There were times things with David were weird—and I don’t mean the Oracle stuff. We’d spent all our lives arguing, so this sudden shift to coupledom had been a tough transition in some ways. But when it was only the two of us, hanging out alone, we almost felt normal.
He pulled back again, returning to his chair. “Anything else happen at the mall?”
“I might have figured out at least one of the trials,” I told him, handing over the flyer. “Same date as the last night of the moon cycle. Seems like a possibility, at least.”
David’s eyes scanned the paper. “They do seem to like picking big events for maximum damage, don’t they?” he murmured. He glanced up at me then, quirking an eyebrow. “Will you twirl a baton?” he asked. “Please promise me a baton will be involved. And, like, huge hair.”
I swatted at him. “You know I despise pageants. But I’m doing this for the greater good. And, hey”—I shrugged—“maybe it will make me look even more well rounded on my college applications.”
“Well, as long as that’s the only reason,” he said with a shudder, and a little sizzle of irritation buzzed through me.
“It’s not like the pageant is that big of a deal,” I told him. “And Bee wanted do it.”
That wiped the smirk off his face. Brows drawing together, he shifted so his elbows rested on his knees. “How is she? After the other day?”
I picked up one of the throw pillows from my bed, tugging at the embroidery. “She’s . . . okay. Obviously still shaken up and trying to come to terms with all of this.”
David nodded, then reached up to scratch his shoulder through his ugly T-shirt. “I’m sorry,” he said.
I looked up, surprised. “What do you have to be sorry for?”
He frowned, clasping his hands in front of him. “If I didn’t suck so much at being an Oracle, maybe I could’ve found her earlier, you know?”
I dropped my gaze from him, watching my fingers as they traced over the little flower on the pillow. Aunt Martha had made this for me. Or had it been Aunt May? One of them. And maybe if I stared hard enough at the stitches, David wouldn’t see the guilt on my face. If I hadn’t messed around with his visions, could he have seen Bee?
David sat back in my chair, and it creaked slightly. “And of course now, I’m completely useless.”
There was a bitterness in his voice I hadn’t heard in a long time, and I set the pillow back on my bed, getting up to go to him. “Hey,” I said softly, brushing a hand over his jaw. The stubble there was rough against my fingers, and when David looked up, I moved my hand to the back of his neck. “Just because you can’t see the future right now doesn’t mean you’re useless.”
One corner of his mouth kicked up in a smile. Or a grimace. “I guess I could make a dirty joke about what uses you might have for me,” he said, and I rolled my eyes, letting my hand drop away from his neck.
“What I meant,” I told him, going back to sit on the edge of my bed, “is that David Stark the person is worth a lot more to me than David Stark the Oracle.”
Snorting, David crossed his feet at the ankle. “Yeah, well, David Stark the person just annoyed you. He didn’t ruin your life.”
There it was again, that bitterness I definitely didn’t like. “Could you not say stuff like that?” I snapped. “I think I can decide who and what ruins my life.”
Downstairs, I could hear pans rattling as Mom started dinner, and Dad’s low voice talking on the phone. David glanced toward the door and heaved a sigh.
“I’m sorry, Pres,” he said before standing up. “I’m embracing my inner emo, I guess.”
I stood up, too, crossing the room to wrap my arms around his waist. “Well, that would explain the T-shirt.”
He smiled then, a real smile, and after he kissed me, I said, “Why don’t you stay for dinner? I don’t like the thought of you in that big house alone.”
David’s expression didn’t change, but I could feel his hands tighten on my waist. Then he shook his head and stepped back. “Thanks, but I’m not great company tonight. Besides, I have some stuff I need to work on for school.”
I was going to ask what stuff exactly, but David was already picking up his bag and heading for the door. I walked him down, stopping so that he could say good night to my parents, and then followed him out to where his car was parked in the driveway. He opened the door and threw his satchel inside before turning back to me, that familiar wrinkle between his brows. “Sometimes I wonder what would happen if I just drove out of town, you know?”
His tone was casual, but something about those words made goose bumps break out all over my body. “You can’t,” I told him, my voice stiff. “I mean, right now, you literally can’t since Alexander had Ryan put up all these wards, but—”
Shoving his hands in his pockets, David leaned forward a little. “What? Why?”
“I don’t know,” I confessed. “Apparently the one time Ryan decided to take the initiative, it potentially screwed us over.”
With a groan, David tipped his head back. “It would be awesome,” he said, “if people would stop doing things that affect me without, you know, asking how I might feel about those things.”
I swallowed hard.
David tilted his head back down and gave me a steady look, his hands still in his pockets. For a moment, I thought my guilt must show clearly on my face.
But he didn’t ask me anything about his visions. Instead, he studied me and asked, “If you could do it all over again, don’t pretend that you never would have gone into the bathroom that night.”
I blinked, thinking about Bee. About Saylor and the Cotillion and all the lying I’d done to my family.
Smiling as best as I could, I raised up on tiptoes and kissed him. “Of course I would have.”
Chapter 13
“SO THIS IS a thing that’s happening?” David asked as he sat against the fence in my backyard.
Pulling my hair up into a high ponytail, I sighed around the rubber band in my mouth. “Yes,” I mumbled. “And if you mock it, I’ll never ask you to come back.”
“No mocking,” David replied, laying his arms on his upraised knees. His wrists looked bony underneath the cuffs of his (both ugly and seasonally inappropriate) plaid button-down. “You’re going to train for whatever trials the Ephors may have coming your way by . . . spinning a baton? Because I was honestly kidding about that earlier.”
Hair secured, I propped my hands on my hips. “It’s not like I can practice dagger swinging or karate kicks in the backyard. But baton twirling is totally socially acceptable, and it lets me both work on my agility and wield what could be a weapon.” I gave the baton a few experimental twirls, and David laughed.
“Your ability to multitask is truly extraordinary, Pres.”
He looked back at the book he had spread open on the grass, and I tossed the baton up, catching it easily. “What are you reading?” I asked, and he raised his head, sunlight flashing off his glasses.
“Still looking through some of Saylor’s books for stuff about the Peirasmos.”
“Anything?” I asked, but he shook his head.
“Not yet. But Saylor had a lot of books.”
I kept twirling, but watched him out of the corner of my eye. “And you? You feeling okay?”
“Sure,” he said, the word clipped off and sharp in his mouth. He didn’t look up at me, and something in my stomach twisted.
“David,” I said, and he sighed, tapping his pen furiously against the page.
“It’s just irritating, that’s all. Being completely useless, power-wise. If I could just see something . . .” He broke off with a frustrated noise. “My visions might have been stupid before, but at least I could have them.” Shaking his head, he leaned back against the fence. “No idea why everyone is working so hard to protect me when I’m not exactly worth much.”
It was the second time he’d said something like that, and I still didn’t like it. Part of that, I knew, was the guilt. But wardi
ng him had been for his own good, I thought again. To keep him safe and keep him . . . well, him.
But I’d tried to ignore how that was making David feel, especially when he was all alone in Saylor’s house, with nothing but his own thoughts to keep him company. David was a smart guy, and ever since I’d known him, he’d had a bad tendency to overthink things. I knew he’d been sitting there at night, brooding over all of this.
Now, he tipped his head back and studied the sky, bright blue through the oak leaves overhead. “I’m trying to help by going through all these books, but nothing there is all that helpful, and I . . .” Trailing off, he pushed his hands under his glasses, scrubbing his face. “If something happens to you during all of this, Harper—”
I set the baton down and walked over to stand in front of him, catching his chin in my fingers and tilting his head up to look at me. “Nothing is going to,” I told him. “We got through Cotillion, and we’ll get through this, too.”
David’s eyes were nearly as blue as the sky above, and as they searched my face, I could tell he didn’t believe me. But he dropped the subject, picking up the baton I’d laid down on the grass.
“I’m still having trouble wrapping my mind around you twirling this thing in a pageant,” David said, idly toying with it as he stood up.
I took it from him with a skeptical frown. “It’s a traditional choice,” I admitted. “And my Paladin skills mean that I’m weirdly good with it.”
David laughed at that. “Seriously? Thousands of years of knowledge and training have resulted in the ability to spin a baton?”
“Yup,” I replied. “Check this out.” With that, I tossed the baton from hand to hand, spinning it furiously as I did. The metal rod slid easily through my fingers, and I realized that in the right circumstances, this thing could actually be a pretty impressive weapon.
But I hoped that the right circumstances never occurred. Braining someone with a baton was not on my agenda any time soon.
Tossing the baton high in the air, I added a backflip before coming down solidly on both feet and catching the baton with one hand. I used the other hand to give a little wave, and David looked at me with a grin.
“Okay, now you’re showing off.”
“Little bit,” I admitted, glad that we were talking like normal people again. I tossed him the baton.
“Maybe you should start carrying one of these things,” he mused as he inspected it.
He looked at the rubber end over the top of his glasses, squinting slightly, and I leaned over and smacked a kiss on his cheek. That was one of my favorite David faces.
“I’ll stick with my dagger,” I told him as he let the baton drop back on the grass.
He laughed. “I think the baton would be a little less conspicuous.”
I shook my head. “No way. And then I’d have to join the marching band as a majorette to make up an excuse for carrying it around all the time.” With a dramatic sigh, I tipped my head back to look at the sky. “And I’ve already had to join the paper and now I’m going to sign up for a pageant . . .”
David closed his notebook. “Admit that you kind of like the paper.”
Wrinkling my nose, I shuddered. “No. It is a necessary evil.”
But I couldn’t stop smiling a little bit, and David pointed at me. “Aha! You do like it! In fact, you love the paper.”
“Do not!” I insisted, but he was fully dedicated to teasing me now.
“You love the paper so much you’re thinking of studying journalism at college instead of poli-sci.”
“Ignoring you,” I said in a singsong as I scooped my baton off the grass and started twirling it again.
David sat back down on the grass, wrapping his arms around his knees as he watched me. “It’s too late. I know your secret heart.”
Feeling better, I kept spinning the baton, tossing it and catching it, watching the sunlight glint off the silver. I was still practicing when the back gate opened and Bee walked inside, also dressed in a T-shirt and shorts.
“Have you come to mock with David?” I asked, and she shook her head, a few tendrils of hair coming loose from her own ponytail.
“I actually thought we should join forces on our talent. Do some kind of dual baton thing. Especially if I’m right about the pageant being one of the trials.”
“That was Bee’s idea?” When I glanced back, David was sitting up a little straighter, his eyebrows raised. “I thought you put that together, Pres.”
Irritation bubbled up in me, which was probably stupid, since what did it matter whose idea it had been? But I didn’t like the sharp, interested way David was looking at Bee. He was thinking . . . something. I wasn’t sure what, but the wheels were clearly turning.
I shrugged, sweat rolling down my spine. The late afternoon was getting warmer, and I was about to suggest going in when Bee held out one hand. “Here,” she said, nodding toward the baton. “Let me try.”
The baton was a little slick with my sweat—more from the warmth of the day than from any real effort—but I tossed it to her.
The baton turned end over end in the air, but before it had even completed one full rotation, Bee had launched into a forward handspring unlike anything I’d ever seen her do in cheerleading. Heck, Bee had been so bad at jumps that it was sort of a joke. She’d always said it was because she was too tall, but apparently that wasn’t a problem anymore.
Bee was a blur of motion, and then the baton was in her hands before rising back into the sky. Another series of easy, effortless flips, and she caught it again, beaming at me triumphantly.
And then from the fence, I heard David breathe, “Holy crap. She’s better than you.”
Chapter 14
“OKAY, WELL, let’s not go that far,” I joked, and Bee stepped up beside me, frowning at David.
“No, I’m not,” she said, but David was already standing up, shaking his head.
“No, no, I didn’t mean, like, better better,” he said as he shoved his hands into his back pockets. “I just meant . . . you’re good. It’s one thing to know you’re a Paladin, but it’s another to see it in action, I guess.”
David was still watching both of us, eyes bright behind his glasses. “What if . . .” He stopped, holding up both hands even though neither Bee nor I had said anything. “Hear me out,” he added, and I knew that whatever was going to come next was not going to be something I’d like.
“Okay, so if Harper fails the Peirasmos, you become my Paladin, right?”
Bee shifted her weight, looking at David like he’d started speaking a foreign language. “Harper can’t fail the trials,” she said, and I noticed her fingers tightening around the baton. “She’ll die.”
“I know that,” David said. “But is there any way she could maybe, I don’t know, opt out? Let you take over?” He lifted his hands. “Not that I want you to die, obviously.”
The words hit me square in the chest. “You don’t want me to be your Paladin?” I asked, and David’s gaze swung to me.
“Don’t you get it?” he asked. “It’s perfect.” David was practically bouncing on the balls of his feet, his blue eyes bright when they looked over at me. “This is the solution to everything, Pres. Bee can be my Paladin, she can do this”—he waved one hand in the air—“Peirasmos thing, and we can just be us.”
He was smiling so big, looking happier than I’d seen him look in a long time, and all I could do was stare at him, suddenly cold despite the warm afternoon.
“But . . . Bee doesn’t want to do those things.” I turned to her, pushing a stray strand of hair off my forehead. “You have powers, and that’s awesome, but this is my problem. I’m not going to foist it off on you to make my life easier.”
David blinked rapidly, like I’d smacked him in the face. “Pres,” he said, shaking his head again, “we’re not talking about making Bee do anything she can’t do.”
Now the cold was fading, and I felt something hot and angry rise up inside of me. “She was kidna
pped,” I said, gesturing toward Bee with my baton, “and she just got back, and you want her to go through something that might kill her?”
He frowned, eyes darting to Bee. She was still standing there, arms folded over her chest, watching the two of us. Even though we were talking about her, I had the sense that she wanted to stay out of this.
“Of course I don’t, but I don’t know why you’re being so stubborn about this. If Bee can be my Paladin, that makes things less complicated for us.”
“And totally screws up her life,” I argued. “My life is already screwed up, so we might as well leave things the way they are.”
Tugging at his hair, David tipped his head back to look at the sky. “Or maybe you like doing everything in the whole freaking world.”
“Like?” My voice got louder. I wasn’t shouting, not yet, but we were getting close. “No, I don’t like having to do all of this, but that’s the way it goes. Sorry that I won’t throw my best friend away so you can have a regular girlfriend. Not that you could ever be a regular boyfriend, so what does it even matter?”
“Everything okay out here?”
I turned to see my dad sticking his head out the back door. His expression was fairly mild, but I saw the grip he had on the doorknob.
Taking a deep breath, I made myself smile. “Yup!” I called brightly. “Practicing for debate club!” I gave Dad a little wave, but he jerked his head, beckoning me over.
Hiding a sigh, I jogged away from David and Bee, up the porch steps and into the kitchen.
It was cooler in there, the air-conditioning nearly making me shiver. “Harper Jane, I know you’re not in the debate club,” Dad said as he walked over to the island.
I tried very hard not to fidget as he braced his hands on the counter and fixed me with a look, his eyes as green as mine. He was wearing a polo shirt and khaki shorts, plus there was a slight sunburn on his balding head, so I guessed golf had been on the agenda earlier.
“It’s nothing,” I told him with a little toss of my head. “Typical me-and-David stuff.”