“We can’t take her,” I said to Ryan, even as he clicked the button to unlock the back doors. “She’ll try to stop us, she’ll—”

“No, I won’t,” Bee replied, sliding into the backseat. When she looked at me, her expression was pleading. “I had no choice, Harper, but now that he’s gone—”

“We don’t know that,” I snapped back, even though she was probably right. Whatever the three of them had planned, it had worked.

“Where do you want to go?” Ryan asked me, and I closed my eyes, taking a deep breath and trying to sense where David was. Just outside of town, I thought. Close, still. I could find him, I could talk to him, I could get him to see that this wasn’t the solution.

“Head toward the city limits,” I told Ryan. “He’ll be going for the highway; we might be able to catch up.”

Ryan started the ignition, pulling out of the parking lot.

“When?” I asked as we left the rec center. “When did y’all put this whole plan in motion?”

There was a pause, and I could see Ryan catching Bee’s eye in the rearview mirror. “Four days ago,” he said, and I racked my brain, trying to remember what had happened four days ago.

We’ll think of something, David had said, and I guess he had. Too bad he’d never thought to let me in on this.

“So he comes to you, says he wants your help leaving town,” I clarified, and Bee leaned forward, sticking her head between our shoulders.

“Yes. He chose the night of the pageant because he’d thought you’d be distracted, and he’d hoped that it wouldn’t... I don’t know, trigger your Paladin senses or whatever.”

She looked at me, and I could see the whites of her eyes around her dark irises. “He didn’t think it would be dangerous.”

The car rounded the square just as Adolphus Bridgeforth exploded in a shower of sparks and stonework.

All three of us instinctively ducked, and when a large piece of marble bounced against the hood of Ryan’s car, denting it, he gave a groan.

I wanted to remind him that this was all his fault, his and Bee’s for deciding to handle this without me, but then I remembered how much Ryan loved his SUV, and decided that would be adding insult to injury.

“Well, clearly it is,” I said through clenched teeth, and Ryan took his eyes off the road long enough to flash me a panicked glance.

“What’s happening?”

“Those wards Alexander had you put up, genius. Either David did some kind of crazy spell himself to get rid of them, or this is what they do when they’re broken.” Either option seemed possible at this point, and then something occurred to me.