Miss Mayhem (Rebel Belle #2)(68)
“Is this what you wanted, then?” he asked, his voice hoarse. My chest was still aching, telling me that wherever David was, he was in danger, so I shook my head. I had never wanted David to belong the Ephors, but I hadn’t wanted him to leave, either. Especially not like this. If he had known . . .
Maybe this was what he’d seen that night at the golf course? Our town burning, me standing in a deserted field with Alexander? It was difficult to speculate about what David had known or not known.
“I didn’t have anything to do with this, believe it or not,” I told him, coming to stand in front of him. “This was David’s doing. He . . . he didn’t want to go with you, but he knew he couldn’t stay here.” The words stuck in my throat. I hated them. Hated that as I said them, I knew David had done the right thing. Or at least the best thing he could think of.
Not that I thought this would last very long, of course.
Staring down at Alexander, I said, “I’m guessing you’ll report back to the rest of the Ephors and drag him back.”
“There are no more Ephors,” Alexander said, his voice dull. “Only me.”
I’d never thought surprise could actually knock you on your butt, but I swear I rocked back on my heels. “What?”
Still looking at the ground, his tie wrapped around his hand, Alexander gave an entirely humorless huff of laughter.
“It’s flattering to know I fooled you, Harper Price, it truly is.” He looked up at me, his green eyes sharp despite the obvious devastation there. “What a Paladin you would have made.”
“I am a Paladin,” I answered without thinking, and he smiled again. This time, there was something like fondness in it, and to be honest, I think that freaked me out more than the whole sardonic-in-the-face-of-destruction thing he’d had going on.
But then he looked back at the tie in his hands, heaving a sigh. “We can’t last without the Oracle, you see. Her—or in this case his—power feeds ours. We’re all very, very old men, no matter how dapper we appear.” He gestured to himself, and I thought it would probably be mean to point out that he wasn’t exactly rocking it on the dapper front right now.
“Without the Oracle, we wither. We die. It’s why we were so desperate to find him.”
Bee and Ryan still stood by the car, watching, and I gave them a little wave to let them know that I was all right. Then, clutching my skirt in my hands, I sat down on a cinder block next to Alexander, watching him carefully.
“The Peirasmos?” I asked, and Alexander heaved a sigh, grinding the heels of his palms into his eyes.
“Had you completed them, the trials would have increased your powers enough for me to use you if I had to. Ephors gain most of our strength from the Oracle’s magic, but the Paladin and the Mage help as well. Not enough, not nearly enough, but some.”
I took a deep breath. “That’s why you stripped Ryan’s powers. It wasn’t so that he couldn’t help me. It’s because you were draining his . . . his Mage energy or whatever.”
With another one of those humorless laughs, Alexander nodded. “Indeed. All of this had been an elaborate ploy to keep myself alive, and”—sitting up, he placed his hands on his knees, the headlights from Ryan’s car winking off the heavy gold ring on his pinky finger—“you see how well it has gone for me.”
“So the house was an illusion?” I asked, and Alexander shook his head.
“It was real enough. Created by magic, yes, but real.”
My head hurt. My heart hurt. And while I wasn’t sure how it was possible, I was pretty sure my soul hurt.
“If you were dying or . . . fading, how did you get enough power to set all this up?”
Alexander looked down again. His normally shiny shoes were covered in dust, and he poked at a loose stone with the toe of one. “Blythe proved useful.”
They were only three words, but they sent a finger of ice down my spine. I hadn’t liked Blythe—I’d hated her for taking Bee—but the idea that Alexander had killed her to take her magic . . .
Shaking his head, Alexander chuckled. “God, what a mess this is. And to think, all we wanted was to have things back the way they should’ve been. The way they’ve been for millennia. A powerful Oracle at our side, a brave Paladin, a crafty Mage. Now we have nothing.”
The night was warm, but I was nearly shivering now, wrapping my arms around myself. “Will you go after him?” I asked, and Alexander looked off into the distance. It was probably just my imagination, but I could swear his cheeks looked more hollow, the lines around his eyes deeper than they were when we started talking.
“There’s no point,” he said. “I won’t last long enough to find him, and whatever he did to blow through my wards seems to have drained the last bit of magic from me.”
He smiled that ghoulish smile. “So you see, Miss Price? I am just a sad old man now. You are just a pretty girl in a silly dress. Your friends are now simply your friends. Oh, you’ll all retain some powers for a while, but they’ll fade over time, and all will go back to the way it was.”
His smile turned fierce, almost a grimace. “Isn’t that what you wanted?”
It had been. I’d spent all this time trying to make my life resemble what it had been before, trying to convince myself that I could balance it all. Paladin and SGA president, Oracle and boyfriend, family and duty. Now I had what I wanted, but as my chest ached and I thought of David, speeding off into the darkness, the cost seemed so high.