“Hella,” I answered, and with that, I charged forward, shoving with all my might.

I’m not a big girl, but Blythe was even smaller and more delicate, plus, as she’d said herself, her school didn’t have cheerleading. Plus I’d caught her by surprise.

She shrieked as she fell backward into the water, her hands grabbing at me, but I was too quick, moving out of her embrace before she could tug me in, too. She was light enough (and I’d pushed hard enough) that she went out near the middle of the pool.

I didn’t see her hit the water, only heard the splash as I bolted from the pool, running down the cement sidewalk in my bare feet, sandals abandoned on the pool deck. Luckily I still had tennis shoes in the room.

Even more luckily, I had barely unpacked today, so when Bee let me in after I pounded on the door, it was an easy thing to just grab my bag.

Bee, unfortunately, was not as organized.

“Um, what are we doing?” she asked, her phone still held near her jaw as I started throwing her things in her Vera Bradley tote. “Where’s Blythe?”

I shook my head. “We have to go,” I said. “Now.”

Look, Bee is not a perfect best friend. She once dated a guy I could barely stand, she listened to truly obnoxious music, and I had caught her making out with my ex in a supply closet. Plus she’d lied to me and helped David escape town, which had led to this whole mess.

But when it counted, Bee always came through.

“Call you back,” she said to who I assumed was Ryan, and then gathered up the rest of her things, moving as fast as I was without asking a single question. It took her about thirty seconds to throw all she’d gotten out into her tote, but that was about ten seconds too long. We’d just slung our bags over our shoulders when Blythe appeared in the doorway, soaking wet and, surprisingly, nowhere near as angry as I thought she would be.

“Harper,” she started, but I could see her fingers flexing at her side, and while there was no anger pouring off her, there was something else, something a lot scarier than anger.

Magic.

Chapter 30

WE WERE all frozen there, me and Bee in the room, our bags still on our shoulders, Blythe standing in the doorway, her fingers still flexing, water dripping from her hair. We’d spent enough time together over the past few days that she’d started to feel like my friend, and only now did I realize how stupid that had been. Blythe wasn’t Ryan. She sure as heck wasn’t Bee. She was a girl who did things for her own reasons, reasons I couldn’t possibly understand, and for all that she might say we were alike, I knew now that we couldn’t be. I could never be this ruthless, this . . . what had she said?

Determined.

“We’re leaving,” I told Blythe now. “Without you. And to be honest, I don’t care where you go from here, but you’re not coming with us.”

Blythe gave me that little half smile that had become so familiar. “Do you really think I don’t know where you’re going? God’s sake, Harper, I feel David, too. Maybe not as clearly, but still. The tightness in the chest, the headaches . . .”

She did and she had magic to boot, but—I remembered as my hip started to tingle—so did we.

I had no idea how Ryan’s mark might work, but it was supposed to act against Blythe’s magic if we were in danger, and I felt pretty sure that we were in danger now, no matter how much Blythe might smile and say we weren’t.

The wind was picking up outside, and I could hear the first few patters of raindrops on the sidewalk and roof, but the electric feeling in the air had nothing to do with the storm, and everything to do with the girl standing in front of us, keeping us from leaving.

Ryan and I had talked about how the wards would work—the one Bee and I both had, and the one I wasn’t telling anyone about. I didn’t have to mutter a spell or anything, just . . . think about what I wanted to happen.

Blythe was still talking, her hands held out in that conciliatory way people use when they’re trying to come across like rational people, but seeing as how the first words out of Blythe’s mouth had been “Killing David is the only solution here,” I wasn’t sure that “rational” was even in her vocabulary.

“What?” Bee squawked next to me. “We’re here to rescue him.”

Blythe rolled her eyes, stepping farther into the room. “And you can’t. The spell is too big a risk. Didn’t everything with Dante prove that? This is unstable magic we’re working with, and an unstable Oracle on top of everything else. Like I said, if we’d gotten to him before the cave . . .”

It was probably just a trick of the light, but I could swear I saw her lower lip wobble a bit before she said, “I honestly did try to help you. All of you. But there isn’t a way. There just isn’t. Except this.”

I shook my head, my fingers falling to the tattoo on my back. “There’s always another way,” I said, and Blythe’s gaze followed the movement of my hand.

Her own hand shot up, and I felt a pulse of magic, but it was like Bee and I were behind protective glass. The power bumped harmlessly off us, and Blythe looked at her hand much the same way I’d looked at mine earlier today—confused, kind of betrayed.

“What did you do?” she asked, almost wondering, but before I could reply, she tried again. This time, whatever spell she was pulling up was stronger, and I felt it like a fist pushing at my sternum, but still, Ryan’s ward held.

Blythe dropped both of her hands, sucking in a deep breath through her nose. “Harper,” she said, clearly losing her patience, “I don’t want to hurt you. The whole point of this is to keep the Oracle from killing you. Don’t do—”

Her words were abruptly cut off as Bee, who had edged around behind Blythe while Blythe’s focus was on me, brought a lamp down on her head.

It was maybe not the most elegant of moves, but it worked, and Blythe’s eyes rolled back as she slid to the floor.

We didn’t hesitate this time, grabbing our bags and hurrying out of the room.

It was raining heavily now, one of those “gully washers” as my aunts would say, the kind that start and stop all of a sudden in southern summers. My car was parked in the farthest corner of the lot, so Bee and I were just as soaked as Blythe had been by the time we got to it.

Reaching into the backseat, I pulled Blythe’s bag out, tossing it to the sidewalk. I might have pushed her in a pool and Bee might have hit her with a lamp, but we weren’t terrible people. Granted, all her stuff was going to get wet, but I figured Blythe could sort that out.

That done, we got in the car, and I drove out of the parking lot like I was fleeing the scene of a crime.

Which I guessed I was, technically. Bee’s lamp had definitely hit her hard enough to qualify as assault and battery. I did tell myself not to feel guilty about what had just happened, though. I was protecting David, and that was my job whether I had powers or not. But I thought Blythe had been telling the truth when she said she’d looked for other ways to save him. She was scared, or maybe she just didn’t want it badly enough.

I was scared, too, believe me, but I was also willing to do anything, no matter how risky it might be.

“So do you have a plan?” Bee asked, and I appreciated that she waited until we’d gotten to the interstate before asking me that. It showed a certain amount of faith I really needed right now. Rain was beating on the windows, and I had the wipers turned on as high as they would go, adding this frantic feeling to everything. My heart was pounding, my hands were shaking, and all I could think was how close we’d come to screwing up. If I had led Blythe to David and she’d killed him . . . I could hardly even think about it.