Lady Renegades (6 page)

“H
OLY CRAP,”
I breathed, my fingers still locked around Blythe's delicate wrist. “
You.
”

She had one hand free, which she used to wiggle her fingers at me in a little wave. “Harper.”

I was breathing hard, but as the adrenaline faded, the realization that I had just handed a girl her lunch in front of a third of Pine Grove suddenly began to dawn.

Then Aunt Jewel, bless her heart, stood up and said, “Ooh, is this the girl teaching your self-defense course, Harper Jane?”

She said it so loudly that I was pretty sure people in the next town over had heard her, so it wasn't exactly the most subtle of saves.

But it was effective, especially when Bee came over and said, “Wow, when you said the final exam could happen anywhere, I didn't think you meant the country club!”

She gave a bright laugh that was as high as it was fake, but I could feel some of the tension drain out of the room, especially when I finally took my foot off Blythe's chest and offered a hand to help pull her up.

Shooting to her feet, Blythe just smiled again and, for whatever reason, decided to play along. “And you
passed
!” she said before rubbing at her chest with the tips of her fingers and grimacing slightly. “With flying, really painful colors!”

At my side, Mom still had her palm flat against her pearls, her gaze shooting between me and Blythe. Dad was also on his feet, hands deep in his pockets, watching up over the tops of his new bifocals.

“What self-defense class, Harper?”

My head was spinning, wondering both what Blythe was doing here—and if her being here had anything to do with what had happened at the pool on Friday night—and with making sure I sold this to my parents as quickly as possible.

“Just an extra little thing I picked up for the summer,” I said, waving it away like it wasn't a big deal. “You know, getting ready for college and all that. Girl has to be able to defend herself.”

Considering the fact that at least half the women in this room were probably concealing pistols in their pocketbooks, I didn't think anyone would argue with that. Sure enough, people started digging back into their prime rib and potatoes.

My own family was still a little nonplussed, but Aunt Jewel sat down and started eating, which went a long way with Aunt May and Aunt Martha. They took their lead from Jewel and today was no exception. After a brief pause, they gave identical shrugs and tucked back into their food.

My parents were a little less willing to let this go.

“Self-defense is important,” Mom said, looking at Blythe, who, in her bright yellow dress and high ponytail, certainly
didn't look all that threatening. She kind of looked like a brunette Easter Barbie, to tell the truth. But this girl had tried to cut me with a letter opener, performed terrifying magic on David, and kidnapped my best friend, all to help the Ephors either super-charge David or kill him.

I didn't underestimate her.

“But there is a time and place for displays like that,” Mom continued, “and Sunday afternoon at the country club is not one of them, young ladies.”

“Yes, ma'am,” I said, knowing that the easiest way to get out of this was to seem as abashed as possible, no matter how much my heart was racing. What the heck was Blythe doing here?

“I apologize, too,” Blythe said, flashing my parents a bright smile. “But being prepared in any location really is one of the tenets of our, um, organization.”

She looked back at me. “Can we go outside and talk for a minute?” Blythe asked before flicking her eyes at my parents again. “About the, um, self-defense class?”

Looking back to my parents, I put on my most contrite expression. “May I be excused?”

Mom and Dad glanced at each other, Dad rocking back on his heels, but after a beat, Mom nodded, and said, “Fine. But don't be too long.”

Ryan and Bee were already standing up next to their table, and I jerked my chin at them.

As quickly as I could, I ushered the three of them, Bee, Blythe, and Ryan, out of the dining room and down the long hall leading to the front doors. Posture is 80 percent of projecting an air
of self-confidence, so I made sure my shoulders were back, chin lifted slightly as we walked outside. The country club was surrounded by thick flowering bushes, their scent almost overpowering in the July heat, and I led our little group around the side of the building and down a sloping sidewalk, close to the tennis courts where the bushes were highest so that we'd be out of sight for the most part.

As soon we'd stopped, I whirled on Blythe and dropped any pretense of civility. “What are you doing here?”

“You summoned me,” Blythe said immediately, looking around at all of us, her big brown eyes wide. “With, like, a fairly powerful spell. I felt it the second you did it. Threw my stuff in the car and headed this way. Of course, I wasn't positive
who
was summoning me, but once I hit the state line, I had a pretty good idea it was you.”

“Trust me,” I said, still rubbing my sore elbow. I'd whacked it fairly hard on the table throwing Blythe to the ground. “No one around here did anything of the sort. The absolute last thing—”

And then I thought of the three of us in that field with David's things, the thump Ryan had felt in his chest. The spell had been a mix of Greek and English with the word “summoning,” in there, and . . .

“Mother effer,” I muttered. “So that spell we did to find David paged you instead?”

Blythe reached up and pulled her sunglasses down from the top of her head. “Oh my God, seriously? You were doing a ritual and didn't even know what it was for?”

That last bit was directed at Ryan, who looked distinctly
unhappy with this development. “It's not my fault,” he said, shoving his hands into the pockets of his khakis. “We didn't know what we were looking for, so—”

“So you just decided to do any magic you could find, hoping it would work out?” Blythe folded her arms over her chest. “Well, that's not incredibly stupid or anything. Oh, wait, I actually meant the
opposite
of that.”

“Yes, we're familiar with sarcasm,” I told her. “But the fact remains that we did the best we could with a situation that you and your bosses—or boss, whatever—caused.”

Blythe whipped her head around to glare at me, and the anger in her eyes was so intense, I nearly took a step back.

“They were
not
my bosses,” she practically spat.

I probably should have backed down given the look in her eye, but I'm not really good at that. “Oh, sorry, it's just that you did a thing they asked you to do, which generally makes someone your boss? See, that's more of that sarcasm I identified before.”

Blythe took a deep breath through her nose, the universal sign for “I am trying so hard not to murder you right now.” But when she spoke, her voice was relatively calm.

“Look, it doesn't matter if you were trying to summon me or not. Point is, I'm here now, and we all want the same thing: to find the Oracle.”

My pulse leapt. The attack at the pool—what if it was actually Blythe's doing? The idea that I had been right, that David would never send people to hurt me, nearly made my knees weak with relief. “Why do
you
want to find him?”

She turned to me, wiping her palms on her skirt. “Because he's gone rogue, right? Scampered right off with more magic than he knows what to do with? Seems like a potentially yikes-y thing.”

“How did you know that?” Ryan asked, stepping forward a little bit, but Blythe waved a hand at him like he was a particularly annoying mosquito.

“Believe it or not, you're not the only ones connected to the Oracle,” she said. “Thanks to that little ritual I did on him at your cotillion, I'm just as connected to him as his Paladin. Magic does bond people.”

“You mean like the magic that you did that had him making Paladins?” I suggested, lifting my eyebrows. “The magic that, for all we know, you're doing again?”

That seemed to genuinely surprise Blythe. She stepped back just the littlest bit, lifting her chin, her dark eyes wide. “You think it's my fault that he's descending into crazy-town?”

We were still standing just outside the country club, and I knew people would be coming out soon. Bee was already looking toward the door, probably keeping an eye out for her parents. I turned back to Blythe. “You can't exactly blame us for thinking it.”

She paused, considering that, and then shrugged. “Fair enough. But I promise you, this”—she looked down at the little purse dangling from her shoulder, opening it up and pulling out a folded piece of newspaper—“has nothing to do with me.”

I took the paper. It was from yesterday's edition of the
Ellery News.
Ellery was a medium-sized town, big enough to have a
weekend edition. Yesterday's headline was about a missing girl from Piedmont, Mississippi, who had turned up in Ellery with no memory of how she'd gotten to Alabama.

“Read it,” Blythe instructed. “The last thing she remembers is meeting some guy with, and I believe I'm quoting this correctly, ‘glowing eyes.'”

My heart seemed to stutter in my chest. There was no picture of the girl, and even if there had been one, I'd never actually seen who attacked me at the pool. But, reading this, it became pretty clear this was her. Her name was Annie Jameson, and she seemed . . . a lot like me, actually. From what I could gather reading the brief snippet, she was an upcoming senior at Piedmont High School, an honor student, no history of trouble . . . I still didn't understand why she'd run off, or how she could suddenly be . . . de-Paladined. None of this made any sense, and my skin felt itchy, my nerves jumping.

Piedmont wasn't very far from here.

I was still looking at the paper when Blythe turned to me and said, “So when are we leaving to go after him?”

S
TARTLED, I
LOOKED
up from the piece of newsprint. “What?”

“He's making Paladins,” Blythe said, tapping the paper. “It's a little bit my fault for doing that ritual on him, sure, but it's also your fault for letting him get away.”

I tried very hard not to look at Ryan and Bee, but I could sense them shuffling next to me. Placing blame was pointless at this stage in the game.

“We can't,” I told Blythe now, but the words were hollow. “It's not feasible.”

Blythe shoved her glasses back on top of her head, blinking at me. “Are you kidding? Isn't this, like, your entire sacred duty?”

I gestured around to Bee and Ryan. “It's . . . Look, I don't know how you got here or where you came from, but it isn't easy for us to just go gallivanting around the country for a few months. We have things like responsibilities. And
parents.
”

The second the words were out of my mouth, I felt kind of bad. I mean, I had no idea if Blythe had a family or not. Obviously, she had at one time, but what did they think happened to her after she ran off to be a crazy Mage?

But then I remembered that Blythe cast a spell on my boyfriend, kidnapped my best friend, and tried to kill me multiple times—once with a letter opener—and my sympathetic feelings disappeared in a big poof.

Blythe rolled her huge dark eyes. “You also have
magic,
” she said. “Buttloads of it. Mostly mine since this redheaded Ken doll over here seems kinda worthless.”

Ryan frowned, one hand touching the back of his head. “My hair isn't red.” Glancing over at Bee, he raised his eyebrows. “It's not, right?”

She patted his leg. “It's only a little red,” she assured him, and Ryan's frown deepened.

Blythe gave a little smirk before turning back to me and crossing one leg over the other, the heel of her bright yellow ballet flat slipping off as she propped one toe on the sidewalk. “We have to find the Oracle and put a stop to this before it gets any worse.”

She was right, I knew that, but putting my trust in her was not exactly the easiest thing to do.

When I said something to that effect, she heaved a deep sigh that seemed to come up from her toes. “I get that. But how many times do I have to say this?” Tilting her head down, she fixed me with a look over her sunglasses. “I. Am. Not. Doing this. For. You.” As if to punctuate the statement, she shoved her glasses back into place with one perfectly manicured finger. “This is not about saving your boyfriend or helping you all become one happy, magic-doing, future-seeing, butt-kicking threesome—
not
like that,” she added when it was clear Ryan was about to protest.

“It's about me undoing the thing I did for people who never deserved my powers in the first place.”

There was something cold in her tone when she said that, something so bitter about the words, I felt like I could almost taste them. I didn't know what had happened to Blythe after the Ephors took her, but whatever it was, it had clearly been bad.

“Blythe wasn't there,” Bee suddenly said, and I turned to see her standing just behind me, arms folded tightly. “When I was with the Ephors, she wasn't there.”

It was weird, remembering that Blythe and Bee had that in common, being held by the Ephors, and when I looked back to Blythe, a muscle twitched in her jaw.

“Yeah, let's just say they made sure I was out of sight,” she said. “It wasn't until Alexander died that I was even able to get out of that place.”

“How did you know he died?” I asked then, and Blythe gave another one of those eye rolls that suggested we were all wasting her time.

“I could feel it. There was a lot of magic going into keeping their headquarters running, and even more into making sure I couldn't get out. When it just went away, I knew Alexander was gone. It was the only explanation.”

That made sense, I guessed, but this was all moving so fast—and I was very aware of curious eyes on us as people made their way to the parking lot—so I decided to cut to the chase.

“Okay, but why should we go with you when we already have a Mage?” I said. “
You
may not be impressed with Ryan's powers,
but he's still every bit as useful to us as you would be, with the added bonus of not being insane.”

Throwing her hands up in the air, Blythe made a disgusted sound. “He can come, too, for all I care. But you need me. I'm the only one who can find the spell we need to stop him.”

People were starting to leave the country club now, my parents and aunts among them, and I gave them a quick little wave before gently taking Blythe's arm and leading her closer to the tennis courts. There was no way I was going to be able to fake smile at her while my parents watched.

“What kind of spell?”

Blythe shrugged out of my grip and pulled at the skirt of her yellow dress. “Why, so I can tell you, and then you and your friends can run off and screw it up? You people don't exactly have the greatest track record with magical nuance.” She shook her head, making her ponytail swing. “Nuh-uh. We're either all in this together, or we're not in it at all.”

“Whatever you're doing, we don't want a part of it,” I told Blythe, and when I folded my arms over my chest, Ryan and Bee mimicked my pose. Blythe looked at the three of us for a beat before scoffing and putting her sunglasses on top of her shiny brown hair.

“Okay, fine. Be the Three Musketeers and solve this on your own. I mean, that's clearly worked well for you so far. We've got a Mage who has no idea how to use his powers”—a flick of her hand at Ryan—“and two Paladins who are losing theirs.” She moved her hand to gesture to me and Bee, her lips pursed slightly.

“How did you know about that?” I asked without thinking, and then from beside me, I heard Bee suck in a breath.

“Wait, that's true?” Ryan asked.

I ignored him, keeping my eyes on Blythe. One corner of her mouth lifted in a smirk. “The longer you're away from the Oracle, the weaker your powers will get. It may not happen at the same rate,” she added, nodding at Bee, “but it
will
happen to both of you, Harper. And that means you're going to have Paladins coming after you without being able to fight back. Do you see
now
why my idea might be the best one?”

It was. I totally saw that. Heck, I'd always wanted to go after David rather than sitting back and waiting for things to happen to me. “Proactive” was practically my middle name, but that didn't mean this would be easy.

But if we had Blythe—and Blythe's plan, whatever it was—maybe it could work?

I felt the briefest spark of hope in my chest, and then I remembered Blythe at Cotillion. The look on her face as she'd done the spell on David. The way she'd vanished with Bee. The complete and utter havoc she'd wreaked in the few days I'd known her.

I wanted to find David, and I was curious about whatever she had planned, but trusting Blythe after everything? Was I
that
desperate?

“I understand that you don't trust me,” Blythe added. “I mean,
I
wouldn't trust me if I were you.” She leaned closer, and I could see my own skeptical face reflected in her sunglasses. “But there are things I know that you just don't. Spells this guy”—another dismissive glance at Ryan—“hasn't even heard of.”

Reaching out, Blythe tugged my purse off my shoulder. I gave a startled squawk, but she just fished out my phone and typed into my contacts.

“Now you have my number. When the three of you decide to grow up,” she said, even though I was the only one she was looking at, “you can give me a call. But I'm only sticking around for a few days.”

With that, she spun on her little ballet flats and headed toward the parking lot.

But then she stopped, turning around to look back at us, her hand lifted to shade her eyes. “This isn't just about you, Harper. You or your friends. Alaric destroyed an entire
town
when he turned. He killed Paladins, sure, but innocent people, too. This whole thing is so much bigger and worse than you understand.”

She nodded at my phone, still in my hand. “So you think real hard about that. And then call me.”