Miss Mayhem (Rebel Belle #2)(66)

“I kissed her. That night at the movies.”

The same night I had almost kissed David. I had spent all these months feeling terrible about that, and the whole time, he had been making out with Mary Beth Riley? Seriously?

I jabbed my finger in the general direction of Ryan’s face. “You are so lucky we are busy right now, because if we weren’t, you and I would be having a major discussion about this.”

Ryan snorted and swatted at my hand. “Why? Didn’t you just say we should have broken up earlier?”

“Yes! That doesn’t mean it was okay for you to cheat on me.”

“You had been cheating on me way before that, Harper,” he hissed, and I gave a squawk of outrage.

But then he raised up on his knees, whipping out a pocket knife and scratching at the marks. The door gave with a creak, spilling Ryan out into the parking lot. He glanced over his shoulder at me.

“Harper?”

Outside, the wind was blowing hard, reminding me of the night we got Bee back from Alexander’s house. Just like then, there was this almost overpoweringly electric feeling in the air, racing along my nerves and making my hair stand on end.

The parking lot was full, and several car alarms were blaring. Underneath the sodium lights, Ryan’s hair was orange, his skin pale.

“This is bad,” he said, his gaze darting around.

Shooting him a glare, I bent down and grabbed my skirt in both hands, ripping the little slit in the side until the dress was open to my upper thigh. I wasn’t going to let the skinny skirt get in my way again. “Yes, Ryan, that’s been established.”

Ryan shook his head. “No, Harper, I mean . . . this is not just run-of-the-mill bad. I can feel something. There is major magic happening out here. Scary magic. It’s like . . .” Trailing off, he shook his head and looked at me. “We shouldn’t have done this,” he said, and it wasn’t the cool spring air raising goose bumps on my arms.

“We have to find David.”





Chapter 34


MY PARENTS had driven me, so I turned to Ryan and said, “Car!”

He was still standing there in his white button-down and khakis, looking around with a pained expression. “It wasn’t supposed to go like this,” he muttered, and I grabbed his shirtfront, forcing him to look in my eyes.

“It is going like this, though,” I said, “And we need to find David now. Before it gets worse.”

I remembered the wards Alexander had had Ryan put up, wards that were meant to keep David in town. We’d never tried to break a ward before; I didn’t even think that was possible, but if that was what David was doing now . . .

From somewhere in the distance, there was a loud boom, and both Ryan and I flinched.

“He can’t leave town,” I said to Ryan. “It’s not that simple. Did he not bother to explain that to y’all?”

Dazed, Ryan shook his head. “He said he had to leave, that it would be better for everyone if he did.”

Looking down at me, Ryan’s eyes seemed to focus. “Harper, I think whatever he saw that night at the golf course scared the hell out of him.”

I remembered what I’d seen in the Fun House. If David had seen that, if Alexander was wrong about the Fun House only showing me my worst fears . . .

“We have to get to him,” I told Ryan, dropping my hands from his shirt. “And . . .”

My words trailed off. Why did we have to get him? If the wards were going off, he was already gone, and this was pointless. But I could still feel that ache in my chest, telling me that he was in danger, that we at least had to try.

“We’re wasting time,” I told Ryan, scanning the parking lot. I could still hear people leaving the rec center, and I sent up a quick prayer that my parents wouldn’t worry too much about me.

Ryan took my elbow, pulling me in the direction of his car. As I hopped into the passenger seat, he glanced at me from the corner of his eye. “Bee,” he said, and I held up a hand.

“We can talk about her later, but for now—”

“No, I mean Bee is heading this way,” Ryan said, nodding out my window.

I turned and sure enough, there she was, a knot on one side of her forehead, but other than that, totally fine.

“We can’t take her,” I said to Ryan, even as he clicked the button to unlock the back doors. “She’ll try to stop us, she’ll—”

“No, I won’t,” Bee replied, sliding into the backseat. When she looked at me, her expression was pleading. “I had no choice, Harper, but now that he’s gone—”

“We don’t know that,” I snapped back, even though she was probably right. Whatever the three of them had planned, it had worked.

“Where do you want to go?” Ryan asked me, and I closed my eyes, taking a deep breath and trying to sense where David was. Just outside of town, I thought. Close, still. I could find him, I could talk to him, I could get him to see that this wasn’t the solution.

“Head toward the city limits,” I told Ryan. “He’ll be going for the highway; we might be able to catch up.”

Ryan started the ignition, pulling out of the parking lot.

“When?” I asked as we left the rec center. “When did y’all put this whole plan in motion?”