But it was only a hug. And if I maybe spent a second or two thinking that he actually smelled really nice, or that he was much more solid than he appeared, so what? I was traumatized by all the car chasing/nearly dying.
Luckily, it didn’t last long, but when I pulled back, I noticed that my heart was pounding and there was this weird fluttering sensation.
Butterflies.
No, I thought to myself. Near-death flutters of anxiety. That’s all.
Then I noticed that David was staring out the shattered wind
shield, looking as weirded out as I felt.
Oh my God, what was wrong with me? I could barely muster up the enthusiasm to make out with my own super hot boy
friend, and I was . . . oh dear God, was I blushing? Ugh. Ugh ugh ugh.
Yup, the car chase had clearly addled my brain.
I was about to say something mean to David, you know, to
restore equilibrium, when his eyes got big and he blurted out,
“Bad guys in the pool!”
Huh? Was that like thinking of baseball when—OH! Right! I pushed open my door and leapt out into my yard, taking
deep breaths, hoping the cool air and sight of people drowning
in my pool might get my hormones or whatever back under
control.
I had knocked over Mom’s birdbath. It lay in three big pieces
right under David’s bumper. And then, of course, there was the
giant hole in our fence. But those were really the least of my
problems. This biggest issue was the black Cadillac currently
sinking into my pool.
No sound came from the car, and there didn’t appear to be
any activity inside, so I guessed the impact had knocked out the
driver and any passengers he or she might have had. David was standing next to me, watching the car as the aqua
water bubbled and churned around it. “So are we, um, are we
gonna let them drown?”
I was glad he said that. We.
I had killed Dr. DuPont, and I didn’t feel bad about that. I
couldn’t. He had been seconds from killing me when I jammed
that shoe into his neck. But whoever was in that black car . . .
well, I didn’t know what they’d wanted. My gut told me they had been bad guys, but that still didn’t make me feel great about let
ting them drown in my pool.
I was also more than a little worried about explaining this
whole thing. All evidence of my fight with Dr. DuPont had mysteriously vanished, but I wasn’t sure how whoever had worked
that particular mojo could cover this up. I expected our neighbors
to start congregating in the street any minute now, like they did
when the power went out.
David gave a huge sigh and ran his hands over his hair. “Well,
this is weird. And awful.”
“Yup.” My skirt had gotten twisted around my hips somewhere in all of this, and I started straightening it. Anything to
avoid looking at the pool.
“Who are you?” David asked me for the second time that day.
“International assassin? Ninja? Vampire slayer, maybe?” I lifted my head. “No, I’m a—”
There was a slight popping sound from the pool, and David
and I both turned our attention back to the water.
Which was now empty.
And with one loud crack, the hole in my fence was suddenly
gone. I didn’t even have to look behind me to know that the
screech of metal was David’s car repairing itself. In just a few
seconds, all evidence of the insane car chase, the crash, all of it,
was gone. Then the only sound in my backyard was the singing
of birds and the rustling of the leaves.
“That really happened,” David said softly. “All that shit, it . . .
disappeared, right? I didn’t hallucinate that?”
My adrenaline seemed to vanish as completely as the Cadillac, and it was all I could do not to collapse in a heap on the grass. It was one thing to see the after-effects of stuff disappearing. It was another to see an entire car—with people inside—poof out of
existence.
“Yeah,” I replied. “That happened.”
“Do you know why?”
When I turned to him, David was still staring at the pool, the
fingers of his right hand pressed against his temple again. “No. But . . . David, something seriously weird is going on.” The hand at his temple moved up to tug on his hair as David
made a sound that was part sob, part laugh. “You think? Jesus,
Harper. You . . . you flipped Ryan Bradshaw like a pancake. You
drove a car like Jason Bourne. And then this . . .” He waved his
hand at the water. “I don’t . . . I mean . . .” His words trailed off
and he sank down into a crouch, eyes still fixed on the pool. Walking over to him, I pulled at the shoulder of his jacket.
“Okay, I get that it’s weird, and while I totally respect the need
for a PTSD moment, we really need to talk.”
He eyes moved up to my face, still kind of unfocused. “About
what? Why bad guys are chasing you, and why freaking magic is
apparently real?”
“I actually think the bad guys might be chasing you, but yeah.” David staggered backwards, and sat down heavily on the
grass. As he did, he nearly overturned Mom’s statue of two little
girls reading on a bench, but I was able to grab it before it fell. His sleeves, too short as usual, fell back from his thin wrists
as he rested his elbows on his knees, hands tugging at his hair.
“Hold up, what? You think those guys were after me? Why?” “I don’t know. Do you know why?” I towered over David, my
shadow falling on his body.
Dazed, David shook his head. “I can’t—”
And then I saw it. Something flickered across his face and he
flinched.
“You do know,” I said, yanking him to his feet. “David, what
is it?”
He swallowed heavily. “Nothing. It’s nothing.”
At that moment, I really hated that my superpowers prevented
me from shaking the crap out of him. I settled for balling my fist
up in the front of his shirt and pulling him down to meet my
eyes. “David, look around you. This? This is crazy-sauce. And if
you know anything that could help me figure out why I’m suddenly Wonder Woman, I need to know it right. Effing. Now.” I actually said the word that time, and David’s eyes went so
wide I wondered if that had shocked him more than the disappearing Cadillac.
But he never got a chance to answer me.
“Yoo hoo!” a voice called out from the other side of my fence,
and David and I both went still.
“Is that?” I hissed.
“My Aunt Saylor,” he gulped.
The back gate swung open, and suddenly Saylor Stark was
standing there, a pair of Chanel sunglasses pushed down her
nose as she took in the sight of me, shaking and sweaty, clutching
the front of her nephew’s T-shirt.
“Oh my,” she said, and two syllables had never contained so
much dismay. “What exactly is going on here?”
David and I practically leapt apart as Saylor moved into the
yard, her high heels sinking slightly. The late afternoon sunlight
flashed on her silver hair as well as the silver and turquoise jewelry around her neck. Other than a slight grass stain on the hem
of her beige trousers, she looked as immaculate as ever. “I was over at Anne Beckwith’s, and I thought I saw your car
tearing down the street, David James Stark,” she said, pushing
her sunglasses back into place with one finger. “But I told myself,
‘Of course not, Saylor. David would never drive so irresponsibly.
Besides, he’s meant to be in school right now.’”
She turned her head to me. “As are you, correct, Miss Price?” “Yes ma’am,” I said feebly. “I . . . I felt sick, and David offered
to drive me home.”
I couldn’t see her eyes behind her dark glasses, but I had a feeling they were very cold. “Really?” she said. “How odd. Because
right after I had the thought that David would never, ever drive
his car in such a manner, I noticed that he was not the one behind
the wheel.”
Oh, God. Of all the people to see me doing my Dale Earnhardt, Jr., impression, it had to be Saylor Stark.
“She asked to drive it,” David said, speaking up for the first
time. He still seemed a little out of it, and his voice wasn’t as
strong as normal, but he was still good at thinking on his feet.
“She’d never driven one like it before, so she, uh, wanted to.” As one, the three of us looked over at David’s pathetic Dodge.
Even without its fender and back door mangled, it didn’t exactly
scream, “DRIVE ME.”
Maybe David wasn’t that great at thinking on his feet. And why did he even own a car like that, anyway? Saylor surely could’ve afforded something nicer. It was probably a point of
pride with him, like his weird thrift shop wardrobe.
“I’m sorry, Aunt Saylor,” he continued. “I shouldn’t have
ditched school, but Harper, uh, was sick. And you’re always
going on about good citizenship.”
I tried not to let surprise show on my face. That was actually
a pretty good save. Certainly better than “chicks really want to
get behind the wheel of my Stratus.” And the fact that he’d been
able to do it after nearly getting killed and dealing with what appeared to be magic was impressive.
“Good citizenship doesn’t have to come at the cost of your
own morals, David,” Saylor snapped. “You know better than to
skip class, and I am very disappointed in you. And of course, we
haven’t even gotten into the completely reckless way you two
were driving. I think you and I will be having a long talk when I