Lady Renegades

  ALSO BY RACHEL HAWKINS

  Rebel Belle

  Miss Mayhem

  G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS

  an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  375 Hudson Street

  New York, NY 10014

  Copyright © 2016 by Rachel Hawkins.

  Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

  G. P. Putnam’s Sons is a registered trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.

  eBook ISBN 978-0-698-17398-9

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Cover image: Cornelia James;

  Shutterstock/Cosma • Cover design by Theresa Evangelista

  Version_1

  Contents

  Also by Rachel Hawkins

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Acknowledgments

  For Jen Besser and Ari Lewin, my Publishing Paladins.

  Prologue

  Outside Jackson, Mississippi

  HIS HEAD HURT.

  It always hurt these days and had for a long time now, long enough that David couldn’t tell whether it was getting worse or whether he’d just been hurting for so long that it was starting to become unbearable.

  As always on nights like these, nights when he was in pain and felt like he didn’t fit in his own skin, he thought about Harper. About Pine Grove and everything he’d left behind. It had been the right thing to do, he was sure of that. Staying in Pine Grove, making Harper give up so much of her life to protect him, it only would’ve hurt her in the long run. Not just physically—although God knew there was a risk of that—but everything. Her whole life, spent making sure he was safe? No, David couldn’t let her do that. So the easiest thing to do, seemed to him, was to take himself out of it altogether. Then, if someone came after him, Harper wouldn’t have to deal with it.

  It had seemed like such a good idea at the time.

  Even Ryan and Bee, the two people who cared about Harper just as much as he did, had thought it was for the best. They helped him get away, and David had thought . . . well, he hadn’t really been sure. Getting away had been the main point, and he’d just figured he would work out exactly what to do next once he was gone.

  That was before the headaches—and the visions—got worse.

  Before he started having the sense that he was headed somewhere. Or being pulled in a direction. Every day he got behind the wheel of his car and drove, but he couldn’t say where he was going. Only that he knew to turn here or to take this exit.

  It should’ve scared him, probably, but instead it just felt like a relief.

  David sunk farther into the booth, trying to make himself eat another bite of his burger. That was the other thing: with his head pounding all the time, eating had gotten harder, and his clothes were fitting a little bit looser. He didn’t have any extra weight to lose, so he was probably looking gaunt, but since he avoided his reflection in the mirror these days, he couldn’t confirm how bad he must look.

  “You, uh, you need something else?”

  The only other person in this fast-food place was a cashier, and she’d come around from the counter a few minutes ago, sweeping up old fries and straw wrappers. She was about his age, seventeen or so, and had straight brown hair that fell to her collarbones. She didn’t look like Harper that much—God knew, Harper wouldn’t have been caught dead in the orange polyester uniform the girl was wearing—but her eyes were a similar shade of green, and seeing them made David’s chest ache in addition to his head. So he made himself smile at the girl even though he was pretty sure it must look like a grimace.

  “I’m good,” he said, and for the first time realized how rusty his voice had gotten. He didn’t know whether that was from how little he’d spoken to anyone over the past weeks, or whether it was from all the screaming he was doing in his sleep. Either way, he sounded raspy and unfamiliar to his own ears, and from the way the girl backed up just a little bit, he knew it must sound awful to her, too.

  Or maybe she was weirded out by the sunglasses.

  It was bright inside the restaurant, sure, but not bright enough for the dark lenses covering David’s eyes. He wore them there all the time now. By the time he’d left Pine Grove, his eyes had become bright orbs of golden light, and in his experience, that tended to freak people out. The sunglasses didn’t completely disguise the light, of course, but they made it easier for people to think that they were just seeing something reflected off the lenses. People preferred to believe the least creepy explanation for a thing.

  David had figured that out, too.

  The girl went back to sweeping, and David went back to eating and trying to keep visions at bay.

  Once, he’d needed help to see the future. Needed guidance and the magic of his Mage and his Paladin to see things clearly. Now he couldn’t seem to stop seeing things, and every day was a struggle to keep himself rooted in the present. And the worst part of it was, he had no idea what the visions even meant. Weird, fragmented images came to him—things on fire, blood on the front of a yellow dress—but sometimes, he got the sense the images were coming from another time and place. There was the dream he kept having of men on horseback, plus the one of men in robes in caves, the smell of incense heavy in the air.

  There were times David wondered if he wasn’t having visions at all, but simply going insane. Given how violent and awful his visions had gotten, sometimes he thought insanity might be the better option.

  “Um, we’re about to close?”

  Glancing up, David saw the cashier standing near the counter, her fingers wrapped around the broom handle. Her hair was falling in her eyes, and she was shifting her weight from one foot to the other, the soles of her sneakers squeaking against the linoleum floor. This was another thing David had learned in the past two months. People were scared of him. It was probably more than the voice or the sunglasses: People could sense that there was something wr
ong with him, that he was something way past normal.

  “Right,” he said, gathering up the remnants of his meal, squashing his fries in the paper that had wrapped around his burger. Sliding out of the booth, he grabbed his tray and walked over to the trash can, pretending not to notice the way the girl moved closer to the counter.

  It had been stupid to come here. Not only had he wasted money he really didn’t have on food he barely ate, but now he’d freaked the girl out, and he hated that. David wished he could say it was because he didn’t like scaring people, but the truth was, he didn’t like being reminded of what he was. The more time he spent alone, the weirder he felt when he had to join the public.

  It felt worse now than it had before. Back in Pine Grove, he might have been an Oracle, he might have had the glowing eyes and the occasional vision, but he’d had friends, too.

  He’d had Harper.

  Then there was the other part. The other truth. The reason he was spending so much time alone these days, no matter how many times he told himself that he couldn’t be sure what had happened those other nights . . . to those other girls.

  Hands shaking, he tipped the remains of his dinner into the trash, already planning out what he would do when he got back to the motel that night. Put the few things he had back in his bag, see if there was any extra change around the vending machine, and get the heck out of—

  Then the pain came on, fast and immediate, and so intense he felt like he might actually die from it, like you couldn’t hurt this much and not die.

  Blood on a yellow dress, the taste of salt on his lips. More blood? Tears?

  As if from a distance, David heard the clatter of the tray hitting the ground and gritted his teeth against the sudden fire inside his brain. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see the girl moving closer. Even though he’d scared her, she was still coming to help him, concern overriding her fear.

  People were better than you’d think they’d be. Another lesson from the road, and one that broke his heart now.

  She was just at his elbow when the golden light shot out of his fingertips, sending her reeling back, her broom flying from her fingers to smack against the glass doors, her lips parting with both the shock of her fall and the jolt of power David had just sent her way.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, and his voice was his and not his at the same time. “I didn’t mean to.”

  He said that every time.

  Chapter 1

  “IT’S WRONG that I’m kind of hoping someone starts to drown, isn’t it?”

  From her spot in the lifeguard chair next to mine, my best friend, Bee Franklin, took a sip of Diet Coke, her shoulders lifting underneath the straps of her bright red bathing suit. “It would be if I thought you really meant it,” she answered, and I sighed, pushing my sunglasses back up the bridge of my nose.

  It was mid-July, the weather was End of Days hot, and the large rectangle of cool turquoise water shimmering beyond my chair looked like it would feel amazing. But, if I were being honest, I’d have to admit that wasn’t the only reason I wished someone might get into some aquatic danger.

  I was bored.

  Turns out, being a superhero with no one to save is something of a bummer. I was a Paladin, a kind of magically charged knight, my sworn duty to protect the Oracle. Only problem was, the Oracle was my ex (well, one of my exes) and he’d taken off nearly two months ago, leaving me with no boy, no Oracle, and a whole summer with nothing to do stretching out in front of me. I’d never really liked summer vacation. I was always happiest doing things, being involved in projects, and throwing myself into as many school activities as I could manage.

  Sure, there were other things to do in the summer. I’d tried camp when I was younger, but that hadn’t worked out. (I might have made a good counselor at some point, but I was not cut out to be a camper. Bug spray, no private showers, and outdoor “plumbing”? Yeah, no.) I’d helped my mom teach Vacation Bible School for the past few years, but that was mostly grabbing glue and glitter from the supply closet or reading the occasional picture book about Jonah and the whale. No, what I needed for this summer—the last one before high school ended—was something meaningful, something . . . distracting.

  Hence the lifeguard gig.

  Blowing my whistle, I pointed at a little towheaded boy currently dunking a towheaded girl I assumed was his sister. “No horseplay!” I called out, and, once I’d decided he looked appropriately abashed, I settled back into my chair.

  It made sense, this summer job. While I was supposed to use my powers to protect the Oracle, with him absent and my powers still present, I figured I could at least put them to good use. Plus the Pine Grove Recreation Club was desperate for lifeguards this year, and once I’d passed the test (I’d actually had to fake being tired during the part where I treaded water holding a brick over my head), the job was mine, complete with red bathing suit, shiny whistle, and a tall chair where I could sit all day, scanning the pool for anyone in distress and trying not to think too much about my own problems. Like the fact that while most bad breakups went something like “He sent me a text,” mine was “He literally ran away and nearly blew up the entire town to do it.”

  So, yeah, I needed a distraction, hence the lifeguard job. A solid plan, but I’d been working here for over three weeks now, and not once had I needed to dive into the pool to save anyone. Which meant that I’d basically sentenced myself to a summer sweltering to death in a tall chair with only my thoughts for company.

  Well, my thoughts and Bee’s.

  She’d applied for a lifeguard position here, too, both to keep me company and because, thanks to a tricky spell back in the fall, she had Paladin powers, too. So really, this was the most guarded pool in the entire state of Alabama. Maybe the most guarded pool in the entire country . . . but no one had the decency to drown even a little bit.

  Honestly.

  Of course, spending all day with Bee had drawbacks. Were it not for Bee and Ryan, my ex-boyfriend and Bee’s current one, David never could have escaped town in the first place. And both seemed more relieved about their lives being off the magical hook than sorry about what they’d done.

  I could smell hamburgers grilling at the Snak Shak, coupled with the coconut scent of my sunblock and the sweet syrup from hundreds of melting snow cones. In other words, the scent of every summer since I was a little girl. This was what I’d wanted for months now—some normalcy. So why did I feel all restless and sad?

  I jumped as a few cold drops of liquid hit my arm and glanced over to see Bee with the bright pink straw from her Diet Coke still pursed between her lips. “Ew,” I said, brushing off the soda she’d sprayed at me.

  “You’re thinking too hard again,” Bee said, setting the sweaty can in the cup holder attached to her chair. “There’s, like, a little black cloud over your head, Eeyore-style.”

  I smiled despite myself. “There is not. I’m just, you know, focused on the pool.” I nodded at the water, but Bee just shook her head.

  “No, you’ve got your patented Harper Price Brood Face on.” She leaned a little closer then, the rickety chair groaning slightly. “Anything with David?”

  Our powers and whole “sacred bond” thing meant that I was supposed to feel when David was in danger. But there’d been nothing over the past weeks, not even the slightest hint that he was anything less than okay. I didn’t even have the sense that he was all that far away. Usually, when we were apart, I felt this ache, almost like a phantom limb or something, and there hadn’t been any of that.

  But then there was another part of me that worried that my not sensing anything might mean he was . . .

  No, I didn’t want to think about that.

  So I turned back to Bee and shrugged. “Nothing.”

  She frowned, and I bit back that impulse again, the one that wanted me to remind her that if she and Ryan hadn’t helped David l
eave town, I’d know exactly what was going on with him.

  The rest of the afternoon wore on the way they all did, slowly and with absolutely nothing of note happening (other than some little kid eating both a hot dog and three snow cones, which meant I’d had to call the janitorial people to clean up rainbow-colored vomit, ugh). The pool had fairly informal hours, opening usually around nine, and closing at “sunset.” By this point in the summer, that meant sometime after eight p.m.

  This evening, most people had trickled out the gates earlier, probably wanting to get home in time for supper, and for once, I didn’t have to round up any stragglers in the changing rooms. Bee and I threw white terry-cloth cover-ups over our bathing suits and pulled the umbrellas off our chairs, packing them up in the storage room by the Snak Shak.

  “Another successful day, guarding the heck out of lives,” Bee said as we made our way to the parking lot, bags over our shoulders. We took turns driving each other to and from work, and today, Bee had played chauffeur, so it was her white Acura we headed toward, parked sensibly under a streetlight. Overhead, the sky was striped bright pink and orange, studded with the occasional dark purple cloud. It was the perfect summer evening, but I still felt like my feet were dragging on the hot asphalt.

  “And another day tomorrow,” I said to Bee, shifting my bag to my other shoulder. “And then another one after that, and then—lucky us!—another one after that. A pie-eating contest where the prize is more pie.”

  Bee paused in front of the driver’s side door, her keys in her hand. Her blond hair was curling from the water and the humidity of the day, her skin much tanner than mine. “Well, that’s . . . depressing.”

  With a sigh, I tugged at the end of my braid where it hung over my collarbone. “I’m sorry. I’m the angstiest lately, I know. I really ought to start wearing black and listening to tragic songs. Maybe start a poetry club.”

  That made Bee smile, but didn’t erase the concern in her brown eyes. “It hasn’t been easy for you lately,” she observed, and I felt a really bitter comment—When is it ever easy for me?—leap to the tip of my tongue.