Lady Renegades (Rebel Belle #3)(55)

For a long moment, I just stared at her, wondering if she was screwing with me. But, no, the moment stretched on without her giving a little wink or breaking at all, until finally I said, “We brought you on this trip to help us.”

With a roll of those big brown eyes, Blythe turned to look at me again. “Which I am, duh. Have you missed the part where David is trying to kill you?”

“He isn’t,” I answered, but that just made her laugh.

“Okay, sure. All those Paladins he’s sent after you are the Oracle version of the singing telegram. Got it.”

It was beginning to dawn on me that Blythe was most definitely not kidding, and I stood up so fast I nearly slipped on the edge of the pool.

Blythe, however, stayed right where she was, looking up at me like she was legitimately confused. “Harper . . . you knew this was a possibility. At Alexander’s, when Bee asked why they didn’t just kill Alaric, I saw your face.”

She said it so easily that I felt like she had to be right, almost. Like I was the one being irrational here. But I wasn’t the one who was calmly talking about murdering someone, and I backed up another step, my heart pounding.

Pulling her feet out of the water, Blythe turned to face me more fully. “Honestly, I thought you got this,” she said. “Why else did you buy that sword today?”

The sword. I’d almost forgotten about it, still wrapped in a sweatshirt in the trunk of my car. I couldn’t deny the pull I’d felt toward it. Alexander had said that my vision from the fun house—the one where I’d stabbed David—was just what I feared most, not an actual thing that might happen. But facing Blythe now, I felt sick as I wondered if that were the truth.

Blythe must have seen some of that on my face because she leaned in a little, head cocked to the left. “It’s the reason I took you to the flea market in the first place.”

I shook my head. “No, you said we were looking for some magical rock so you could do the spell Saylor found, and . . .”

The words trailed off as soon as I realized what I was saying. “Magical rock,” I scoffed at myself. “Stupid. And it didn’t bother you at all that we never found it.”

Blythe gave a little shrug. “Because it never existed. I wanted you to find the sword. The one you needed. I thought we might need it just in case, but now that you’ve seen him already in the cave, I understand why you had to have it. Why I wanted you to find it.”

When I didn’t answer, she kept going. “Did you ever think that you were losing your powers not because you were away from him, but because the more dangerous he got, the more you’d be needed to put a stop to him?”

I shook my head, my thoughts whirling, and Blythe crossed her arms over her chest. “Your powers meant you could never hurt the Oracle, only protect him. If you can’t protect him anymore, it’s because he’s become such a danger that he has to be dealt with, Harper. I wasn’t sure of it until today, but seeing him in the cave? Your powers going out for good? Those things are connected.”

“You don’t know that—” I started, even though everything she was saying made a terrible kind of sense.

And she knew it, too, because she lifted her hand to cut me off. “You and I, we do what needs to be done, Harper. It’s who we are. Did you know that back before all this happened to me, I was SGA president at my school, too? We didn’t have cheerleaders, but I was first-chair flute in the school symphony, and I was on just about every committee there was. Prom, Students Against Drunk Driving, the Big Sisters program . . .” She ticked them off on her fingers. “And commitment like that is what makes both of us so good at this stuff. It’s why we were chosen.”

I shook my head, not wanting to have anything in common with her right now. “No,” I said. “Those powers . . . they were forced on me, and I’m guessing they were forced on you, too.”

She just shrugged in that way she did, tilting her head to the other side. “Forced, fated . . . all works out the same. Point is, we’re the type of girls who do what they have to do, and stopping David is what I have to do. You know what Alaric turned into. And now we know that not only is David following in his exact footsteps, they’re also the only two Oracles ever born to Oracles. That means David is more powerful than any of us thought. More dangerous.”

Once again, her voice was so even and calm, her face almost eerily placid, that I felt like I was the one who was nuts. Still, I heard myself say, “This isn’t what you have to do.”

“Of course it is. I told you,” she said slowly and patiently, the way you talk to really little kids or people who speak a different language. “I’m. Redeeming. Myself.”

My shoes dangled from my fingertips, and one dropped to the concrete with a muted thwack. “But this isn’t redeeming yourself,” I argued. “Redeeming means . . . it means fixing what you did wrong, not stabbing what you did wrong in the face. Okay, wait, that didn’t come out right, but you know what I mean.”

I pointed one sandal at her, and Blythe finally got to her feet, swatting my shoe out of her face. “Harper, this is how we fix this, don’t you get that? What do you think all this journeying around has been about?”

I shook my head, not getting it. “Finding David. To make him stop, not to murder him.”