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.
Paladin.
No, that wasn’t her name; it’s what she was.
The money tumbled from his hands, bills falling to the grubby carpet, change clattering against the desk. He was on his knees, and the pain in his head was a hurricane.
Yellow dress. Blood. Green eyes. Green eyes filled with tears, and a word booming around loud as thunder.
Choose.
The girl behind the desk was next to him now, crouching down. She smelled like strawberries, and her hair brushed his shoulder. It was brown hair, not black, but he could still swear it was that other girl next to him. The one whose name had slipped through his fingers like sand.
The last time the light poured out of him, he’d said he was sorry. He’d felt sorry.
He didn’t feel sorry now.
Chapter 14
I WONDERED HOW long it would take Blythe to notice that I wasn’t driving toward the address she’d given me. I had banked on her not being all that familiar with this area—we had no idea where she was from, but Blythe was a Yankee name if I’d ever heard one—so I figured it would take a while.
As it turned out, we were nearly to my destination before Blythe suddenly twisted in her seat and said, “Wait, why aren’t we on the interstate yet?”
“Because we’re not getting on the interstate,” I answered calmly, signaling to turn right onto a long four-lane highway bracketed with palm trees. We were farther south now, which meant the landscape was slowly sliding into beachy territory, white sand appearing between clumps of dark green grass.
Blythe turned to face me, frowning. “What’s going on?”
“A mutiny,” Bee said cheerfully from the backseat, and I gave an unapologetic shrug. “What she said.”
I was willing to concede that Blythe had something we needed, namely a bunch of magic Ryan didn’t know, plus what appeared to be a genuine desire to fix this mess with a specific spell. But that didn’t mean that I was giving her total control of this mission, no matter what she might think. We could follow her plan when the time came, but for now, there was a stop I wanted to make.
We passed a big wooden “Welcome to Piedmont” sign, and Blythe settled back in her seat with a huff, crossing her arms over her chest. “We’re going to see the girl who attacked you,” she said, and I nodded.
“The night she went after me, she was totally set to kill me until she wasn’t. I know from experience that Paladin fights don’t work like that. You fight—”
“Until you’re dead,” Blythe finished. “Yeah, I’m familiar with all that.”
Ignoring her snotty tone, I turned into the wide parking lot of a strip mall. There was one just like it in every town in Alabama, seemed like, and I could see that was true of Mississippi, too. A nail salon, a Chinese buffet, one of those places where you trade your car title for cash . . .
The store I was looking for was on the very end of the row, a knockoff card and gift boutique with lots of brightly colored quilted bags prominently displayed in the window.
According to the research I’d done (by which I mean I used Google for about twenty minutes), this was where Annie Jameson worked. It had been a real find, discovering her job, tucked into a little article about her when she’d been the Piedmont High Star Student Athlete. Rocking a 4.0 GPA and captaining her volleyball team, Annie also worked afternoons at her family’s boutique, according to the paper. I had no idea if she’d be there today, of course, but I figured it was easier to try to talk to her at her work than going to her house.
You should always plan the approach that will bring you the most success. I read that in an ACT prep book, but it seemed applicable here, too.
“So what are we going to do?” Blythe asked as we got out of the car. “Just walk up there, be like, ‘Hi, my crazy ex-boyfriend gave you superpowers, and I’d like to ask you some questions about that’?”
The sun was beating down, and I could feel sweat popping out on my forehead, but I shrugged. “More or less, yeah.”
Shaking her head, Blythe slammed the car door way harder than was necessary. “And you didn’t tell me about this why?”