I thought David might argue with him some more—I knew I wanted to—but instead, he started off in the direction Alexander had indicated.

At my side, I felt Ryan gently take my elbow. “Come on, Harper,” he said in a low voice.

The hallway was lit with pretty little sconces covered with tiny burgundy shades, casting pools of warm light on the hardwood, but all I could see in my head was Bee. Bee, laughing with me at cheerleading practice; Bee, handing me lip gloss; Bee, tears streaming down her face as she’d kept me from killing Blythe.

Bee, vanishing right in front of me.

I’d wanted answers about the fight at the frat party tonight, but now, the only thing I cared about was knowing if Bee was here.

Alexander opened a doorway off to the left, ushering us into what looked like some kind of study. The decor here was even more extravagant: antique furniture, Tiffany lamps, carpet that felt lush and deep underfoot.

And three chairs sitting across from a gleaming mahogany desk.

The three of us sat, David between me and Ryan, while Alexander sank into the much larger chair behind the desk. “Well,” he said at last, fixing all of us with that smile again. “Here we are. Tea?”

There was a pot beside his elbow, I saw now, steam spilling from the spout, but tea was the last thing on my mind. “No,” I said, sitting up as straight as I could. “What we want are answers. Why are we here, what the heck did you have to do with David’s vision tonight, and where is Bee?”

Alexander flicked his dark gold hair out of his eyes, frowning as though I had disappointed him. “So we’re to skip the pleasantries, I see.”

“Pleasantries?” Ryan sat back in his chair, propping his ankle on his opposite knee. “I only came into this thing at the end last year, but didn’t y’all try to kill David?”

Alexander tilted his head in acknowledgment. “I understand how that may have looked, but we were never trying to harm David, merely to remove his Paladin from the equation.”

“Yeah, that’s not really helping on the trust front,” I said, suppressing a shudder.

Alexander ignored me. “We sent our Mage to perform Alaric’s ritual on the Oracle in the hopes that he would not prove as useless as we’d feared.”

Alexander turned back to David and spread his hands wide. “And now look at you! Everything we’d hoped for and more. Powerful enough to create Paladins, stable enough to have clear, helpful visions. All in all, the entire process went even better than we’d hoped.”

I couldn’t help but grit my teeth as I thought of Saylor, bleeding to death in the kitchen. Of Bee, vanishing before my eyes.