But that smile fell off my face immediately when I realized who was on the country club floor under my foot, wearing a smile of her own.

Blythe.

Chapter 9

“HOLY CRAP,” I breathed, my fingers still locked around Blythe’s delicate wrist. “You.”

She had one hand free, which she used to wiggle her fingers at me in a little wave. “Harper.”

I was breathing hard, but as the adrenaline faded, the realization that I had just handed a girl her lunch in front of a third of Pine Grove suddenly began to dawn.

Then Aunt Jewel, bless her heart, stood up and said, “Ooh, is this the girl teaching your self-defense course, Harper Jane?”

She said it so loudly that I was pretty sure people in the next town over had heard her, so it wasn’t exactly the most subtle of saves.

But it was effective, especially when Bee came over and said, “Wow, when you said the final exam could happen anywhere, I didn’t think you meant the country club!”

She gave a bright laugh that was as high as it was fake, but I could feel some of the tension drain out of the room, especially when I finally took my foot off Blythe’s chest and offered a hand to help pull her up.

Shooting to her feet, Blythe just smiled again and, for whatever reason, decided to play along. “And you passed!” she said before rubbing at her chest with the tips of her fingers and grimacing slightly. “With flying, really painful colors!”

At my side, Mom still had her palm flat against her pearls, her gaze shooting between me and Blythe. Dad was also on his feet, hands deep in his pockets, watching up over the tops of his new bifocals.

“What self-defense class, Harper?”

My head was spinning, wondering both what Blythe was doing here—and if her being here had anything to do with what had happened at the pool on Friday night—and with making sure I sold this to my parents as quickly as possible.

“Just an extra little thing I picked up for the summer,” I said, waving it away like it wasn’t a big deal. “You know, getting ready for college and all that. Girl has to be able to defend herself.”

Considering the fact that at least half the women in this room were probably concealing pistols in their pocketbooks, I didn’t think anyone would argue with that. Sure enough, people started digging back into their prime rib and potatoes.

My own family was still a little nonplussed, but Aunt Jewel sat down and started eating, which went a long way with Aunt May and Aunt Martha. They took their lead from Jewel and today was no exception. After a brief pause, they gave identical shrugs and tucked back into their food.

My parents were a little less willing to let this go.

“Self-defense is important,” Mom said, looking at Blythe, who, in her bright yellow dress and high ponytail, certainly didn’t look all that threatening. She kind of looked like a brunette Easter Barbie, to tell the truth. But this girl had tried to cut me with a letter opener, performed terrifying magic on David, and kidnapped my best friend, all to help the Ephors either super-charge David or kill him.

I didn’t underestimate her.

“But there is a time and place for displays like that,” Mom continued, “and Sunday afternoon at the country club is not one of them, young ladies.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said, knowing that the easiest way to get out of this was to seem as abashed as possible, no matter how much my heart was racing. What the heck was Blythe doing here?

“I apologize, too,” Blythe said, flashing my parents a bright smile. “But being prepared in any location really is one of the tenets of our, um, organization.”

She looked back at me. “Can we go outside and talk for a minute?” Blythe asked before flicking her eyes at my parents again. “About the, um, self-defense class?”

Looking back to my parents, I put on my most contrite expression. “May I be excused?”

Mom and Dad glanced at each other, Dad rocking back on his heels, but after a beat, Mom nodded, and said, “Fine. But don’t be too long.”

Ryan and Bee were already standing up next to their table, and I jerked my chin at them.

As quickly as I could, I ushered the three of them, Bee, Blythe, and Ryan, out of the dining room and down the long hall leading to the front doors. Posture is 80 percent of projecting an air of self-confidence, so I made sure my shoulders were back, chin lifted slightly as we walked outside. The country club was surrounded by thick flowering bushes, their scent almost overpowering in the July heat, and I led our little group around the side of the building and down a sloping sidewalk, close to the tennis courts where the bushes were highest so that we’d be out of sight for the most part.

As soon we’d stopped, I whirled on Blythe and dropped any pretense of civility. “What are you doing here?”

“You summoned me,” Blythe said immediately, looking around at all of us, her big brown eyes wide. “With, like, a fairly powerful spell. I felt it the second you did it. Threw my stuff in the car and headed this way. Of course, I wasn’t positive who was summoning me, but once I hit the state line, I had a pretty good idea it was you.”

“Trust me,” I said, still rubbing my sore elbow. I’d whacked it fairly hard on the table throwing Blythe to the ground. “No one around here did anything of the sort. The absolute last thing—”

And then I thought of the three of us in that field with David’s things, the thump Ryan had felt in his chest. The spell had been a mix of Greek and English with the word “summoning,” in there, and . . .

“Mother effer,” I muttered. “So that spell we did to find David paged you instead?”

Blythe reached up and pulled her sunglasses down from the top of her head. “Oh my God, seriously? You were doing a ritual and didn’t even know what it was for?”

That last bit was directed at Ryan, who looked distinctly unhappy with this development. “It’s not my fault,” he said, shoving his hands into the pockets of his khakis. “We didn’t know what we were looking for, so—”

“So you just decided to do any magic you could find, hoping it would work out?” Blythe folded her arms over her chest. “Well, that’s not incredibly stupid or anything. Oh, wait, I actually meant the opposite of that.”

“Yes, we’re familiar with sarcasm,” I told her. “But the fact remains that we did the best we could with a situation that you and your bosses—or boss, whatever—caused.”

Blythe whipped her head around to glare at me, and the anger in her eyes was so intense, I nearly took a step back.

“They were not my bosses,” she practically spat.

I probably should have backed down given the look in her eye, but I’m not really good at that. “Oh, sorry, it’s just that you did a thing they asked you to do, which generally makes someone your boss? See, that’s more of that sarcasm I identified before.”

Blythe took a deep breath through her nose, the universal sign for “I am trying so hard not to murder you right now.” But when she spoke, her voice was relatively calm.

“Look, it doesn’t matter if you were trying to summon me or not. Point is, I’m here now, and we all want the same thing: to find the Oracle.”

My pulse leapt. The attack at the pool—what if it was actually Blythe’s doing? The idea that I had been right, that David would never send people to hurt me, nearly made my knees weak with relief. “Why do you want to find him?”