Pine Grove sped by, a blur of trees and flowers and little shops that were closed for the night. I fished a hand-sanitizing wipe out of my purse to clean the wound on my neck—knew those things would come in handy working at the pool, but had to admit, this was not how I’d thought I’d be using them—and then leaned my head against the window, letting the cool glass soothe my scraped cheek. I knew I’d been right to hate that gross carpet in the changing rooms.
“If she was a Paladin—” Bee said, drumming her fingers on the steering wheel.
“David made her,” I finished, my head aching for a whole other reason now. “She told me so. She said . . .” I wasn’t sure I wanted to finish that sentence. But no, denying a hard thing didn’t make it not exist. So I took a deep breath, squared my shoulders, and said, “She said he sent her to kill me.”
To her credit, Bee didn’t swerve the car off the road or gasp or anything, but I did think she suddenly looked a lot paler. “Why?” was all she asked, and I leaned my head back against the seat.
“According to our new friend back there, David thinks I’ll kill him.”
That was the time I would have liked to have seen some shock, maybe wide eyes, but Bee just took that in, too, and I could tell she was thinking hard. It was there in that nervous drumming—something David had done, too, I remembered—and in the way she chewed at her lip.
“You said he saw that once, right? In a vision?”
I swallowed hard. “Yeah, he did. But his visions don’t always come true,” I reminded her. “Perils of male Oracle-dom. He sees not just what will happen, but what could happen.”
“That is so annoying,” Bee murmured, and I didn’t disagree. David had never actually believed that vision anyway. He’d told me so, plenty of times.
But Saylor had warned me once that boy Oracles were notoriously unstable. If David had ridden into crazy town, making other Paladins and thinking I was out to hurt him, what was he capable of? He’d almost blown up Pine Grove when he left, and now he’d turned some random girl into a freaking assassin.
“Is there anyone we can talk to?” she finally wondered aloud, turning into Ryan’s neighborhood. Like mine, it was lined with tall oak and magnolia trees, and there was a tasteful brick sign reading “Amber Ridge.”
“No,” I answered, watching the elegant homes slide by. “Trust me, I wish there were, but . . .”
It had been David’s “aunt” Saylor who’d first explained everything about Paladins and Oracles, who had trained me how to fight and told me what was expected of me. After she’d been killed, an Ephor—one of the people who controlled the Oracle—had come to town, and he’d told me a little more. But he was gone, too, died before my eyes, and with him had gone any chance of learning more. Alexander had been the last Ephor, which meant that we were completely out of adults who might be of any help.
Of course, after David left back in May, I hadn’t thought we’d need any more help. It seemed like my days of chasing danger were over. To be honest, I’d been a little relieved, even if David leaving had broken my heart.
“If he’s making Paladins,” I said slowly, “it’s because someone is making him do it. You know David would never do this on his own. Maybe Alexander was wrong and there are more Ephors. Maybe it’s Blythe! We haven’t seen her since Cotillion, and there’s no telling what she might be up to.” True, some of the stuff Alexander said had implied that Blythe was probably dead, but whatever. I was grasping at straws right now.
Bee didn’t answer right away, but I wasn’t sure it was because she didn’t agree. I suddenly wished she’d turn on the radio or something, anything to ease the heavy silence between us.
“Is this something you knew could happen?” she asked at last, just as we pulled into Ryan’s driveway. “That David could be dangerous?”
It was right on the tip of my tongue to remind Bee that maybe I’d had more reasons to want David to stay in town besides him being my boyfriend. If she and Ryan hadn’t helped him leave town, none of this would be happening. I knew they hadn’t done it to hurt me; they’d thought it was for the best.
And it wasn’t like I’d told them about David maybe being dangerous. I still wasn’t sure why exactly, except that I hadn’t wanted to believe it myself.
“Saylor said some things,” I told her, staying vague as I unbuckled my seat belt. “Let’s talk to Ryan.”
If Ryan’s mom was surprised to see her son’s ex and his current girlfriend at the front door in bathing suit cover-ups, she didn’t show it, although her eyes did drift to the cut on my jaw. But maybe she just assumed it was a lifeguard-related injury, because she smiled and said hello before ushering us inside and calling for Ryan. Like her son, Ryan’s mom had auburn hair and hazel eyes, although he got his height from his dad.