At that exact moment, the music cut off, and for a long moment, all I could hear were my own ragged breaths and the thundering of my heart in my ears.
And then, from the auditorium, Aunt May said, “Ooh, performance art!” and started to clap.
Hers was the only applause, though, and as I looked out at the audience, I saw my parents sitting like they were frozen in their seats, their mouths open in identical Os of horror. It was a sea of pale, shocked faces as far as I could see.
Another pair of hands began clapping loudly. As I watched, Aunt Jewel rose from her seat, her tall form sparkling slightly from the sequins on her dress. “It’s part of the show!” she said loudly, still clapping and giving me a nod. “Performance art!”
Her words slowly started to penetrate the rest of the crowd, and there was the slightest smattering of applause, but for the most part, everyone was still gaping at me, and I felt sick to my stomach.
The sick feeling increased when I looked down and saw Bee, slumped there on the stage, her temple already swelling, black and blue.
But I couldn’t worry about that right now. Not when something was happening to David.
Nodding at Aunt Jewel in thanks, I dropped the branch and ran.
Chapter 33
MY INSTINCTS were leading me outside, and as I ran backstage, I dodged the other girls, all of whom were blinking at me. “What was that?” Abi asked, her hand closing around my elbow, but I shook her off, making my way to the back door that led to the parking lot behind the rec center.
I pressed down hard on the bar, but the door wouldn’t budge. The tightness in my chest was getting worse, my blood and heart racing, and I tried again, even harder this time.
But whoever had sealed this door had done a darn good job, and when I squinted at the bar, I saw crude runes scratched into the metal.
My whole body went cold.
Those were wards. A Mage had put those there.
“Harper,” Ryan said, panting, and I turned to see him standing beside me. His tie was loose, his cheeks flushed, and he’d shed the jacket he’d been wearing earlier.
“Can you undo this?” I asked, gesturing to the door. “We’ve got to get—”
“To David, I know. But . . . Harper, let him go.”
I’m pretty sure my mouth actually fell open. “You’re in on this?”
He winced. “Don’t say it like that. Like we’re not on the same side.”
My chest was so tight it was a wonder I could breathe, but I managed to say, “If you did these”—I pointed savagely at the wards—“then we are not on the same side, Ryan. Not even remotely.”
Ryan’s gaze swung to mine, his face pale. “We both want what’s best for David, right? Harper, this is what’s best.”
Tears spilled down my cheeks all over again, and I wiped at them. “Then why is my chest on fire? Why do I know he’s in danger, Ryan?”
When he didn’t answer, I kept going. “Did Bee talk you into this? Did she tell you she was doing this to save David? Because that wasn’t her call to make. Or yours.” I hit my breastbone with my fist, but that was nothing compared to the pain there. “It was mine. You lied to me, both of you lied, and—”
Ryan crossed the space between us, one warm hand coming down on my forearm. “David didn’t want to tell you. He knew you’d never let him go. That you couldn’t if it was dangerous. So he . . . he asked us to help, and what were we supposed to say?”
I didn’t know how to answer that. They were supposed to be loyal to me? Supposed to tell me what David had planned?
From the stage, I heard music start up again and I stood up fast enough to make me dizzy.
Looking back toward the stage, I couldn’t see any sign of Bee and I ducked back down beside Ryan, hissing, “She’s gone. Bee.”
Ryan sighed, scrubbing a hand over his face. “You didn’t hit her that hard,” Ryan said. “And my magic fixed the rest.”
I stared at him, confused. “Your magic doesn’t work.”
“After the vision at the golf course, it came back,” Ryan answered, and I nearly squawked.
“And you didn’t think this was worth telling me?” I hissed, but before Ryan could answer, there was a loud pop, followed by a hiss.
The lights overhead flickered once, twice, then went out altogether.
“That cannot be good,” I whispered, and when the entire building began to shake, the screams of the audience filling my ears, Ryan muttered, “The hell?”
We crouched in the darkness, my skirt pooling around my legs, my heels wobbling slightly. I could hear Ryan breathing hard and could nearly feel the fear vibrating off him.
“Take the damn wards off the door!” I whispered. It was too dark to see him, but I could tell from the change in his breath that Ryan was looking at me. “I’m not supposed to,” he answered, and honestly, I could have slugged him.
“Look,” I said, leaning in closer to him. “I’ll forgive you for this, and I’ll even forgive you for stealing my best friend.”
“I didn’t—” he started, but I cut him off.
“I figure I owe you a couple of things after nearly getting you killed last year. And for . . . other stuff.”
Ryan didn’t say anything, and even though I knew this was not exactly the best time to get into this, I felt like it was now or never. “We should’ve broken up a long time before we did. I should’ve . . . I don’t know, set you free or whatever. But we’d been together too long, and I didn’t know how, and I nearly kissed David while I was dating you.”
At that, Ryan gave a sharp intake of breath. Miserable, I continued. “I know, I know. I am a terrible person. But I promise nothing happened between us until after we broke up. I mean, it was like ten minutes after we broke up, which I still don’t feel great about, but—”
“Harper.” Ryan grabbed my elbow, his fingers digging into my skin. “First off, I think Bee and I might have made a mistake about letting David go. Secondly, we have no idea where David is right now, and seeing as how it is more or less our sacred duty to protect him, that’s kind of an issue. And third, I kissed Mary Beth before we broke up.”
For a moment, all I could hear both of us breathing and the rush of blood in my ears. “You what?” I was proud of how non-shrieky I managed to sound, considering how shrieky I felt.
“I kissed her. That night at the movies.”
The same night I had almost kissed David. I had spent all these months feeling terrible about that, and the whole time, he had been making out with Mary Beth Riley? Seriously?
I jabbed my finger in the general direction of Ryan’s face. “You are so lucky we are busy right now, because if we weren’t, you and I would be having a major discussion about this.”
Ryan snorted and swatted at my hand. “Why? Didn’t you just say we should have broken up earlier?”
“Yes! That doesn’t mean it was okay for you to cheat on me.”
“You had been cheating on me way before that, Harper,” he hissed, and I gave a squawk of outrage.
But then he raised up on his knees, whipping out a pocket knife and scratching at the marks. The door gave with a creak, spilling Ryan out into the parking lot. He glanced over his shoulder at me.
“Harper?”
Outside, the wind was blowing hard, reminding me of the night we got Bee back from Alexander’s house. Just like then, there was this almost overpoweringly electric feeling in the air, racing along my nerves and making my hair stand on end.
The parking lot was full, and several car alarms were blaring. Underneath the sodium lights, Ryan’s hair was orange, his skin pale.
“This is bad,” he said, his gaze darting around.
Shooting him a glare, I bent down and grabbed my skirt in both hands, ripping the little slit in the side until the dress was open to my upper thigh. I wasn’t going to let the skinny skirt get in my way again. “Yes, Ryan, that’s been established.”
Ryan shook his head. “No, Harper, I mean . . . this is no
t just run-of-the-mill bad. I can feel something. There is major magic happening out here. Scary magic. It’s like . . .” Trailing off, he shook his head and looked at me. “We shouldn’t have done this,” he said, and it wasn’t the cool spring air raising goose bumps on my arms.
“We have to find David.”
Chapter 34
MY PARENTS had driven me, so I turned to Ryan and said, “Car!”
He was still standing there in his white button-down and khakis, looking around with a pained expression. “It wasn’t supposed to go like this,” he muttered, and I grabbed his shirtfront, forcing him to look in my eyes.
“It is going like this, though,” I said, “And we need to find David now. Before it gets worse.”
I remembered the wards Alexander had had Ryan put up, wards that were meant to keep David in town. We’d never tried to break a ward before; I didn’t even think that was possible, but if that was what David was doing now . . .
From somewhere in the distance, there was a loud boom, and both Ryan and I flinched.
“He can’t leave town,” I said to Ryan. “It’s not that simple. Did he not bother to explain that to y’all?”
Dazed, Ryan shook his head. “He said he had to leave, that it would be better for everyone if he did.”
Looking down at me, Ryan’s eyes seemed to focus. “Harper, I think whatever he saw that night at the golf course scared the hell out of him.”
I remembered what I’d seen in the Fun House. If David had seen that, if Alexander was wrong about the Fun House only showing me my worst fears . . .
“We have to get to him,” I told Ryan, dropping my hands from his shirt. “And . . .”
My words trailed off. Why did we have to get him? If the wards were going off, he was already gone, and this was pointless. But I could still feel that ache in my chest, telling me that he was in danger, that we at least had to try.
“We’re wasting time,” I told Ryan, scanning the parking lot. I could still hear people leaving the rec center, and I sent up a quick prayer that my parents wouldn’t worry too much about me.
Ryan took my elbow, pulling me in the direction of his car. As I hopped into the passenger seat, he glanced at me from the corner of his eye. “Bee,” he said, and I held up a hand.
“We can talk about her later, but for now—”
“No, I mean Bee is heading this way,” Ryan said, nodding out my window.
I turned and sure enough, there she was, a knot on one side of her forehead, but other than that, totally fine.
“We can’t take her,” I said to Ryan, even as he clicked the button to unlock the back doors. “She’ll try to stop us, she’ll—”
“No, I won’t,” Bee replied, sliding into the backseat. When she looked at me, her expression was pleading. “I had no choice, Harper, but now that he’s gone—”
“We don’t know that,” I snapped back, even though she was probably right. Whatever the three of them had planned, it had worked.
“Where do you want to go?” Ryan asked me, and I closed my eyes, taking a deep breath and trying to sense where David was. Just outside of town, I thought. Close, still. I could find him, I could talk to him, I could get him to see that this wasn’t the solution.
“Head toward the city limits,” I told Ryan. “He’ll be going for the highway; we might be able to catch up.”
Ryan started the ignition, pulling out of the parking lot.
“When?” I asked as we left the rec center. “When did y’all put this whole plan in motion?”
There was a pause, and I could see Ryan catching Bee’s eye in the rearview mirror. “Four days ago,” he said, and I racked my brain, trying to remember what had happened four days ago.
We’ll think of something, David had said, and I guess he had. Too bad he’d never thought to let me in on this.
“So he comes to you, says he wants your help leaving town,” I clarified, and Bee leaned forward, sticking her head between our shoulders.
“Yes. He chose the night of the pageant because he’d thought you’d be distracted, and he’d hoped that it wouldn’t . . . I don’t know, trigger your Paladin senses or whatever.”
She looked at me, and I could see the whites of her eyes around her dark irises. “He didn’t think it would be dangerous.”
The car rounded the square just as Adolphus Bridgeforth exploded in a shower of sparks and stonework.
All three of us instinctively ducked, and when a large piece of marble bounced against the hood of Ryan’s car, denting it, he gave a groan.
I wanted to remind him that this was all his fault, his and Bee’s for deciding to handle this without me, but then I remembered how much Ryan loved his SUV, and decided that would be adding insult to injury.
“Well, clearly it is,” I said through clenched teeth, and Ryan took his eyes off the road long enough to flash me a panicked glance.
“What’s happening?”
“Those wards Alexander had you put up, genius. Either David did some kind of crazy spell himself to get rid of them, or this is what they do when they’re broken.” Either option seemed possible at this point, and then something occurred to me.
My hand flew to my mouth, stomach clenching. “You put the wards where we’d put the other ones.” I looked at Ryan and saw the same realization dawning on his face.
“We put hundreds of wards on Magnolia House.”
I turned my head east, in the direction of the huge mansion where we’d had Cotillion, and saw a faint orange glow in the sky.
Without a word, Ryan turned the car that way.
Magnolia House was on fire. Cotillion hadn’t destroyed it—although it had come pretty freaking close—but this . . . this had finally done it.
We sat in the car for a while, watching flames lick out of the windows, racing along the white wood, wrapping the huge pillars out front in fire.
“How?” Bee asked, and the words almost stuck in my throat.
“Alexander put up different wards,” I told her. “To keep David here. But they . . . they didn’t work.” One of the upstairs windows suddenly burst outward in a spray of glass. That was the bedroom where I had kissed David for the first time, finally understanding what had been between us for all those years.
“We need to get to him,” I said, even though I hated to do this. “Alexander. Maybe he can stop David.”
I didn’t think that would actually work. I could actually feel David getting farther away from me, a steady pulse beating behind my ribs like a second heartbeat.
I’d failed.
The one job I’d had was to keep him safe, and I hadn’t been able to do that. Saylor had told me that one day, I might have to protect David from himself, but I’d never thought it would be like this. I’d imagined him having too many prophecies, burning up his mind. Never running from town—from me—and leaving this kind of destruction in his wake.
Silently, we drove out of town and onto the dirt road where Alexander had set up headquarters.
I waited for the house to loom out of the darkness, its windows glowing, but the closer we got, the darker it seemed to get. Frowning, I sat forward in the seat, squinting into the inky blackness.
“Where is it?” I said, then glanced over at Ryan. His hands were so tight on the steering wheel, it looked like he could snap it right off, and from the back, I heard Bee take in a sudden sharp breath.
“Harper,” she said softly. “Look.”
Chapter 35
THERE WAS no house left.
It was like Ryan had described that first night, just a charred and broken chimney rising from tall grass, a few stray cinder blocks littering what appeared to be an empty field.
Alexander sat on one of those blocks, his head in his hands. His hair was a mess, his tie dangling limply from his fingers, and it looked like one sleeve of his jacket was singed.
“Holy crap,” Ryan murmured as he stopped the car, and I laid a hand on his sleeve.
“Let me go by mysel
f, okay?” I wasn’t sure why, but this seemed like something that should be between me and Alexander.
I thought both Bee and Ryan would argue that, but neither said a word, and I opened the car door, stepping out on shaking legs.
I took a few steps forward, my high heels crunching on stones and broken glass. My dress snagged on a tall weed, but I kept walking. Overhead, there was no moon, but the sky was full of stars.
And smoke. Not much of it—we were still a few miles outside of town—but I could see the bright glow in the distance and took in a deep breath at the thought of Magnolia House burning.
At the knowledge that my parents were probably frantic and looking for me.
Alexander only lifted his head when I was a foot or so away, and when he did, his face looked . . . broken. His eyes were bloodshot, circled in lines, and when he smiled at me, it was one of the scariest expressions I’d ever seen.
“Is this what you wanted, then?” he asked, his voice hoarse. My chest was still aching, telling me that wherever David was, he was in danger, so I shook my head. I had never wanted David to belong the Ephors, but I hadn’t wanted him to leave, either. Especially not like this. If he had known . . .
Maybe this was what he’d seen that night at the golf course? Our town burning, me standing in a deserted field with Alexander? It was difficult to speculate about what David had known or not known.
“I didn’t have anything to do with this, believe it or not,” I told him, coming to stand in front of him. “This was David’s doing. He . . . he didn’t want to go with you, but he knew he couldn’t stay here.” The words stuck in my throat. I hated them. Hated that as I said them, I knew David had done the right thing. Or at least the best thing he could think of.
Not that I thought this would last very long, of course.
Staring down at Alexander, I said, “I’m guessing you’ll report back to the rest of the Ephors and drag him back.”
“There are no more Ephors,” Alexander said, his voice dull. “Only me.”
I’d never thought surprise could actually knock you on your butt, but I swear I rocked back on my heels. “What?”