“Can I just say — and let me finish before you say anything — I think you should try really hard on your SATs this time and apply to a few colleges. You’ve studied a ton the last couple of months anyway. Why throw that away?”
He paused, but Laurel was silent.
“Thing is,” he continued, “applying, getting accepted even, doesn’t mean you have to go. But when you graduate and—” He hesitated and Laurel bit her lip, knowing this was hard for him to even say. “And you have to start making decisions, I don’t… want you to ever feel trapped. Options are good.”
The minutes slid quietly by as Laurel thought about that. David was right — she didn’t have to go just because she got accepted. And she knew all too well that feeling one way now didn’t mean she’d feel the same way later. Lots of things had changed in her life, as well as in her head, over the past several years. Often for the better. “Okay,” she said softly. She knew that when David said, “Options are good,” he was really saying, “Don’t make a choice that will separate us for sure.” It was his way of holding on for as long as he could — keeping open the possibility of forever.
But that didn’t make him wrong.
Chapter Fourteen
“SHE’S IN THERE ALL THE TIME,” TAMANI SAID TO Aaron halfway between Laurel’s and Yuki’s houses. “She does homework, reads, watches television. I don’t see any evidence of plotting at all.” It had been more than a fortnight since they’d discovered Yuki was a faerie, and there was still nothing to indicate that she even comprehended what she was, much less had a master plan that involved Laurel’s demise.
“All the guards say their most boring shifts are watching her,” Aaron replied. “And I don’t mean that humorously. Nothing happens. Suspicious or otherwise.”
“We can’t pull them away,” Tamani said, “but it does feel like an inefficient use of resources, doesn’t it?”
Aaron raised an eyebrow. “That’s how I’ve felt most of the past year,” he said wryly.
Tamani swallowed the retort that sprang to his lips. He would have thought the same if he were an unaffected observer. But any effort was worth it when you were guarding someone you loved.
“I wonder—” He cut off sharply. Someone was crashing noisily through the forest, headed in their direction. Aaron and Tamani both darted behind trees, hands poised over their weapons, when two misshapen figures came lumbering through the darkness. What was this? For months they’d been combing the forest for trolls, only to have two stumble into them? With his free hand, he signaled Aaron.
Mine dies. Yours talks.
Aaron responded with a single nod.
As the first troll passed within arm’s length, Tamani stepped out from behind the tree, unsheathing his knife in a sweeping arc that scored a long, shallow gash across the troll’s back. The troll spun to face him, lashing out with one clawed, gnarled hand — a blind, reflexive counter-attack. Tamani sidestepped the blow easily, then, with a savage thrust, buried his knife to the hilt in the troll’s eye socket. He gave the blade a sharp twist and the creature crumpled to the ground.
A short distance away, Aaron had scored several cuts on the other troll’s arms and legs, slowing its movements. Crippling a troll wasn’t easy — better to just kill them quickly — but Tamani needed information. Fortunately, two weapons could cripple a troll faster than one. Bracing one foot against the fallen troll’s neck, Tamani wrenched his knife from its skull. Rivulets of blood, black in the starlight, pulsed from the wound. He looked up just in time to watch Aaron’s back vanish into the darkness; apparently, the other troll had decided it was time to run. Tamani considered going after them, then decided against it. Aaron was more than capable.
Instead, he took the fallen troll under its arms and dragged it away from the path, in case any more came this way. Once he was far enough, he searched the body for any evidence of what it might be doing here. It was unarmed — not that trolls had any real need for weapons — and dressed in a muddy burlap poncho and black coveralls. No clues there, except perhaps that Barnes’s trolls had often dressed similarly. The creature’s pockets were empty, no hint of where he came from or who he was after.
Kicking at the corpse with his foot, Tamani crept back to the path, then followed the trail Aaron had left, finding him less than a minute later. His knife was sheathed and he looked unharmed, but there were no trolls to be seen, crippled or otherwise.
“I lost him,” Aaron said, shaking his head.
“You lost him?” Tamani asked incredulously. “He was two feet in front of you!”
“Thanks for that, Tam. Because I wasn’t feeling like enough of a failure,” Aaron said caustically.
“Tell me what happened.”
“He just… vanished.” He kicked at a tuft of earth. “I’ve tracked down scores of trolls in my time, and nothing like this ever happened until I came here.”
“Did he go to ground?” Tamani asked, scanning the undergrowth for signs of burrowing.
Aaron shook his head. “I was watching for that. I was chasing him and he was in my sight. I went for a throwing knife — I was going to hamstring him — and I looked down for a second. Half a second, even. And he was gone.”
“What do you mean, gone?”
“Gone! Gone like summer. Gone like mist. I’m telling you, Tamani, that troll disappeared. There wasn’t even a trail!”
Tamani folded his arms over his chest, trying to comprehend this. Aaron was one of the best trackers he’d ever met. If he said there wasn’t a trail, there wasn’t a trail. But that didn’t mean it made any sense.
“I thought I heard footsteps,” Aaron continued. “But even those disappeared soon enough.”
Tamani swallowed hard, trying to suppress the niggling fear in his stomach.
“Send out scouts,” Tamani said quietly. “Try to pick up the trail.”
“There is no trail to pick up,” Aaron insisted. Then he pulled back and stood a little straighter. “I will follow any order you give me, Tamani. And if you want a dozen scouts crawling over this forest, you shall have them. But they won’t find anything new.”
“What else can we do?” Tamani asked, failing to keep the desperation from his voice. “I have to keep her safe, Aaron.”
Aaron hesitated. “Which one?”
Tamani paused; were they watching Yuki or protecting her? “Both,” he said at last. “These trolls could have been headed for either house. Have we seen anything else?”
“Stripped cow carcasses, paths broken through the trees. The same thing we’ve been seeing for months,” he said, staring toward the horizon. “They’re out there, even if we can’t see them.”
“Any chance it’s been just these two?” Tamani asked, though he already knew the answer.
“Not unless they’re eating for twelve. Or twenty. I think these ones just got sloppy.”
“It’s more than that,” Tamani said, shaking his head. “They seemed almost… confused. I’m sure they were surprised to see us, but they weren’t even armed. Mine barely put up a fight.”
“Mine didn’t put up much of a fight either,” Aaron agreed.
“I have to go soon,” Tamani said quietly after a moment. “Laurel is going to Eureka for some kind of test. I’ll be trailing her. You’re in charge of the Wildflower. We haven’t seen Klea in weeks — she should be coming round any day now. If she does, I need you to listen to everything they say and let me know. Even if it’s something you don’t think is relevant. I want to know every word they say.”
Aaron nodded stoically and Tamani turned, sprinting through the forest toward Laurel’s. He slowed to a walk as he approached the tree line behind her house and saw the glow of lights in the kitchen. A wave of warmth washed over him as her face appeared in the window, looking out at the trees. Looking for him.