back, my desk chair creaking slightly under his weight, and the three of us looked at one another.

Smacking both palms flat on my thighs, I stood up with all the forced cheer I could manage. “Well, shall we hit the tattoo parlor, y’all?”

? ? ?

Just over an hour later, Bee and I left the Ink Pot with white bandages on our backs and little foil packets of ointment clutched in our hands. Underneath the bandage, the wards Ryan had made throbbed under my skin, both from the pain of the needle— seriously, that was going to be the last tattoo this gal ever got, ouch—and from the magic in the mark. If I’d had any doubts about this idea working, I was over them now. No matter what else, Bee and I were definitely warded, both from anything that might hurt us and from Blythe’s magic, just to be on the safe side. Still, I couldn’t escape the feeling that this was a little bit like putting a Band-Aid over a bullet hole. If more Paladins came after me, and if my powers stayed . . . blinky, I wasn’t sure just how well a tattoo was going to protect me.

That errand done, I went back to my house—Ryan had driven Bee home—and changed into a sundress. No chance of my T-shirt riding up so they could see the bandage.

Mom got home around four, Dad an hour later, and we had dinner outside. It was still hot, but the deck was shaded by big trees, and besides, once May first hit, Dad was all about grilling. That night’s offering was steak-and-vegetable kabobs, and I waited until we were nearly done—and until both my parents had had two glasses of wine, not that I’m proud about that—to tell them about the road trip plan. While I kept my hand from straying to the mark on my hip, I leisurely applied the rose balm to my lips, then made sure to touch Mom’s hand as I said something, to let my fingers brush Dad’s when I brought him a glass of iced tea. I used words like “college” and “bonding experience” and “totally supervised.” I made sure to tell them how there were already three other girls on the waiting list for my job at the pool. But I didn’t give any details, and as I finished up, I waited for them to say some variation of “Hell to the no.”