Chapter 19

AFTER ALL the taxidermy at Saylor’s old house, I didn’t think I’d ever want to eat again, but Blythe and Bee were both hungry, so we stopped in a Mexican place in the middle of what passed for “downtown.”

As soon as we were situated with sweet tea and chips, Blythe pulled the journal out of her bag, and I tried not to wince as the leather hit a drop of salsa on the laminate table. “What is it?” I asked, and Bee leaned farther over the table, trying to see what Blythe was reading.

“A book,” Blythe answered, and one of the chips cracked in my fingers.

“Yes, I’m aware of that,” I told her. “What with it being all book-shaped and such. What I mean is what does it say, and what was it this Dante person took—”

Blythe cut me off by raising a hand and giving me a firm “Shh!”

Had someone pulled that crap on me at cheerleading practice, I’m pretty sure I would’ve murdered her. As it was, I was coming very close to dumping my glass of sweet tea over Blythe’s head. But since a simple glance at the pages of Saylor’s journal revealed the same mishmash of Greek and English we’d seen in the books at David’s, I decided to let it slide so Blythe could keep reading.

I stirred a chip in the salsa while Blythe read, and at my side, Bee nudged me. “You okay?” she asked.

I wasn’t sure how to answer that. On the one hand, we’d found what we were looking for. On the other, I still felt weirdly . . . disappointed.

When Blythe had said she’d had a “sense” of where we should go next, I’d hoped it would be a direct line to David. That we could find him and . . . fix him. Whatever that meant. The waiting was starting to get to me, and even though we’d only been gone a few days, I was already starting to feel like we were running out of time. Two weeks didn’t seem long enough, but it was all we had, and while it had probably been a little naïve to think there would be an easy answer at Saylor’s, I had hoped for . . . well, something.

Across the table, Blythe made a little sound of frustration, and I looked over at her. “What?”

She shook her head, dark hair brushing her shoulders. “I don’t know what Dante took out of this book,” she said. “But whatever it was, it was big. Saylor has all these notes about trying ‘something’ and reading about ‘the spell,’ but she never says what it is. And then right before the ripped pages, she’s all excited and saying that if this works, it’ll change everything and then . . .”

Blythe lifted the journal, letting it fall open wide so that the jagged edges of paper stood up slightly. “I always hated that dude,” she said with a sigh.

Frustrated, I snapped another chip in half, the sound of mariachi music seeming louder and more annoying now. “Okay, so as soon as Saylor dies, Alexander sends his lackey to find Saylor’s journal, but Dante doesn’t take the whole thing, just rips out the pages he needs. Why? It would’ve been easier just to take the book.”

“If someone took the whole book, Saylor would’ve known,” Blythe said, shrugging. “But ripping out a few pages wouldn’t have set off the magical alarm, as it were.” She frowned. “Which is weird, actually. Most of the spell stuff I’ve found of hers was a lot more careful and well-done. But the magical alarm she put on this thing? That was done in a hurry.”

I nodded, but thinking about that—Saylor knowing that once she took David, she could never go back home again, and doing a quick spell on her journal, thinking she was leaving it somewhere safe—just made me feel sad all over again.

“You know what?” I said, sliding out of the booth. “I’m not all that hungry.”

I wasn’t surprised that Bee followed me out of the restaurant, and when we stood in the parking lot, she looked over at me. Well, down at me. Bee really was freakishly tall.

“So I’m not sure if you know this,” she said, “but Blythe kind of sucks.”

I crossed my arms. “She’s not my favorite person, I’ll admit, but . . . I don’t know. She hasn’t been as bad as I thought.”

Bee shaded her eyes from the sun with one hand, squinting at me. “If you say so. You know, we could ditch her,” she suggested, and I wasn’t totally sure she was joking. “Let her find her own way back to wherever she came from.”

Not gonna lie, the idea was tempting, but I thought of that book—all its secrets and weird spells or whatever—and knew that Blythe was still our best chance of fixing David. And with my powers out of whack, we needed all the help we could get. “No,” I said to Bee now. “Although I reserve the right to abandon her at a rest stop if she tries to shush me again.”

Bee laughed at that and wrapped an arm around my shoulders, tugging me close. “Deal.” She gave me another quick squeeze before stepping back. “I swear, she’s lucky my Paladin powers are fading because the ‘shh’ thing definitely made me feel punchy.”

Bee’s voice was light and she was still smiling, but I noticed the way she didn’t quite meet my eyes when she said it, and I touched her arm.

“Are you bummed?” I asked her. “About your powers going away?”

Bee shook her head, but she wasn’t smiling anymore. “Not . . . bummed, exactly? It was just that I’d kind of gotten used to them, I guess, and the idea of being, I don’t know, normal again while you and Ryan are still superheroes—”

“My powers are on the fritz, too,” I reminded her. “And who knows what will happen with Ryan.”

Bee looked over at me, her fingers tugging at the hem of her T-shirt. “You fought that girl at the motel,” she reminded me. “I didn’t see it, but it sounds like your powers were fine then.”

Now it was my turn to shake my head. “It’s not like I’m getting weaker, it’s just that they keep . . . flickering on and off? Like a faulty switch or something.”

That was the best way I could explain it. Honestly, I think it would’ve been a relief if they had just been getting weaker. Not knowing if I’d suddenly lose all my strength? That was the scary part.

I was going to say that to Bee, but she just lifted her head, glancing around. “You wanna walk for a bit, see what’s what?”

So that was clearly the end of that talk. I nodded, needing both the space from Blythe and some fresh air.

We set off down the sidewalk. In a lot of ways, this little town was basically like Pine Grove. Well, like Pine Grove if people like my aunts and Saylor Stark hadn’t tried to take care of it. You got the sense that it had been pretty once, quaint and charming, all of that. But the big terra-cotta planters outside the shops were filled with dying flowers, and, perhaps most tragically of all, there were still Christmas decorations hanging up on the streetlights. I stared at a faded green tinsel tree for a long time, taking deep breaths and trying not to panic. For the first time, I actually felt far from home, and even though Bee and Blythe were with me, I felt lonely.

Scared.

In that moment, I would’ve given most anything to be able to get back in the car and drive all night to get to Pine Grove. To sleep in my own bed underneath my white-and-purple comforter and wake up in the morning to my mom burning bacon.

I thought back to Saylor’s brother, and the sad, faded air of the town took on new significance. Had Saylor longed for this place like I longed for home now? Had she looked at the streets of Pine Grove and thought of another small southern town? It had been Saylor’s idea to put those big terra-cotta planters outside Magnolia House. After finding out that she was a Mage, I’d assumed everything she’d done as part of the Pine Grove Betterment Society had been about putting up wards, making the town safe for David. But maybe she’d really done some of those things just to make Pine Grove . . . better.

More like home.

My eyes stung all of a sudden, and I could feel a lump welling up in my throat. Saylor’s death had hit us all hard, but it was almost like we’d all worked so hard to put it behind us that we’d never taken any time to mourn her. Standing in the streets of her hometown now, I missed her more than I had since she’d died, I think. I’d looked at Saylor for so long as the Woman Who Knew Everything. Even before all the Paladin stuff, she’d been my role model, and now I understood that we were more alike than I’d ever guessed. I didn’t just want her back to fix stuff for us or tell us what to do. I wanted her back so that we could talk about what she had been before. How she’d managed to choose her duties as a Mage over the life she’d led here in Ideal, Mississippi. If she’d ever regretted it.

“Hey,” Bee said, pulling me out of my thoughts. “What’s wrong?”

I really didn’t want to be the weird girl crying in the middle of a town square, so I did my best to stop the tears before they could fall, but it was a losing battle. I was already sniffling, and with a disgusted sound, I scrubbed at my face. “We should’ve told him,” I said. “Saylor’s brother. Or I should’ve told him. I . . . I owed that to Saylor.”

Bee frowned, folding her arms over her chest. “But then he’d know she was dead. He’d have questions, Harper. How she died, where she’s buried, why no one called the police . . .”

Sighing, I rubbed the back of my neck. “I know, but it feels wrong. To keep lying like this, to always be covering stuff up or wondering how to get away with things. I’m just . . .” Trailing off, I took another deep breath. “I’m tired of it.”

She was right, obviously. Telling Saylor’s brother that she’d died would open up a whole other can of worms, one I didn’t have time for right now, but it was another reminder of just how badly magic could screw things up. Saylor had done a spell on her brother that would have him just kind of vaguely remembering her for the rest of his life.

Was it worth it, preserving all these secrets at a cost like that?

I was just about to turn and say so to Bee, but before I could, agony erupted in my head.

Crying out, I slammed my eyes shut against the sudden flare of light, my vision completely whiting out, my stomach rolling with the pain in my temples. I had the briefest moment of wondering if I was having a migraine, and then it was like the entire world dropped away. I wasn’t on a street corner in Ideal anymore, surrounded by the heat of a southern summer. I was actually a little cold, standing in a dim space, the smell of moisture and earth all around me, a distant dripping sound in my ears.

A man stood in front of me. Well, a boy, really. Dark hair curled over his ears, and he was wearing a dingy robe, the hem ragged and splattered with mud. His eyes were glowing so brightly that I fought the urge to cover my face against the glare.

We were in a cave, I realized, glancing up to see stalactites dripping from the ceiling, and even though some part of my mind knew I was still standing on the sidewalk in Ideal, there was nothing of that here. This was a vision, I knew it, but it definitely felt real.

The boy in front of me didn’t react to me, all his concentration centered on a crack in the ground in front of him, wispy steam rising up. At his side, his dirty fingers opened and closed, opened and closed.

I’d seen David make that same gesture before when he was anxious, and something about it made my chest ache and my mouth go dry.

And then, just as quickly as it had come on, the vision was gone, and I was gasping on the sidewalk, leaning on one of those giant planters, sweat dripping down my face.

For one horrible second, I thought I was going to throw up right there in the middle of downtown, and I swallowed hard, sucking in a deep breath through my nose.

What the heck had that been? I knew it was a vision of some kind, that the boy I’d seen had been an Oracle. Had it been Alaric?

In my dreams, I’d seen a glimpse of someone who looked like him, and I knew that my dreams were somehow connected to David, but those had felt like dreams. Just hazy, distant things while I was sleeping.

This was like a full-scale hallucination while I was wide-awake, and it scared the heck out of me.

Suddenly I remembered Bee, and that she’d had just as many dreams of David as I had. If that was true, then shouldn’t she—

Sure enough, when I lifted my head, I saw Bee leaning against a brick wall, her face pale, her hands on her thighs as she took deep breaths. Her blond hair was sweaty against her temples, and when her eyes met mine, I had my answer.

Whatever it was that had happened, it had happened to both of us.