Lady Renegades (Rebel Belle #3)(45)
For what felt like ages, there was just that sense of being in a dark tunnel and seeing those little bits of light. I could hear voices, but they were muffled—muted, like people talking in another room. I couldn’t hear the sounds of the cicadas and frogs, couldn’t feel the brush of the tall grass against my legs, or the suffocating warmth of a Georgia summer night anymore. It was like I wasn’t anywhere, and even if I’d wanted to pull my hand back from Dante’s temple, I don’t think I could have.
And then suddenly, the tiny dots of light got bigger, rushing toward me. Or maybe I was rushing toward them. It was hard to tell. All I knew was that the darkness faded away, replaced by a scene that seemed awfully familiar.
Alexander, sitting behind his desk, his golden hair burnished in the lamplight. He was wearing a dark suit with a deep-green tie, looking exactly like he had every time I’d ever seen him, and as he rose from the desk, I realized that the office he was in was almost identical to the one he’d had in Pine Grove. That house had been magicked up, but it felt like what I was seeing was the real deal.
Because this was Dante’s memory, we were seeing everything from his perspective. He was clearly sitting in front of the desk, wearing jeans, his fingers tapping nervously on one leg.
Leaning back, his hands folded in front of him, Alexander looked anything but anxious. He was as calm and collected as I remember, and the smile he shot Dante was clearly meant to be welcoming. But I saw the edge to it and remembered that, too. For all his good manners and elegant style, Alexander had been dangerous, and Dante clearly understood that. I could see him jiggling one leg as he reached into the front pouch of his hoodie, pulling out ragged sheets of paper.
“Ah, very good,” Alexander said, the words sounding slightly echoing and distorted, like he was talking underwater.
“It was easy to find,” Dante said, lifting his chin a bit. “She’d set some kind of alarm spell on the book, but not on the pages themselves. Took me like ten seconds to find it and lift it.”
“Sloppy,” Alexander murmured, his eyes traveling over the page in front of him. “How unlike Saylor.”
Feeling better now, Dante leaned back in his seat, crossing one ankle over the other. “That’s some hard-core magic, though. Like, way outside my skill set. Probably outside Blythe’s, even.”
“Yes, well, it was always more theoretical than practical, this spell,” Alexander said, but he didn’t lift his eyes from the page, and I could swear his hand was trembling slightly.
“I’d hope so,” Dante said, pushing his hood from his head. “The power and memory wipe is one thing, but that last bit?” With a low whistle, he shook his head. “Man, that’s dark. And intense. I wouldn’t even want to try it. Be like that story, right? The one with the people who wish for—”
Alexander lifted a hand, cutting him off. “Like I said, the spell was theoretical. Something I asked Saylor to work on before she vanished so precipitously. I’d never meant to actually test it.”
And then he suddenly smiled again, looking up at Dante and saying, “But no time like the present, hmm?”
He said some words then, nothing I understood, and the scene in front of me started to shake. I wasn’t sure if the room itself had shaken when this happened, or if Dante’s memories, locked away in some faraway corner of his mind, were just becoming unstable.
Either way, everything fell apart. There was a sound like wind wailing in my ears, and suddenly we were being thrust away again, hurtling backward, until I felt hot, muggy air again and the scratch of grass on my legs, and I was once again standing in a field, my hand falling away from Dante’s head.
Next to me, Bee had a hand on my shoulder, her face creased with worry. “Are you all right?” she asked, and I nodded, even though I definitely wasn’t sure about that.
I looked over to see if Blythe was all right, but her eyes were fixed on Dante, and when I turned my head, I saw why.
He was still staring sightlessly ahead, his chest rising and falling rapidly, but now a trickle of blood was slipping from his nose.
“What’s going on?” I asked Blythe, and she shook her head frantically, paging through Saylor’s journal.
“I . . . I think the spell was too strong. Or maybe Alexander added some kind of, I don’t know, like, booby trap to it.” Her voice was thin, higher than usual, and her fingers moved over the pages of the journal so quickly that death by paper cut seemed like a real hazard.
“You did a spell on him without knowing what it would do?” Bee asked, stepping forward and slightly out of the headlights’ glare. She’d pulled her hair into a messy bun, and she was looking at Blythe with her eyebrows raised. “Isn’t that what you gave us so much crap for?”
Blythe’s head shot up. “The kind of magic we’re dealing with is dangerous,” she spit out. “I’m sorry it’s not a freaking chemistry problem with formulas or whatever, but it’s not, and—”
“And the two of you need to stop fighting and figure out what we’re going to do,” I finished, crouching down at Dante’s side. His pulse was strong underneath my fingers, even though he was still breathing fast. Still, in the bright glow of my headlights, his pupils were so wide that there was hardly any iris showing.
“Should we call nine-one-one?” I asked, wondering what we would even say to a dispatcher. “‘Hi, we did magic on this guy in a field and now he seems catatonic, please assist’?”