David must’ve felt the same way because he shoved his hands in his pockets and rocked back on his heels. “Yeah. We definitely need an adult.”

It wasn’t that funny, but the whole afternoon had been so stressful that I burst into giggles. Surprised, David rocked back further, but, after a second, a slow grin spread across his face.

“Wait, are you two really a thing?” Blythe asked, making David’s grin disappear.

“No,” he said quickly, and I shook my head so hard it was a wonder I didn’t sprain something. “No,” I echoed. “No, no, no, no. Vast worlds of no.”

I think Blythe would’ve said something sarcastic in reply, but David didn’t give her the chance. “We need to get you out of this building without anyone seeing it. You have anything for that?”

Blythe slumped in her bonds, dimples vanishing, big brown eyes going dull. “If I say no, are you going to staple me to death?”

David bent down and picked up the letter opener, tossing it to me. It was slick with blood—my blood—but I still caught it easily with my good hand. “No,” he told her. “If you say no, Harper gets her turn with that.”

It was a tone I’d never heard David use, and considering how long I’d known him, that was saying something. He sounded steely and grown-up, and threatening. Almost like someone who could be a superpowered . . . something.

But this was David Stark. The only threatening thing about him was his toxic level of obnoxiousness.

Still, it worked on Blythe. She jerked her head toward her desk. “Top drawer. Bottle of nail polish. Dab a dot on all of us, we’re as good as invisible.”

I moved to the drawer, and pulled it out before something occurred to me. “David, why don’t you get it?”

He crossed the room in a couple of strides and rifled thorugh the open drawer. When I didn’t double over in pain, I gave a little nod. “Okay, it’s safe.”

Blythe was watching me from under her bangs, her brown eyes sparkling. “Smart girl. But honestly, if I had some kind of deadly potion, wouldn’t I have used that on you instead of a letter opener?”

David snorted, turning the bottle of nail polish over in his long fingers. “She has a point, Pres.” As I snatched the bottle from him, he reached up to smooth his hair, making him look . . . well, he was never going to be entirely presentable, but at least better.

After dotting the back of all of our hands with the nail polish, David and I managed to untie Blythe, get her out of the chair, and tie her back up without her attempting to murder me. We navigated her down the stairs, and sure enough, even though we passed several people, no one so much as glanced in our direction. It was eerie.

We were at the car before David asked, “Why don’t Mages have potions that can kill people?”

I wasn’t sure if Blythe’s expression of disgust was for the question or for the way I kind of manhandled her into the backseat. “We’re not that powerful. A little mind control, some temporal disturbances . . . those we can pull off. Anything to do with human life is a little trickier. But I’m working on it, trust me.”

“Is that how you survived the car crash into my pool?” I asked her, but Blythe just fidgeted on the seat, trying to tuck her dress underneath her.

“I actually poofed out of there before the car hit.”

“You can just ‘poof ’ out of places?” David leaned his forearms on the roof of the car, looking in at Blythe. “Can you also just poof into places?”

I handed David the keys—my hand still hurt too much to think about wrapping it around a steering wheel—and slid into the passenger seat, buckling my seatbelt. “David, maybe don’t give the tiny psychotic witch ideas, okay?”

As David pulled out of the parking lot, I leaned back and closed my eyes, taking a deep breath through my nose. We’ll take her to Saylor. Saylor will know what to do.

The more I repeated it, the better I felt. In fact, as David got closer to Pine Grove, I was feeling almost . . . proud. My first real mission as a Paladin, and I had captured the enemy, learned something about the other side’s plans, and managed not to get too horribly injured. Of course, I’d still need to go to the hospital. My hand would need stitches, which meant coming up with a good excuse for my parents. But when I slid the sweater sleeve off my hand, I could see that the wound was already beginning to heal. It was puckered and red and ugly, but mostly closed. I turned my hand back and forth, marveling at it, and David glanced over.

“Whoa,” he murmured, and I nodded. The “Welcome to Pine Grove” sign loomed in the distance, and I actually smiled a little bit. Yes. Today was definitely one for the win column.

David must’ve felt the same, because as we sped into town, he looked over at me and said, “You know, Pres, this was actually . . . I don’t want to say fun because of the attempted stabbing, but—”

“No,” I said. “I get what you mean. We did good work today. And once we get her—”

The backseat was empty.

Chapter 23

David’s car shook and shimmied as he slammed on the brakes and swerved off the road. Throwing it in park, he turned around in his seat and joined me in staring slack-jawed at the spot where Blythe had been. “How?”

“She’s a Mage,” I offered, too stunned to think of anything else. Saylor had said their magic was pretty low-level. Making yourself disappear was not what I considered low-level magic.

David made a sound that was somewhere between a laugh and a groan, and lowered his forehead to the seat.

“She wasn’t kidding about her alchemy game, was she?” he asked, his voice hoarse.

As I looked at the empty backseat, all I could see was Blythe leaping over that desk, Mr. Hall bleeding to death on the bathroom floor. They weren’t trying to kill David, they were trying to kill me, and I had let one of my would-be assassins go. One who had way more power than I’d prepared for, at that.

After a beat, David turned to me, “You wanna drive around for a little bit?”

Wordlessly, I nodded. David turned his car down one of the side streets leading toward Pine Grove Park, and we drove until we reached the little hill above the playground.

We sat in silence while watching kids scampering over the brightly colored playground equipment. A little girl climbed up the same slide where, when we were eight, I’d shoved David off the ladder. Or had he shoved me? I couldn’t remember. And there, on the swing set, a boy sat on the swing where Ryan had given me my first kiss.

Shutting off the ignition, David leaned forward on the steering wheel. “She wants you dead,” he said.

I looked at my hand again. “Yeah, I got that.”

He let out a heavy sigh, dropping his forehead to the steering wheel. “So what do we do now?”

I wished I had an easy answer. I wished I could pretend none of this was real, and that everything could go back to the way it was. But now there was a lot more on the line than my social life. My actual life was at stake here, and while the idea of hiding under the covers, preferably until Rapture, was appealing, it didn’t seem to be an option.

Sitting up straight, I pushed my hair away from my face, gathering it into a loose knot. David’s backpack was at my feet, and I fumbled through it until I found a notebook and a pen. Skipping past a bunch of sketches at the front—which, hey, were actually pretty decent. I stopped, looking more closely at a few. There was Chie, his friend from newspaper, her dark hair curling around one ear, hand playing with her bangs. And there was Bee, laughing. Bee did this thing when she laughed of tipping her head all the way back, mouth open and teeth flashing. David had captured it perfectly, and I couldn’t help but smile.

I flipped to another page, and there was me. I took up nearly the whole sheet of paper, standing next to a wall of lockers, my head slightly down, face in profile. I was smiling, but my shoulders were tense and I was clearly twisting my ring around my finger.

Clearing his throat, David pulled the notebook back and flipped to a blank page. “I like drawing people,” was all he said before once again placing the notebook back in my hands.

Something seemed to have settled over the car, something heavy and weirdly tense, like the air before a storm.

“When did you draw—” I asked, but David tapped the blank paper in front of me.

“So what was all that stuff Blythe said?”

Taking the hint, I nodded and picked up a pen. “Okay. So the Ephors want to do a spell that makes you Mega Oracle.” I jotted that down. “And they’re doing it at Cotillion.”

David was studying me over the rims of his glasses. “Are you . . . making a flow chart?”

“Shut up. Also, why is it that prophecies are always so vague and mystical? I mean, would it kill you to be able to say, “Oh, the bad guys are coming on this day at this place and they’re going to do this thing? ‘Night of the Swans,’ honestly . . .”

A ghost of a smile flittered across David’s face. “I’ll try to make things more specific the next time I have terrifying visions of the future, Pres.”

I caught myself smiling back before returning my attention to the notebook. “But now we know what this test you have to face is. She’s going to try the spell on you. So all I have to do is keep that from happening.”

David nodded, but he didn’t seem any happier. “Unless she kills you first.”

I swallowed around the sudden lump in my throat. The cold sweat was back, too. You know, if the universe is going to give you super-strength and super-speed and fighting skills you never had, it should also give you some kind of anti-fear power.

“Saylor has wards up all around town to protect you, right? Well, we’ll see if she can whip up some for me, too.” My voice was light as I said it, but the hand holding the pen shook a little, and David was still frowning.