Illusions

by Aprilynne Pike

  Ryan moaned and said, “I’m going to have a bruise tomorrow, huh?” He closed his eyes and mumbled something else, but he appeared to be losing consciousness again.

  That sent everyone back into action. Tamani gave Chelsea and Yuki a once-over. “You okay?” he asked Yuki, his tone rushed.

  “She’s fine,” Chelsea said. “She called Klea. But she seems pretty out of it.”

  Tamani sighed. “David,” he said, turning.

  David stood transfixed, eyeing Chelsea’s state of undress. He looked completely mortified.

  “David!” Tamani said louder, touching his shoulder. David looked up with a start, his cheeks flushing red.

  “You guys have to get out of here now, before anyone comes out to see what happened,” Tamani said, whispering so Yuki wouldn’t hear him.

  “Where are you going?” Laurel asked.

  “I have to track them. You have to get to your house.”

  “But the car—”

  “Still works,” he said, pressing his keys into her hands. “Please go. Take them to your house. You’ll all be safe there.” He started to turn and Laurel grabbed his arm.

  “Tam, I—”

  Lightning burst in Laurel’s head. She slumped to her knees and threw her hands to her temples as knives of pain shredded her consciousness. She wanted to scream, tried to scream. Was she screaming? She couldn’t tell. All she could hear was blaring, meaningless noise.

  And as soon as it had started, it was over.

  She collapsed onto the street, overwhelmed by the shockingly abrupt absence of pain. Her limbs shook and it took her a few seconds to realize she was damp all over because her entire body had broken out in sweat—something she had never experienced before. Someone was calling her name. David? Tamani? She wasn’t sure. She tried to open her lips to answer, but they wouldn’t move. Blackness crept in at the edges of her vision and she welcomed it. She felt arms curl beneath her, lifting her, then her eyelids fluttered and the darkness embraced her.

  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?”

  “No,” she said quickly, her eyes wide. Then her expression went neutral. Back on guard. “It’s okay,” she said, her voice calm again. “Klea will be here soon; she’ll take care of it.”

  Tamani forced himself to nod. Having Yuki summon Klea presented an opportunity to follow her, but Laurel was still unconscious, and then there were those two trolls to track . . . not to mention Ryan—he didn’t seem to remember confronting the trolls, but Laurel would surely forbid Tamani from using a memory elixir on the boy, so if he remembered anything at all, Tamani would have one more human to kee
p an eye on. He grimaced; he had his work cut out for him.

  “Laurel told me to call,” Yuki continued, seeming to misread his expression. “I don’t really remember what I said, but she’s coming.”

  “We should get you some paper towels or something,” David said, piping up rather suddenly.

  Yuki’s hand went immediately to her head. “That’s okay,” she said shortly. “This is good.”

  “Yeah, but Chelsea will want that shirt back,” David pressed. With a look at Tamani, he leaned down close to Yuki and whispered softly near her ear. After a moment, Yuki nodded, and he left the room.

  “What about Laurel, did she hit her head too?” Yuki asked after a moment of awkward silence.

  “You don’t remember?”

  Yuki shook her head slowly. “Not really. I just remember smoke, and voices, and . . .” She paused. “Laurel fainted or something.”

  “Yeah, I think she hurt something in the crash and just didn’t feel it till it was all over. Adrenaline, you know,” he said with a dark laugh. But Yuki didn’t respond.

  David came back from the kitchen with a roll of paper towels. “Can I get some space?” he said pointedly to Tamani.

  Tamani backed away, not sure what David was trying to pull here. Clearly he’d said something to Yuki to let her know he knew about her. Or at least about her non-human blood. And that was information Tamani had not been ready to share.

  “Look who I found,” Laurel’s dad said from the doorway, clearly trying to sound cheerful in the face of having so much thrown at him. “She pulled up just as Chelsea and Ryan were leaving. Klea, right? Laurel’s told us, um, so much about you.”

  Tamani wasn’t sure whether fear or intrigue was stronger as he turned to greet Klea for the first time. She looked exactly as Laurel had always described her; dressed all in black—mostly tight leather tonight—with cropped auburn hair and sunglasses. She exuded an aura of intimidation and Tamani imagined he could feel Laurel’s sentries moving in closer.

  Tamani watched Klea and Yuki as inconspicuously as he could. In the two or three seconds before Klea softly said, “Are you okay?” there was a silent conversation between the two that he wished he could interpret.

  “I think so,” Yuki said, nodding slowly. Tamani studied her downcast eyes, her tense shoulders. He had just spent three hours with Yuki—which included a car accident and troll attack—and she had never looked as frightened as she did right now. Because Yuki spent so much time on her own, Tamani had never considered the possibility that she could be Klea’s prisoner. Pawn, perhaps, but never prisoner. But watching her now . . . ?

  “She cut her head,” David said, and Tamani noticed that he was holding the soiled T-shirt carefully, but casually, behind his back. “Chelsea and I helped her clean it up,” he said, meeting Klea’s eyes and injecting a hint of purpose into his words.

  Tamani watched Klea’s eyebrows raise just barely over the rims of her sunglasses, then she nodded. “Okay,” she said, clearly not responding to the words David had actually spoken.

  As if feeling Tamani’s eyes on her, Klea turned to Tamani. “And who are you?” Klea asked, not bothering to hide her suspicion.

  “I’m Tam,” Tamani said quickly, holding out his glove-clad hand. “Yuki’s date. You must be her host, uh, family?”

  Klea looked at his hand for a long moment before shaking it as briefly as possible.

  “I’m from Scotland,” Tamani added, letting his accent deepen just a little. “Yuki and I, we’re both foreign. Met on the first day. I . . .” He dropped his gaze, donning a sheepish expression. “I was driving. I’m so sorry.”

  “Things happen,” Klea said dismissively. “I do need to get Yuki home though.” She started toward the armchair, but stopped as she passed Laurel. “Is she all right?” Klea asked, real concern in her voice.

  “We were just waiting for you to come get Yuki before taking her to the hospital,” Laurel’s dad said quickly, his lie easy and natural.

  “Of course,” Klea said brusquely. “I won’t keep you.” She helped Yuki up from the couch, one hand covering Yuki’s, pressing the paper towels to her forehead. “I’ll call and see how Laurel is in the next couple days,” she said, vaguely addressing the whole room.

  “Sure,” Laurel’s mom murmured. “We do need to get her to a doctor, though.”

  “Absolutely,” Klea said, prodding Yuki toward the door.

  The door closed behind her and everyone in the room let out a soft sigh.

  Except Tamani.

  He ran to the front window and peeked out, carefully, watching Klea load Yuki into her car—a sleek black two-door model that looked, even to Tamani’s unaccustomed eye, extremely fast—and then drive off. Only when he saw dark, agile shapes whip under the streetlight, following them, did he turn his attention back to the rest of the room.

  “David, what were you thinking?” Tamani demanded. “You totally tipped our hand!”

  “It was worth it,” David said, pulling the shirt out from behind his back. “I got this.”

  “I somehow think Chelsea would have survived without her shirt,” Tamani said. “Quite frankly, with the way she collects faerie souvenirs, I don’t expect to get my shirt back.”

  “You don’t get it,” David shot back. “We’ve been trying to get a sample, right? This is covered in her sap!”

  Tamani was speechless for a second. It was so simple, so obvious, so . . .

  “Brilliant,” Tamani allowed grudgingly.

  David just grinned.

  “Mom?” Laurel’s voice was scratchy and weak, but they all heard her.

  Her parents rushed to the couch and David leaned over the back of it, his face close to Laurel’s. Tamani forced himself to remain where he was, feeling even more an outsider than he had at the dance, watching Laurel spin in David’s arms.

  “How did I get here?” she asked, disoriented.

  “We brought you here after the accident,” David said softly.

  Laurel lay back, looking a little confused. Her mom squeezed her hand and turned to Tamani. “What exactly happened?” her mom asked. “And none of this ‘we hit a deer’ stuff.”

  David looked at Tamani, allowing him to make the call. But Tamani knew it didn’t matter; Laurel would tell them everything anyway. So he took a deep breath and told them the whole story, not leaving anything out.

  “And she just collapsed?” Laurel’s mom asked when he finished, her hand soft on Laurel’s face. “Why?”

  “I’m not sure,” Laurel answered, her words slow and deliberate. “Everything was over, and I was standing there, and then I had the most excruciating headache ever. I . . . I guess I blacked out.”

  “Are you sure you didn’t hit your head in the wreck?”

  “I don’t think so,” Laurel said. “It didn’t feel like that. For a second, it was just . . . pain. And a roaring sound in my head. And pressure. Then nothing.”

  Her dad looked up at Tamani. “Can trolls do that?”

  All Tamani could do was shrug. “I don’t know. It’s never happened before, but I seem to be running into that problem a lot lately.”

  “My potion didn’t work on them,” Laurel said. “It should have worked.”

  After a moment’s hesitation, David asked, “Did you make it?”

  Laurel rolled her eyes. “No,” she said dryly, “I didn’t make it. One of the advanced Fall students made it. I don’t know who.”

  “Still, it could have just gone wrong, right?” David pressed.

  “Fall potions can always go wrong,” Laurel admitted. She paused, remembering. “Yuki, she was hurt.” She spoke slowly, like even that was effort.

  “Yeah,” David said. “Klea came and got her just a couple minutes ago.”

  “Klea came here?” Laurel asked, trying to sit up. Her mom helped her, placing an arm around her shoulders. Laurel’s eyes closed for a second, as if she was in danger of losing consciousness again, and Tamani took an involuntary step forward before
they opened again.

  “There was nothing I could do about that,” David said. “But we gave her as quick an explanation as we could and got them both out of here. She . . . she knows that Chelsea and I know about Yuki. I’m sorry, I didn’t know what else to say.”

  “It’s okay. Klea didn’t tell me not to tell you two. What about Ryan and Chelsea? Where are they?”

  David hesitated. “They drove home. Or maybe to the hospital. Well, Chelsea drove Ryan. Wherever they go, his dad will probably check him for a concussion. And we’re probably going to get a lecture for not calling nine-one-one.”

  Laurel shrugged. “I can handle a lecture from Ryan’s dad. It’s better than him finding out. So . . . Ryan doesn’t remember anything?”

  “Doesn’t seem to.” David sighed. “Lucky for us, he was really disoriented.”

  “And for sure he doesn’t remember the trolls?” asked Tamani.

  “Not as far as I can tell,” David replied.

  “Thank goodness for that. What about Yuki?” Laurel asked.

  David looked at Tamani.

  “I don’t know,” Tamani admitted. “She seemed pretty disoriented too. I’m not even sure she saw the trolls. But she could easily have been lying for my benefit. Either way, she’s acting like she knows nothing. At least to me.”

  “But what—”

  “That’s enough now,” Laurel’s mom said, laying her back down again. “You’ve got to stop thinking about everyone else and worry about yourself for a moment. Are you feeling okay?”

  Laurel nodded. “Yeah, I am,” she said, and she did look better. She stifled a yawn. “I’m totally exhausted though. I mean, that was the reason we came home in the first place, right?” She laughed shallowly, and even that faded away when no one joined in.

  “All right,” her mom said cheerily, “let’s get our girl to bed.”

  “There’s one more thing,” Tamani said quickly.

  “Not tonight,” David said.

  “It might be too late tomorrow,” Tamani hissed.