“Hi, girls!” I said with forced brightness.
“Hey, Harper,” Mary Beth replied, but her eyes were on Ryan. “Are you guys . . . okay?”
“We’re fine,” Ryan and I said in unison, too quickly. Abigail and Amanda exchanged a look, and I stepped closer to Ryan, slipping my arm through his. His forearm was like a rock under my fingers, and I could still feel the tension humming through him. Even though he was smiling at the girls, I knew they could sense it, too.
There was an awkward silence before Abigail said, “Is Ryan trying to drag you to that stupid Hard Fists movie?”
“Grooooosssss,” Amanda drawled. “I hate stuff like that. Ryan, be a good boyfriend and take your girlfriend to The Promise. Y’all can sit with us.”
“Mandy,” her twin said, elbowing her in the side. “They probably want to sit alone at the movies.”
Mary Beth swallowed, and her shoes must have been really fascinating for all the attention she was paying to them.
“Oh, please,” Amanda said, delicately picking out a piece of popcorn and tossing it in her mouth. “Like Ryan and Harper are the make-out-in-the-theater type. That would be like . . .” She screwed up her elfin face. “My parents doing that or something. No offense, guys.”
I waved her off, but under my other hand, I could swear Ryan got even tenser. More people were coming in the door now, and as I moved closer to Ryan to avoid the crush, he stepped the tiniest bit away. Ignoring that as best as I could, I held onto his sleeve tighter. “Actually, I want to see Hard Fists.”
Amanda and Abigail both snorted in disbelief, but Mary Beth’s lips lifted in a little smile. “It does look kind of badass,” she offered, and Amanda and Abigail swung identical frowns at her.
“Ugh, no, it does not, Mary Beth. All that violence and blood and . . . bleh.” Amanda shuddered.
“Maybe you need a Y chromosome to properly appreciate the amazingness of Hard Fists, Amanda,” Ryan said. Then he nodded at Mary Beth. “Or maybe you just need to be a cool chick like MB here.”
MB? Since when did Ryan have a nickname for Mary Beth? It wasn’t like anyone else called her that.
Mary Beth’s face flushed, and while I thought pink was supposed to look terrible on redheads, she actually looked really pretty with a little color in her cheeks. And there was a softness in Ryan’s grin as he looked down at her that I recognized. He used to smile at me like that.
For once, the pain in my chest had nothing to do with David or danger or magic. This was straight up teenage angst, and it hurt. I mean, fine, if he suddenly liked Mary Beth, whatever, but did he have to do it in front of Amanda and Abigail?
Wait a second. Whatever? My boyfriend was smiling at a blushing girl, and I was embarrassed because my friends were watching?
Standing there in the theater, with what felt like my entire town hemming me in, I let that thought sink in. I wasn’t hurt that Ryan might have a thing for someone else. I was scared of what that might make other people think about me.
That was . . . effed up.
Suddenly, the lobby was too hot and the smell of popcorn was making me slightly nauseous, and all I wanted to do was go home. What would happen if I turned around and walked out? Would Ryan come after me, or would he shrug and go watch the “badass” Hard Fists with MB? And why didn’t that thought make me want to tear MB’s pretty auburn hair right out of her head?
“Harper?” Abigail asked, laying a hand on my arm. “Are you okay?”
I hadn’t realized I was staring at the floor, my eyes tracing the golden concentric circles stamped on the grubby navy carpet. Lifting my head, I did my best to smile, but from the look on Abi’s face, I wasn’t pulling it off. “Yeah,” I said, “It’s just hot in here.”
“It is,” Abigail agreed. “I mean, look at Mary Beth, she’s practically a tomato.”
Mary Beth’s cheeks were more red than pink now, and Amanda tried to disguise a giggle as a cough.
Tired of this, tired of them, I tugged on Ryan’s sleeve. “In that case, we better go ahead and get into the theater before we all boil to death out here.”
I took a step forward and as I did, I looked up into the crush of people waiting to get their sodas and Gummy Bears. I could recognize nearly every face, either from school or church. And then Matt Sheehan, a senior at the Grove, stepped aside, and I found myself staring into a very familiar—and very crazy—pair of brown eyes.
Blythe.
Chapter 28
I froze, my hand still on Ryan’s sleeve. My heart was somewhere south of my knees, sweat immediately prickling my brow. The crowd shifted, a group of preteen girls sliding in front of Blythe. When they moved on, she was gone.
Rising up on tiptoes, I frantically searched the lobby, looking for some trace of her. “Who are you looking for?” Ryan asked, lifting his head to glance around, too.
“Did you see a girl?” I said, still scanning the mass of bodies moving through the theater.
“I . . . see lots of girls,” Ryan replied, bemused.
“No, a specific girl. A tiny one with brown hair and dimples.”
“Lauren Roberts?” Abi asked, naming a girl in our math class.
“No,” I told her, twisting to look behind me. “But like her. About that height, same hair. Like Lauren Roberts with a major case of crazy eyes.”
She could be anywhere. She was short enough to pass through the crowd unseen, and damn it, I wasn’t tall enough to see over all these people.
“Does this chick owe you money or something?” Ryan joked, finally sounding like himself again. But I was too panicked to be happy about that.
The glass doors opened, and as they did, I spotted a few people leaving the theater. I caught the briefest glimpse of a long brown ponytail, and then the door swung shut. It might have been Blythe, but I couldn’t be sure.
Whirling on Ryan, I grabbed his arm again. “I’ll be right back. Go on into the theater and I’ll find you in a few minutes.”
“Whoa.” Ryan flipped his hand, fingers encircling my wrist. “Where are you—”
I tugged out of his grasp, forgetting about my super-strength, so instead of taking my arm back gently, I more or less wrenched it from him.
Surprise, hurt, and more than a little bit of anger all warred on his face, but I didn’t have time to worry about that right now. Blythe was here, and I had to find her before she found me.
“I’ll be right back,” I said again, then dashed out the front doors of the theater before Ryan had the chance to say anything else.
The November night was cold and clear, and my breath puffed out in front of me as I stood on the sidewalk, looking left, then right. The theater took up one whole side of the square; the other three sides were taken up with little boutiques, Miss Annemarie’s, the jewelry store, and Pine Grove’s sad attempt at a coffee shop, the Dixie Bean. Other than the theater, the rest of the square was relatively deserted, since most of the shops closed around five. Miss Annemarie’s and the Dixie Bean were probably the only things open, but there was no one on the sidewalks, and no sign of the little group that had just left the theater.
I jogged across the street, heading for the center of the square. The statue of Adolphus Bridgeforth, one of the founders of Pine Grove, glowered down at me. The Pine Grove Betterment Society, led by Saylor, had raised the money for it about five years back. I knew that if I looked closely, I’d see wards etched into the stone base. Saylor had been very thorough where David’s protection was concerned.
Next to him, the little fountain splashed away merrily, the night wind blowing a few stray droplets on me. Every nerve in my body felt tense and coiled, the hair on the back of my neck standing up.
You’re a Paladin, I reminded myself. You have all kinds of kickass abilities and she doesn’t.
But then I remembered how easily she’d gotten the jump on me before.
To Adolphus’s right, there was a little flower garden surrounded by a tiny white picket fence. A bronze plaque on the fence said that the garden had been planted by the Pine Grove Betterment Society just last year. Sure enough, as I got closer, I could see tiny golden wards on all the fence posts.
Giving another quick glance around to make sure no one was looking, I reached down and, easy as picking a flower, plucked a stake from the fence. The hole glared at me accusingly, and I slipped the pointed piece of wood behind me as I backed away from the center of the square. I hated vandalism more than anything, but I needed a weapon. Besides, Saylor had put that fence up, so when you thought about it, the fence was practically mine.
In a way.
Keeping the stake low at my side, I headed back toward the theater. There was a parking lot behind it. Maybe that was where Blythe had gone. As I hurried in that direction, a tiny voice in my head kept up a running commentary. So if you find her, you’re simply going to stab her to death with a piece of wood in the parking lot? And hope no one sees? Because tiny girls getting staked behind the Royale Cinema seems like something people would notice.
But if I got rid of—no, killed, I needed to say killed—Blythe now, all of this ended. No Cotillion showdown, no chance of my whole town being wiped out, no chance of David dying. This was my chance.
Or it would have been, if she had been in the parking lot.
There were a few people straggling in, but both of the movies had already started, so the parking lot was more or less empty. Still, I kept my stake hidden at my side as I walked the rows of cars, ducking down to look under them, even peering in the windows.
No Blythe.
When I got to the last car on the row, I sighed, nearly letting the fence post drop from my hand. This was stupid. It probably hadn’t even been her. Maybe the stress of the past few weeks was finally catching up with me, and I was going crazy in addition to becoming a Paladin.
I should go back into the theater, find Ryan, and figure out some way to salvage this evening. The fence post clattered to the ground, and I turned back to the theater.
And suddenly I heard the sound of running feet. As I whipped around, I could have sworn I saw brown hair disappearing around the corner, back toward the square.
Dropping to my knees, I scrambled for the fence post. Not caring who saw me dashing through downtown Pine Grove wielding a damn stake, I took off after her. My boots clicked hard on the pavement, and I could hear the wind and my own blood rushing in my ears.
Was there a flash of movement over by Miss Annemarie’s? I ran in that direction.
But just as I reached the tea room, the door swung open. I didn’t even have time to register that someone was coming out of that door before plowing directly into him.
Something warm splashed all over me, and for one horrifying, dizzying moment, I thought I’d plunged my stake into an innocent person’s heart. But no, I’d managed to lower it at the last second, and I could hear the wood clatter harmlessly to the pavement. As for the hot liquid currently seeping into my cashmere sweater, from the smell, it was the crab bisque that my Aunt May was so fond of.
My breath was sawing in and out of my lungs, burning with the sharp night air, as I stumbled back from . . . David.