Miss Mayhem (Rebel Belle #2)(56)

But not by much.

Ryan had agreed to drive since he had the biggest car, a nice SUV his dad had bought for him last year when the basketball team had managed not to come in dead last. But even with all that space, I still felt cramped, even though it was just me and David in the backseat. Apparently the weirdness between us took up a lot of space. Bee rode up front with Ryan, and she’d done a decent job of trying to keep small talk going, but after getting monosyllabic answers from most of us, she’d given up, and now we drove in silence.

Bee and I still hadn’t talked about that afternoon at the pageant, which, to be honest, was fine by me. Nobody can repress better than a good Southern girl, and I wondered if the best thing to do was to forget any of that had ever happened. So Bee and Ryan were a thing. So she hadn’t told me.

That was . . . fine. No big deal at all. I certainly wasn’t watching the two of them, waiting to see if their hands touched or if they glanced at each other the way they had that afternoon. And I definitely hadn’t spent a lot of time wondering if, no matter what they’d told me, there hadn’t been a spark of something there before.

No, definitely not wondering any of that.

Next to me, David felt like he was strung so tightly that he nearly vibrated, and I couldn’t blame him. There was this bizarre vibe in the car, like something bad was coming, but that could have been all the tension. Still, when Ryan made the turn onto the highway out to the country club, I almost told him to turn back. Which would have been dumb, of course. I’d promised David we could do this, but if I was being honest, I didn’t expect anything to happen. Alexander had taken David’s powers from him, and no matter how much David thought he could somehow overcome that, I didn’t have particularly high expectations. If anything, this felt more like a favor we could do for him.

That thought in mind, I laid my hand on David’s leg, trying not to notice how he flinched when I first touched him. But then he glanced over at me, his blue eyes bright behind his glasses, and he linked his fingers with mine. It had been a while since we’d touched, and I was surprised by how good it felt to have his hand in mine, even if it was only for a second.

The big stone and wood sign announcing the Pine Grove Country Club was lit up, but everything else was dark as we turned down the winding drive. Ryan rolled down his window, waving a card in front of a sensor, and the gate slowly swung open. Technically, the club closed at seven, but since Ryan’s dad owned the place, he could come and go as he pleased. And if his dad asked him why he’d been out at the club on a Wednesday night at ten, Ryan could always say he’d been cleaning the pool or something. That’s what he’d said on the nights we’d come out here after hours—memories I didn’t want to dwell on right now.

From the almost embarrassed way Ryan’s eyes met mine in the rearview mirror, I didn’t think he wanted to stroll down memory lane either.

We’d decided to come here for a couple of reasons. One, in all of David’s readings, he’d realized that the past Oracles were always having visions in nature-y places like caves or forests. There were a few woody places around Pine Grove—there was a reason the town was called what it was—but since none of us were in the mood to tramp through underbrush and risk snake bites, ticks, and God knew what else, we’d chosen . . . civilized nature. Plus it was a nice, private space still in town, but not too close to anything else, just in case this got out of hand.

The country club was a pretty building made to look like an antebellum mansion, and as we drove past it, spotlights on the tall white columns, giant tubs of azaleas by the front door, David snorted. “I feel like I should start humming ‘Dixie.’”

“Have you never been out here?” I asked, and he shook his head.

“Saylor came out here for lunch sometimes, but it’s not exactly my scene.”

There were still shadows under his eyes and his nails were bitten almost to the quick, but in that moment, there was enough of the old David in his face to make me feel a little better about what we were about to do. David’s powers still scared me, and for all that he wanted to use them to the best of his abilities, I thought they scared him, too. And with the Peirasmos still going on, what if him doing this . . . violated that somehow?

I didn’t want to think about what the repercussions of that could be, but I felt like this was something I owed David. He was asking me to have faith in him, and the least I could do was try.

Ryan’s SUV drove silently over the asphalt lane winding its way to the golf course. We’d decided to attempt this on the eighth hole. Well, Ryan had decided, pointing out that that part of the golf course was hidden from the main road by a hill, plus there was the lake to one side, and trees to the other.

Once the car was parked, we piled out, and for a moment, we all just stood there, looking at the fairway.

“We’re really going to do this,” Ryan said, his hands in his pockets.

At his other side, Bee nodded. “We have to.” She looked over her shoulder at me, tucking a strand of hair behind one ear. “Right, Harper?”

I nodded without thinking. “Right. So let’s get started.”

All four of us tromped down the hill, and once we were near the eighth hole, I gestured for us to sit. We did, forming a semicircle with David in the middle, Ryan and me on either side of him, Bee across from us. Overhead, the moon was high, reflecting on the pond. I could hear frogs croaking and the occasional chirp of bugs, but there was no breeze. The night was still and warm, almost too warm, but I still felt chilled.