Lady Renegades (11 page)

T
HE INSIDE
of the house was . . . interesting.

If this had been Saylor's childhood home, it was pretty clear her brother had been living here for a while, because the entire decor was straight-up Southern Male Left Alone Too Long. Lots of paintings of ducks, lots of plaid furniture, and way more taxidermied heads than I ever wanted to see.

Bob—that was Saylor's brother's name—led us into a living room that sat under the baleful gaze of a giant buck's head over the fireplace, and once we all had some tea, he sat and faced the three of us. “You girls know Saylor, huh?”

He said it casually, but I saw the look in his eyes. It was hope, and it broke my heart.

I couldn't do any kind of mind control or anything, but in that moment, I had never wished harder for a power like that because all I could think was,
Blythe, you tiny crazy person, if you tell him his sister is dead like this, I am going to kill you right in front of that painting of Baby Jesus.

But Blythe just smiled brightly at Bob and said, “We sure do! She's a very big part of our hometown.”

Bob made a sound like
humph
and then sort of sucked at his teeth. There wasn't much of Saylor in his face, although his hair was a similar shade of silver, and his eyes, like hers, were blue. Saylor's had been brighter, though, and looking at Bob's, I suddenly thought of David. His eyes were blue, too, although the last time I'd seen them, they'd been shining with the golden light of the Oracle.

Thinking of that reminded me that we weren't just here to chat with Bob in front of taxidermied animals, so I sat up a little bit, pushing my glass of iced tea away.

“Mr. Stark,” I said, “you said Miss Saylor said someone might come by to pick up something she'd left here?”

He nodded. “She sure did. I think it was the whole reason she stopped by in the first place.”

I'd assumed Saylor had left something before she left to go be a Mage, but Bob made it sound a lot more recent than that.

“You . . . you've talked to Saylor recently?”

Bob gave a chuckle, the ice rattling in his glass. “If you can call a year ago ‘recent,' I s'pose so. She showed up last summer, first time I'd seen her in ages.” Nodding toward the staircase, he added, “Spent the night in her old room, then left the next morning. Said she'd kept something here for ‘safekeeping,' and that if a young lady showed up asking for it, I could give it to her.” He snorted and sat his glass down on the table. “Of course, might've been helpful to tell me what the damn thing was in the first place—beg pardon—but then Saylor always was secretive.”

Because she was a Mage,
I thought to myself, remembering all the secrets I'd have to keep over the years.

Next to me on the sofa, Blythe was strung tighter than a wire but she managed to sound almost nonchalant as she said, “Oh, that's wonderful! Do you mind if we go fetch it?”

Bob didn't answer her but instead kept his eyes on me. I fought the urge to squirm in my seat. Was it better for him not to know the truth about Saylor? Every time I'd had to lie to anyone—from my parents to David—I'd told myself that it was because it was for the best.

But was it really? Was it my place to decide that?

Blythe cleared her throat, and Bob looked back at her. “Oh, sure,” he said, gesturing with his glass up the stairs. “Go on. I take it you know what you're looking for? I figured it was jewelry or something.”

Blythe just made a vague sound of agreement that had me shooting a look at her, one she pointedly ignored.

I glanced over at Bee, who gave me a little nod, and I knew she was agreeing to sit downstairs and make small talk with Bob while we did our searching. Bee was pretty good at the whole “charming adults” thing, maybe even better than me, so it seemed like a safe bet.

“Whatever it is, maybe you'll have better luck than that boy did finding it,” Bob said on a sigh, and Blythe suddenly sat up a little straighter, the corner of her mouth turning down.

“Boy?” she asked, and he nodded before frowning and rubbing a hand over the back of his neck.

“Yeah, came by . . . oh Lord, I guess it was around November of last year. Said he worked for Saylor's boss, and that she'd sent him to pick up something for her. Seemed damn odd—pardon, girls,
darn
odd—but he had a business card, and . . .”

Bob's words faded away, a puzzled look on his face, and I felt something in my stomach go cold. Whoever this boy was, he'd used magic on Bob, that was for sure. I'd seen that look of confusion on people after Ryan had done his Mage thing on them. It's what Shelley at the motel had looked like when Blythe had finished with her.

And in Bob's case, who knew just how much magic had been done on him over the years? There were Saylor's spells, whoever this boy was—and what had he meant by Saylor's “boss”? Alexander? Some other Ephor before they'd all been wiped out?

I reminded myself to tell Blythe not to even attempt a mind wipe here. Lord only knew what it might do to Bob after this much magic. I wasn't even going to risk Ryan's magic rose lip balm stuff.

“What did this boy look like, if you don't mind my asking?” Blythe said, sweet as pie, and Bob's hazy eyes shot to her.

“Oh. Well. He was . . . tall? Young, not much older than you girls. Figured he was an intern or something. Asian fella, handsome as all get out.”

That description wasn't familiar to me, but Blythe's lips tightened, and her hands, clasped in her lap, flexed a bit.

“Y'all need me to go up with you?” Bob asked, and we both shook our heads.

“No, we know what we're looking for,” I said, even though I was pretty sure we didn't. “Won't be a tick.”

The stairs creaked slightly as Blythe and I made our way up, Blythe heading unerringly for the last door on the left past the landing.

“So who was the handsome guy?” I asked, and she glanced back at me. When she didn't answer immediately, I rolled my eyes. “Oh, come on,” I said. “You clearly knew who he was talking about.”

Another little frown. “Dante,” she answered. “Alexander's assistant . . . another Mage.”

I raised my eyebrows at that. “Another one?”

“It's a long story,” she replied. “And one we don't have time for now.”

With that, she turned to the nearest door on her left.

“You don't know what we're looking for?” I whispered, and she tossed her hair over her shoulders, turning the doorknob.

“I'll know it when I see it.”

Saylor's childhood bedroom looked a lot like . . . well, like mine. Sure, it was still solidly stuck in the 1970s, but apparently Saylor hadn't been a trend follower any more than I was. The bed was dark cherrywood, the coverlet white Battenburg lace, and other than a peeling poster of some band called Bay City Rollers—guys even more devoted to plaid than David—on the wall, there wasn't much to mark it as belonging to a teenage girl. Still, I was struck by something as I stood there, looking out the window to the empty lot across the street.

“She was normal,” I heard myself say.

Blythe had already moved past me, opening drawers and rifling through them. “What?”

I glanced back out in the hall, worried that Bob would come upstairs and find us pawing through Saylor's stuff. True, we'd told him we were looking for something, but I didn't think he'd be happy with just how roughly Blythe was treating Saylor's things. I wasn't sure I was happy with it, to be honest.

“This is stupid,” I whispered to Blythe even as I crossed over to a bookcase and began to looking for anything resembling a journal or a diary. “We have no idea where she could have hidden a spell. Or why she left it here, for that matter.”

Snorting, Blythe moved over to the dresser. “If I had to guess, whatever it was had to do with David, and with her being worried about his powers. Think about it. She's gone for years, then suddenly turns up last summer, just when things started getting intense. Right before the Ephors found him. And besides, it's
here.
I can feel it.”

“How?” I asked, picking out an old, well-thumbed copy of
Jane Eyre,
flipping through the pages. “You've said that a couple of times, but you haven't mentioned exactly what you're feeling or how you're feeling it.”

Blythe paused, one hand still stuck in the dresser drawer, and I realized that she was actually attempting to formulate a serious answer rather than some mumbo jumbo or another reminder that I was totally stupid where all this stuff was involved.

“It's like . . . a homing beacon,” she finally said. “Or the black
boxes they put on planes. You know, like there's something . . . beeping in my head, only it's magic, not electrical.” She frowned, her cherubic face wrinkling. “Does that make sense?”

I thought about the way I could still feel David, just the vaguest sense of him. Or how I'd been able to feel that he was in danger, that sensation of Pop Rocks deep in my chest.

“Yeah,” I replied, sliding
Jane Eyre
back into its space. “It does, actually.”

Pleased, Blythe smiled and then turned back to her rifling while I did my best to help. I definitely wasn't feeling any kind of “homing beacon,” but maybe it was just a Mage thing. I'd always wished that Ryan were the Mage here with us, but, watching Blythe move around Saylor's old bedroom with the kind of efficiency usually limited to worker ants, I had to admit that she seemed pretty dedicated.

“Bob said she was just seventeen when she took off,” I said as Blythe continued her search. “Same age as me.”

When Blythe didn't look up, I pressed a little more. “Same age as . . . us?”

She still didn't lift her head, but her hands stilled. “Not quite. I'm nineteen.”

“How long has the Mage thing been happening for you, though?” I said, leaning back against the dresser.

Blythe heaved a sigh that just ruffled her bangs, but seemed deep enough to make the curtains flutter. And then she shut the drawer, looked at me, and said, “You really want to do this now?”

I shrugged. “Why not? Seems relevant to the task at hand and all.”

Blythe sighed, then shrugged herself, and said, “Fine. We can talk while we search.”

Feeling more pleased with myself than I should have, I sat down on the edge of the bed. “So how long have you been a Mage?”

“I'm not one, exactly.”

That startled me, although I guess it shouldn't have. The previous Mage usually has to die before another one can take over, and Blythe had powers long before Saylor had died. Ugh, this was way too much rule-breaking to take in, honestly.

“Do you have hobbies?” Blythe asked, pulling me out of my thoughts, and I shook my head, confused.

“Okay, for one, I have, like, a thousand, and two, way to change the sub—”

“Magic was my hobby,” Blythe said, acting like I hadn't even spoken. “All types of magic. The traditional witches-and-broomsticks kind, the weird hippie-herbal kind . . . and then one day, I came across the Greek kind. The Mage kind. And”—she gave a little shrug, moving over to Saylor's closet—“that was clearly the most powerful kind, so that's what I wanted. Why do anything if you can't be the best at it, right?”

I really didn't like how familiar that sounded, and I fidgeted, clutching the edge of the bed. “Was that the deal with that other guy, too? This Dante kid who was here?”

Blythe nodded. “I was better, so I was the official Mage for the Ephors, but Dante wasn't . . . untalented, exactly.” She flashed
me a brief smile. “Just not as good as me. By that time, the Ephors needed all the help they could get, so they weren't about to let a perfectly-good-if-not-great Mage slip through their fingers.”

I wanted to ask more about that, but before I could, my fingers brushed something underneath the mattress.

Dropping to my knees, I reached, my hand almost immediately touching something hard.

I tugged and was aware of Blythe coming up to stand behind me as the book slid out from between the mattress and the box springs.

Glancing up, I looked into Blythe's bright eyes and asked, “Is this what we're looking for?”

“Oh, thank God,” she breathed, taking it from me.

Her fingers flew as they paged through the book, her face practically glowing.

And then, just as abruptly, her smile dropped.

There, toward the back of the book, were the jagged edges of several ripped-out pages.

Seemed Dante had found what he was looking for after all.

A
FTER 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.