Lady Renegades (Rebel Belle #3)(44)

“Alexander?” I suggested, and Blythe nodded, watching as Dante scrambled for his phone.

“I’m guessing so, yeah.”

“Which means . . .”

Heaving out a long breath, Blythe walked over to the bathroom door, unlocking it and letting Dante rush out of there. He nearly plowed right into Bee, who, it turned out, was the door rattler.

“What’s going on?” she asked, watching as Dante bolted into the crowd.

Hands on her hips, Blythe sighed as he took off, and then turned to me and Bee, her eyebrows raised. “Well?” she said, nodding after Dante. “Go get him.”





Chapter 23


THERE’S NO NEED in getting into what happened at “OW Y” after that. You really don’t need to hear about me and Bee chasing the dude through the crowd, or how I maybe tackled him right by the jukebox, regretting my decision to wear a skirt that night. And you certainly don’t need to hear about the various things the crowd shouted out, or how Bee and I ended up wrestling him out of the bar to cheers and clapping, and that before we got him in the car, I saw the flash of several phone cameras, and heard the words “Facebook” and “Twitter.”

The main thing is that we got Dante out of “OW Y” and into a field just on the outskirts of town. And to be honest, standing in tall grass with Dante sitting in front of us, squinting against my headlights—I’d left them on to illuminate whatever it was Blythe wanted to do—I thought of those tawdry true-crime books Aunt Martha always got at Walmart. Back at the bar, I’d been afraid of being a victim in a book like that.

Staring at Dante now, I kind of felt like I might actually be one of the bad guys in that kind of book.

Not that we’d hurt him or anything. Other than a little cut above his eyebrow where he’d hit it on the corner of the jukebox as he’d fallen, he wasn’t hurt, and he seemed to be more angry than scared.

“You’re totally going to cut out my kidney, aren’t you?” he asked, and I tried to look both intimidating and nonthreatening, crossing my arms over my chest while still giving a reassuring smile.

As a result, I probably just looked confused when I said, “We don’t want your kidney, trust.”

He glared up at me, his dark hair falling over his forehead. Even pissed off and freaked out, he was pretty cute, so if he and Blythe had had something going on, I definitely couldn’t blame her.

“Then what—” Dante started, but Blythe was already walking forward, Saylor’s journal open in her hands, the headlights lining her in a bright white glow.

“There’s nothing in here for reversing a spell this big,” she said, ignoring Dante, who sat with his hands fastened behind his back with some of the spare bungee cords I’d brought in case we needed to strap luggage to the roof of my car.

“But,” Blythe went on, her eyes moving over the pages, “I can try a . . . combination of things, maybe.”

She sounded less than sure, but when she lifted her head, her expression was determined, her pointed chin thrust forward.

Bee and I had done our job as Paladins, using our strength to manhandle Dante into the car and out here, so now it was Blythe’s turn to show what she could do.

The words that came out of her mouth made no sense to me. I wasn’t sure if they were Greek or just, you know, magic, but there was power in them, no matter how nonsensical they sounded. The hairs on my arms stood on end, and right next to me, I could feel Bee shiver.

Dante had gone still, his eyes so wide I could see the whites all the way around, and once again, an uncomfortable feeling slithered through me. I didn’t like this, any of it, and whether the bigger problem was Blythe’s magic or the kidnapping, I didn’t know, but I definitely felt icked out.

But then Blythe stepped forward and stretched a hand out to me. “Come here.”

I moved closer, putting my hand in hers. Her palm was clammy, making me wonder if she was a little creeped out by what we were doing, too.

Bee shuffled back a bit as Blythe and I approached Dante, and when Blythe pressed her fingers to his temples, she gestured at me to do the same.

I stood there, fingers out, but not touching him yet. “What are we doing?” I asked, scratching the back of my calf with the opposite foot. “Some kind of Vulcan mind-meld thing?”

David would’ve been proud of me for making that reference, but Blythe just glared. “We’re seeing if getting inside his head will work,” she said. “Whatever Alexander did to him, it wiped his memories and his powers. I want to know why and how, and I’m hoping the spell I just did will do that for us. Okay? Are we good now?”

“We’re never good,” I muttered, but it was more from habit than actual irritation.

When I pressed my fingers to Dante’s temple, the only thing I felt was his damp skin, his sweaty hair against my knuckles, and I opened my mouth to tell Blythe that this was stupid, that it wasn’t working.

And then it was like everything suddenly . . . tunneled. My vision went dim except for two pinpricks of light, like I was looking through a telescope the wrong way. It wasn’t anything like the time I’d seen David’s vision or even when Alexander had made me see things during the Periasmos last year. This was something new, something that had me feeling as though I were standing on very shaky ground, my knees wobbly, my heart racing.