Blythe smiled briefly at that, which just intensified the whole crazy-eyes thing she had going on. “And how determined are you, Harper Price?”
By now, she was very close to me, hands on her hips. Through the triangles made by her elbows, I could see the bright turquoise water of the pool behind her, and I didn’t let myself think. I might not have superstrength or superspeed anymore, but I still knew how to Mean Girl when the situation called for it.
“Hella,” I answered, and with that, I charged forward, shoving with all my might.
I’m not a big girl, but Blythe was even smaller and more delicate, plus, as she’d said herself, her school didn’t have cheerleading. Plus I’d caught her by surprise.
She shrieked as she fell backward into the water, her hands grabbing at me, but I was too quick, moving out of her embrace before she could tug me in, too. She was light enough (and I’d pushed hard enough) that she went out near the middle of the pool.
I didn’t see her hit the water, only heard the splash as I bolted from the pool, running down the cement sidewalk in my bare feet, sandals abandoned on the pool deck. Luckily I still had tennis shoes in the room.
Even more luckily, I had barely unpacked today, so when Bee let me in after I pounded on the door, it was an easy thing to just grab my bag.
Bee, unfortunately, was not as organized.
“Um, what are we doing?” she asked, her phone still held near her jaw as I started throwing her things in her Vera Bradley tote. “Where’s Blythe?”
I shook my head. “We have to go,” I said. “Now.”
Look, Bee is not a perfect best friend. She once dated a guy I could barely stand, she listened to truly obnoxious music, and I had caught her making out with my ex in a supply closet. Plus she’d lied to me and helped David escape town, which had led to this whole mess.
But when it counted, Bee always came through.
“Call you back,” she said to who I assumed was Ryan, and then gathered up the rest of her things, moving as fast as I was without asking a single question. It took her about thirty seconds to throw all she’d gotten out into her tote, but that was about ten seconds too long. We’d just slung our bags over our shoulders when Blythe appeared in the doorway, soaking wet and, surprisingly, nowhere near as angry as I thought she would be.
“Harper,” she started, but I could see her fingers flexing at her side, and while there was no anger pouring off her, there was something else, something a lot scarier than anger.
Magic.
Chapter 30
WE WERE all frozen there, me and Bee in the room, our bags still on our shoulders, Blythe standing in the doorway, her fingers still flexing, water dripping from her hair. We’d spent enough time together over the past few days that she’d started to feel like my friend, and only now did I realize how stupid that had been. Blythe wasn’t Ryan. She sure as heck wasn’t Bee. She was a girl who did things for her own reasons, reasons I couldn’t possibly understand, and for all that she might say we were alike, I knew now that we couldn’t be. I could never be this ruthless, this . . . what had she said?
Determined.
“We’re leaving,” I told Blythe now. “Without you. And to be honest, I don’t care where you go from here, but you’re not coming with us.”
Blythe gave me that little half smile that had become so familiar. “Do you really think I don’t know where you’re going? God’s sake, Harper, I feel David, too. Maybe not as clearly, but still. The tightness in the chest, the headaches . . .”
She did and she had magic to boot, but—I remembered as my hip started to tingle—so did we.
I had no idea how Ryan’s mark might work, but it was supposed to act against Blythe’s magic if we were in danger, and I felt pretty sure that we were in danger now, no matter how much Blythe might smile and say we weren’t.
The wind was picking up outside, and I could hear the first few patters of raindrops on the sidewalk and roof, but the electric feeling in the air had nothing to do with the storm, and everything to do with the girl standing in front of us, keeping us from leaving.
Ryan and I had talked about how the wards would work—the one Bee and I both had, and the one I wasn’t telling anyone about. I didn’t have to mutter a spell or anything, just . . . think about what I wanted to happen.
Blythe was still talking, her hands held out in that conciliatory way people use when they’re trying to come across like rational people, but seeing as how the first words out of Blythe’s mouth had been “Killing David is the only solution here,” I wasn’t sure that “rational” was even in her vocabulary.
“What?” Bee squawked next to me. “We’re here to rescue him.”