Chapter 21

“NO.”

“Yes.”

“Except no.”

I sat in the driver’s seat, staring at the dive in front of me, my fingers tight around the steering wheel. At one point in its existence, the bar had maybe been called “Cowboys.” I was guessing this based on the cardboard cutout of a cowboy propped up near the door, and the fact that there was a sign on the roof that had an “O,” a “W,” and a “Y” on it. Other letters had fallen off or rotted away.

In short, it was clearly the worst place in the world, and I could not believe I was going to have to set foot in there.

Blythe was in the passenger seat, eyebrows raised as she looked over at me. “I’m telling you, this is where he is.”

From the backseat, Bee snorted. Her hair was loose tonight, and she pushed it back with impatient hands. “Why would anyone want to hang out here?” she asked. “This is a place where you end up on a true-crime TV show.”

Truer words had never been spoken, but Blythe folded her arms over her chest, staring at the bar. “In any case, this is the place where he is.”

Before we’d driven out of Ideal, Blythe had done a quick tracking spell on Dante. Apparently, his fingerprints on Saylor’s journal had been enough, and after a brief ritual done in a Shell station bathroom, Blythe had come out with a location in mind.

Stupidly, I’d assumed we’d be heading to a house. Maybe an apartment. Not this truly sad dive bar in eastern Georgia.

We’d been driving for about five hours, and while the sun had just gone down, the parking lot was already packed, telling me that the clientele here at “OW Y” took that whole “five o’clock is drinking time” thing seriously.

I was not looking forward to a night sifting through the local drunks for one guy.

But if this was where Dante was, then this was where we had to be. Still, I had some reservations.

“We’re teenagers,” I reminded her now. “They won’t let us in.”

“We’re girls,” Blythe countered. “They’ll let us in.”

She probably had a point there, but I still wondered if maybe Bee and I should hang out in the car.

Leaning forward, Blythe continued. “Plus we have mind-controlling magic. Haven’t y’all ever used the Mage’s powers to get into bars?”

I looked over at her, scowling. “Um, no, we don’t use the special superpowers Ryan got because Saylor died in order to score beer, actually.”

But then Bee leaned in closer and said, a little sheepish, “One time, Ryan used it to get us into that new restaurant in Montgomery? The one it’s hard to get reservations to?”

I turned in my seat, blinking at her, and she shrugged. “It was our one-month anniversary, and he wanted to take me somewhere special. It didn’t hurt anyone.”

Rolling my eyes, I turned back around to face Blythe’s triumphant smile. “Okay,” I said, taking the keys out of the ignition. “Fine. Let’s go use the powers of the gods to dodge creepy guys and drink cheap beer and find this other guy who apparently holds the key to everything.”

We stepped out of the car, gravel crunching under our feet. The door was open, and loud, raucous music was pouring out into the night. I could hear the stomping of feet on the wooden floors, and the smell of stale beer and fried food hung like a fog over the building.

I stood there at the base of the steps leading up into the bar as Bee and Blythe walked in front of me, heading on in. “Seriously, why this place?” I muttered, but Blythe didn’t answer me. After a minute, I sighed and followed.

I wish I could say that “OW Y” was not what I expected and that I learned a valuable lesson about not making snap judgments, but no. No, I was totally right, and it was totally gross. The music was too loud, and despite the name of the bar—or what I was guessing was the name of the bar—I didn’t see a single cowboy hat. I saw a lot of baseball caps, though, and more fraternity shirts that I could count, plus a fair amount of giant belt buckles.

“Wait at the bar!” Blythe shouted over the music (some ungodly bro-country song about trucks and rivers and girls in short shorts), and I caught her arm before she could disappear.

“Don’t you need us?” I asked, and she shook me off with an irritated look.

“Let me find him first,” she called out. “Better if I do that part on my own.”

With that, she turned away and was promptly swallowed up by a wave of plaid and denim.

Sighing, I wove my way through the crowd, making my way to the bar. Not that I wanted a beer—ew—but I did want somewhere to sit and a bottle of water. This place was packed, and also hot as Satan’s armpit.

There were two empty stools, and I propped my hip on one, leaning in to shout at the bartender. I’d just asked for the water when I sensed someone sliding onto the stool beside me, and without even bothering to look over, I held up one hand. “No. No to whatever you’re about to say; go away, please.”

A hand curled around mine, and I jerked my head around, prepared to send some redneck crashing through the opposite wall if I needed to, but it was just Bee, shaking her head and laughing at me.

“Easy there,” she said. “I was coming to be your wingwoman.”

Snorting, I took my bottle of water from the bartender, handing him a few crumpled dollars from my pocket. “Yeah, because picking up dudes is what I’m here for in this dump.”

Bee nodded and glanced around. “You think this guy is actually here?”

Shrugging, I unscrewed the lid on my bottle. “Let’s freaking hope so.”

Bee had her hair in both hands, twisting it over her shoulder, and at that, she lifted her eyebrows. “I can’t imagine she’d want to come here for fun, Harper.”

I couldn’t see Blythe in the press of bodies on the dance floor, so I had no idea where she was. Scowling slightly, I looked back to Bee. “No telling with her.”

“That’s the truth,” Bee replied, before looking back at me with a slight lift of her eyebrows.

“Not used to taking the backseat, huh?”

The words were light and teasing, and they shouldn’t have bugged me, but I found myself frowning and turning on my stool to face her better. “What?”

Clearly picking up on my tone, Bee gave an uneasy shrug. It was hot in the bar, and her hair was already curling in the humidity. “You’re just used to being in charge is all. And now, because Blythe has the magic we need, we have to trail after her.” Another lift of her shoulders. “It has to feel weird, is all.”

It did, but I didn’t really want to talk about that, not even with Bee. Especially since it made me wonder if this was what she had felt earlier in the year, me always trying to decide what was best, plowing on without actually asking anyone else how they felt about it.

I’d made her and Ryan ride shotgun—sometimes literally, but mostly metaphorically—a lot. Riding shotgun wasn’t a great feeling.

I smiled at Bee and tried to keep my tone light. “Not so weird. I’m just annoyed that we’re spending time in a dump like this.”

Leaning back on her stool, Bee fished in her pocket for her phone, pulling it out to take a picture of the stuffed dance floor. “For Ryan,” she told me, and I nodded and smiled and missed David.

I fumbled for my own phone, pulling it out of my pocket and scrolling through the picture gallery. There were lots of pictures of David. Him on the computer in the newspaper lab. Him grimacing as he held up one of the huge construction-paper daisies I’d made for the Spring Fling dance.

One of him sitting underneath a tree in the courtyard at the Grove, smiling at me. His hair was a wreck because of course it was, but the pale green shirt he was wearing made his eyes look especially blue, and the sunlight lined him in gold. Not from any magic, no crazy Oracle powers spilling out of him. Just a cute boy, smiling at me because he liked me.

My throat felt tight, and even though I knew it was stupid and pointless, I took a quick snap of the scene around me. The dudes in trucker hats, the girls in really short shorts, the general “this is where you come not only to drown your sorrows, but also to obliterate your brain” vibe.

The flash made the whole thing look even more depressing, but it made me smile a little anyway as I texted it to David’s number, a number I knew wasn’t working anymore.

Wish you were here, I typed, and then, before I could let myself think, I hit send.

There wasn’t any reply; I hadn’t expected there to be. But I still watched my phone for a long time.

“Hey, pretty lady,” a voice slurred, and the stool on the opposite side of me jostled slightly.

I didn’t bother looking up. “No,” I said, raising one hand, eyes still trained on my phone.

A gust of boozy breath, and then a slurred “I ain’t even asked you a question yet!”

“No,” I repeated, keeping my hand up, and after a moment, there was another huff of breath, and then he was gone, lumbering off to find some other girl.

I looked up at Bee, then, but she was still grinning down at her phone, clearly texting with Ryan.

Sighing and feeling way more sorry for myself than was attractive, I stood up, determined to find Blythe. If she hadn’t already found Dante, I was willing to give her about ten more minutes in this place.

I gingerly made my way around the dance floor, trying to keep my toes un-stomped while scanning for Blythe. This was where being short was a real pain in the butt, because I could barely see anything, and I was searching for someone even littler than I was.

I completed a full circuit of the floor and didn’t see Blythe.

This was not only a giant waste of time, but also completely gross, and if there are any two things I hate in this world, it’s wheel-spinning and nasty bars.

My hands felt gritty from just touching the chairs in this place, so I made my way to the ladies’ room—sorry, the “Cowgirls’ Room” according to the sign—determined to wash up before enlisting Bee in my search for Blythe.

But when I opened the door to the bathroom, Blythe was already in there, standing by the sinks, fists clenched at her sides.

And at her feet was a guy, blood slowly trickling from his temple.