Miss Mayhem (Rebel Belle #2)(60)

“Was it from one of the books your Mage kept?” Alexander asked, almost frantic. His tie was loose, one cuff of his shirt unbuttoned where it peeked out from underneath his jacket sleeve. “A . . . a ritual or something that you found and decided to experiment with.”

“There wasn’t a book,” David told him, jamming his hands into his back pockets. “I just . . . I felt like if I tried, I could have a vision, and I did. It was cloudy and . . . I don’t know, murky. Like they used to be before Blythe did the ritual.”

Alexander stopped pacing, coming to stand in front of his desk with both hands braced on the edge. “But you did see something?”

David kept his hands in the pockets of his skinny jeans, his shoulders tight. After a moment, he nodded, and Alexander dropped his head with a deep sigh.

I’d never seen Alexander look anything besides 100 percent with-it and together, but now, he wiped a hand across his mouth, and I could swear he was shaking. There was also something about the way he was looking at David that I definitely did not like.

“It’s impossible,” he said. “Even with the ritual Blythe performed, there’s no way you should . . . No one has ever overcome the removal spell I did on you. Ever.”

Next to me, David gave a familiar shrug. “Well, I did.” He said it as a challenge, and as I watched, David pushed his shoulders back, meeting Alexander’s gaze head-on.

“What was it you saw?” Alexander asked, and David flexed his fingers. I was waiting for that answer myself, but if David wouldn’t tell me, I knew he wouldn’t tell Alexander. And sure enough, after a pause, he shook his head.

Alexander stood there, his hair still messy, his gaze fixed on David’s face, and while his expression didn’t change, it was like I could see the gears whirring in his head. I sometimes felt that with David, too, that I could sense all that was going on beneath the surface, and it was weird to have the same feeling watching Alexander.

Then he straightened up abruptly, fixing his tie and tugging at the unbuttoned cuff with a sniff. “The Peirasmos is cancelled,” he said in a tight voice, and I blinked, caught totally off guard.

“What?”

“There’s no need for it anymore,” Alexander continued, and when his eyes met mine, they were hard chips of pale green ice.

But I’d faced a lot of scarier things than one pissed-off snooty guy, so I met that cold gaze and asked, “Why? A few weeks ago, this was so important that if I didn’t do it, I’d die, and now you’re telling me, ‘oh, no big, totes cancelled, everyone go on your merry way!’”

Alexander stood ramrod straight, his fingers still on the cuff of his shirt. “I do not know what ‘totes’ means in this context, but I assure you, no one is ‘going on their merry way,’ Miss Price.”

With that, he crossed over to his desk, pulling open a drawer and yanking out an ancient-looking binder of some kind, the leather cracked and peeling. As he smacked it on top of his desk, he glanced up at the two of us.

“You may go now,” he said, lifting one long-fingered hand to more or less shoo us away.

I stayed right where I was, hands on my hips. “Um, I will not be shooed. What is going on here?”

“What is going on,” Alexander replied, bracing both hands on his desk to look up at me, “is that our Oracle is more powerful than I’d guessed, and now I have to rethink some things. Which I can do much better without you standing there yammering at me.”

I was pretty sure I’d never been accused of “yammering” in my life, and I was about to show Alexander what real yammering was, but David tugged my elbow, pulling me toward the door. “Let’s get out of here, Pres.”

I followed him through the house, and as we got close to the front door, a loose board tripped me, the tip of my shoe catching its lip. David paused, but I gave him a little wave, saying, “I’m fine, no worries.” But as I looked back at the board, I noticed it wasn’t the only one that was loose. There were a couple that were warped and not fitting flush against the floor anymore. That was weird. As was how . . . unshiny the hardwood looked. And when I glanced at the wall, I could see wallpaper peeling in the corners. Even the paintings seemed less glowy than before.

Maybe whatever magic Alexander had used to make this place was fading. Or maybe it looked worse in the afternoon sun. I had no idea, and at the moment, my brain was so full of thoughts, I couldn’t stop to consider that.

We paused on the porch, David’s hands thrust into his pockets, my own dangling limply at my side. I had no idea what I wanted him to say. We weren’t fine. No matter what had happened last night, we weren’t back together, and none of the issues between us had been solved. I knew that, and from the slump in his shoulders, I think he must have, too.

“Guess you don’t have to do the pageant now,” he finally said. The afternoon light was turning his hair a dark gold, almost the same color as Alexander’s. I could hear the hum of insects, the soft whisper of the breeze through the tall grass, and all I wanted to do was step back into his arms like I had yesterday after the golf course.

But I stayed where I was on my side of the steps, watching David. “I guess I don’t,” I agreed, “but I might as well at this point. I think Sara Plumley might actually murder me if I dropped out.”

That made him smile, but it didn’t reach his eyes, and I felt a million unsaid words sitting between us.