I stared at her for a second, then looked back to Dante, who was starting to moan and move around a bit. “And the purpose of knocking him out was . . . ?”

Blythe put her hands on her hips. “I told you I always hated that dude.”

Taking a deep breath through my nose, I studied my reflection in the grimy mirrors over the sink, telling myself I’d count to ten before I said something I regretted. “We have to ask him all kinds of questions,” I said, keeping my voice steady, “so maybe giving him a concussion was a less-than-stellar plan?”

Dante moaned again, and I added, “And also, would’ve been nice to hear you’d found him before you clocked him.”

Blythe tugged at the hem of her shirt, sniffing. “Fine. I just . . . I have trouble not leading, I guess.”

That cut close to home. I nodded, then turned back to the guy on the floor.

Dante was conscious again, staring at both of us, befuddled. Whether that was because he’d been listening to us or from the damage Blythe had done with that can of Big Sexy Hair, I couldn’t say.

“Ugh, finally,” Blythe said, stepping over to Dante. “I didn’t hit you that hard.”

“Why did you hit me at all?” he said, hand still to his head. Then he glanced back and forth between us, wary.

“You’re not, like, going to steal my kidney or something, are you? I saw that kind of thing on the news once.”

Rolling her eyes, Blythe crossed her arms and cocked one knee. “Oh my God, Dante, don’t act like you don’t know me.”

His eyes traveled over her, and if he was acting, he was doing a damn good job of it because he genuinely looked confused and scared. “I . . . don’t?” And then he scowled. “Other than as the crazy bitch who hit me with . . . was that hair spray?”

Blythe dropped her arms and moved closer to Dante. “What are you talking about? Of course you know me. We worked together for over a year. We . . .” She glanced over at me, and then dropped her voice. “We made out that one time? At the office?”

The word “office” surprised me. It was so . . . normal. Did the Ephors have a regular building somewhere with, like, cubicles and fax machines? That was almost too bizarre to contemplate. As was the idea of Blythe making out with anyone. She seemed so . . . okay, no-nonsense isn’t right, because Lord knew there was plenty of nonsense around Blythe, but she was . . . determined. Serious. She might have taken us to the ball field to ogle boys, but I hadn’t actually seen her doing any ogling. I wasn’t sure Blythe even liked boys. Or girls, for that matter.

Still, the idea that the same kind of drama that had been dogging me, David, Ryan, and Bee was also an issue for the Ephors was kind of funny, I had to admit.

This is what happens when you use teenagers for all your crazy world-controlling stuff, I thought.

But Dante was still watching Blythe, now less scared, more pissed off. “Look, I don’t know you,” he said, rising—more than a little wobbly—to his feet. “And if you hit me because you thought I was your ex or something, I feel really sorry for whoever it is you think I am.”

Blythe stepped right up to him, rising on tiptoes to look at his face, and Dante flinched (not that I could blame him).

“You . . . seriously don’t remember?” she asked, and he stepped back, one hand raised defensively toward his head.

“I’m telling you, I don’t know you.” He looked over to me. “Either of you.”

“Blythe,” I said, “I think he’s telling—”

“The truth,” she finished. “Yeah, me, too.”

Someone rattled the bathroom door handle, and I was glad I’d had the presence of mind to lock it. But still, we were going to have to move fast now.

“Mind wipe?” I asked and she nodded slowly, still staring at Dante’s face.

“Yeah, but . . . more than that, I think.”

Without warning, she lifted her hand, and a bolt of . . . something shot out of it, smacking Dante firmly in the chest and making him yelp as he stumbled back against the toilet stalls.

“The hell?” he gasped, and I was thinking something similar.

But Blythe shook her head. “Mind wipe or no, he’d still have his powers,” she said to me, even as Dante’s eyes went wide.

“What?” he asked, but she waved him off.

“It’s instinctual. He would have felt me charging up for that hit.”

“I didn’t feel you charging up for that hit,” I countered, and Dante slumped against graffiti reading, “ASHLEY <3s BO.”

“What are you talking about?” he asked. “What hit, what powers, wh—”

“Shut. Up,” Blythe said in clipped tones, never looking over at him.

“Maybe he forgot he could do magic?” I suggested. “And that’s the issue?”

But Blythe shook her head again. “No, that’s what you’re not getting here, Harper. It wouldn’t matter if he forgot he could do magic; he’d still be able to do magic.”

“But he can’t,” I said, looking back over at Dante, who was now pulling out his phone with trembling hands.

As he lifted it, Blythe reached over, smacking the phone from his hands, and he made a sound really close to a whimper. “You are not taking a picture of us, and we are not here to tell you you’re going to be a superhero,” she said. “You used to be, kind of, but clearly something got to you.”

“Alexander?” I suggested, and Blythe nodded, watching as Dante scrambled for his phone.

“I’m guessing so, yeah.”

“Which means . . .”

Heaving out a long breath, Blythe walked over to the bathroom door, unlocking it and letting Dante rush out of there. He nearly plowed right into Bee, who, it turned out, was the door rattler.

“What’s going on?” she asked, watching as Dante bolted into the crowd.

Hands on her hips, Blythe sighed as he took off, and then turned to me and Bee, her eyebrows raised. “Well?” she said, nodding after Dante. “Go get him.”

Chapter 23

THERE’S NO NEED in getting into what happened at “OW Y” after that. You really don’t need to hear about me and Bee chasing the dude through the crowd, or how I maybe tackled him right by the jukebox, regretting my decision to wear a skirt that night. And you certainly don’t need to hear about the various things the crowd shouted out, or how Bee and I ended up wrestling him out of the bar to cheers and clapping, and that before we got him in the car, I saw the flash of several phone cameras, and heard the words “Facebook” and “Twitter.”

The main thing is that we got Dante out of “OW Y” and into a field just on the outskirts of town. And to be honest, standing in tall grass with Dante sitting in front of us, squinting against my headlights—I’d left them on to illuminate whatever it was Blythe wanted to do—I thought of those tawdry true-crime books Aunt Martha always got at Walmart. Back at the bar, I’d been afraid of being a victim in a book like that.

Staring at Dante now, I kind of felt like I might actually be one of the bad guys in that kind of book.

Not that we’d hurt him or anything. Other than a little cut above his eyebrow where he’d hit it on the corner of the jukebox as he’d fallen, he wasn’t hurt, and he seemed to be more angry than scared.