Blythe snorted and then winced. “Obviously. And since I’m clearly not an Oracle”— she jerked her head at David—“why don’t you use the process of elimination?”
“You’re a Mage,” David said, mimicking my pose. “Like my— Like Saylor Stark.”
Blythe surged against the cords holding her, eyes suddenly fierce. “No, I am nothing like Saylor Stark. I do my damn job. I am loyal to the people who gave me this power.”
“The Ephors?” I asked as David said, “How long have you been a Mage?”
We glared at each other, and Blythe’s gaze flicked back and forth between us. The corner of her mouth lifted in a smirk, cracking the dried blood under her nose. “Which one of you am I supposed to answer first?”
After a moment, David rolled his eyes. “Her,” he said, gesturing toward me. “Answer her first.”
But instead of answering, Blythe kept looking at the two of us. “How old are you guys?”
“Seventeen,” we answered in unison, and Blythe made a kind of gurgling chuckle. Seriously, I never wanted to break someone’s nose again, even if they were trying to stab me. It had some majorly gross aftereffects.
“Me, too,” she said. While she’d seemed young, she hadn’t looked that young. David glanced over at me, and although telepathy wasn’t part of the Paladin-Oracle bond, I still knew what he was thinking: How effed up is this?
Tightening the cardigan around my hand, I stared Blythe down. “You haven’t answered my question.”
Heaving a sigh, Blythe leaned back in the chair. “Yes, the Ephors,” she said, and while she didn’t add “you idiot,” it was clearly implied. Then she looked at David. “And as for your question, about six months.”
“How do they find you?” I found myself asking. Suddenly, I was really regretting not asking Saylor more about all of this. It would’ve been nice to know that Mages could be just as homicidal and dangerous as Paladins in their own way.
Blythe looked up at me, tilting her face. “You know those tests you take in school? The things that judge aptitude for certain careers?”
“I worship those tests,” I said, leaning back against one corner of the desk.
A lock of hair had fallen into Blythe’s eyes, and she huffed out a breath. “Me, too. There are questions woven into that thing that alert the Ephors to people who have Mage potential.”
David stepped back a little, nearly tripping over a jar of pens. It must have fallen during the fight with Blythe. Righting himself, David rubbed one hand over his mouth, studying Blythe. “But a Mage’s power can be passed on, right?”
Sighing, Blythe rolled her neck. “Yes, but it helps to find someone with a few natural abilities if you can. If the Ephors have time, which they did in my case. The Mage before me knew she was dying for months. Plenty of time to prepare.”
Over Blythe’s head, David and I locked eyes. That was an interesting little fact. I wondered if it worked the same way for Paladins. But before I could ask, Blythe jerked her head in my direction and said, “Now would the two of you get on with the killing me part already?”
“We’re not going to kill you,” I heard myself say, and when Blythe looked up at me, eyebrows raised, I hastily added, “I mean, not yet. So long as you tell us what we need to know.”
The letter opener was near the door, so I picked up the nearest weapon I could lay hands on: a stapler.
I lifted it, going for “menacing.” I admit it lacked a certain elegance, but hey. It was worth a shot.
David placed his hand on my arm and pushed it back down.
“What?”
“Just . . . that’s embarrassing for all of us,” he replied.
Blythe gave another one of those laughs that made me shudder. “This is such a freaking mess,” she muttered before fixing me with her dark eyes. “You don’t even know what’s really going on here, do you? What’s your name, Paladin?”
“Harper Price,” I said, good manners automatically kicking in over sense.
“Do you want to give her your address, too?” David muttered, but Blythe’s gaze stayed on me.
“Well, listen to me, Harper Price. Me, the people I work for . . . we don’t want to hurt David. We want to help him.”
I opened my mouth, but David replied before I could say anything. “Help me?” His voice was tight with anger, and he reached up to tug at his hair, never a good sign. “You killed the man who was sworn to protect me.”
“That wasn’t me—” Blythe said, but David acted like she hadn’t spoken.
“You tried to run me over,” he said, eyes wide behind his glasses. I could see a flush creeping up his neck.
Scowling, Blythe struggled a little against the cords. “Okay, that was me, but technically I was after her—”
“And then, to top it off, you lure me out of town and try to stab Harper right in front of me.”
By now, David was nearly shouting, and again, I wondered why no one was running in. Surely we’d made enough noise to bring someone up here. I mean, this was a library, for goodness’ sake.
“If you’re trying to help me, why would you—or the people you work for—do any of that crap?” David rocked back on his heels, waiting for an answer, and I would’ve felt sorry for Blythe had it not been for the whole stabbing thing. Being on the other end of a David Stark Glare was a truly unpleasant thing.
Blythe sat up as straight as the cords would allow, leaning forward. “Because,” she said, clenching her teeth, “those people—that janitor, your so-called aunt—they were holding you back, David. You have a destiny, and I’m here to help you fulfill it.”
Chapter 22
THERE WAS a pause. In it, I could hear the ticking of the little clock above Blythe’s desk, but nothing else. No sounds from downstairs, nothing from the parking lot outside. Finally, David took off his glasses and scrubbed a hand up and down his face. “I am so effing sick of that word,” he muttered, and I found myself nodding. “Destiny” was not my favorite word these days either.
“The Ephors wanted to kill David,” I told Blythe. “Because of his . . . boy parts and stuff.”
David lifted his head at that, and I think he mouthed, Really? at me, but I was watching Blythe.
She held my stare, grinning, and between the blood, her ridiculously young face, and the Lilly Pulitzer, it was more than a little unsettling. “So you’re not totally ignorant, then. Awesome. Yes, at first the Ephors thought that David’s ‘boy parts’ would make him a bad Oracle. After all, the only one they’d ever had didn’t exactly work out for them.”
“Alaric,” David said, polishing his glasses on the bottom of his shirt.
“The very same,” Blythe said with a little nod. “So you can imagine why they were very anti–boy Oracle for a while there. But”— Blythe’s smile went from slightly unhinged to smug, but still seriously unhinged—“that was before they found me.”
David still had his glasses dangling from his fingers, but at that, he put them back on and squinted at her. “What does that mean?”
“No offense or anything, but Saylor Stark has nothing on me as far as the alchemy game goes,” Blythe said, settling back into the chair. For the first time, I honestly believed she was seventeen. “I mean, Saylor can do a mind-control potion on what? One, two people at a time, max? I’ve got this whole freaking library under my thumb right now.” Smirking, she tried to cross her legs, but the way we’d tied her to the chair made that impossible. She settled for bringing her knees tighter together. “I got a job here as a volunteer, and every Friday, they do this big potluck thing. One potion in a batch of brownies, and bam. I have an office, an official e-mail account . . .”