“Maybe there’s something you could work into an aftershave?” I suggested. “Or that gross boy body spray they’re always advertising?”
He sniffed, shoulders rising and falling. “I don’t wear that crap,” he reminded me, and I nodded.
“I know. Trust me, you wouldn’t have lasted long as my boyfriend if you had.”
That made Ryan smile again, and he looked over at me with squinted eyes. “What is it you call David? That word he hates?”
“Boyfie,” I answered, and Ryan laughed.
“Yeah, you wouldn’t have lasted long as my girlfriend if you’d said that.” He was still smiling, just the littlest bit, but then he looked back at Mary Beth and all the humor left his face. “She’ll be okay, right?”
I leaned in closer to Mary Beth. Her eyes met mine, and I could tell she was trying to focus. “Mary Beth?”
Another blink, but nothing else. Next to me, Ryan stood up, chafing his palms against his thighs. “Oh God,” he groaned. “I’ve lobotomized her. I’ve lobotomized my girlfriend with a—an effing potion.”
He didn’t say “effing,” but I didn’t bother admonishing him. We were in F-word territory for sure.
Crossing the room in two long strides, Ryan moved to his desk and snatched up the little pot of lip balm. “Screw this stuff,” he said, and before I could stop him, he’d opened the window and thrown it out as hard as he could.
Now I shot to my feet. “Ryan!” I said sharply. “So you screwed up using it once. That doesn’t mean you won’t use it again. And what if someone else finds it?” Moving to the window, I ducked my head out, even though I knew I wasn’t going to be able to see it.
“I suck at this,” Ryan moaned, dropping his head into his hands as he sat down heavily on the bed. “I screwed up the spell with Bee, and now I’ve screwed up with MB, too.”
I don’t think I’d ever heard Ryan admit to being bad at something in his entire life. I wasn’t sure he actually had been bad at anything in his entire life, now that I thought about it. Things had always come pretty easily to Ryan. It was one of the few things we’d had in common, and now, as I remembered how awful and confused I’d felt when I’d first learned I was a Paladin, I couldn’t help but sympathize.
“Hey.” My hand hovered over his shoulder as he slumped forward, elbows on his knees. Was I allowed to hug him? Even in a totally platonic, comforting way? I wasn’t a hundred percent sure, so I did what seemed safest and patted his back a few times before clasping my hands in my lap. “You don’t suck. You just don’t know all the ropes yet.”
Ryan dropped his hands from his face, swiveling his head to look at me. “Is this something where you can know the ropes, Harper? Because I’m pretty sure magic and potions and—and Oracles are always gonna be pretty effing confusing to me.”
Considering the fact that I still had no idea when the Peirasmos was starting, that wasn’t exactly something I could answer. Instead, I gave him another pat and said, “We’ll all figure it out together.”
Ryan seemed to sigh with his whole body, his hair ruffling with the long breath he blew out. “You say that all the time. ‘We’ll work it out.’ ‘Everything will be okay.’”
Stung, I dropped my hand from his back again. “We will. And it will be.”
Ryan straightened, watching me over steepled fingers. “You’ve never been able to admit that you were in over your head.”
I opened my mouth, but Ryan raised one hand. “No, I know you’re going to say it isn’t true, but it is, Harper. You know it. Only this time, it’s not school dances and leadership committees and student government issues you’re trying to balance. It’s huge, life-or-death stuff, and you’re still pretending it’s another project. People are going to get hurt.”
His gaze drifted to Mary Beth, slumped next to him. “People have already gotten hurt.”
I moved over to Ryan’s bookcase. It held a few sports biographies, but the shelves were mostly stacked with video games and a couple of picture frames. Once they’d held pictures of me and Ryan, but now he and Mary Beth smiled out at me from behind the glass. But in one picture frame, behind a photo of the two of them with their arms around each other on Mary Beth’s parents’ porch, I could make out a bright turquoise corner. That had been the backdrop for last year’s Spring Fling. The theme had been Under the Sea. Ryan and I had gone together. Apparently, Ryan had shoved a picture of them on top of one of the two of us.
I fiddled with the frame now, half tempted to open it and see if I was right. “You think I don’t know that?” I said at last, not looking at him. “Saylor Stark died the night of Cotillion. Bee was kidnapped. And now the Ephors suddenly want to be besties, and I’m apparently going to face some kind of trials, but I have no idea what they could be. And if I don’t do them, we spend the rest of our lives trying not to get killed.”
My voice broke on the last word, and from behind me, I heard Ryan sigh.
“I’m sorry, Harper,” he said softly. And then he gave a little huff of laughter. “It’s weird, my impulse is to hug you, but I don’t know if that’s something we can do anymore.”
Turning around, I smiled and put the picture back on the shelf. “I know what you mean. But we should probably do without hugging.”
Ryan was still wringing his hands in front of him, glancing over at Mary Beth. “It’s gotta wear off eventually.”
“I’m sure it will,” I said, even though I wasn’t exactly. Saylor had used that stuff a lot, but I’d never asked questions about how it worked. After she’d died, we’d handed all her various potions and elixirs over to Ryan without thinking. He’d inherited Saylor’s skills, but that didn’t necessarily mean he knew exactly how to use every little tool she’d had. Not for the first time, I wished that she were here.
Mary Beth’s eyes started to flutter a little more, and Ryan was off the bed like a shot, kneeling in front of her. “MB?”
“My head,” she slurred, her fingers going to her temple. Her dark red hair swung above her shoulders, and the freckles across the bridge of her nose stood out against her pale skin.