I shook my head. “We have to go,” I said. “Now.”
Look, Bee is not a perfect best friend. She once dated a guy I could barely stand, she listened to truly obnoxious music, and I had caught her making out with my ex in a supply closet. Plus she’d lied to me and helped David escape town, which had led to this whole mess.
But when it counted, Bee always came through.
“Call you back,” she said to who I assumed was Ryan, and then gathered up the rest of her things, moving as fast as I was without asking a single question. It took her about thirty seconds to throw all she’d gotten out into her tote, but that was about ten seconds too long. We’d just slung our bags over our shoulders when Blythe appeared in the doorway, soaking wet and, surprisingly, nowhere near as angry as I thought she would be.
“Harper,” she started, but I could see her fingers flexing at her side, and while there was no anger pouring off her, there was something else, something a lot scarier than anger.
Magic.
Chapter 30
WE WERE all frozen there, me and Bee in the room, our bags still on our shoulders, Blythe standing in the doorway, her fingers still flexing, water dripping from her hair. We’d spent enough time together over the past few days that she’d started to feel like my friend, and only now did I realize how stupid that had been. Blythe wasn’t Ryan. She sure as heck wasn’t Bee. She was a girl who did things for her own reasons, reasons I couldn’t possibly understand, and for all that she might say we were alike, I knew now that we couldn’t be. I could never be this ruthless, this . . . what had she said?
Determined.
“We’re leaving,” I told Blythe now. “Without you. And to be honest, I don’t care where you go from here, but you’re not coming with us.”
Blythe gave me that little half smile that had become so familiar. “Do you really think I don’t know where you’re going? God’s sake, Harper, I feel David, too. Maybe not as clearly, but still. The tightness in the chest, the headaches . . .”
She did and she had magic to boot, but—I remembered as my hip started to tingle—so did we.
I had no idea how Ryan’s mark might work, but it was supposed to act against Blythe’s magic if we were in danger, and I felt pretty sure that we were in danger now, no matter how much Blythe might smile and say we weren’t.
The wind was picking up outside, and I could hear the first few patters of raindrops on the sidewalk and roof, but the electric feeling in the air had nothing to do with the storm, and everything to do with the girl standing in front of us, keeping us from leaving.
Ryan and I had talked about how the wards would work—the one Bee and I both had, and the one I wasn’t telling anyone about. I didn’t have to mutter a spell or anything, just . . . think about what I wanted to happen.
Blythe was still talking, her hands held out in that conciliatory way people use when they’re trying to come across like rational people, but seeing as how the first words out of Blythe’s mouth had been “Killing David is the only solution here,” I wasn’t sure that “rational” was even in her vocabulary.
“What?” Bee squawked next to me. “We’re here to rescue him.”
Blythe rolled her eyes, stepping farther into the room. “And you can’t. The spell is too big a risk. Didn’t everything with Dante prove that? This is unstable magic we’re working with, and an unstable Oracle on top of everything else. Like I said, if we’d gotten to him before the cave . . .”
It was probably just a trick of the light, but I could swear I saw her lower lip wobble a bit before she said, “I honestly did try to help you. All of you. But there isn’t a way. There just isn’t. Except this.”
I shook my head, my fingers falling to the tattoo on my back. “There’s always another way,” I said, and Blythe’s gaze followed the movement of my hand.
Her own hand shot up, and I felt a pulse of magic, but it was like Bee and I were behind protective glass. The power bumped harmlessly off us, and Blythe looked at her hand much the same way I’d looked at mine earlier today—confused, kind of betrayed.
“What did you do?” she asked, almost wondering, but before I could reply, she tried again. This time, whatever spell she was pulling up was stronger, and I felt it like a fist pushing at my sternum, but still, Ryan’s ward held.
Blythe dropped both of her hands, sucking in a deep breath through her nose. “Harper,” she said, clearly losing her patience, “I don’t want to hurt you. The whole point of this is to keep the Oracle from killing you. Don’t do—”
Her words were abruptly cut off as Bee, who had edged around behind Blythe while Blythe’s focus was on me, brought a lamp down on her head.
It was maybe not the most elegant of moves, but it worked, and Blythe’s eyes rolled back as she slid to the floor.
We didn’t hesitate this time, grabbing our bags and hurrying out of the room.
It was raining heavily now, one of those “gully washers” as my aunts would say, the kind that start and stop all of a sudden in southern summers. My car was parked in the farthest corner of the lot, so Bee and I were just as soaked as Blythe had been by the time we got to it.
Reaching into the backseat, I pulled Blythe’s bag out, tossing it to the sidewalk. I might have pushed her in a pool and Bee might have hit her with a lamp, but we weren’t terrible people. Granted, all her stuff was going to get wet, but I figured Blythe could sort that out.
That done, we got in the car, and I drove out of the parking lot like I was fleeing the scene of a crime.
Which I guessed I was, technically. Bee’s lamp had definitely hit her hard enough to qualify as assault and battery. I did tell myself not to feel guilty about what had just happened, though. I was protecting David, and that was my job whether I had powers or not. But I thought Blythe had been telling the truth when she said she’d looked for other ways to save him. She was scared, or maybe she just didn’t want it badly enough.
I was scared, too, believe me, but I was also willing to do anything, no matter how risky it might be.
“So do you have a plan?” Bee asked, and I appreciated that she waited until we’d gotten to the interstate before asking me that. It showed a certain amount of faith I really needed right now. Rain was beating on the windows, and I had the wipers turned on as high as they would go, adding this frantic feeling to everything. My heart was pounding, my hands were shaking, and all I could think was how close we’d come to screwing up. If I had led Blythe to David and she’d killed him . . . I could hardly even think about it.
“If I can get to him,” I told her, “if I can just talk to him, maybe . . . maybe we won’t even need the spell. Any spell. Maybe there’s enough David in there to overrule the Oracle.”
Bee was quiet for a long time before she finally said, “Harper, you know that’s crazy.”
I did. It was completely irrational and stupid and nothing like me. I was the girl who made a spreadsheet for her first-week-of-school wardrobe, for goodness’ sake. The girl who had a plan for everything.
But from the very beginning, nothing about any of this had gone to plan. Maybe it was time to throw out the rule book and trust my instincts.
Instincts that could, I was willing to admit, get me totally killed.
“I have to try,” I told Bee. “Even if it doesn’t work. Even if I . . .”
I didn’t want to say it out loud, but I thought again of the sword in the trunk.
Reaching over, Bee squeezed my hand where it clutched the steering wheel. “Okay,” she said. “So since plans and calendars and schedules haven’t worked, we’ll try being nuts for a change.”
She smiled at me, and I wanted to smile back, but I was way too worried for that now. Besides, I needed to think about where we were headed.
I focused on that vision I’d had, remembering what I could from those moments when David’s mind and mine were
linked.
“North,” I said to Bee now, my fingers flexing on the steering wheel, the answer floating up through my brain. “He’s north, in Tennessee.”
Bee glanced over at me, the rain making strange patterns on her face. “Blythe can sense him, too,” she said. “She said so.”
I nodded and thought again of the sword in the trunk.
“We just need to get there first,” I said. “And now we have a head start and also, you know, a car, which is something Blythe is definitely lacking at the moment.”
Bee made a little noise in the back of her throat, turning to look at the rain-slicked road ahead of us. “I still wouldn’t count her out.”
Determined, I thought again, remembering the look in Blythe’s eyes.
“Me, neither,” I told Bee. “But we just have to get there first.”
Chapter 31
“DO Y’ALL need a map?”
The park ranger in front of me was maybe the perkiest person I had ever seen in my life, and seeing as how I had been a cheerleader and in a pageant, that was saying a lot.
“Yes, please,” I said, trying to smile and not shatter into about a billion pieces. Because David was here. I could feel it, and I thought Bee could, too. It was like a constant weight in my chest, a second heartbeat thudding away in there. My Paladin strength and quickness might be gone, but it was clear some thread still connected me to David.
I had to admit he’d chosen a good place, too. The visitor center was a tall, octagonal room with the information desks against one wall, but windows surrounded the rest of the space. They looked out on a wall of green, branches pressing so close to the glass it felt like we were in a tree house. And beyond the trees were the mountains, even though we couldn’t really see them from here. The peaks weren’t especially high, and the heavy forest blocked most of the view. Still, the mountains were there, and in those mountains, there were caves, like the ones the ancient Oracles had lived in in Greece.
Who knew that David Stark of all people could be such a drama queen?
Bee had wandered to the big display in the middle of the room, a low table containing a topographical map of the region, and once I had my own paper map, I joined her. I ran my fingers over the ridges and valleys of the mountain—okay, really, the super big hill—we were about to climb, and wished I’d eaten more this morning. I hadn’t eaten when Bee, Blythe, and I had stopped yesterday at the motel, either, and my stomach had been too jumpy to even think about anything more than a bag of trail mix from a gas station. But now, looking at this hill, I felt like something more substantial had been called for.
Especially if it was going to be my last meal.
Turning away from the model, I took in a deep breath through my nose. I couldn’t think like that, not right now. I was so totally not going to die. David was so totally not going to die. I was going to save David or at least talk him out of going all mega Oracle and destroying Pine Grove . . . somehow, and then we were all going to go home and put this behind us.
I just hadn’t figured out the how yet.
Bee and I left the visitor center, stepping out into the thick heat of late-July Tennessee. Despite the fact that we were technically in the mountains and there was a cover of green over everything, the leaves blocking out almost all of the direct sunlight, this was still summer in the South, which meant I was sweating every place a girl can sweat.
Next to me, Bee shifted her backpack and slid her sunglasses down from the top of her head. “So . . . we’re doing this?” she asked, and I looked up at the trail stretching in front of us. It started just beyond the parking lot, a cheerful brown wooden sign reminding us that we were taking our lives into our own hands, and I nearly laughed at that. Of course, whoever had put up the sign was worried about people falling or possibly getting mauled by black bears, not facing down a supernatural boy in a cave.
I swallowed hard, my mouth dry. “We are,” I said to Bee.
We’d joked about this whole thing being a quest right from the very beginning, like we were knights-errant on an impressive journey, not a group of girls driving through the back roads of the South, eating gas station food and staying in creepy motels. But as Bee and I started climbing up the trail leading into the woods, for the first time, it genuinely felt like a quest. The forest was quiet, and there were no other people on the path, probably because it was hotter than Satan’s armpit. Or maybe they’d felt something. Not as strongly as I felt it, of course, but something nonetheless, a sense of “wrongness,” like Saylor’s brother had described.
I could feel something, too. The higher we climbed, the deeper we got into the woods, the stronger the feeling got. I wasn’t sure how long we hiked, ignoring hunger pangs in my stomach and the scratches of thorns and brambles. I was glad I’d decided to wear jeans even though they were heavy and damp with sweat. But that discomfort was nothing compared to every other sensation. I knew David was close. I couldn’t explain how I knew, exactly. Just that the feeling, almost as though I had two heartbeats, seemed stronger, heavier.
Now instead of making our way through undergrowth, we were on hard-packed dirt, but the way we needed to go was steep, and I felt my thighs and calves protest as I headed up the ridge.
Behind me, Bee gave a little gasp, and I turned to see her stumble, one hand flailing out as pebbles slid from beneath her feet. Without thinking, I reached down to grab her outstretched arm. Bee was about half a foot taller than me, and heavier, plus she had gravity on her side. Our hands locked together, and I gritted my teeth as I caught her and kept her upright.
But the force of my pull sent me stumbling backward so that I fell hard on my butt, wincing as a loose twig scraped the exposed skin of my ankle.
For a moment, we just sat there, breathing hard, in the middle of the trail, me sitting, Bee half sprawled on the ground. My shoulder ached, and my leg stung, and I had knocked the breath out of myself with that hard fall, so I was nearly wheezing.
If ever there was an appropriate moment for swearwords, this was it. We were halfway up a mountain in Tennessee, going after my magical ex-boyfriend, a guy who had sent superpowered assassins after me. We had ditched the one person who could’ve maybe helped us in all of this because I hadn’t wanted her to hurt David, but what if he was going to hurt me?
Lowering my head to my hands, I took a deep breath through my nose. “Bee,” I said, my voice wavering, and to my horror, I could feel stinging at the backs of my eyes, a thickness in my throat. “I effed this up.”
I did not say “effed.” I said the actual word. And it felt so good that I thought maybe I needed to say it again. Lots.
Lifting my head, I looked at Bee and tears spilled down my cheeks. “My effing powers are effing gone, and now I’ve got us into this effed-up situation, and I have no effing clue what the eff I’m going to do once we find David. Not a single. Effing. Idea.”
Bee’s eyes had gone wide, but I wasn’t sure if it was from my confession or the fact that I had just used that word so many times. And honestly, whichever it was, I did not give an eff.
I was openly crying now, and I shook my head. “I don’t think I can do this,” I said, and I wasn’t sure if I meant I couldn’t save David or that I couldn’t bring myself to hurt him if it came to that. Honestly, it could have been both. Earlier today, when we’d left the car, I’d almost left the sword behind. Sure, if there ended up being other Paladins in the cave, I might need it, but there was always the thought at the back of my mind that I might have to use it on David.
Rising to her feet, Bee crossed over to me and took me firmly by the shoulders. “You can,” she said, squeezing for emphasis. “Harper, listen to me. Your powers are great and all, and I’m not going to pretend I don’t really wish they were working about right now, but . . . being a Paladin isn’t what’s going to save David. You can save him because he loves you. Because you love him.”
Sniffling, I rolled my eyes. “That’s very Disney-movie of you, Bee.”
I’d meant to make her smile, but she just gave me another little shake. “I’m serious. Even if your powers had been gone before we started on this whole thing, I would’ve gone with you.”
She said the words so quietly, so simply, that something in my chest seemed to give way. My becoming a Paladin had hurt Bee. It had gotten her kidnapped and superpowered and nearly killed. But she was still looking at me like she believed in me, and that gave me the strength to nod, reaching out to rest my hands on her forearms.
“Okay,” I said. “You’re right. I can do this.”
I repeated the words, almost like a mantra. Satisfied, Bee gave a little smile and stepped back, hoisting her pack.
“So how much farther, do you think?” she asked.
I turned to jerk my chin at the trail winding its way up to a wall of stone and green above us. “Not much farther at all,” I told her, and took a deep breath. “We’re here.”
Chapter 32
HERE IS A THING you should know about me: I really hate caves. Maybe it’s the damp and the dark, maybe it’s the thought of being underground. Who can say? The point is, I’ve always avoided them, not even going on my class field trip to DeSoto Caverns in the third grade. I’d missed underground mini-golf and a laser show because I hated caves so much.
Which meant that walking into the mouth of that huge fissure in the rock was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do. Bee and I made our way up the hill, and even though the air was loud with the sound of buzzing insects, the breeze through the leaves, and our own breathing, it seemed weirdly quiet and still.
The cave was nearly hidden behind a wall of branches and vines, but I pushed those aside, staring into the darkness in front of me. Bee stepped forward, too, shifting her backpack on her shoulder, but I stopped and turned toward her, taking a deep breath.
Lady Renegades Page 18
