groaned in her ear, but when she tried to pull back, he held her tight against his chest. “Don’t you ever,
“Me?” Laurel protested. “I’m not the one who got shot!” Her arms snaked around his neck and her whole body shook.
Her head jerked up when she heard footsteps pounding up the stairs. Tamani shifted her a little to the side and grabbed the gun, pointing it at the doorway.
David’s white face appeared at the top of the stairs. Tamani sighed and let the gun fall back onto the floor, his arms limp.
“I heard the shots and saw Barnes run away,” he said, his voice shaking. “Are you two okay?”
“Eye of Hecate, do neither of you know how to follow directions?” Tamani growled.
“Apparently not,” Laurel said dryly.
“What happened here?” David asked, looking wide-eyed around the disaster of the room.
“We’ll talk in the car. Hurry, David, Tamani needs help.” They each ducked under one arm and managed to raise Tamani from the floor. Tamani was trying to be brave, but Laurel winced every time a choked moan escaped his lips. They half-dragged him toward the doorway when Laurel stopped. “Wait,” she said, transferring all of Tamani’s weight to David. She hurried to the desk and looked at the papers. The top layer was peppered with a fine spray of blood.
“Let’s go,” she said, ducking under Tamani’s arm again.
They were silent as they passed the bodies of the dead trolls. The sun was out in earnest now and Laurel hoped no one would see them dragging this obviously injured person out to their car. Belatedly, she wondered if anyone besides David had heard the shots. Looking up and down the street at the other crumbling and dilapidated houses, she wasn’t sure it mattered. It looked like a neighborhood where gunfire was commonplace.
David laid Tamani in the backseat and tried to make him comfortable, but Tamani brushed his hands away. “Just get me back to Shar. Hurry.”
David held Laurel’s door open, but she shook her head and, without looking at him, slid into the backseat with Tamani.
Laurel settled Tamani’s chest and head on her lap and he clung to her like a child, groaning each time David drove over a bump. His face was pale and his black hair slick with sweat. She tried to get him to open his eyes, but he refused. As his breathing grew more and more ragged, Laurel glanced up at David, who watched her in the rearview mirror. “Can’t we go any faster?” she pleaded.
David pursed his lips and shook his head. “I can’t speed, Laurel. It’s too risky. What do you think a cop would say if he pulled us over and saw Tamani?” His eyes met hers in the rearview. “I’m going as fast as I dare — I promise.”
Tears filled Laurel’s eyes, but she nodded, trying not to notice that Tamani’s grip on her arms was getting looser.
The road was mostly empty, but Laurel held her breath the entire way through Crescent City and then Klamath as they passed close to several other cars. One man even looked over at her, and she wondered if his sunglasses covered mismatched eyes. Just as she felt sure he was a troll sent to finish them off, he looked away and turned down a side street.
Finally the driveway came into view and David pulled off the road. The unpaved drive was bumpy, but Tamani didn’t protest as the car bounced over ruts. Laurel’s breath stuck in her throat as David reached the end of the drive and shifted into park.
“Please hurry, David,” Laurel begged in a whisper.
David ran around to the other side of the car and helped her ease Tamani out. They dragged him past the house and down the now-familiar path. As soon as they passed the tree line, Laurel began shouting in a sob- strained voice, “Shar! Shar! We need help.”
Almost instantly, Shar stepped onto the path from behind a tree. If he was shocked, it didn’t register on his face. “I’ll take him,” he said calmly. He lifted Tamani from David and Laurel and slung him gently over his shoulders. “You can’t come any farther,” Shar said to David. “Not today.”
David’s brow furrowed and he looked to Laurel. Laurel threw her arms around him. “I’m sorry,” she whispered and turned down the path.
David caught her hand. “You are coming back, aren’t you?” he asked.
Laurel nodded. “I promise.” Then she pulled her hand away and hurried up the path after Tamani’s limp form.
As soon as David was out of sight, other faeries stepped onto the path, adding their shoulders beneath Tamani’s weight — a parade of unbelievably beautiful men, several clad in camouflaging armor. Each faerie who appeared made Laurel feel better. Tamani wasn’t alone now — the faeries would find a way to make everything all right. She had to believe it. They led her down a twisted path that looked strangely unfamiliar and came to a stop in front of an ancient tree that, even in the chilly late-autumn air, had not changed color.
Several of the faeries took a turn placing a palm in a shallow hollow on the tree’s trunk. Finally, Shar lifted Tamani’s limp arm and placed his hand on the tree. For a few seconds, no one moved and nothing happened. Then the tree began to sway and Laurel gasped in surprise as a crack appeared at the base. It widened and grew, pushing the trunk out, molding it into an archway. The air glimmered and sparkled until it was almost too bright to look at. Then a brilliant flash shone and Laurel had to blink. In the instant it took to close her eyes and open them again, the shimmering air had turned into a golden gate snaked with brilliant white blossoms and glittering with millions of sparkling jewels.
“Is that the gate to Avalon?” Laurel said breathlessly to Shar.
Shar barely spared her a glance. “Bar her way; Jamison’s coming through.”
Spears crisscrossed in front of her and Laurel realized she’d taken several steps forward. She was almost overwhelmed by the urge to push through the spears and run to the shining gates, but she forced her feet to stay where they were. The gate was moving now, swinging slowly outward in an arc as all the faeries backed away and made room. Laurel couldn’t see much as she strained against the spears, but her eyes found an emerald-green tree, a sliver of cerulean sky, rays of sunshine that sparkled like diamonds. The thick aroma of fresh earth rolled over her, along with a heady, intoxicating scent she couldn’t identify. A white-haired man in long, flowing silver robes waited on the other side of the shimmering gate. Laurel couldn’t help but stare as he made his way forward to stand by Tamani. He ran a finger down Tamani’s face and looked back at several other faeries carrying a stretcher.
“Take him quickly,” he said, beckoning them forward. “He’s fading.”
Tamani was transferred onto the soft white stretcher, and Laurel watched helplessly as he was borne into the shining light that poured from the gate. She had to believe he would be fine now, that she would see him again. Surely no one could enter a world so full of wonder and not heal.
When she looked up, the older faerie’s eyes had settled upon her. “I assume this is her,” he said. His voice was too sweet, too musical to be of this world. He walked toward her as if he were floating on air, and the face she looked up into was so beautiful. He seemed to glow, and his eyes were soft and blue and surrounded by wrinkles that fell not in the uneven crevices she saw on Maddie’s face but in exact, even folds like perfectly hung drapes. He smiled at her gently, and the pain of the last twenty-four hours melted away.
“You’ve been very brave,” Jamison said in that sweet, angelic voice. “We didn’t think we would need you so soon. But things never go quite as planned, do they?”
She shook her head and looked back through the gate, where she could just see the top of Tamani’s head. “Will he…will he be all right?”
“Don’t worry. Tamani has always been stronger than anyone expected him to be. Especially for you. We will take good care of him.” He placed a hand on her shoulder and beckoned her down the unfamiliar path. “Will you walk with me?”
Her eyes stayed locked on the gate into Avalon, but she responded instinctually. “Of course.”
They walked in silence for a few minutes before Jamison stopped and invited her to sit on a fallen log. He joined her and sat close, their shoulders almost touching. “Tell me about the trolls,” he said. “You obviously ran into trouble.”
Laurel nodded and told him how Tamani had been so careful and brave. Jamison’s eyes glimmered with
