Illusions

“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 keep 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.”