Chapter Eighteen

TAMANI WATCHED IN HORROR AS LAUREL FELL. HE scanned her body for an injury, but saw nothing. “David,” he said, urgently running to the trunk and jamming his key in, “pick her up, put her in the backseat.”

“We shouldn’t move her,” David said, crouching beside her.

“What are you going to do?” Tamani said, his temper flaring. “Call an ambulance? The most important thing right now is that we get her away from here. Put her in the car.”

David lifted her tentatively and put her beside Ryan, who was still out. “What now?” he asked, looking at Tamani.

Tamani stared at his supply belt, sitting, waiting for him, in the trunk. He could hear Shar in his head, urging him to pick it up, to follow the trolls. It was what his training dictated. But even as he reached out his hand to take it, he knew he couldn’t. Laurel was unconscious in the back of his car. He could no more leave her in this condition than he could tear off his own arm. With a growl he slammed the trunk closed. “Get in,” Tamani snapped at David.

He slipped into the driver’s seat and held his breath as he clicked the ignition. The second the engine caught, Tamani pressed on the gas, wanting Laurel safe in her home as soon as possible.

“When we get there I want everyone in,” Tamani said sharply, only moments away from Laurel’s driveway. “We’ll figure things out from there. I’ll take Yuki,” he added in a softer voice, remembering that although her eyes were closed, she could still be listening.

He bumped up on the curb and killed the engine. Chelsea carefully shifted Yuki over to Tamani and ran to open the front door. Tamani slipped Yuki into his arms, curling her against his chest, watching David out of the corner of his eye with more than a little jealousy as he did the same with Laurel. Chelsea had managed to tie her shirt around Yuki’s head in such a way that it wouldn’t slip off and Yuki would be allowed to believe that her secret was still safe.

By the time they reached the door Chelsea was already leading Laurel’s dad, clad only in a pair of drawstring pants and a T-shirt, out toward the wrecked car, presumably to help with Ryan.

“What happened?” Laurel’s mother asked in a panicky tone from the doorway.

“We hit a deer,” Tamani said before anyone else could answer. He stared meaningfully at Laurel’s mom until her look of skepticism melted away, and she nodded at him in understanding. She gestured to an armchair where Tamani set Yuki while David laid Laurel on the couch. Laurel’s mom immediately crouched down next to her, stroking her hair.

Laurel’s dad and Chelsea showed up in the doorway, steadying Ryan between them. He was awake again, but still quite disoriented. “Do you have a car?” Tamani asked Chelsea.

She shook her head. “David picked me up earlier.”

“What about Ryan?”

She nodded, almost convulsively. “His truck is here.”

“Get his keys; take him home.”

He started to turn, but her hand closed firmly around his upper arm. “What am I supposed to tell his parents?”

“We hit a deer.”

“We really shouldn’t be moving him around after a car accident. We should go to the hospital. He may have a concussion.”

“Whatever you need to do,” Tamani said, leaning in close to her ear, “as long as they all know we hit a deer.” He paused to slip out of his button-down shirt, which he draped around Chelsea’s bare shoulders as he looked her in the eye. “Any girl who has done as much as you have tonight can pull off one more thing for me.”

A smile started to spread across her face and Tamani knew he had said the right thing.

“And I’ll make sure you get completely filled in,” he added, knowing it was the last thing holding her back.

Chelsea nodded, then let Laurel’s dad hold on to Ryan while she pushed her arms through the sleeves of Tamani’s shirt and hurriedly buttoned up. As they helped Ryan out to his truck, Tamani turned to the remaining people and tried to assess the damage. Laurel was still unconscious, but Yuki was surveying the room from beneath lowered lids.

Tamani stared at her while she was distracted. The moment after Laurel had fallen, Tamani had glanced up at Yuki, and she had been staring at Laurel. There had been a gleam in Yuki’s eyes, something Tamani didn’t like. Maybe he was being paranoid, but it seemed like coincidence followed Yuki the same way it followed Klea. And coincidence was never something Tamani trusted.

The trolls had demanded “the girl.” But which one did they mean? Not for the first time, he wished he could just work his Enticement on Yuki and ask his questions. But his secret identity was one of the few advantages they had over her—assuming it was still secret at all. Tonight had certainly given him reason to doubt. Still, just in case, he couldn’t risk losing that advantage in exchange for a few minutes of question-and-answer that might not even lead anywhere.

When Yuki glanced up at him, Tamani immediately put on a mask of concern and dropped to the ground by her side. “Are you okay?”

Yuki smiled and Tamani forced himself to smile back. “Better now,” she said, her voice a little scratchy. She placed a hand to her head, still wrapped in Chelsea’s shirt. “What happened?”

Tamani was hesitant to answer. “I ran into a deer,” he said finally. “You hit your head.” He leaned forward, determined to push her a little while she was still disoriented. “Chelsea wrapped it up—do you want me to look at it?”