Rebel Belle

Chapter 22

THERE WAS a pause. In it, I could hear the ticking of the little clock above Blythe’s desk, but nothing else. No sounds from downstairs, nothing from the parking lot outside. Finally, David took off his glasses and scrubbed a hand up and down his face. “I am so effing sick of that word,” he muttered, and I found myself nodding. “Destiny” was not my favorite word these days either.

“The Ephors wanted to kill David,” I told Blythe. “Because of his . . . boy parts and stuff.”

David lifted his head at that, and I think he mouthed, Really? at me, but I was watching Blythe.

She held my stare, grinning, and between the blood, her ridiculously young face, and the Lilly Pulitzer, it was more than a little unsettling. “So you’re not totally ignorant, then. Awesome. Yes, at first the Ephors thought that David’s ‘boy parts’ would make him a bad Oracle. After all, the only one they’d ever had didn’t exactly work out for them.”

“Alaric,” David said, polishing his glasses on the bottom of his shirt.

“The very same,” Blythe said with a little nod. “So you can imagine why they were very anti–boy Oracle for a while there. But”— Blythe’s smile went from slightly unhinged to smug, but still seriously unhinged—“that was before they found me.”

David still had his glasses dangling from his fingers, but at that, he put them back on and squinted at her. “What does that mean?”

“No offense or anything, but Saylor Stark has nothing on me as far as the alchemy game goes,” Blythe said, settling back into the chair. For the first time, I honestly believed she was seventeen. “I mean, Saylor can do a mind-control potion on what? One, two people at a time, max? I’ve got this whole freaking library under my thumb right now.” Smirking, she tried to cross her legs, but the way we’d tied her to the chair made that impossible. She settled for bringing her knees tighter together. “I got a job here as a volunteer, and every Friday, they do this big potluck thing. One potion in a batch of brownies, and bam. I have an office, an official e-mail account . . .”

My hand was starting to feel a little numb, so I loosened the cardigan around it. As I did, I saw Blythe’s gaze flick to her sweater, a tiny frown creasing her brow. “So that’s why no one came up here when we fought,” I said, getting it at last. “Alchemy.”

Tearing her eyes from her blood-soaked cardi, Blythe nodded. “I didn’t want to be disturbed.”

“So what does your badass alchemy have to do with David?” I asked, looping the sweater around my hand again. Blythe grimaced.

“I liked that sweater,” she said, and while I could appreciate an attachment to clothes, I was quick to snark back, “I liked my hand.”

Blythe rolled her eyes. “You were the one who grabbed the knife.”

As she said it, some of the adrenaline started to wear off, and a wave of nausea swept through me as I remembered the blade so close to my throat, the blinding pain of wrapping my palm around it. How close to death had I actually been? Moments, definitely. And for the second time in my life. Third if you counted the car chase.

I was pretty sure Paladins weren’t supposed to feel scared or sick, but that was fine. I wasn’t really one. Was I?

That wasn’t something I wanted to think about right now, so I scowled at Blythe. “Answer my question,” I said. “What does your . . . magic or whatever have to do with David?”

David had moved across to Blythe’s desk, and he leaned back against it, bracing himself on his hands as he waited for Blythe to answer. That put him a little bit behind her, and I could tell she was trying to look at him out of the corner of her eye.

“Boy Oracles can be just as awesome as girl Oracles. Heck, they can be better.” Behind her back, she flexed her fingers. “And—look, can y’all loosen these things? I can’t feel my hands.”

David made a move forward, but I held up my hand. “Answers first.”

The look Blythe gave me was weirdly approving. She shrugged and continued, “If you know the right kind of alchemy to use—which, hi, I do—you can . . . I don’t know, like, supercharge him. Make it so that he can see further into the future. And more. And it’s not even that difficult of a spell, really. Some alchemy requires, like, lizard innards and stuff, but this is just saying some—”

“We know about the spell,” I interrupted, clenching my hands at my side. “It made Alaric insane and ended with a whole bunch of people dead and a whole village destroyed.”

Disgust flickered over Blythe’s cherubic face. “Because he wasn’t a Mage. The spell itself isn’t bad. It was just that Alaric didn’t know what the heck he was doing. I would. I mean, I do. And there’s so much you could do once the spell was in effect.”

“Like what?” David asked, and even though she couldn’t look right at him, Blythe swiveled her head in his direction.

“Come with me and I’ll show you,” she said, her voice lower than before, almost like a purr.

David straightened a little, and I saw him swallow hard. “Um . . . no. Thank you,” he said, and it was all I could do not to roll my eyes. Boys, honestly.

“Okay, so the Ephors want David all Super Oracle. Got it. That really doesn’t sound all that bad, I guess.”

Blythe’s eyes narrowed as David startled. “Pres?”

I kept going. “And of course, once they have a Super Oracle, it makes total sense that they’d want to kill, you know, the person sworn to protect him.”

Gripping the arms of Blythe’s chair, I leaned down, getting in her face. “Oh, wait, except it doesn’t make sense at all. If you guys want David to be more powerful, why kill Mr. Hall? Why kill me?”

For the first time, Blythe seemed unsure. She dropped her gaze, and David stepped forward, coming to stand behind me.

“Because the spell is dangerous,” he said softly. “Why else would Harper need to be out of the way?”

My head shot up. Saylor had said that spell ended up destroying Alaric. As David’s Paladin, would I need to protect him from that?

Blythe’s big brown eyes widened in appreciation. “No,” she said, shaking her head. “It’s not—well, there is a slight danger element, maybe. But, hi, crossing the freaking street can be dangerous. And like I said, Alaric wasn’t a Mage. He wasn’t me. So it wouldn’t be dangerous. Just because he screwed up the spell doesn’t make it a bad spell. Just a bad . . . spellcaster.”

I might have bought that if her gaze hadn’t slid from David to the bright splash of blood—mine or hers, I wasn’t sure—on the carpet. “I would do it right.”

My head ached, and my hand and arm were still stinging, and I felt this weird desire to curl up on my bed and cry. Or sleep. Instead, I tightened my hold on Blythe’s chair. “So that’s the test David has to face at Cotillion? You’re going to do some spell on him that will either soup up his powers, or turn him into a crazy person.”

From behind me, I heard David make some kind of noise, but I didn’t turn around to face him. One problem at a time.

The dried blood around Blythe’s face cracked and flaked when she smiled. “Look, I am trying to help you guys out. Just . . . just go with it, okay? Don’t fight me, don’t try to stop me. David will have awesome powers, the Ephors will have an Oracle again, and we can all be buddies. The three of us, working together, kicking ass, taking names . . . all that.”

“We already have a Mage,” David said, coming to stand beside me. I could feel him trembling, but his voice was steady. “Saylor Stark.”

Blythe blew a breath out, ruffling her bangs. “Who can maybe do a couple of weak mind-control spells. Boring. I’m offering you everything. All the power you could ever want.”

Flexing his fingers, David just watched her.

I shook my head. “Okay.” Setting my hands on my hips, I faced Blythe. “Interrogation over.”

It might have been the bad lighting, but I thought her olive skin went a little pale. “So this is the part where you kill me, huh?”

I should. Everything in my blood was urging me to kill her. Somehow, I knew that if I gripped her head the right way, jerked her neck just so, she’d be dead in less than a second. No blood, no fuss, and almost no pain at all. But even as my fingers curled into my palms, as cold sweat trickled down my back, I knew I couldn’t do it. Self-defense was one thing. This felt like . . . murder. Besides, there was something else I could do with Blythe.

“We need to take her to Saylor,” I told David. “She’ll know what to do.” I wasn’t a hundred percent sure that was true, but I was positive that I sure as heck didn’t know what to do.

David must’ve felt the same way because he shoved his hands in his pockets and rocked back on his heels. “Yeah. We definitely need an adult.”

It wasn’t that funny, but the whole afternoon had been so stressful that I burst into giggles. Surprised, David rocked back farther, but, after a second, a slow grin spread across his face.

“Wait, are you two really a thing?” Blythe asked, making David’s grin disappear.

“No,” he said quickly, and I shook my head so hard it was a wonder I didn’t sprain something. “No,” I echoed. “No, no, no, no. Vast worlds of no.”

I think Blythe would’ve said something sarcastic in reply, but David didn’t give her the chance. “We need to get you out of this building without anyone seeing it. You have anything for that?”

Blythe slumped in her bonds, dimples vanishing, big brown eyes going dull. “If I say no, are you going to staple me to death?”

David bent down and picked up the letter opener, tossing it to me. It was slick with blood—my blood—but I still caught it easily with my good hand. “No,” he told her. “If you say no, Harper gets her turn with that.”

It was a tone I’d never heard David use, and considering how long I’d known him, that was saying something. He sounded steely and grown-up, and threatening. Almost like someone who could be a superpowered . . . something.

But this was David Stark. The only threatening thing about him was his toxic level of obnoxiousness.

Still, it worked on Blythe. She jerked her head toward her desk. “Top drawer. Bottle of nail polish. Dab a dot on all of us, we’re as good as invisible.”

I moved to the drawer, and pulled it out before something occurred to me. “David, why don’t you get it?”

He crossed the room in a couple of strides and rifled through the open drawer. When I didn’t double over in pain, I gave a little nod. “Okay, it’s safe.”

Blythe was watching me from under her bangs, her brown eyes sparkling. “Smart girl. But, honestly, if I had some kind of deadly potion, wouldn’t I have used that on you instead of a letter opener?”

David snorted, turning the bottle of nail polish over in his long fingers. “She has a point, Pres.” As I snatched the bottle from him, he reached up to smooth his hair, making him look . . . well, he was never going to be entirely presentable, but at least better.

After dotting the back of all of our hands with the nail polish, David and I managed to untie Blythe, get her out of the chair, and tie her back up without her attempting to murder me. We navigated her down the stairs, and sure enough, even though we passed several people, no one so much as glanced in our direction. It was eerie.

We were at the car before David asked, “Why don’t Mages have potions that can kill people?”

I wasn’t sure if Blythe’s expression of disgust was for the question or for the way I kind of manhandled her into the backseat. “We’re not that powerful. A little mind control, some temporal disturbances . . . those we can pull off. Anything to do with human life is a little trickier. But I’m working on it, trust me.”

“Is that how you survived the car crash into my pool?” I asked her, but Blythe just fidgeted on the seat, trying to tuck her dress underneath her.

“I actually poofed out of there before the car hit.”

“You can just ‘poof’ out of places?” David leaned his forearms on the roof of the car, looking in at Blythe. “Can you also just poof into places?”

I handed David the keys—my hand still hurt too much to think about wrapping it around a steering wheel—and slid into the passenger seat, buckling my seat belt. “David, maybe don’t give the tiny psychotic witch ideas, okay?”

As David pulled out of the parking lot, I leaned back and closed my eyes, taking a deep breath through my nose. We’ll take her to Saylor. Saylor will know what to do.

The more I repeated it, the better I felt. In fact, as David got closer to Pine Grove, I was feeling almost . . . proud. My first real mission as a Paladin, and I had captured the enemy, learned something about the other side’s plans, and managed not to get too horribly injured. Of course, I’d still need to go to the hospital. My hand would need stitches, which meant coming up with a good excuse for my parents. But when I slid the sweater sleeve off my hand, I could see that the wound was already beginning to heal. It was puckered and red and ugly, but mostly closed. I turned my hand back and forth, marveling at it, and David glanced over.

“Whoa,” he murmured, and I nodded.

The “Welcome to Pine Grove” sign loomed in the distance, and I actually smiled a little bit. Yes. Today was definitely one for the win column.

David must’ve felt the same, because as we sped into town, he looked over at me and said, “You know, Pres, this was actually . . . I don’t want to say fun because of the attempted stabbing, but—”

“No,” I said. “I get what you mean. We did good work today. And once we get her—”

I turned to the backseat, ready to face Blythe’s sullen expression and found myself staring at . . . nothing.

The backseat was empty.