She said it so easily that I felt like she had to be right, almost. Like I was the one being irrational here. But I wasn’t the one who was calmly talking about murdering someone, and I backed up another step, my heart pounding.

Pulling her feet out of the water, Blythe turned to face me more fully. “Honestly, I thought you got this,” she said. “Why else did you buy that sword today?”

The sword. I’d almost forgotten about it, still wrapped in a sweatshirt in the trunk of my car. I couldn’t deny the pull I’d felt toward it. Alexander had said that my vision from the fun house—the one where I’d stabbed David—was just what I feared most, not an actual thing that might happen. But facing Blythe now, I felt sick as I wondered if that were the truth.

Blythe must have seen some of that on my face because she leaned in a little, head cocked to the left. “It’s the reason I took you to the flea market in the first place.”

I shook my head. “No, you said we were looking for some magical rock so you could do the spell Saylor found, and . . .”

The words trailed off as soon as I realized what I was saying. “Magical rock,” I scoffed at myself. “Stupid. And it didn’t bother you at all that we never found it.”

Blythe gave a little shrug. “Because it never existed. I wanted you to find the sword. The one you needed. I thought we might need it just in case, but now that you’ve seen him already in the cave, I understand why you had to have it. Why I wanted you to find it.”

When I didn’t answer, she kept going. “Did you ever think that you were losing your powers not because you were away from him, but because the more dangerous he got, the more you’d be needed to put a stop to him?”

I shook my head, my thoughts whirling, and Blythe crossed her arms over her chest. “Your powers meant you could never hurt the Oracle, only protect him. If you can’t protect him anymore, it’s because he’s become such a danger that he has to be dealt with, Harper. I wasn’t sure of it until today, but seeing him in the cave? Your powers going out for good? Those things are connected.”

“You don’t know that—” I started, even though everything she was saying made a terrible kind of sense.

And she knew it, too, because she lifted her hand to cut me off. “You and I, we do what needs to be done, Harper. It’s who we are. Did you know that back before all this happened to me, I was SGA president at my school, too? We didn’t have cheerleaders, but I was first-chair flute in the school symphony, and I was on just about every committee there was. Prom, Students Against Drunk Driving, the Big Sisters program . . .” She ticked them off on her fingers. “And commitment like that is what makes both of us so good at this stuff. It’s why we were chosen.”

I shook my head, not wanting to have anything in common with her right now. “No,” I said. “Those powers . . . they were forced on me, and I’m guessing they were forced on you, too.”

She just shrugged in that way she did, tilting her head to the other side. “Forced, fated . . . all works out the same. Point is, we’re the type of girls who do what they have to do, and stopping David is what I have to do. You know what Alaric turned into. And now we know that not only is David following in his exact footsteps, they’re also the only two Oracles ever born to Oracles. That means David is more powerful than any of us thought. More dangerous.”

Once again, her voice was so even and calm, her face almost eerily placid, that I felt like I was the one who was nuts. Still, I heard myself say, “This isn’t what you have to do.”

“Of course it is. I told you,” she said slowly and patiently, the way you talk to really little kids or people who speak a different language. “I’m. Redeeming. Myself.”

My shoes dangled from my fingertips, and one dropped to the concrete with a muted thwack. “But this isn’t redeeming yourself,” I argued. “Redeeming means . . . it means fixing what you did wrong, not stabbing what you did wrong in the face. Okay, wait, that didn’t come out right, but you know what I mean.”

I pointed one sandal at her, and Blythe finally got to her feet, swatting my shoe out of her face. “Harper, this is how we fix this, don’t you get that? What do you think all this journeying around has been about?”

I shook my head, not getting it. “Finding David. To make him stop, not to murder him.”

Blythe took a step forward, and when I moved backward, she lifted her hands in entreaty. “I didn’t want it to come to this either, Harper. When I found that spell, I thought we had the answer. Killing him was always . . .” Trailing off, she looked up at the low clouds, tinted orange by the lights around the motel. “A last resort, I guess. It’s just that it’s too late now.”

“I don’t believe anything you say,” I muttered, and took another step back.

But Blythe kept coming, her dark eyes bright in the glow from the sodium lights above the pool. “I was looking for another way. But there isn’t one.”

“What about the other spell?” I asked, and she blinked. “The one that Dante mentioned,” I said. “Whatever it was that was darker and scarier than the power-wipe spell. What about that one?”

Blythe sniffed, shaking her head. “It won’t help,” she said, her voice tight.

“You’re always going on about what a badass Mage you are,” I said, shaking my head, “and now you’re telling me you can’t do one simple spell?”

“It’s not simple!” Blythe shouted, her hands clenched into fists, her voice tight. “Alexander managed it on Dante, but Dante had hardly any powers. Just some Mage skills he picked up from the internet. Trying to do this to a full-blown Oracle who’s gone rogue?”

This time when she looked at me, I could see tears in her eyes. “I. Can’t,” she said again. “It’s too dangerous. For you, for me, for Bee. What if it just amps him up more? I gave Dante powers he never even really had, and we saw how that went.”

“Ryan,” I said, grasping for anything. “If you can’t do it, we’ll let him try.” But Blythe just shook her head.

“We don’t have time. Now that your powers are gone, now that he’s in the cave, the only way is to kill him. Put this behind us once and for all.”

For the first time, something sparked in her eyes. In anyone else, I would have said it was anger, but in Blythe, it was that tiniest hint of crazy that I knew all too well could blossom into full-blown whackjobbery. “Your last duty as his Paladin is setting him free.”

And then she frowned a little. “Although, I guess . . . without powers, you’re not actually his Paladin anymore.”

The words stung.

But my voice was as steady as hers when I replied, “I don’t think it’s the powers that make the Paladin, to be honest. I think it’s the determination.”

Blythe smiled briefly at that, which just intensified the whole crazy-eyes thing she had going on. “And how determined are you, Harper Price?”

By now, she was very close to me, hands on her hips. Through the triangles made by her elbows, I could see the bright turquoise water of the pool behind her, and I didn’t let myself think. I might not have superstrength or superspeed anymore, but I still knew how to Mean Girl when the situation called for it.