Lady Renegades (Rebel Belle #3)(25)

Harper Price. Pres.

His girlfriend.

It’s still such a weird thing to think that he almost misses her question, and when she just looks at him, eyebrows raised, he mimics her expression. “Pastel is off the menu, too?” he finally asks, then gives her the most serious frown he can muster. “First plaid, then stripes, now pastel?” Shaking his head, David closes the book with a thump. “You’re a fashion tyrant, you know that, Pres?”

Harper smiles, making a dimple dent one cheek, and there’s that stomach swoop again. Reaching over to his desk, she picks up a pen, tossing it at him. “You love it,” she counters.

I love you, he thinks, but doesn’t say it.

“Are you okay?”

Startled, David raised his eyes back to the motel clerk. His head still felt full of Harper, but looking at the girl in front of him now, the resemblance wasn’t as strong. Still, his pulse seemed to speed up, and there was that feeling in his chest, a tightness like someone was reeling in a line looped around his heart.

She was coming for him.

Hands shaking, David fumbled with his wallet. He wouldn’t run from her. He would wait here, let her find him, let them end this, whatever it was. Maybe he could just go back. Harper wanted to keep him safe. Some part of his mind balked at that idea, but that wasn’t him. Not the real him, at least. That was the Oracle part, and it was the Oracle part that he had to fight. Sure, there had been the girl at the fast-food place, then before her, those girls in Alabama, but those had been accidents. Besides, once he’d come back to himself, he’d been able to pull the power from them, change them back into what they were.

Or at least he thought he had. He’d tried.

But when he closed his eyes—just for a second, trying to get his thoughts to settle—there were other voices in his head again. Other images.

Stand and fight, they whispered, the voices bleeding together. He’d heard these voices before, but it seemed like they were louder now, stronger.

He opened his eyes.

The girl in front of him was looking at him funny, and David knew he must be mumbling to himself again. He’d been concentrating so hard on keeping his eyes downcast—so she couldn’t see the glow through his glasses—that he forgot about what his mouth was doing. That was another thing, the way he couldn’t seem to control everything at once. He could talk but not look, look but not talk. And when he looked, half the time, he wasn’t seeing the person in front of him but . . .

Her name.

She had a name, the girl he was seeing. He had just thought it, had just held the name inside his mind, he was sure of it, but it was slipping away now, almost like it had never been there at all.

Paladin.

No, that wasn’t her name; it’s what she was.

The money tumbled from his hands, bills falling to the grubby carpet, change clattering against the desk. He was on his knees, and the pain in his head was a hurricane.

Yellow dress. Blood. Green eyes. Green eyes filled with tears, and a word booming around loud as thunder.

Choose.

The girl behind the desk was next to him now, crouching down. She smelled like strawberries, and her hair brushed his shoulder. It was brown hair, not black, but he could still swear it was that other girl next to him. The one whose name had slipped through his fingers like sand.

The last time the light poured out of him, he’d said he was sorry. He’d felt sorry.

He didn’t feel sorry now.





Chapter 14


I WONDERED HOW long it would take Blythe to notice that I wasn’t driving toward the address she’d given me. I had banked on her not being all that familiar with this area—we had no idea where she was from, but Blythe was a Yankee name if I’d ever heard one—so I figured it would take a while.

As it turned out, we were nearly to my destination before Blythe suddenly twisted in her seat and said, “Wait, why aren’t we on the interstate yet?”

“Because we’re not getting on the interstate,” I answered calmly, signaling to turn right onto a long four-lane highway bracketed with palm trees. We were farther south now, which meant the landscape was slowly sliding into beachy territory, white sand appearing between clumps of dark green grass.

Blythe turned to face me, frowning. “What’s going on?”

“A mutiny,” Bee said cheerfully from the backseat, and I gave an unapologetic shrug. “What she said.”

I was willing to concede that Blythe had something we needed, namely a bunch of magic Ryan didn’t know, plus what appeared to be a genuine desire to fix this mess with a specific spell. But that didn’t mean that I was giving her total control of this mission, no matter what she might think. We could follow her plan when the time came, but for now, there was a stop I wanted to make.

We passed a big wooden “Welcome to Piedmont” sign, and Blythe settled back in her seat with a huff, crossing her arms over her chest. “We’re going to see the girl who attacked you,” she said, and I nodded.

“The night she went after me, she was totally set to kill me until she wasn’t. I know from experience that Paladin fights don’t work like that. You fight—”

“Until you’re dead,” Blythe finished. “Yeah, I’m familiar with all that.”

Ignoring her snotty tone, I turned into the wide parking lot of a strip mall. There was one just like it in every town in Alabama, seemed like, and I could see that was true of Mississippi, too. A nail salon, a Chinese buffet, one of those places where you trade your car title for cash . . .