Lady Renegades (Rebel Belle #3)(53)
It wasn’t a long blade, nothing all that intimidating, really—other than the fact that it was used for stabbing people, I guess. More like the kind of short sword I’d seen in gladiator movies. And it felt good in my hand.
“How much for the sword?” I asked the guy behind the folding table.
“Um, Harper?” Bee asked. She stood on one side of me, arms held tight to her sides, and I was struck by how not-Bee-like she looked. The frantic pace, the crappy fast-food diet, the stress . . . the three of us now looked less like Cute Girls Headed to the Beach and a lot more like strung-out teenage runaways, albeit ones with decent tans. Anyone observing us would probably think we were only months away from our own Lifetime movie.
“What?” I asked Bee, my eyes still on the sword as the vendor in front of me in a University of Alabama T-shirt glanced over his shoulder.
“Oh,” he said, turning more fully toward the box. “Huh, that’s . . . You know, I gotta be honest with you, I haven’t seen that before.”
The alarm bells going off in my head seemed even louder now, and when he walked over and lifted the sword from the box, they were nearly deafening.
It wasn’t a fancy sword. There were no jewels on it, and the metal didn’t shimmer with unspoken magic or anything like that. It actually looked kind of dull, and while there were some deep grooves on the hilt, it was clearly nothing all that special. Still, everything inside me seemed to reach for it.
The guy hefted the sword, weighing it. “What’s a pretty thing like you want with a sword anyway?”
“She’s going to use it to castrate guys who ask stupid questions,” Blythe answered for me, her voice flat.
“What she said,” I told the guy, lifting my chin. His eyes fell to my swollen lip and the ice bag still clutched in my hand, dripping into the dirt.
Clearing his throat, he offered me the sword, handle first. “Fair enough. Since I have no idea where it came from or what it’s even made of, I’ll give you a discount.”
Whether he actually did give me a discount or not, I couldn’t say. It’s not like I’d ever priced swords or anything, and what he charged was enough to have me grimacing a little bit as I handed over the credit card Mom had given me for emergencies. (Which, okay, I knew she had meant for me to use it for food and shelter and stuff, but I think we can all agree that on this trip, a sword was a solid emergency supply.)
But once that sword was in my hand, I knew that I would have paid anything to own it. It felt right clutched against my palm, and I gave a few experimental strokes, earning me some worried looks from all those people who did just want crappy jewelry or a puppy or a cassette tape from 1988.
When we got back to the car, I grabbed an old backpack from the back of the trunk and a Grove Academy sweatshirt from beside the roadside kit my dad had given me last Christmas. Wrapping the blade gently in the shirt, I placed it in the backpack and wedged it carefully in the back of the trunk.
But even once the sword was tucked away, I stayed there by the open trunk, one hand still holding the lid open like I couldn’t quite bring myself to stop looking at it.
“Harper?” Bee asked. Blythe had already gone to sit in the backseat, so it was just the two of us out there, looking down into my trunk. “What do you need that sword for?”
I slammed the lid shut. “Just in case.”
Chapter 28
WE DROVE for another few hours, heading north. Before Blythe had mind-wiped the girl at the flea market, we’d managed to learn she was from Tennessee, so we headed that way. We found another motel, this one not quite as dire as the one in Mississippi, but still no place I’d choose to stay for very long. Bee had curled up under the blankets after taking a few aspirin, but I was too restless. I felt like we were so close to David, but knowing he was already in a cave made it impossible for me to do anything but think about what we’d do when we found him there.
Blythe was sure it was too late, but I couldn’t let myself think that. We’d come all this way, gone through so much, and now that we had Saylor’s spell, surely we could fix it?
That thought in mind, I went looking for Blythe. I found her sitting on the edge of the pool, dangling her feet in the bright blue water. For a second, I thought about warning her that there were probably at least a thousand infectious diseases living inside motel pools, but then I decided that, hey, if Blythe wanted to catch syphilis of the foot, that was on her. Me, I was going to sit in one of the lounge chairs.
The plastic creaked when I sat down, and Blythe glanced over her shoulder at me, still moving her feet lazily through the water. “You okay?”
I sighed, unsure how to answer that. Technically, yes, I was fine. The fight today at the flea market had been tough, but the soreness had already faded from my muscles. I still felt like I was about to crawl out of my skin, though. The sense that David was close, but that we were already too late, was making me crazy. I’d wanted to keep driving through the night, but Bee and Blythe were both exhausted, and pointed out that facing David tired was probably not the best idea. Plus Blythe had been quiet all afternoon, and since we needed her at her best for the spell, I wanted to make sure she had enough time to get ready.
Didn’t mean I liked it, though.
“I’m not . . . ideal,” I finally said, and that made Blythe give a snort of laughter as she pulled her feet up from the pool and turned to face me. Drawing up her knees, she wrapped her arms around her legs. “Your Paladin strength is finally gone. For good, I think,” she said, and it wasn’t a question.