I glanced back at the twins. “Self-defense class,” I told them with a little shrug. “Now can we please go?”
Spencer was sitting up now, holding his wrist and watching me with wary eyes, but I saw Abi hesitate before following me out of the room, and I wasn’t sure if I’d done my job here tonight or not.
“You’re not the boss of us, Harper,” Abi said once we were out of the frat house and marching down the front steps toward the street. She’d grabbed her cardigan off the back of a chair on the way out, and was shoving her arms into it, scowling.
Then why are you following me? I thought.
What I said was, “I’m just looking out for you. That’s what friends do.”
“Abi’s right,” Amanda said, and they both stopped there at the edge of the yard. “We’ve all known you were a control freak, but this is kind of nuts.”
I stopped then, turning to glance between them, wishing their words didn’t . . . bug.
It was too close to what David had said when I’d first come up with this idea. “People have to live their lives, Harper,” he’d said.
But, as I’d reminded him, what was the point of having superpowers, superpowers he could actually use now—safely—if we didn’t, you know, use them?
“Ladies,” David said with a little wave, and they both scowled at him.
“What is he doing here?” Abi asked, and I rolled my eyes.
“He’s my boyfriend. He drove me here, obvs.”
The twins were looking at David’s car like it might give them a disease, and while I was irritated, I couldn’t really blame them. David’s Dodge was a total clunker, full of dents and dings and scratched paint, and . . . the truth was, I might have done some of that damage myself during a car chase last fall, but the point was that it barely looked drivable. I didn’t know why David insisted on hanging on to that thing. He still had his aunt’s car, and while Saylor’s Cadillac was of the old-lady variety, it certainly wasn’t in danger of having its engine drop out.
Abi opened the back door, delicately kicking a stack of books off the backseat and onto the floor. David winced as the books fell, and the corners of his mouth jerked down as he cut his eyes at me.
However, when Amanda tossed his ratty messenger bag out of the way, he twisted to look into the backseat. “Hey,” he started, and then he winced.
I wondered if Amanda had pushed his bag onto something and broken it—there was no end to the random stuff in David’s backseat—but then I felt my own chest seize up in pain, and knew we were in for something way worse.
A vision.
But those didn’t just pop up the way they used to. David’s powers were under control now. Thing was, David didn’t know that me and Ryan were using the wards to keep his powers under control. But it was for his own good. The smaller visions didn’t leave him sick and shaking.
Or looking so scary.
“What the hell?” one of the twins squawked from the backseat, and David fumbled with his door handle, shaking his head.
“David,” I said, reaching across the car to grab his arm.
Fingers closing around the handle, David shoved the door open, spilling out into the street.
Chapter 2
I WAS ALREADY out of my seat and moving around to him, barely paying attention to the twins, who were climbing out of the backseat.
David fell to his knees, hands pressed to his head. Golden light poured out of his eyes, so bright it hurt to look at, and from behind me, I heard one of the twins make a sound somewhere between a gasp and a breathy scream.
“What is wrong with him?”
There was a part of my mind already on the phone with Ryan, asking him to work his mind-wipe mojo on the twins ASAP, but for right now, David was the only thing that mattered. I didn’t know if it was my Paladin powers or the way I felt about him that made my chest hurt, but I knelt down next to him, taking his hand.
His skin was clammy, but he grabbed my hand tight, fingers curling around my palm. “It’s all right,” I heard myself say, even though the power coming from him was making my teeth ache. I’d only seen him like this once, the night of Cotillion. Right now, light in his eyes, body vibrating, he looked a lot less like my boyfriend, and a lot more like a powerful supernatural creature.
Which, I had to remind myself, was exactly what he was.
But still, he shouldn’t have been having visions like this, not anymore.
“We have to go,” he said, his voice sounding deeper and echoing slightly, like there were two people talking. “Now. We need to go to them.”
I’d never known cold sweat was a thing people could actually feel, but that’s exactly what popped out on my forehead.
I held his hand tighter. “Where?” I asked. “Is Bee there?”
David’s head swung toward me, and I flinched at the glare.
My best friend had gone missing the night of Cotillion, kidnapped by Blythe and taken who knew where. Of everything that had happened that night, even Saylor’s death, losing Bee had been the worst. I couldn’t stop feeling like I’d failed her.
“Bee’s at cheerleading camp.”
Glancing over my shoulder, I saw that the twins were still frowning at us. Well, Amanda was. Abi was just staring at David, shocked.
“Seriously, what is wrong with him?” Abi asked, and I winced.
“It’s nothing,” I said, lifting my and David’s joined hands to look at his wrist. I never wore a watch, but David always did, so I checked it now. It was nearly eleven, and I’d promised my parents I’d be home by midnight.
David’s vision was already fading. I could feel the power draining out of him, and his breathing was starting to slow, the light in his eyes going dim. “Pres?” he croaked, and while there was still a little echo, he sounded more like himself than like the Oracle.
Sucking in a deep breath through my nose, I forced myself to think. First things first, I needed to get the twins home and dealt with. I could worry about my parents and where David was meant to be taking me once Abi and Amanda were handled.
“Okay,” I said, overly bright, as I clapped my hands together and rose to my feet. “Everybody back in the car.”
David stood, too, lurching for the driver’s side, but I caught his arm and steered him back toward the passenger seat. The twins stood there, arms folded over their chests.
“What the hell was that, Harper?” Amanda asked, and Abi echoed, “The. Hell.”
It had been a long night already, and I had a feeling it was about to get a lot longer. I shook my head, shooing the twins back toward the car. “I’ll explain later,” I promised, even though I had no intention of doing anything of the sort. What I did plan on doing was calling Ryan.
Even though last year I spearheaded the Campaign Against Texting and Driving—I signed a pledge and everything—I was already starting the car when I pulled up Ryan’s number and texted, “Meet me at the twins’ house. 911.”
“Harper,” David said, his voice low and rough. “We don’t have time. We have to go now.” I didn’t take my eyes off the road to look at him, but I did drop my phone in the change tray under the radio, reaching out to put my hand on his knee.
“It’s okay,” I said, even though my heart and mind were racing at a million miles an hour.
I had no idea what was going on, but I did know that to handle it, we had to ditch the Not-So-Wonder Twins and hope to God that Ryan had gotten my text, since he didn’t seem in any hurry to reply.
But when we pulled up in the driveway, Ryan was leaning against his car outside the twins’ house. “What’s he doing here?” Abi said from the backseat.
“Don’t know!” I chirped, throwing the car into park. “Stay here,” I told David firmly, pointing at him in case he wasn’t clear how serious I was.
He gave a weak nod and waved his hand, still slumped against the door panel. Maybe this will make me sound like a terrible person, but seeing him like that, much as it worried me, also made me feel kind of
. . . relieved. Vindicated, even. This was what Ryan and I were protecting him from, this kind of pain. I knew it had bummed David out that his visions weren’t as big as he’d hoped, but surely he could understand that a little disappointment was better than this.
I started to open the car door, but before I could, Ryan was suddenly there in the open window, folding his arms on the door, chin resting on his forearms. As always, he looked like he’d just stepped out of an Abercrombie & Fitch catalog, auburn hair curling over his brow, hazel eyes kind of sleepy and lazy, his T-shirt showing off the results of plenty of time in the gym. I could practically feel the twins swoon in the backseat. Ryan used to make me swoon once, too, but now I frowned and waved him back from the door so I could get out of the car.
“What’s the emergency?” he asked once we were on the lawn, and I glanced over my shoulder at the car.
“David had a vision, and the twins saw,” I said in a whispered rush. “So now I need you to do your Mage thing and wipe their memories, okay?”
By now, the twins were getting out of the backseat, muttering to each other. I heard David’s name, and also mine, along with a few words that, were I not so concerned with other things right now, I would have lit into them for. Honestly.
“What kind of vision?” Ryan asked, his brow wrinkling. “About what?”
“It doesn’t matter right now,” I told him, already making to move back to the car. “Do the mind wipe, and—”
Ryan caught my elbow before I could rush back to David. “It seems like it matters. It’s Oracle stuff, which means I’m involved, too. Harper, if he’s having visions without us, after all that we did, that’s . . . that’s kind of an issue.”
That was true, but right now, I needed him to erase the twins’ memories of tonight so I could get back to David. Luckily, at that minute, the twins wandered up, and I saw Ryan’s eyes flick to them.
“We’ll talk later!” I called, both to Ryan and to Amanda and Abigail, before hurrying back across the lawn.
David was out of the car, moving to the driver’s seat, and I stopped him with a “Whoa whoa whoa. What do you think you’re doing?”
Under the street lamps, he was looking a little bit better, but not much. There were still shadows underneath his eyes, and he was moving gingerly, like something inside him was broken. But his jaw was set when he looked at me, fingers on the door handle. “I’m driving.”
I put my hands on my hips, shifting my weight to one foot. “Um, okay, except you’re not?”
Now was not exactly the time to be arguing over who had control of the car, but I was not about to let a guy who looked like his brain might actually start leaking out of his ears get behind the wheel.
But David wasn’t budging. “You heard what it—what I—said. I’ll lead the way.”
Behind me, I could hear the low murmur of voices as Ryan talked to the twins, but I ignored that, focusing on David with my arms crossed tightly.
The twins’ street was quiet, the lawns almost identical green squares, glowing in the security lights. Azalea bushes lined the brick walls, and every yard had either dogwood trees or magnolias planted smack-dab in the middle of the grass. “Right, but you could, like, lead the way by telling me where we’re going. Like a GPS.”
David’s eyes blinked behind his glasses, and he shook his head slightly. “Pres, for once, can’t I be in charge of some aspect of this whole thing? I’m telling you, I need to drive us there. I’m fine now”—the slight trembling of his hand seemed to make that a lie, but whatever—“so please get in the car.”
I thought about arguing with him again, but David was right; I did tend to put myself in charge of all of these things, but how could I not? Wasn’t that my responsibility now that Saylor was gone?
But then I thought again of his visions, and the lies I’d told.
Couldn’t I give him this one thing?
Dropping my head, I pinched the bridge of my nose between my fingers. “David—” I started, and he dropped his head, trying to meet my eyes.
“Trust me, Pres,” he said. “Please.”
The twins were walking toward their house, and Ryan gave me a thumbs-up, so I figured that was settled, thank goodness.
But then Ryan walked over to us and grinned.
“So,” he said, opening the door to the backseat. “Where are we headed?”
Chapter 3
“IT’S NOT that I don’t want you to come,” I explained for what had to be the third time in five miles. “But David and I have this.”
From the backseat, Ryan snorted, and when I glanced over my shoulder, he was sitting back, his arms folded, legs spread wide. I’d always hated when he sat like that, taking up too much space, but there wasn’t anything I could say to him. That was a Boyfriend Complaint, and Ryan wasn’t my boyfriend anymore. Of course, what he was now, I couldn’t even explain. We’d never been friends, exactly, so saying we were didn’t feel true. Maybe we were coworkers.
Which was part of why I didn’t want Ryan on this little expedition. He’d never liked the idea of not telling David about how we were limiting his visions, and I was worried that all of the weirdness of tonight was going to make him feel worse, maybe even give him the urge to confess.
“The other day you were bitching—sorry, complaining,” Ryan amended, catching my look, “that I wasn’t doing enough Mage stuff.” He spread his big hands wide. “Isn’t this Mage stuff?”
I looked back over at David. His hands were clenched tightly around the steering wheel, eyes on the dark road in front of us. We were driving out of town, in the opposite direction from the college where we’d been earlier, and the houses were starting to be few and far between.
I caught Ryan’s eyes in the rearview mirror. “When I said I wanted you to do more Mage stuff, I meant I wanted you to check on the wards Saylor made.” David’s “aunt” had put up all kinds of magical protection charms over Pine Grove to keep the Ephors from finding him, and we’d told David that they needed to be charged up from time to time.
“And,” I added, twisting in my seat, “I think you may want to add wards farther out.”
“Sure thing. Should I go ahead and cover the whole state?” Ryan asked, and I rolled my eyes.
“No,” David said. “No more wards.”
Surprised, I twisted in my seat, the seat belt digging into my hip. “What do you mean ‘no more wards’?”
David shook his head, but didn’t look at me. “I think the wards are screwing up my visions.”
I could hear Ryan shift in the backseat, and willed him not to say anything. Luckily, he didn’t, and David continued. “I mean, I had those two big ones, right? The thing about the earthquake in Peru, and then the one about that senator lady Harper likes becoming president. But then . . . nothing. For months now.” He was talking faster now, fingers drumming on the steering wheel. “So maybe all the wards Saylor put up to protect me are, like, getting in the way of that.”
I tried not to squirm in my seat since it wasn’t Saylor’s wards getting in his way.
“And now,” David added, “the most important thing I’ve been able to see is that your friend will marry a douche someday. Not earth-shattering stuff.”
“Which friend and which douche?” Ryan asked, leaning forward, but I ignored him.
“I happen to think that kind of thing is important, David.” And I did. Sort of.
He did look over then, eyebrows drawing close together over the rims of his glasses. We’d started to move out of the city now, fields to either side of the road, and only the occasional streetlight. The green glow from the dashboard lights played over David’s high cheekbones, making his eyes look slightly sunken in. “I mean, your friends are important,” David said, even though I was pretty sure he didn’t actually think that. There was something weird in his voice. “But bigger-picture stuff? Stuff that might actually help . . . I don’t know, the world? At least more people than a handful of your friends. Tonight, for the first time in
months, I had a strong vision, a clear one that I didn’t need any help with. And it was a big one.” He glanced over at me. “I saw the Ephors, Pres.”
My heart thudded heavily in my chest. “What?”
He nodded and reached over to squeeze my hand. “The Ephors,” he repeated, eyes still on the road. It was probably just the reflection of streetlights, but it looked like his eyes were glowing again, and I swallowed hard.
“Although why they’ve decided to set up shop all the way out here, I don’t know,” he said, and I jerked my hand back.
“Wait, we’re going to see them? That’s where you’re taking us?”
“That seems like information we should’ve had from the start,” Ryan commented, and when I caught his eye in the rearview mirror, he was frowning, auburn hair hanging low on his forehead.
“If I’d told you, would you have come?” David asked, turning to glance at me. Now I could tell his eyes weren’t glowing after all, but I didn’t feel much better.
“Yes,” I told him quickly. “But, you know, with . . . weapons. Grenades, maybe.”
David shook his head and turned down a dirt road, the car thumping over bumps and ruts.
“There’s nothing out here,” Ryan offered, leaning up between us. He had his elbows propped on his spread knees, his hazel eyes scanning the road in front of us, the fields of tall grass on either side. “Me and some of the guys used to come out here to drink beer.”
“When was that?” I asked, but now it was his turn to ignore me apparently.
“There used to be a house,” he told David. “Big ol’ Gone with the Wind–type place. My grandmother had a painting of it over her mantel. Apparently it was kinda famous or something, but it burned down back in the seventies. All that was left was a chimney. And we threw enough cans at it that I’m not sure much of that was left either.”
“What a fabulous use of time,” I muttered, and I think Ryan would have had a comment for that had the car not taken a curve in the road right then.
David brought the car to a shuddering halt.
“A house like that?” he asked, and Ryan gave a slow nod.