Miss Mayhem (Rebel Belle #2)(23)
Ryan dropped his hands from his face, swiveling his head to look at me. “Is this something where you can know the ropes, Harper? Because I’m pretty sure magic and potions and—and Oracles are always gonna be pretty effing confusing to me.”
Considering the fact that I still had no idea when the Peirasmos was starting, that wasn’t exactly something I could answer. Instead, I gave him another pat and said, “We’ll all figure it out together.”
Ryan seemed to sigh with his whole body, his hair ruffling with the long breath he blew out. “You say that all the time. ‘We’ll work it out.’ ‘Everything will be okay.’”
Stung, I dropped my hand from his back again. “We will. And it will be.”
Ryan straightened, watching me over steepled fingers. “You’ve never been able to admit that you were in over your head.”
I opened my mouth, but Ryan raised one hand. “No, I know you’re going to say it isn’t true, but it is, Harper. You know it. Only this time, it’s not school dances and leadership committees and student government issues you’re trying to balance. It’s huge, life-or-death stuff, and you’re still pretending it’s another project. People are going to get hurt.”
His gaze drifted to Mary Beth, slumped next to him. “People have already gotten hurt.”
I moved over to Ryan’s bookcase. It held a few sports biographies, but the shelves were mostly stacked with video games and a couple of picture frames. Once they’d held pictures of me and Ryan, but now he and Mary Beth smiled out at me from behind the glass. But in one picture frame, behind a photo of the two of them with their arms around each other on Mary Beth’s parents’ porch, I could make out a bright turquoise corner. That had been the backdrop for last year’s Spring Fling. The theme had been Under the Sea. Ryan and I had gone together. Apparently, Ryan had shoved a picture of them on top of one of the two of us.
I fiddled with the frame now, half tempted to open it and see if I was right. “You think I don’t know that?” I said at last, not looking at him. “Saylor Stark died the night of Cotillion. Bee was kidnapped. And now the Ephors suddenly want to be besties, and I’m apparently going to face some kind of trials, but I have no idea what they could be. And if I don’t do them, we spend the rest of our lives trying not to get killed.”
My voice broke on the last word, and from behind me, I heard Ryan sigh.
“I’m sorry, Harper,” he said softly. And then he gave a little huff of laughter. “It’s weird, my impulse is to hug you, but I don’t know if that’s something we can do anymore.”
Turning around, I smiled and put the picture back on the shelf. “I know what you mean. But we should probably do without hugging.”
Ryan was still wringing his hands in front of him, glancing over at Mary Beth. “It’s gotta wear off eventually.”
“I’m sure it will,” I said, even though I wasn’t exactly. Saylor had used that stuff a lot, but I’d never asked questions about how it worked. After she’d died, we’d handed all her various potions and elixirs over to Ryan without thinking. He’d inherited Saylor’s skills, but that didn’t necessarily mean he knew exactly how to use every little tool she’d had. Not for the first time, I wished that she were here.
Mary Beth’s eyes started to flutter a little more, and Ryan was off the bed like a shot, kneeling in front of her. “MB?”
“My head,” she slurred, her fingers going to her temple. Her dark red hair swung above her shoulders, and the freckles across the bridge of her nose stood out against her pale skin.
“You’re okay,” he said, cupping the back of her neck in one big hand. “You’re fine.” I wasn’t sure if he was trying to use magic to convince her of that, or if he was just saying it in the normal, comforting boyfriend sense. In any case, Mary Beth didn’t look fine. She was still blinking, her face flushed, her gaze muddled.
But it occurred to me that I might want to skedaddle before she came back fully and realized I was standing in her boyfriend’s bedroom.
I didn’t think that would go over particularly well, so I gave Ryan a little wave and mouthed, “Gonna go.” He gave a distracted nod as I walked away.
Once I was outside, I took a minute to dig in the bushes around his house, trying to find the little pot of lip balm (and hoping no one saw me prowling around in Ryan Bradshaw’s front garden). I finally felt it behind a camellia bush, and, pulling it out, rose to my feet. Ryan would definitely want the balm again, although maybe he’d be a little more careful with how much he used next time.
Chapter 11
“SO, THE MALL?” I asked, starting my car. Bee sat in the passenger seat, her sunglasses on, elbow resting on the open window.
“Yup,” she replied. “I need some normalcy.”
Bee’s second day back at school had been better than her first—fewer of the teachers seemed to think she was new, and Abi and Amanda had totally recognized her, which seemed to cheer her up. Brandon was still keeping his distance, though, and when I’d mentioned his name at lunch, Bee had cut me off with a shake of her head. “I don’t want to talk about that.”
After school, I’d planned on going home and doing a little more work on college stuff. That talk with The Aunts had reminded me that I’d been meaning to add at least two more schools to my application list. But then Bee had caught up with me and asked if we could have a “girls’ afternoon,” so here we were, heading toward the Pine Grove Galleria.