Lady Renegades (8 page)

W
E LEFT
early in the morning, wanting to get as much time on the road as we could. The sooner this whole thing got started, the sooner it would be over.

Still, even though I wasn't looking forward to two weeks in a car with Blythe, there was a part of me that was actually . . . excited? A road trip after months of sitting at home seemed like just the thing I needed, and after so long just
waiting,
it felt really good to be
doing
something.

So, yeah, I had felt a little giddy as I'd packed last night and possibly made a few mixes for Appropriate Quest Music.

Blythe met us at my house. I had no idea where she'd come from or how she'd gotten there, but she was wearing a loose sundress, an admittedly super cute bag at her feet. Big sunglasses covered her face, and she gave me a tight smile as Bee and I made our way to her.

“You two ready?”

Bee and I had matching Vera Bradley bags—gifts from our parents for 4.0 GPAs sophomore year—we'd picked them out
together. I pressed a button on my key fob, opening the trunk. “Ready as we'll ever be,” I said, tossing my bag in. Bee followed suit, and after a pause, so did Blythe. To anyone passing by, we were just three girls headed off somewhere. Probably Panama City Beach, where we'd wear bright bikinis and try to con older guys into buying us drinks. Instead, we were two Paladins and a Mage, going on a quest to save an Oracle.

Despite how scary this whole thing was—and trust me, it was way scary—I mean . . . come on. It was kind of awesome, too. And really, how often do you get to actually
quest
in this day and age? And I'd have Bee with me, which meant everything. There had been a time I'd been afraid I'd never see Bee again, and yet here she was, at my side.

Of course, the reason I'd almost lost Bee forever was standing right in front of me, which made it harder to believe this was a good idea. But it was the only idea we had, and I was determined to see it through.

I'd said good-bye to Mom and Dad inside, and I was in a hurry to get going. So was Blythe, I thought, watching her drum her nails on the roof of my car.

But Bee was still standing there, stretching up on her tiptoes to look down the street. “Ryan said he was coming,” she explained, “and I told him to be here early.”

“Ryan's ‘early' is a little different from how the rest of us would define it,” I told her, trying to stamp down my impatience.

Last night, I had met Blythe back at the Waffle Hut, and we'd gone over where we were heading. She'd unfolded a map on the
table, ignoring the sticky spots where syrup hadn't been totally cleaned up, and pointed to a spot in north Mississippi. “Here first,” she said, tapping a place so tiny it didn't even have a name.

I had taken a sip of Coke—the regular kind this time. Planning requires both sugar
and
caffeine. “What's there?” I asked.

Blythe had wrinkled her nose at me and tapped the spot again. “Trust me, okay? We can talk about it when we get there.”

“Why not now?” I'd asked. “Because you feel like being mysterious, or because you know that I won't want to go if you tell me?”

This time, I got an eye roll in addition to the nose wrinkle. “Can you just trust me?”

“No,” I'd replied immediately, and to my surprise, she'd smiled.

Sitting back in the booth, Blythe had watched me for a long moment. Her dark hair had been loose for once, and it made her look younger. I had to remind myself that I hardly knew anything about her. Maybe she was
my
age. Another teenage girl caught up in something she didn't understand, but one who, I think we can all agree, had really run with it.

“Has it occurred to you,” she asked, leaning forward to rest her arms on the table, “that I'm putting a lot of trust in you, too? I mean, I'm getting into a car with a
Paladin
and her best friend, both of whom have more than enough reasons to want to hurt me. So can we just make a deal to trust each other the best we can, and stop thinking the other is looking for a backstabbing opportunity?”

“Literally,” I'd quipped, and while she hadn't exactly offered her hand for us to shake on it, I felt like a deal had been made.

So I hadn't pressed her any more. It was my car we were taking, after all, and while I wasn't sure I believed that Blythe wanted to help out of the goodness of her heart, I believed that she wanted to undo what she'd done the night of Cotillion.

I was distracted from that line of thinking by the sound of a car turning down our street. It wasn't Ryan's SUV, though. It was Aunt Jewel's massive Cadillac, and I grinned to see it. I'd hoped to get a chance to say good-bye to her, and when I saw that Ryan was in the passenger seat, I smiled even more. She must have gone by to pick him up on her way over.

The giant Cadillac careened to a stop at the end of the driveway, and I grimaced as Aunt Jewel's bumper took out one of our trash cans.

The car parked, she got out, wearing yet another rhinestone-studded sweater, this one in a pale pink with matching slacks. She was holding a plastic Piggly Wiggly sack, and I went around to her side of the Cadillac, giving Bee and Ryan a little bit of privacy on the other side.

“I knew that boy would be late if left to his own devices, so I decided to swing by and get him myself,” Aunt Jewel said, taking my proffered hand and hefting herself out of the driver's seat. “I can still do that, right? Even though y'all aren't together anymore?”

She didn't even wait for me to answer, instead thrusting the Piggly Wiggly bag at me.

“Here, baby.”

I took the shopping bag and glanced inside. A rainbow of Tupperware stared back at me, along with several plastic sandwich bags, all holding, as far as I could tell, different types of cookies.

Reaching in, I lifted one napkin-wrapped bundle and held it up to my aunt, my eyebrows raised. “Um. Cake?”

Aunt Jewel shrugged and fiddled with the appliqué hummingbird on her shirt. “You girls will get hungry, and Lord only knows what you'll find to eat out there. I figured better safe than sorry. And your aunt May went ahead and put her best cooler in the trunk, so make sure you grab that, and if you'll just stop and pick up some bags of ice—”

I threw my arms around her before she finished, squeezing tight.

“I love you, Harper Jane. And I want you to promise me you and these girls are going to be very careful. And call me every night.”

“Every night,” I vowed, grateful for about the hundredth time that I'd decided to tell Aunt Jewel my secret.

Ryan and Bee had apparently said their good-byes, because they crossed around to the front of the car, their arms around each other's waists. Blythe stood off alone but didn't seem all that self-conscious. That wasn't a surprise, I guess, seeing as how being self-conscious probably required an amount of self-
awareness
I doubted Blythe possessed.

“So how long will y'all be gone?” Aunt Jewel asked, and I stood up a little straighter.

“Two weeks. We'll be back by the end of the month.”

Reaching down, Aunt Jewel plucked at her lace collar. “And if you don't find David?”

“We come back anyway,” I said, enjoying how resolutely I said that. I just wished I felt as resolute. If all of this ended up being for nothing, if I sent myself traveling all over who knew where just to come home empty-handed . . .

No. Thinking like that had to stop. We had two weeks, and in that time, we were going to find David, find out what had happened to him, and stop it from happening anymore.

Somehow.

For now, I just gave Aunt Jewel another hug, and then, as Bee went to hug her, too, I turned to Ryan.

He stood there in another T-shirt and his basketball shorts, familiar as always, his hands held out to his sides. “Do we, uh, do we hug?”

I punched him lightly in the bicep and then wrapped my arms around his shoulders, giving him what was basically the most platonic hug known to man.

When we pulled back, he met my eyes, hands braced on both my shoulders. “You remember?” he asked in a low voice, and I glanced over at Bee, trying to keep my hand from straying to the bandage still taped over the tattoo on my back. It was just a ward, for the most part, but Ryan had added something extra to mine, something that could only be activated with a certain collection of words he'd taught me.

Something Bee didn't know about.

I turned back to Ryan and nodded. “I won't have to use it.”

“Let's hope,” he answered, and then moved away from me.

Our good-byes said (and Aunt May's cooler packed in the trunk), Bee, Blythe, and I got in my car. I looked at my house in the morning sunlight and told myself that I should feel excited. Anticipatory. Other words that weren't “scared out of my mind” and “freaked out.”

Bee clearly felt the same because she reached over and gave my hand a quick squeeze. “We've totally got this,” she told me, and I made myself smile back.

“Of course we do.”

Starting the car, I glanced back at Blythe. “What about you, Blythe? You got this?”

“I
told
you,” she said, tapping her chest. “I can feel the spell we're going to need. You help me find him, I'll help you fix him.”

“Awesome,” I muttered, plugging the address she'd given me last night into my phone's GPS. “So here we go.”

And there we went.

• • •

The motel attendant looked like Harper.

But then it seemed like every girl looked like Harper lately, that he saw her heart-shaped face and green eyes on everyone who crossed his path.

As the clerk turned away, tapping something into the computer, David closed his eyes, sucking in a deep breath.

“If we go to prom, do you promise not to wear pastel?”

They're in his bedroom, Harper sitting primly at his desk chair while he slouches against the bed, a book on his upraised knees. He looks at her and feels that giddy drop in his stomach he gets every time
he remembers she's his girlfriend. That if he wants to, he can get up and walk over to her, drop a kiss on her lips, slide his fingers under the heavy, silky hair that falls against her neck.

Harper Price. Pres.

His girlfriend.

It's still such a weird thing to think that he almost misses her question, and when she just looks at him, eyebrows raised, he mimics her expression. “Pastel is off the menu, too?” he finally asks, then gives her the most serious frown he can muster. “First plaid, then stripes, now pastel?” Shaking his head, David closes the book with a thump. “You're a fashion tyrant, you know that, Pres?”

Harper smiles, making a dimple dent one cheek, and there's that stomach swoop again. Reaching over to his desk, she picks up a pen, tossing it at him. “You love it,” she counters.

I love you
, he thinks, but doesn't say it.

“Are you okay?”

Startled, David raised his eyes back to the motel clerk. His head still felt full of Harper, but looking at the girl in front of him now, the resemblance wasn't as strong. Still, his pulse seemed to speed up, and there was that feeling in his chest, a tightness like someone was reeling in a line looped around his heart.

She was coming for him.

Hands shaking, David fumbled with his wallet. He wouldn't run from her. He would wait here, let her find him, let them end this, whatever it was. Maybe he could just go back. Harper wanted to keep him safe. Some part of his mind balked at that idea, but that wasn't
him.
Not the real him, at least. That was the
Oracle part, and it was the Oracle part that he had to fight. Sure, there had been the girl at the fast-food place, then before her, those girls in Alabama, but those had been accidents. Besides, once he'd come back to himself, he'd been able to pull the power from them, change them back into what they were.

Or at least he thought he had. He'd
tried.

But when he closed his eyes—just for a second, trying to get his thoughts to settle—there were other voices in his head again. Other images.

Stand and fight,
they whispered, the voices bleeding together. He'd heard these voices before, but it seemed like they were louder now, stronger.

He opened his eyes.

The girl in front of him was looking at him funny, and David knew he must be mumbling to himself again. He'd been concentrating so hard on keeping his eyes downcast—so she couldn't see the glow through his glasses—that he forgot about what his mouth was doing. That was another thing, the way he couldn't seem to control everything at once. He could talk but not look, look but not talk. And when he looked, half the time, he wasn't seeing the person in front of him but . . .

Her name.

She had a name, the girl he was seeing. He had just thought it, had just held the name inside his mind, he was sure of it, but it was slipping away now, almost like it had never been there at all.