“Oh my God, we are ninjas!” Amanda squealed. “How did that happen?”

They weren’t ninjas. They were Paladins. All of them. David had made them Paladins.

David!

As my fellow debutantes kicked the ass of every person who walked through the door, I looked back to the middle of the room. David was on his knees now, no longer surrounded by light. But when he lifted his face to me, his eyes were still bright gold, like coins behind his glasses.

“David?” I asked, kneeling down with him.

He blinked, and the light faded for a moment before growing bright again. “Pres?” he murmured, and I flung my arms around his neck.

“Oh, you’re still you,” I breathed. “You’re still in there.”

“I-I think so,” he said. “But—what did I do to them?”

We looked over to where Amanda and Abigail were wrestling with their escorts, and Mary Beth was using her ladle to great effect on the owner of the Dixie Bean.

“You made them Paladins,” Blythe said from the bed.

I had almost forgotten about her. She sat in the middle, legs crossed, hands clasped under her chin, grinning like a little kid. “I told you the ritual would work,” she said. “You made Paladins, just like Alaric! And this is merely a handful of girls. If you had focused harder and if I hadn’t been interrupted”—she glared at me—“you could’ve made this entire town an army. The whole state, if we tried hard enough.”

Breathing hard, David stared at her. His eyes were still filled with light, the effect disturbing. “Why would I want that?”

Giggling, Blythe shook her head. “Oh, if you knew what was coming, you wouldn’t ask a question like that.”

I stood up, reaching under my dress for the knife strapped to my thigh. I was officially over Blythe. Whipping out the blade, I made my way to the bed, but I only got about three steps when a vise-like grip closed around my wrist.

I glanced back, stunned. “Bee?”

She blinked at me. “I . . . I can’t let you hurt her. I don’t know why, but I can’t.”

Mary Beth was at my other side, her fingers tight on my arm. “Me, either. If you try to kill her . . .” She didn’t finish, but her hands squeezed tighter. Even Amanda and Abigail were standing by the door, eyes wary.

Delighted, Blythe clapped her hands. “Even better! See, Paladins can’t harm their creator. And since I had a hand in turning David into a personal Paladin factory, that makes me a creator!”

“Bee,” I pleaded. “Override it or something. I can’t let her go.”

Everything in Bee’s face was anguished. “I really want to, Harper, but I can’t. Now please put the knife away or I’m going to have to hurt you, and I really don’t want to.” Tears pooled in her eyes, spilling down her cheeks. “Except I do want to. What the heck is going on?”

“It’s going to be okay,” I told her. “This is what I am. This is what I haven’t been telling you, but now you know! And now you’re one, too, and we can train together. But let me take care of—”

I didn’t finish the words before Bee wrenched my arm, throwing me off balance. With a well-placed kick to my chest, she sent me tumbling back against the bed. “Oh, God!” she cried. “Harper, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—”

“It’s all right,” I told her, even as I wheezed for breath. “We can fix this.”

Blythe got off the bed, her dressed bunched up in her hands. “Oh, this is nothing that needs fixing. This is perfect.” Her sweet little face practically glowed with excitement. “All these Paladins, and my very own Oracle. Now.” Holding out one tiny gloved hand, she crooked a finger at David. “Come along.”

His eyes still blazing, David struggled to his feet. “No.” The words sounded like they were being forced through broken glass, but he got it out. And then, again, stronger. “No.” Blythe fisted her hands on her hips. “Now isn’t the time for stubbornness. I said—”

A thin bolt of golden light shot out from David’s finger, striking Blythe in the middle of her forehead. Shrieking, she stumbled back, landing on the little settee at the end of the bed. “I am not yours to control, Mage,” David said in a voice that didn’t sound anything like his own.

Blythe slowly rose, staring at David with a mixture of shock and wonder. “Oh,” she breathed. “This is . . . unexpected.” David’s hand shot out again, and Blythe winced as another bolt of light took her in the chest. “Very unexpected,” she said through gritted teeth.

Moving away from the settee, Blythe stepped behind Bee. “Well, if I can’t have an Oracle, at least I’ll have a Paladin.”

Before I could think, she had an arm around Bee’s waist. Blythe was so tiny, she barely came up to Bee’s shoulder blades. Sticking her head out from behind Bee, Blythe winked at me.

“I think I like this one best,” she said and then, almost instantly, they both vanished.

Chapter 41

“Bee!” I cried, staring at the spot where she and Blythe had been. Behind me, David put a hand on my shoulder.

“Pres,” he said softly, but I shook him off, leaping to my feet. “No! They can’t be—she can’t be—”

But they were. She was. My best friend was gone, and I had no

idea where Blythe might have taken her. Greece? To the other Ephors? David reached up, brushing the tears off my cheeks, and I let myself lean into him for a moment. His eyes were still too bright to look directly into, so I focused on his hair, the places where it stood up in peaks and tufts. “If I’d known she’d take Bee, I would’ve gone with her,” he said, sounding like himself again.

I held onto his jacket tighter, the material wrinkling under my fingers. But as I held onto him, I could only be happy that at least David was still here. At least I still had him.

“Whoa,” Amanda said, glancing out the door. “What happened?”

David and I walked out on to the landing, the other girls trailing us. Downstairs, the main room was covered in bodies. “Are they dead?” Mary Beth asked, but I shook my head.

“They were being mind-controlled. Now that Blythe is gone, it’s over. Everyone will wake up in a few hours with fuzzy brains and . . . probably a lot of bruises.”

We made our way downstairs, stepping over people as we went. It wasn’t until were halfway downstairs that David asked, “Where’s my Aunt Saylor?”

“She’s in the kitchen,” I said, speeding up. “She was hurt, but she said she had a potion to heal it, so hopefully she’s okay now.”

I moved for the kitchen, but David caught my arm “Harper, there’s no such thing as a healing potion.”

“What?” I looked up from my skirt. There was a huge splash of red across the front that, thanks to the fruity smell rising up from it, I was pretty sure was punch. My hair was falling in my eyes, and when I went to push it back, I saw another splash of red on the back of my hand. That was definitely blood.

The light was beginning to dim from his eyes, but they were still more gold than blue. “She told me that healing is the one thing Mages can’t control. Minds, sure, protection, yeah, but healing the human body is way beyond them.”

My heart thudded painfully as his hand grabbed my arm tighter. “How bad was she?”

I didn’t answer. Instead, I opened the kitchen door.

Saylor was slumped against the cabinets, her eyes closed, her face surprisingly peaceful. Brandon still lay on the floor in front of her, the knife he’d killed her with a few inches from his foot.

And kneeling next to her, shaking and holding one of her hands, was Ryan.

When he saw us standing there, he looked back and forth, his eyes wild. “I . . . I decided to come back because I wanted to see you do Cotillion,” he told me. “But when I got here, the place was shaking, and I thought there was an earthquake. I c-came through the back door, and I found her. Brandon—”

Ryan’s throat worked convulsively, and I went to him as David knelt down on the other side of Saylor. “I never told her,” David said, his voice flat. “I never said thank you for everything she did.”

“She knew,” I told him, gently prying Ryan’s hand from Saylor’s. “And she loved you.”

“I . . .” He shook his head, and tears splashed onto his black pants. “I should have told her. And she shouldn’t have died like this. Alone.”

At that, Ryan looked up. “She didn’t. I was with her.”

His mouth worked again and his hand, still in mine, was ice cold. “That’s the thing. I was sitting here with her, and she—she said she hated to do this, and she knew how complicated this would make things for everyone, and then she . . . she . . .”

“She kissed you,” I said, not sure if I should laugh or cry.

“Kind of,” Ryan agreed. “More like she blew something in me, and I got really cold, and suddenly, I felt like I could . . . I don’t know, do stuff. Weird stuff. And I really wanted to find the two of you.” He nodded at me and David.

David raised his tear-streaked face to mine. “I feel like now would be a good time to use the F-word.”

We spent the next few hours trying to repair some of the damage to Magnolia House. People left in uncomfortable positions were gently moved to the floor. I found my aunts and was relieved to see that with the exception of a scrape on Aunt May’s forehead, they were pretty much unharmed.

Finally, I found Bee’s parents, slumped at the bottom of the staircase. I went back to Saylor’s body, getting the little tub of lip balm out and handing it to Ryan. “You have to put this on your fingers, and then—”

“And then I touch them,” he said in a dull voice. “Tell them that Bee is away at cheerleading camp. Be fuzzy on the details.”

“How did you know that?”