“Harper, what’s going on?” Ryan shouted, lifting one hand to shade his eyes. “Why isn’t he saying anything?”

I could only shake my head, and then there was this feeling, almost like a surge of power. I felt my hair blow back, and swore I saw the ground ripple. Bee gave a little scream, and when I turned toward her, I saw a small section of grass was on fire.

Bee rushed over to it, stomping out the small flames with her booted foot.

David’s eyes swung to me, but they weren’t his eyes, not even a little bit. He didn’t say anything, but I could feel something happening. He was seeing something, something to do with me. I couldn’t say how I knew it. It was more like I felt it, this certainty that whatever vision he was locked into, it involved me.

I thought again about my knife at his throat, the bright red of his blood when I’d jerked my arm, and felt my stomach roil.

There was another pulse of power, and the ground shuddered, a crack springing up a few feet away from me, snaking through the earth, sending up clumps of grass and red dirt. It was close enough to Bee that she had to scramble backward, tripping as the ground gave way underneath one shoe.

“David!” I screamed.

The power went out of him all at once, and he sagged to the ground so suddenly that neither Ryan nor I had a chance to catch him. David fell in a heap, and all three of us moved forward, but I got to him first, resting my palm against his cheek. “David? David, wake up.”

His eyes slowly blinked open, still bright, but nowhere near as blinding, and without thinking, I gave a soft cry of relief and leaned forward to kiss his cheek.

“See?” I told him. “You’re fine, it’s all fine.”

But it wasn’t, and all four of us knew it. That much power... It felt like everything Saylor had warned me about, and I could see just how much it had taken out of David.

If I’d thought the ride to the golf course was awkward, that was nothing compared to the ride home. David sat on my left, his knees drawn up tight, his head resting against the window. I was holding his glasses, and he kept his eyes closed the whole way back. I could still see the light burning behind his eyelids, though, and his whole frame shook with occasional tremors.

“Should we take him to Alexander’s?” Ryan asked.

“No,” David replied. His voice sounded so thin and weak that it broke my heart. “I want to go home.”