“I want you to know that I have every intention of convincing you to be my girlfriend again,” David said, releasing her and taking a step back. “I’m trying to be honest, you know.”

Laurel rolled her eyes and laughed.

“But until then,” he said, more serious now, “I’ll be your friend, and I’ll wait.”

“I was beginning to think you would never speak to me again.” She watched, confused, as David’s face flushed red.

“I . . . had some encouragement. Tamani sent me,” he finally said.

“Tamani?” Laurel asked, certain she hadn’t heard right.

“We actually had a good talk today and he said he’d stay away so I could come apologize.”

Laurel contemplated this. “Why would he do that?”

“Why else? To score points with you,” David said with a snort.

Laurel shook her head, but she had to give him credit; it had worked. “I called you the other day,” Laurel admitted.

“I saw that. You didn’t leave a message.”

“I got mad at your voice mail.”

David chuckled.

“I got my SAT scores.”

He nodded shortly. This was almost as important to him as it was to her. “Me too. I still didn’t beat Chelsea, though. How about you?”

Laurel smiled as she told him about her vastly improved scores and the possibilities they brought with them. And for a few moments, it was like nothing had changed—because, Laurel realized, David had always been her friend first. And maybe that was the biggest difference between him and Tamani. With David the friendship had come first—with Tamani, it had always been the heat. She wasn’t sure she could imagine life without either extreme. Did choosing between them mean leaving one of those behind forever? It wasn’t a thought that made her happy, so for the moment she pushed it to the side and enjoyed the one she had here in front of her.

“You want to come in?”

Chapter Twenty-Seven

TAMANI SAT VERY STILL, HIS EYES SCANNING THE forest for movement as the sun disappeared behind the horizon. This was the ideal time to spot trolls—as their “day” was just beginning and the long shadows offered plenty of places to lurk. Wherever they were hiding, it had to be nearby—the trolls they’d wounded always seemed to head in this direction. But the few square miles of forest sandwiched between two human neighborhoods had yielded nothing but frustration. Tamani ground his teeth. He had promised Aaron he would make things right and, eye of the Goddess, he was going to!

“Please, Tam, for all your training in stealth, even a half-deaf troll would hear those teeth grinding,” came a flat, almost bored-sounding voice from lower down the conifer Tamani had climbed for a better view.

Tamani sighed.

“You’re spreading yourself too thin,” Shar added, sounding more concerned now. “Three nights in a row. I worry for you.”

“I don’t normally go for so long,” Tamani said. “I just want to make use of you while you’re here. Normally I do one night on, one night off.”

“That still has you not sleeping half of your nights.”

“I sleep a little while on watch.”

“Very little, I imagine. You know catching trolls isn’t your job,” Shar went on, his voice so low Tamani could barely hear him. He’d said the same thing the last two nights as well.

“How better to protect Laurel?” Tamani asked hotly.

“That’s an excellent question,” Shar said. He had climbed almost as high as Tamani now. “Do you intend to harrow yourself to death with it?”

“What do you mean?”

“You had a choice. Follow the trolls, or stay with Laurel. You stayed with Laurel. I don’t know if you made the best possible choice, but you made a defensible choice, particularly with Laurel unconscious and unable to defend herself. If you’d made a different choice, maybe you could have followed those trolls back to their lair. Or maybe the chase would be fruitless, as it has been so far. I’m sorry that Aaron disagreed with your decision, but you can’t let it take root in you like this. You have to move on.”

Tamani shook his head. “Aaron was almost there. Laurel would have made it home fine. And I could have been one step closer to eliminating the ultimate threat against her.”

“It’s easy to think that, because she did make it safely home. But who’s to say there weren’t more trolls waiting for you to leave Laurel alone? Or that Yuki or Klea weren’t waiting for the same thing?”

“That seems remarkably unlikely,” Tamani muttered.

“Aye. But you’re Fear-gleidhidh. Your job is to anticipate even the most unlikely threat. Above all else, your job is to keep Laurel alive and on task.”

“I would leave everything and join the World Tree tomorrow if she died,” Tamani said.

“I know,” Shar whispered through the darkness.

An hour passed, then two, and the fae said nothing as they scanned the forest. Tamani felt his eyes start to droop, a weariness settling into him that seemed to reach all the way to his core. He’d stayed out two nights in a row often enough, but three was pushing it. Shar had slept during the day, but aside from a brief nap at school while Mr. Robison was out of the room, and a few short stints in the tree, Tamani had not slept since the night he’d forced himself to leave Laurel’s bed—obeying her request even though he knew that as long as he left before dawn, she would never know. He closed his eyes now, thinking of that last sight of her, her blond hair spilling out over her pillowcase like the softest of corn silk, her mouth, even in sleep, turned up ever so slightly at the corners.