Lady Renegades (17 page)

“K
ILL HIM?”
I repeated, my voice shooting up about half an octave.

“Mm-hmm.” She gave a little nod. “It's our best shot now that he's already in the cave.”

For a long moment, I just stared at her, wondering if she was screwing with me. But, no, the moment stretched on without her giving a little wink or breaking at all, until finally I said, “We brought you on this trip to
help
us.”

With a roll of those big brown eyes, Blythe turned to look at me again. “Which I
am,
duh. Have you missed the part where David is trying to kill
you
?”

“He isn't,” I answered, but that just made her laugh.

“Okay, sure. All those Paladins he's sent after you are the Oracle version of the singing telegram. Got it.”

It was beginning to dawn on me that Blythe was most definitely not kidding, and I stood up so fast I nearly slipped on the edge of the pool.

Blythe, however, stayed right where she was, looking up at me like she was legitimately confused. “Harper . . . you knew
this was a possibility. At Alexander's, when Bee asked why they didn't just kill Alaric, I saw your face.”

She said it so easily that I felt like she had to be right, almost. Like I was the one being irrational here. But I wasn't the one who was calmly talking about murdering someone, and I backed up another step, my heart pounding.

Pulling her feet out of the water, Blythe turned to face me more fully. “Honestly, I thought you got this,” she said. “Why else did you buy that sword today?”

The sword. I'd almost forgotten about it, still wrapped in a sweatshirt in the trunk of my car. I couldn't deny the pull I'd felt toward it. Alexander had said that my vision from the fun house—the one where I'd stabbed David—was just what I feared most, not an actual thing that might happen. But facing Blythe now, I felt sick as I wondered if that were the truth.

Blythe must have seen some of that on my face because she leaned in a little, head cocked to the left. “It's the reason I took you to the flea market in the first place.”

I shook my head. “No, you said we were looking for some magical rock so you could do the spell Saylor found, and . . .”

The words trailed off as soon as I realized what I was saying. “Magical rock,” I scoffed at myself. “Stupid. And it didn't bother you at all that we never found it.”

Blythe gave a little shrug. “Because it never existed. I wanted you to find the sword. The one you
needed.
I thought we might need it just in case, but now that you've seen him already in the cave, I understand why you had to have it. Why I
wanted
you to find it.”

When I didn't answer, she kept going. “Did you ever think that you were losing your powers not because you were away from him, but because the more dangerous he got, the more you'd be needed to put a stop to him?”

I shook my head, my thoughts whirling, and Blythe crossed her arms over her chest. “Your powers meant you could never hurt the Oracle, only protect him. If you can't protect him anymore, it's because he's become such a danger that he has to be dealt with, Harper. I wasn't sure of it until today, but seeing him in the cave? Your powers going out for good? Those things are connected.”

“You don't know that—” I started, even though everything she was saying made a terrible kind of sense.

And she knew it, too, because she lifted her hand to cut me off. “You and I, we do what needs to be done, Harper. It's who we are. Did you know that back before all this happened to me, I was SGA president at my school, too? We didn't have cheerleaders, but I was first-chair flute in the school symphony, and I was on just about every committee there was. Prom, Students Against Drunk Driving, the Big Sisters program . . .” She ticked them off on her fingers. “And commitment like that is what makes both of us so good at this stuff. It's why we were chosen.”

I shook my head, not wanting to have anything in common with her right now. “No,” I said. “Those powers . . . they were forced on me, and I'm guessing they were forced on you, too.”

She just shrugged in that way she did, tilting her head to the other side. “Forced, fated . . . all works out the same. Point is,
we're the type of girls who do what they have to do, and stopping David is what I have to do. You know what Alaric turned into. And now we know that not only is David following in his exact footsteps, they're also the only two Oracles ever
born
to Oracles. That means David is more powerful than any of us thought. More dangerous.”

Once again, her voice was so even and calm, her face almost eerily placid, that I felt like I was the one who was nuts. Still, I heard myself say, “This isn't what you have to do.”

“Of course it is. I told you,” she said slowly and patiently, the way you talk to really little kids or people who speak a different language. “I'm. Redeeming. Myself.”

My shoes dangled from my fingertips, and one dropped to the concrete with a muted
thwack.
“But this isn't redeeming yourself,” I argued. “Redeeming means . . . it means
fixing
what you did wrong, not stabbing what you did wrong in the face. Okay, wait, that didn't come out right, but you know what I mean.”

I pointed one sandal at her, and Blythe finally got to her feet, swatting my shoe out of her face. “Harper, this is how we fix this, don't you get that? What do you think all this journeying around has been about?”

I shook my head, not getting it. “Finding David. To make him stop, not to murder him.”

Blythe took a step forward, and when I moved backward, she lifted her hands in entreaty. “I didn't want it to come to this either, Harper. When I found that spell, I thought we had the
answer. Killing him was always . . .” Trailing off, she looked up at the low clouds, tinted orange by the lights around the motel. “A last resort, I guess. It's just that it's too late now.”

“I don't believe anything you say,” I muttered, and took another step back.

But Blythe kept coming, her dark eyes bright in the glow from the sodium lights above the pool. “I was looking for another way. But there isn't one.”

“What about the other spell?” I asked, and she blinked. “The one that Dante mentioned,” I said. “Whatever it was that was darker and scarier than the power-wipe spell. What about that one?”

Blythe sniffed, shaking her head. “It won't help,” she said, her voice tight.

“You're always going on about what a badass Mage you are,” I said, shaking my head, “and now you're telling me you can't do one simple spell?”

“It's not simple!” Blythe shouted, her hands clenched into fists, her voice tight. “Alexander managed it on Dante, but Dante had hardly any powers. Just some Mage skills he picked up from
the internet.
Trying to do this to a full-blown Oracle who's gone rogue?”

This time when she looked at me, I could see tears in her eyes. “I. Can't,” she said again. “It's too dangerous. For you, for me, for Bee. What if it just amps him up more? I gave Dante powers he never even really
had,
and we saw how that went.”

“Ryan,” I said, grasping for anything. “If you can't do it, we'll let him try.” But Blythe just shook her head.

“We don't have time. Now that your powers are gone, now that he's in the cave, the only way is to kill him. Put this behind us once and for all.”

For the first time, something sparked in her eyes. In anyone else, I would have said it was anger, but in Blythe, it was that tiniest hint of crazy that I knew all too well could blossom into full-blown whackjobbery. “Your last duty as his Paladin is setting him free.”

And then she frowned a little. “Although, I guess . . . without powers, you're not actually his Paladin anymore.”

The words stung.

But my voice was as steady as hers when I replied, “I don't think it's the powers that make the Paladin, to be honest. I think it's the determination.”

Blythe smiled briefly at that, which just intensified the whole crazy-eyes thing she had going on. “And how determined are you, Harper Price?”

By now, she was very close to me, hands on her hips. Through the triangles made by her elbows, I could see the bright turquoise water of the pool behind her, and I didn't let myself think. I might not have superstrength or superspeed anymore, but I still knew how to Mean Girl when the situation called for it.

“Hella,” I answered, and with that, I charged forward, shoving with all my might.

I'm not a big girl, but Blythe was even smaller and more delicate, plus, as she'd said herself, her school didn't have cheerleading. Plus I'd caught her by surprise.

She shrieked as she fell backward into the water, her hands
grabbing at me, but I was too quick, moving out of her embrace before she could tug me in, too. She was light enough (and I'd pushed hard enough) that she went out near the middle of the pool.

I didn't see her hit the water, only heard the splash as I bolted from the pool, running down the cement sidewalk in my bare feet, sandals abandoned on the pool deck. Luckily I still had tennis shoes in the room.

Even more luckily, I had barely unpacked today, so when Bee let me in after I pounded on the door, it was an easy thing to just grab my bag.

Bee, unfortunately, was not as organized.

“Um, what are we doing?” she asked, her phone still held near her jaw as I started throwing her things in her Vera Bradley tote. “Where's Blythe?”

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.

W
E 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.”