Rebel Belle

Chapter 28

I FROZE, my hand still on Ryan’s sleeve. My heart was somewhere south of my knees, sweat immediately prickling my brow. The crowd shifted, a group of preteen girls sliding in front of Blythe. When they moved on, she was gone.

Rising up on tiptoes, I frantically searched the lobby, looking for some trace of her. “Who are you looking for?” Ryan asked, lifting his head to glance around, too.

“Did you see a girl?” I said, still scanning the mass of bodies moving through the theater.

“I . . . see lots of girls,” Ryan replied, bemused.

“No, a specific girl. A tiny one with brown hair and dimples.”

“Lauren Roberts?” Abi asked, naming a girl in our math class.

“No,” I told her, twisting to look behind me. “But like her. About that height, same hair. Like Lauren Roberts with a major case of crazy eyes.”

She could be anywhere. She was short enough to pass through the crowd unseen, and damn it, I wasn’t tall enough to see over all these people.

“Does this chick owe you money or something?” Ryan joked, finally sounding like himself again. But I was too panicked to be happy about that.

The glass doors opened, and as they did, I spotted a few people leaving the theater. I caught the briefest glimpse of a long brown ponytail, and then the door swung shut. It might have been Blythe, but I couldn’t be sure.

Whirling on Ryan, I grabbed his arm again. “I’ll be right back. Go on into the theater and I’ll find you in a few minutes.”

“Whoa.” Ryan flipped his hand, fingers encircling my wrist. “Where are you—”

I tugged out of his grasp, forgetting about my superstrength, so instead of taking my arm back gently, I more or less wrenched it from him.

Surprise, hurt, and more than a little bit of anger all warred on his face, but I didn’t have time to worry about that right now. Blythe was here, and I had to find her before she found me.

“I’ll be right back,” I said again, then dashed out the front doors of the theater before Ryan had the chance to say anything else.

The November night was cold and clear, and my breath puffed out in front of me as I stood on the sidewalk, looking left, then right. The theater took up one whole side of the square; the other three sides were taken up with little boutiques, Miss Annemarie’s, the jewelry store, and Pine Grove’s sad attempt at a coffee shop, the Dixie Bean. Other than the theater, the rest of the square was relatively deserted, since most of the shops closed around five. Miss Annemarie’s and the Dixie Bean were probably the only things open, but there was no one on the sidewalks, and no sign of the little group that had just left the theater.

I jogged across the street, heading for the center of the square. The statue of Adolphus Bridgeforth, one of the founders of Pine Grove, glowered down at me. The Pine Grove Betterment Society, led by Saylor, had raised the money for it about five years back. I knew that if I looked closely, I’d see wards etched into the stone base. Saylor had been very thorough where David’s protection was concerned.

Next to him, the little fountain splashed away merrily, the night wind blowing a few stray droplets on me. Every nerve in my body felt tense and coiled, the hair on the back of my neck standing up.

You’re a Paladin, I reminded myself. You have all kinds of kick-ass abilities and she doesn’t.

But then I remembered how easily she’d gotten the jump on me before.

To Adolphus’s right, there was a little flower garden surrounded by a tiny white picket fence. A bronze plaque on the fence said that the garden had been planted by the Pine Grove Betterment Society just last year. Sure enough, as I got closer, I could see tiny golden wards on all the fence posts.

Giving another quick glance around to make sure no one was looking, I reached down and, easy as picking a flower, plucked a stake from the fence. The hole glared at me accusingly, and I slipped the pointed piece of wood behind me as I backed away from the center of the square. I hated vandalism more than anything, but I needed a weapon. Besides, Saylor had put that fence up, so when you thought about it, the fence was practically mine.

In a way.

Keeping the stake low at my side, I headed back toward the theater. There was a parking lot behind it. Maybe that was where Blythe had gone. As I hurried in that direction, a tiny voice in my head kept up a running commentary. So if you find her, you’re simply going to stab her to death with a piece of wood in the parking lot? And hope no one sees? Because tiny girls getting staked behind the Royale Cinema seems like something people would notice.

But if I got rid of—no, killed, I needed to say killed—Blythe now, all of this ended. No Cotillion showdown, no chance of my whole town being wiped out, no chance of David dying. This was my chance.

Or it would have been, if she had been in the parking lot.

There were a few people straggling in, but both of the movies had already started, so the parking lot was more or less empty. Still, I kept my stake hidden at my side as I walked the rows of cars, ducking down to look under them, even peering in the windows.

No Blythe.

When I got to the last car on the row, I sighed, nearly letting the fence post drop from my hand. This was stupid. It probably hadn’t even been her. Maybe the stress of the past few weeks was finally catching up with me, and I was going crazy in addition to becoming a Paladin.

I should go back into the theater, find Ryan, and figure out some way to salvage this evening. The fence post clattered to the ground, and I turned back to the theater.

And suddenly I heard the sound of running feet. As I whipped around, I could have sworn I saw brown hair disappearing around the corner, back toward the square.

Dropping to my knees, I scrambled for the fence post. Not caring who saw me dashing through downtown Pine Grove wielding a damn stake, I took off after her. My boots clicked hard on the pavement, and I could hear the wind and my own blood rushing in my ears.

Was there a flash of movement over by Miss Annemarie’s? I ran in that direction.

But just as I reached the tearoom, the door swung open. I didn’t even have time to register that someone was coming out of that door before plowing directly into him.

Something warm splashed all over me, and for one horrifying, dizzying moment, I thought I’d plunged my stake into an innocent person’s heart. But, no, I’d managed to lower it at the last second, and I could hear the wood clatter harmlessly to the pavement. As for the hot liquid currently seeping into my cashmere sweater, from the smell, it was the crab bisque that my Aunt May was so fond of.

My breath was sawing in and out of my lungs, burning with the sharp night air, as I stumbled back from . . . David.

Bisque was dripping from the front of his tweed jacket, the crushed plastic container still clutched against his chest. He looked down at himself and then back at me. “Pres? Is this some kind of Paladin thing? Was the soup poisoned or something?”

I didn’t answer; I was too busy looking for Blythe, but there was no sign of her. She was gone.

Dropping my hands to my knees, I bent forward, taking deep breaths, trying to slow the slamming of my heart.

“I thought you had a date tonight,” David said, and I don’t know why that’s the thing that did it. The tears that had pricked my eyes earlier suddenly came back full force, and to my absolute horror, I burst into tears.

“Whoa, whoa, Harper,” David said, the plastic container tumbling to the sidewalk. He gripped my arms, holding me slightly away from him and ducking his head to look into my face. “What happened?”

“I was on a date, but Ryan and I got in a fight, and he likes Mary Beth—MB—I think, but it’s like I don’t even c-care, which makes me a-a horrible person, and then I saw Blythe, or I thought I did, and I vandalized a fence, and now we smell bad, and that s-s-soup wasn’t poisoned, I just ran into you, and—”

I didn’t get any further before David carefully wrapped his arms around me. He held me like I was a bomb he was afraid was seconds from going off, keeping our bodies as far apart as he could while still technically hugging me.

“It’s okay,” he said, patting my back once. He apparently decided that was a good move because he did it a few more times. And the weird thing was, it was kind of a good move. I lowered my forehead to his tweed-covered shoulder and let myself be patted until my tears slowed to a trickle. A few weeks ago, if you had told me that being held in David Stark’s arms was one of the nicest things I’d ever feel, I wouldn’t have laughed at you. I would’ve been too busy choking on my own horror.

But leaning against him, crying into his stupid tweed, I thought I could maybe stay there forever. It was such a relief to be able to sob and have someone know all the reasons why.

Once I was calmer, I lifted my head to find David watching me with an expression I’d never seen before. Before I had time to figure it out, he reached behind him and opened the tearoom door. “Well, I’m going to need another order of soup to go, so why don’t we go inside and have a cup of tea. Tea fixes stuff, right?”

I looked back across the square at the theater. Ryan was in there, waiting for me. Or sitting next to Mary Beth and not worrying about me at all. Besides, I smelled like crab.

So giving one last glance to the theater, I nodded and followed David inside.