“I thought David might have left some books behind that I could use,” I told her, and Aunt Jewel smacked my upper arm this time.

“Hogwash,” she pronounced. “I know you, girl, and there is no way you’d risk arrest just to find some books.”

Rubbing the spot on my arm, I glared at her. Okay, I tried to, but Aunt Jewel is a formidable lady. So it was more a quick hard stare before I went back to cowering a little bit.

“She was looking for books, Aunt Jewel,” Bee insisted, coming to stand beside me. Like Ryan, she’d known The Aunts her whole life, too, and had basically been adopted by them. “We promise.”

Aunt Jewel harrumphed at that, but looked at the three of us, standing there on David’s lawn, probably looking as exhausted as we felt. It wasn’t that late, but, man, had it been a night.

“All three of you are going home now,” she said, and when I went to protest, she just shook her head. “No. Whatever it is, it can wait until tomorrow. You’re lucky I was able to convince that police officer that you were suffering the aftereffects of a traumatic breakup, Harper Jane.”

That had been the most embarrassing part of this whole thing, having to look suitably ashamed while the police officer sized me up after Aunt Jewel’s explanation. I wasn’t sure if cops were allowed to gossip, but the last thing I wanted was people thinking I was losing it over David leaving. I was not the kind of girl who pined, for heaven’s sake.

“Your aunt is right, Harper,” Ryan said, resting a hand on my shoulder. “We can come back tomorrow, hopefully a little more stealthily.”

My skin felt too tight, my legs restless, but it wasn’t tied to my Paladin senses, I didn’t think. This was just my regular response to being told to wait or be patient. And besides, that girl was still out there, gunning for me. The sooner I got this worked out the better.

But I couldn’t argue with Ryan, Bee, and Aunt Jewel, all three of whom were looking at me expectantly, clearly waiting for me to acquiesce.

So in the end, I did.

• • •

I didn’t sleep well that night, which I figured was a natural side effect of having been attacked and nearly arrested. And clearly it showed on my face when I showed up downstairs the next morning, because my mom took one look at me and said she was calling the pool and telling them I was sick.

I didn’t even try to argue.

While she was on the phone, Dad came in, straightening his tie.

“Hey, sweetheart,” he said, ruffling my hair. Even though I’ll be eighteen in a few months, my dad perpetually treats me like a third-grader.

On a morning like today, I was actually pretty okay with that.

“Rough night?” he asked, and I sighed, poking at my bowl of cereal.

“Something like that.”

Dad filled his coffee mug, the one I’d painted for him at camp back when I actually was a third-grader. He almost always used it, even though the acrylic paint meant he had to rinse it out by hand instead of putting it in the dishwasher.

“Still nothing from David?” he asked, and I bisected a Cheerio with my spoon.

As far as my parents—and everyone else in town—knew, David had left to join his aunt Saylor in some other state, and that move meant we were done. I’d tried to make it seem like it was mutual, that neither of us wanted to do long distance, but clearly I had not succeeded.

“He’s been in touch,” I said vaguely. Which wasn’t really a lie. I mean, that girl showing up proved he’d been thinking about me.

Dad made a noncommittal sound and took a sip of coffee just as Mom breezed back into the kitchen.

“They said Bee called in sick, too,” she told me, and I sat up a little straighter on my stool.

“I wonder if there’s something going around,” Mom continued. She pressed a hand to my forehead, frowning. There were fine lines around her eyes, and she definitely seemed worried, but I had to admit that in the weeks since David had gone, Mom hadn’t seemed nearly as stressed.

Of course she hadn’t known about the Paladin thing, but I think she’d picked up on . . . something. Some Mom sense of hers had alerted her that I was going through stuff she couldn’t understand, and it had clearly taken a toll.

“Maybe,” I told her now. “Or we’ve just gotten too much sun.”

I tried to sound nonchalant, but I was worried about Bee and anxious to get to my phone and call her. Was she really sick, or had that girl paid her a visit?

That thought had me on my feet, muttering something about going back to bed.

When I got to my room, the light on my cell was blinking, and I checked it, relieved to see that I had two missed calls from Bee, as well as three texts, all asking where I was.

So I wasn’t the only one on edge.

I called her back, and she picked up on the first ring.

“There you are.”

“Sorry,” I said, sitting down on the edge of my bed, tucking my legs beneath me. “What’s wrong? Anything happen last night?”

Bee blew out a long breath, and I could practically see her sitting in her own room, blond hair a mess around her head. Bee always had the worst case of bedhead.

“No, but I didn’t sleep because I was so paranoid that girl might come back.”

“Same,” I told her on a sigh.

There was a long pause on her end of the phone, and then she said, almost tentatively, “You were right. About David, about us helping him and screwing everything up.”

My fingers tightened around the phone. “You were doing what you thought was best,” I said, but the words were a little rote—I’d said them before, after all—and she knew it.

“Still,” she said. “Ryan and I . . . Look, Harper, whatever you need us to do, we’ll do it.”

I glanced at the clock. It was just a little past nine a.m., but I was hoping that would mean most everyone in David’s neighborhood was at work already.

“Then meet me back at David’s in an hour.”

Chapter 6

“REMIND ME again what we’re actually looking for,” Bee said. She sat cross-legged on the floor of David’s room, her braid brushing the pages of the book she held in her lap.

Sighing, I picked a book out of the stack in front of me. The title on the spine was barely legible, the gold leaf all but rubbed away from hundreds of hands over dozens of years, but since none of the other books seemed like what I was looking for—they all seemed too new—I figured I was better off starting with that one. We’d been here for nearly an hour already, and nothing was jumping out at me. Luckily, I’d been right about the neighborhood being fairly deserted, and we’d slipped in with no trouble—no one had bothered covering up the hole I’d made by the door—but I didn’t want to press my luck.

“Anything that looks like a locating spell, or something that mentions finding an Oracle. How to track one.”

“Oracle GPS,” Ryan muttered to himself, and I gave him a little smile.

“Something like that.”

David’s bedroom was dim, and even though he’d only been gone for a few weeks, it was already starting to have that musty, unused smell of locked-up rooms. Other than the books, everything was mostly in order, the bed made up, the desk clear, and looking at all of it, I could almost believe David would be back any minute now. He’d hardly taken anything with him, and I wondered for about the millionth time how he was getting by. Saylor had had plenty of money, but I wasn’t sure how David could’ve gotten his hands on any of it. Plus he wouldn’t be able to get motel rooms. Was he sleeping in his car, or camping out in the woods somewhere?