“Let me see your arm.”

Margot’s command was met with immediate rejection from Josh. It was as if his worst fears about opening up to the woman had been realized. Even Sara gave her mother a wide eyed look of confusion and frustration.

Margot tsk’d her daughter and then turned to Josh. “Nothing will happen. At least nothing should happen. If anything does, it was going to happen no matter what.”

“Is that supposed to be comforting?” Josh asked in alarm. “You’re not even going to tell me what you’re going to do, but that something might happen… There’s no way I’d just let you do whatever you want!”

“Okay. I’m not good at being gentle or forthcoming, cut me some slack. I’m trying to keep information as reversible as possible.” Margot ran her fingers through her short dark hair in distress. “The test is, if I touch my mark to your arm… in the place where you would have a mark, if you had a mark… and some sort of mark showed up… temporarily. I’d be able to learn a lot more about what happened to you.”

“And you won’t pass your mark on?” Josh raised an eyebrow. The honestly, despite the further creeping entrenchment of information that would forever change him, was refreshing and lowered his guard.

“It can’t be passed on without two consenting parties.” Margot repeated what Sara had told Josh the day before.

Josh believed both of them, at least he nodded slightly in agreement, but there was still an uncertainty about the proximity. The idea of actually touching one of their marks felt incredibly personal in a way that he was not comfortable with. At least not with Margot. Margot was older, more mature, had an air of authority, and she didn’t seem… Josh didn’t quite know how to phrase his distrust. It wasn’t that she was an adult. Josh considered himself an adult. It was more that she wasn’t a peer. She wasn’t someone he felt comfortable connection with. But Sara, Josh thought they could both be somewhat comfortable with that.

“I’d prefer it if Sara did the test then, if you don’t mind.”

Sara’s eyes lit up and her face looked genuinely warm. Margot’s face also softened at the trust she saw placed in her daughter. But that look of uncertainty and apology was not gone.

“I don’t mind.” Sara sounded hopeful, but her hopes died out as she looked to her mother.

“I don’t mind either, but it won’t work. Sara’s mark…” Margot growled quietly to herself. “Her mark isn’t in an active state. She can’t do anything with it. And Connor’s the same.”

There was a quiet stare down as all three ran through more or less the same train of thoughts. Josh and Margot had hardly spent any time around each other, and what little they had was spent with Margot asserting her authority to compensate for her youthful appearance. They had a certain respect for each other, but it was the sort of respect that teenagers had with their friends parents; distant and based on fleeting interactions and basic appearance. And while they all lingered on that seemingly insurmountable lack of trust that existed, Sara offered the only real suggestion she could.

“Would it help if I—and please don’t take this the wrong way—held your hand?” Sara was blushing slightly but her face was serious. “Just so I can be close and pull your arm away if something starts to happen.”

Margot looked from Sara to Josh as she assessed what sort of relationship was growing between them. She certainly hadn’t anticipate her daughter being so ready to offer help in such a personal way. She knew that Sara wasn’t reserved, but she wasn’t cavalier about personal interactions either. But right then, as she looked at the kindness that existed between her daughter and this boy she hardly knew, Margot realized that she needed to trust her daughter. And if Josh could trust Sara, he could trust her mother by extension.

“You wouldn’t have much time to react, but you could try.” Margot offered.

Josh, who had been very uncomfortable up to that point, relaxed at Sara’s offer. “I think I could be okay with that. But I reserve the right to stop this at any time I feel like.”

There was a general nod from all three as they didn’t find anything wrong with that arrangement. Margot held out her hand to take Josh’s arm and Sara gripped his left hand with hers, interlocking their grip around each others thumbs as though getting ready to squeeze to alleviate pain. Neither of them expected pain to be a possible reaction based on Margot’s explanation, but Josh still clenched his jaw as Margot grabbed hold of his arm with her right hand and brought her left arm over it. The tendons in Josh’s forearm were starting to twitch and tighten, not abnormally, but uncomfortably; the movement was visible on his forearm, just below the skin.

Before she pressed her forearm down, Margot looked carefully into Josh’s eyes. She looked for regret, for second thoughts, for fear. But she didn’t see them. She saw determination, a set to the brow that accompanied a clenched jaw, and she saw frustration. Margot wasn’t entirely sure herself what would happen when she lowered her arm down to his, just as she wasn’t sure why she saw any of the things she did on Josh’s face.

The movement of her arm was slow. Excruciatingly slow in Josh’s mind. But when it finally touched his skin, it felt like a white hot iron. Sara didn’t have the speed to pull away Josh’s arm. By the time she felt it tense at the feeling and she saw the light radiate off the connection, Josh had already ripped his arm free and taken a step back.

“What the hell did you do to me?!”

Looking just as surprised as Josh, Margot raised her hands in defense. “I’ve never seen that happen before! I don’t even know what happened!”

“Josh, try it on mine.” Sara held out her arm arm with the wrist up. “I want to see if it’s just Margot’s.”

“Are you crazy? That hurt like hell, there’s no way I’m doing that again. I need”—Josh paused mid motion as he rubbed his arm where the mark had touched it—”what?”

“What’s wrong?” Margot was trying to creep close off the edge of the bed, but Josh took another step away.

“It’s not burning.” Josh muttered. “And there’s something wrong with the skin.”

Josh held out his arm in confusion, unable to completely process what had happened. His skin had lightened. Not just in the way that skin lightens over time when not exposed to sunlight. It looked like a splotch of someone else’s skin had been grown on Josh’s arm like a bacterial culture. If it was anything other than a paler skin tone, it might have looked like a rash.

But stranger than the skin tone blotch, was the dark smudge on top of it. It looked like someone had written something on a piece of paper with a paint marker and then pressed it against his arm. It was a fuzzy relief of the mark on Margot’s arm. Not a mark of his own, but a mirror of it; it was dark where the mark was light and light where the mark was dark. And it looked as if it had been made with a bleeding ink as well, further messing up the appearance and distorting what it was. For all the pain that it had caused, the deformation was only about four inches long and two inches wide, but it was still obvious what it was. And as all three looked at Josh’s arm, they watched the deformation fade slowly. At the rate it was going it would be nearly half an hour before it was gone completely, but it was visibly fading.

“What does that mean?” Josh finally made eye contact with Margot as his curiosity overcame his fear. “That was what you thought would happen, right?”

“I thought it was a possibility, but I didn’t know what was going to happen.” Margot took a deep breath as she continued to process what they had all just seen. “I honestly hoped nothing would happen.”

“Okay, but what does it mean? What did the test prove?” The mild frustration that Josh had been experiencing since he arrived was growing into anger.

Sara looked to her mother as well, not with anger or frustration, but concern. She was just as lost as Josh was, which shocked her. She had spent her whole life learning about her mother and the marks and what they meant. But this was new. This was unheard of. It was legitimately strange. Strange to a strange person.

“It means,” Margot let out another sigh, she was struggling to find the right words. “It means that you can’t avoid the mark. It doesn’t matter that you don’t know really anything about them, or that you don’t want one. At some point, you are are going to receive one. It’s inevitable. It’s fated to happen.”

“What do you mean fated?” Josh groaned as he reeled back and began to pace the room. “Where’s the consent in that? If I can’t avoid it why is it supposed to be a choice?”

“Fate sometimes cheats.” Margot shrugged weakly.

“Or, maybe…” Sara began tentatively. She wouldn’t have stopped if Josh hadn’t turned suddenly to her and urged her on with his eyes. “Maybe, it’s something you’ve already said yes to and just haven’t realized it yet. Marks aren’t bound by the same perception as us. They are part of a force that can see your future, so maybe you just haven’t said yes out loud yet but there’s no way you won’t.”

Josh almost laughed, it was the silliest thing he’d ever heard. He couldn’t fully wrap his mind around it but it was absurd. “You’re kidding me right? If it can see into the future and know I’ll ask for a mark, then how does me knowing that know mean I’ll still want one later? It’s a paradox.”

“Not exactly.” Margot hummed. “Witnessing the future can alter it, but some things happen no matter what. Mostly things that depend on who a person is at their core. If someone is the type of person to make a certain choice, even if they know it might kill them, they will still make that choice.”

“Oh, and I suppose you’ve seen the future before? That’s how you know about this. Does your mark let you do that too?” Josh sneered. “Or is it just super strength.”

“I haven’t personally seen the future unravel. But there are people who can see and have seen possible futures.” Margot wasn’t at all concerned with the tone Josh was taking. She saw it as a natural reaction. “But I know that time is fluid. People aren’t though.”

“You sound so crazy right now.” Josh shook his head. He was about to leave when Sara piped up once again.

“You saw for yourself . It’s crazy but it’s real.” Sara stood and grabbed Josh by the shoulders. “And I’m not going to lie to you. This is real. It’s real, and it’s serious.”

“I know…” Josh let out a deep breath. “I’m… this is terrifying.”

“Let us help.” Sara continued. “We can tell you anything you want to know, we’ll show you how to stay safe. You could even move in here if that helped. But I don’t think you want that.”

“I think, I just need to sit down for a bit.” Josh muttered as he gently lifted Sara’s hands off his shoulders and sat back down in the arm chair. “This is a lot.”

Margot stood up and spoke with a bowed head. “I don’t want you to thin that I’m trying to force you into this. But I think you’re probably stuck. And I want to help you get un-stuck if I can. I’m going to go talk to some people about what just happened. I know someone who had an experience similar to yours, they should be able to help.”

“Thank you.” Josh muttered. “I guess that means no self-defense practice.”’

“Oh, I think we crossed that line a while ago.” Sara chuckled weakly. “I think today calls for greasy takeout and a nap.”