I thought back to Saylor’s brother, and the sad, faded air of the town took on new significance. Had Saylor longed for this place like I longed for home now? Had she looked at the streets of Pine Grove and thought of another small southern town? It had been Saylor’s idea to put those big terra-cotta planters outside Magnolia House. After finding out that she was a Mage, I’d assumed everything she’d done as part of the Pine Grove Betterment Society had been about putting up wards, making the town safe for David. But maybe she’d really done some of those things just to make Pine Grove . . . better.

More like home.

My eyes stung all of a sudden, and I could feel a lump welling up in my throat. Saylor’s death had hit us all hard, but it was almost like we’d all worked so hard to put it behind us that we’d never taken any time to mourn her. Standing in the streets of her hometown now, I missed her more than I had since she’d died, I think. I’d looked at Saylor for so long as the Woman Who Knew Everything. Even before all the Paladin stuff, she’d been my role model, and now I understood that we were more alike than I’d ever guessed. I didn’t just want her back to fix stuff for us or tell us what to do. I wanted her back so that we could talk about what she had been before. How she’d managed to choose her duties as a Mage over the life she’d led here in Ideal, Mississippi. If she’d ever regretted it.

“Hey,” Bee said, pulling me out of my thoughts. “What’s wrong?”

I really didn’t want to be the weird girl crying in the middle of a town square, so I did my best to stop the tears before they could fall, but it was a losing battle. I was already sniffling, and with a disgusted sound, I scrubbed at my face. “We should’ve told him,” I said. “Saylor’s brother. Or I should’ve told him. I . . . I owed that to Saylor.”

Bee frowned, folding her arms over her chest. “But then he’d know she was dead. He’d have questions, Harper. How she died, where she’s buried, why no one called the police . . .”

Sighing, I rubbed the back of my neck. “I know, but it feels wrong. To keep lying like this, to always be covering stuff up or wondering how to get away with things. I’m just . . .” Trailing off, I took another deep breath. “I’m tired of it.”

She was right, obviously. Telling Saylor’s brother that she’d died would open up a whole other can of worms, one I didn’t have time for right now, but it was another reminder of just how badly magic could screw things up. Saylor had done a spell on her brother that would have him just kind of vaguely remembering her for the rest of his life.

Was it worth it, preserving all these secrets at a cost like that?

I was just about to turn and say so to Bee, but before I could, agony erupted in my head.

Crying out, I slammed my eyes shut against the sudden flare of light, my vision completely whiting out, my stomach rolling with the pain in my temples. I had the briefest moment of wondering if I was having a migraine, and then it was like the entire world dropped away. I wasn’t on a street corner in Ideal anymore, surrounded by the heat of a southern summer. I was actually a little cold, standing in a dim space, the smell of moisture and earth all around me, a distant dripping sound in my ears.

A man stood in front of me. Well, a boy, really. Dark hair curled over his ears, and he was wearing a dingy robe, the hem ragged and splattered with mud. His eyes were glowing so brightly that I fought the urge to cover my face against the glare.

We were in a cave, I realized, glancing up to see stalactites dripping from the ceiling, and even though some part of my mind knew I was still standing on the sidewalk in Ideal, there was nothing of that here. This was a vision, I knew it, but it definitely felt real.

The boy in front of me didn’t react to me, all his concentration centered on a crack in the ground in front of him, wispy steam rising up. At his side, his dirty fingers opened and closed, opened and closed.

I’d seen David make that same gesture before when he was anxious, and something about it made my chest ache and my mouth go dry.

And then, just as quickly as it had come on, the vision was gone, and I was gasping on the sidewalk, leaning on one of those giant planters, sweat dripping down my face.

For one horrible second, I thought I was going to throw up right there in the middle of downtown, and I swallowed hard, sucking in a deep breath through my nose.

What the heck had that been? I knew it was a vision of some kind, that the boy I’d seen had been an Oracle. Had it been Alaric?

In my dreams, I’d seen a glimpse of someone who looked like him, and I knew that my dreams were somehow connected to David, but those had felt like dreams. Just hazy, distant things while I was sleeping.

This was like a full-scale hallucination while I was wide-awake, and it scared the heck out of me.

Suddenly I remembered Bee, and that she’d had just as many dreams of David as I had. If that was true, then shouldn’t she—

Sure enough, when I lifted my head, I saw Bee leaning against a brick wall, her face pale, her hands on her thighs as she took deep breaths. Her blond hair was sweaty against her temples, and when her eyes met mine, I had my answer.

Whatever it was that had happened, it had happened to both of us.

Chapter 20

“TELL ME AGAIN.”

I took another gulp of bottled water, closing my eyes for a second. We were sitting in my car in a parking lot at a local ball field, and the occasional crack of wooden bats against baseballs was making my head hurt even more than it already did.

“I’ve told you twice now,” I said to Blythe, reaching out to turn the air-conditioning even higher, the cold air blowing my sweaty hair away from my face. Blythe frowned, closing the driver’s side vents with more force than was necessary in my opinion, and from the backseat, Bee made a sound of protest. She was lying down back there, knees tucked up to her chest. Both of us were clearly worse for wear after . . . whatever had happened, and repeating the story to Blythe was exacerbating everything.

But Blythe was nothing if not determined, and she kept looking at me until I tipped my head back against the seat and, in a dull voice, repeated everything I’d seen. The dark-haired boy with the glowing eyes, the cave, the wispy vapor snaking up from the cracked earth . . .

When I was finished, Blythe’s frown only deepened, and she reached down for the bag at her feet, rummaging through it.

“So you were dreaming about David or seeing whatever he’s been seeing in visions,” she confirmed, and I gave a weak nod.

“And now,” she continued, “you’re having full-on visions in the middle of the day. Both of you.”

“Seems to be the case,” Bee offered, sitting up. She was still a little pale, and she’d drained one bottle of water already, another half empty in her hands.

Retrieving Saylor’s journal, Blythe flipped through it while I stared listlessly through the chain-link fence in front of us. A kid around our age was running bases, his dark blond hair shaggy underneath a cap.

“Why did you bring us here?” I asked. Blythe had found both of us standing on the street, shaky and rattled, and for the first time on this trip, I’d gratefully turned my keys over to her. She’d driven unerringly to this field before putting the car in park and demanding to know what happened. She’d asked on the street, too, but Bee and I had both been too wiped to get into it there.