Maybe she’d noticed our fingers touching, too. “Definitely weird,” I agreed. “Even after the day I’ve had.”
“I probably don’t want to ask, huh?” A grin slanted across her face.
“Well, your life’s not so normal right now, either,” I said.
“That,” she said, “is very true.”
“Are you OK?”
Tara considered that. “You know, I think I am. I don’t understand how, though. I mean—I do homework and draw things and look after Hector. That’s it. That’s my life, normally. But somehow I’m not freaking out? Maybe that’ll come later.”
“Maybe you’re just a natural.”
She laughed. “I should’ve been born in that world of Alpha’s, then.”
“Technically, you were.”
“Oh, yeah. True. Man, it’s bizarre to think there’s some Tara Ávila out there who spends her days killing trolls. And another who’s making out with her fluorescent-haired girlfriend.”
I nodded vigorously. “Same. Same. Do you, um.” I tried to sound casual. “In this world, do you also like . . .?”
Why was I asking, anyway? Would Tara think I—? I went back and forth a half-dozen times, but in the end, I just stood there, gangly and awkward, neither taking the question back nor saying the actual word.
Coward, I thought.
Tara finished the sentence for me: “Do I like girls?”
“Yeah,” I said, relieved. “Do you? Did you know before all this?”
I shouldn’t be asking, but who else could I ask? Not many people had experienced learning that, in another world, they were gay as hell. There was no protocol for this situation, no guidance counselor, no online advice column.
“Yeah. I’ve been out since I was, like, twelve. To my family, anyway. The rest of the world will need to wait till I get out of this place for college. Why? You didn’t know?”
“Oh. I’m not—I—” I should’ve seen that question coming. I probably looked bright red. There was no way to salvage this without either protesting too much or having the first person I came out to be a stranger from half a state away.
(“Come out”? Was I calling it that already? That sounded so final, like I knew there was something to come out about, like I knew I’d be doing it more in the future, like . . .)
“You said earlier you were willing to talk to Alpha,” I said abruptly. There. The reason I’d actually approached Tara. “Did you mean that? Do you know the risks?”
Tara glanced at the boy by her side. “I know enough.”
She was probably right. From the way she’d defended herself on the street, it couldn’t have been the first time she’d faced trolls.
“I thought you said the plan wouldn’t work?” she asked.
“Not long-term. But we might not need long-term.”
“Ah. You want me to help . . .” Another glance at the boy. “To help put her to sleep.”
“We need to get close, and you can probably get closer than anyone,” I said, even as guilt nagged at me. Tara had already risked her life for us. And this was supposed to be our fight, my fight, not hers.
“My dad is out there. I can’t leave Hector alone. Especially now.” She looked around the library with a visible sense of dread. From my left came a faint, metallic scratching, like claws raking the metal sheets blocking the windows. “It’s too dangerous.”
“That,” I said, “is where I come in.”
First, we needed to test my theory.
The ladder to the roof creaked dangerously under my weight. The moment I stuck my head out the open hatch, wind rushed at me so fiercely I had to squeeze my eyes almost closed to see.
Three men and two women stood around the edges of the roof. Most of them were keeping an eye on the grounds and shouting updates into their phones; the guy I’d seen on the way in was kneeling by the ledge, rifle aimed at the ground below.
One of the women whirled at hearing us climb up. Her hands went to her rifle.
“It’s safe, it’s safe,” I said hurriedly.
I clambered out onto the gravel and helped pull up Four, who’d climbed up after me. The others had stayed in the library. Between helping Torrance and Tara nail down the specifics of the plan, distracting the kids, and helping secure the building, there was plenty to do.
One or two hundred yards away, Neven’s silhouette stood out sharply against the dark-pink sky. She flew in languid circles. I waved with an exaggerated motion, but couldn’t tell whether she saw.
“You first,” I told Four.
If the trolls were here for me, I could draw them away from the library. Maybe we could do even better than that, though. If trolls couldn’t distinguish between us, we could split up and scatter them.
As Four walked to the edge of the roof, I zipped my coat up to my chin against the cold. I could hear engines, occasional gunfire, yells, unidentifiable thumps, and constant scratching, grinding sounds, but from where I stood in the center of the roof, I couldn’t see a thing.
Four stopped at the ledge and cautiously leaned over to peer at the trolls.
“A couple of them saw me,” she reported. “They’re not reacting, I think?”
Gravel crunched underfoot as I joined her. On the lawn, people worked together to prop up metal sheets, while on the street past the hedge, a woman with a fiercely bleeding leg was pulling herself into a pickup truck. Her good leg snapped out to kick away an approaching troll.
The trolls were strewn all over. A handful rushing along the top of the hedge. A few on the lawn, searching the steel barriers for gaps. There, on the street; there, fighting near the tree log—
A screech like stone along a blackboard tore through the noise. My shoulders snapped to my ears.
“What the—?” a woman standing on Four’s other side said.
I whirled toward where the screech had come from. Two trolls crept along the hedge, their bodies small and tense and fast. Their necks craned up. They stared directly at me as they moved.
Another screech, now to my right—where a
