Nodding, I took another bite of my sandwich. Only when I’d finished did I say, “Yes, but evil. And also crazy. And potentially dangerous.”

Aunt Jewel took that in. “So why is she here, then?”

As briefly as I could, I filled Aunt Jewel in on everything that had happened. The fight at the pool, why I thought David was in danger, the ritual we’d done trying to find him, and how that had summoned Blythe right to us. Finally, I told her about Blythe’s plan to find David.

When I was done, she continued to eat while she watched a hummingbird flit around a bright red feeder. I picked a piece of apple out of the chicken salad and popped in in my mouth, waiting. Aunt Jewel liked to take her time mulling things over.

“Is there a chance?” Aunt Jewel asked at last, turning to look at me. The little rhinestones sewn on her shirt winked in the sunlight, and her eyes were sharp behind her glasses. “Any chance at all that with this girl’s help, you could find David and stop him from sending people after you? Or whatever awful thing it is that’s supposed to happen?”

Taking a deep breath, I fiddled with the wax paper around my sandwich. I wasn’t hungry anymore, not even for Aunt Martha’s chicken salad. “I think there might be, yeah,” I said at last, and Aunt Jewel gave a little nod before biting into her sandwich.

“Well,” she said after a moment, “then that’s it, isn’t it? Nothing else to be done about it.”

I squinted at her, and not just because of the sun in my eyes. “Aunt Jewel,” I said, setting my sandwich down on the bench beside me. “You know I can’t just . . . frolic off around the country with Blythe and Bee. I’m not old enough to rent motel rooms, not to mention the fact that my parents would never sign off on some kind of epic road trip.”

“Don’t you have some kind of magic for that?” she asked, waving one hand, her rings nearly blinding me. All of my aunts loved their sparkles, but Aunt Jewel had especially glittery taste. I guess that’s what happens when your parents name you Jewel.

Sitting back, I braced my hands on the warm stone beneath me. “Are you seriously suggesting I use magic to brainwash my parents?”

Aunt Jewel made a harrumphing sound. “I’m saying you be the girl you’re meant to be,” she said. “I’m saying you have a duty and a destiny and a responsibility, and you are not a girl to shirk those things.”

“I’m not,” I said, and to my surprise, I felt tears sting my eyes. “But . . . this could be bad. Scary. If something happened to me, after everything with Leigh-Anne . . .”

We were both quiet for a minute. I felt like we had all started to come to terms with her death, but she was always in the back of my mind when I was weighing things like this. Yes, I had a duty to David to keep him safe. But I also had a duty to my parents not to do something stupid or reckless that could get me killed.

Aunt Jewel understood that, I knew, and when she looked at me again, her green eyes were bright. “Honey, you know you are just about my favorite thing in this whole world. If anything ever happened to you, I don’t know what I’d do.” Her hands, when they reached out to cover mine, were papery and cool despite the heat. “But loving people means encouraging them to be their best selves. Fixing this, sorting it out, making it right . . . that’s your best self, Harper Jane.”

It was a good thing to hear. Maybe a great thing. My heart seemed to swell up in my chest, and I was suddenly afraid I might burst into tears right there in the Hensley Manor courtyard.

But, I reminded myself, Aunt Jewel didn’t know how out of whack my powers had been lately. If she did, would she be encouraging me to go this strongly? I was pretty sure she wouldn’t be.

For a second, I thought about telling her. She’d shared a lot of my secrets, after all. It would be nice to have her know this one, too. But this one felt too big, too . . . fraught, and besides, maybe, if I got closer to David, this whole thing with my powers would sort itself out. After all, wasn’t it being away from him that was making me weaker? If you thought about it that way, wouldn’t I actually be helping myself stay safe if I went after him?

Leaning forward, I threw my arms around Aunt Jewel in a hug that could’ve knocked her off the bench. “You’re the best, you know that?” I said, breathing in her familiar perfume of baby powder and vanilla.

She hugged me back with surprising strength for a septuagenarian. “I take it that means you’re gonna try?”

Pulling back, I looked at her face and smiled. “Not just try,” I told her. “I’m going to do it.”

Taking a deep breath, I pulled my phone out of my pocket and dialed Blythe’s number.

Chapter 12

“WELL?” I SAID, turning away from the whiteboard, a purple marker in my hand. The whiteboard had been a present from my parents last Christmas, and so far, it had definitely come in handy. Granted, they’d thought I was going to use it for studying or making college decisions, but it had its Paladin uses, too. Like this handy list of pros and cons I’d whipped up for Ryan and Bee.

Unfortunately, they did not look as impressed as I’d hoped. Bee frowned, a hand coming to her mouth. “Um. Harper. Under cons do you have, ‘Might get killed’?”

I looked back at the board, tapping that particular con with the end of my marker. “Well . . . yeah. I mean, it’s a possibility, so it wouldn’t be right to leave it off. Best we go into this thing with eyes wide-open, don’t you think?”

Both Bee and Ryan nodded in unison, but slowly, and I got the sense that they weren’t really listening to me. They’d both gone a little glassy around the eyes, and Bee was still staring at that one con, a deep V between her brows.

Turning back to the board, I put an asterisk next to “Might get killed,” and added at the bottom, “Extremely low possibility as we possess both magic and superstrength.”

When I looked back at her, eyebrows lifted, she just frowned more. “Your powers—” she started, but I waved a hand.

“For now, I’m fine,” I said. “Which of course means the sooner we find David, the better.”

I turned back to the board before she could say more about that. “Blythe said she can find David. That she has a plan,” I went on, “and while she’s not exactly forthcoming about what that is, it’s better than the plan we have.”

“Which is?” Ryan asked, eyebrows raised.

“Nothing,” I reminded him. “Our plan was basically nothing.”

Ryan took a deep breath, his chest expanding. “You’ve got me there.”

Uncapping the marker again, I drew a line between the list of pros and cons and the blank part of the board. “I talked to Blythe on the phone this afternoon and told her that our main challenge is time. We don’t have an indefinite amount of it to spend chasing David all over the country. School starts in four weeks, which means this road trip can take two, tops.”

“Why not the full month?” Bee asked, but before I could answer, she lifted one hand. “Right, because you need two weeks to get ready for school to start.”

As SGA president, I had certain school responsibilities that had to be dealt with before the year started. Helping with assigning textbooks, situating lockers, that kind of thing. Not even tracking down David could derail me from doing my duty to Grove Academy. A girl has to have balance, after all.