Jenna Black - Shadowspell

The smile disappeared when the imposter suddenly stopped in his tracks, whirling around to face me. I tried to put on the brakes, but I’d been running headlong and couldn’t stop in time.

I crashed into the imposter’s body, my momentum pushing him back a few steps as his breath whooshed out. But apparently, he’d been ready for me, because he recovered his balance much faster than I did, and he wrapped his arms around me, turning me around so my back was to his chest. One of his arms pinned mine to my sides, while his other arm came around my neck.

“Stay back!” he yelled at Finn. “Come any closer, and I’ll break her neck.”

Finn stopped much more gracefully than I had and glared daggers at my attacker.

But I hadn’t been taking all those self-defense lessons from Keane for no reason, and we’d practiced any number of different escapes from this particular hold, which was apparently an old standby for bad guys. Without a moment of hesitation, I did three things in quick succession. I stomped down as hard as I could on his instep. Then I lowered my head and sank my teeth into his forearm. He screamed and started to let go, and that was when I snapped my head back as hard as I could.

Whoever he was, the guy wasn’t particularly tall, and the back of my head made satisfying contact with his nose. The crunching sound made me wince, as did his howl of pain. But he let go of me in a hurry.

I was wondering if I should turn around and give him a good kick in the knee to make sure he couldn’t run away, but before I could decide, Finn yanked me away and planted his fist in the imposter’s face. Every muscle in his body went limp at once, and he collapsed to the pavement in a heap.

Despite my frequent complaints about how visitors from Faerie can practically get away with murder in Avalon, the city does have a justice system and a police force. By the time the Lachlan impersonator went down for the count, the Wild Hunt had been gone long enough that people were starting to poke their heads out to see if the coast was clear. Someone must have seen what happened, because before Finn had a chance to round on me and congratulate me on my brilliant performance—hey, it could happen!—we heard the sound of sirens approaching.

The look on Finn’s face said he was considering grabbing me and making a run for it, but by now there were enough witnesses that the cops would have tracked us down if we tried it, and that couldn’t be a good thing.

Finn shook his finger in my face. “You are not to speak to the police, Dana,” he said. “You’re a minor, and they can’t question you without your legal guardian’s permission, so just keep your mouth shut.”

I frowned up at him. “Why? It’s not like we did anything wrong.” At least, not as far as I knew.

Finn gave me a long-suffering look. “Will you just this once do as you’re told without the thousand and one questions?”

“Well, excuse me for wanting to understand why I’m not supposed to talk to the police.”

Finn didn’t have time to respond before the police descended on us.

From the way Finn had been talking, I half expected the cops to arrest us or something, but when Finn told them what happened, they accepted his word without question and slapped handcuffs on Fake-Lachlan. When the cops asked me if I’d be willing to answer a few questions, I bit my tongue and told them I wanted to wait for my dad. I didn’t like it, but Finn wouldn’t have told me to keep quiet without a good reason. I thought maybe the cops would get mad about that, but it didn’t seem to bother them much.

They were just asking us to come to the police station to give formal statements—or at least for Finn to give a formal statement while they tried to contact my dad—when my dad made a surprise appearance. I knew Finn hadn’t called him, and the police hadn’t had time to yet, so I wondered how he knew where to find me—and that I needed him to find me. He worked as a Council Liaison, whatever that was. All I knew was that it was some kind of government position, and that it gave him some degree of power.

I can’t say for sure what happened next, but my suspicion is that some money changed hands, or my dad pulled some strings. Whatever the reason, the police decided Finn and I didn’t have to make a formal statement after all.

“Take her home immediately,” my dad told Finn as the cops stuffed Fake-Lachlan into the back of one of their cars. “I’ll be there as soon as I can, and I’ll expect a full report.”

Finn acknowledged his orders with a formal nod.

“What about Lachlan?” I asked. “He might be in trouble.”

Dad made one of his nose-in-the-air faces that said a troll was beneath his concern. “We won’t be able to do anything for Lachlan until we’ve had time to question the imposter. For all we know, he’s a willing accomplice.”

I opened my mouth to say something indignant, but Dad cut me off before I could.

“We’ll get to the bottom of this,” he promised. “And if Lachlan is in trouble, I’ll do everything I can to help him. Now hurry home. You’ve had an eventful enough day already.”

I might have argued some more, except he turned away from me. I didn’t like being dismissed like a pesky child, but I figured if Finn was going to give a thorough recounting of the day’s events to my dad, it would be best to put that off as long as possible. Call me crazy, but I didn’t think my dad would be happy to hear that I’d chased the imposter.

As Finn led me away from the scene of the crime, I looked back over my shoulder and saw my dad getting into the front seat of one of the police cars. Somehow, I didn’t think it was business as usual to let a civilian do that. However, no one seemed to object, and both cars drove away.

Miraculously, my bag of groceries was still sitting right on the sidewalk where I’d dropped it. Even better, nothing had spilled or broken, though I suspected the bananas I’d bought for my cereal were going to be covered in nasty, mushy bruises. Because of what I’d done, no matter how dumb it might have been, the imposter was in police custody, and I couldn’t help feeling proud. I’d spent a lot of time in Avalon feeling like a damsel in distress, so it felt good to have scored this minor victory. No matter how fiercely Finn frowned as he escorted me back to the safe house.

“If that man had had a weapon,” Finn said quietly once we were in the privacy of the darkened tunnels, “you could well be dead by now.”

I fought down a superstitious shiver. “Good thing for me he didn’t, then,” I responded with as much bravado as I could muster. If I thought too hard about what might have happened, I could totally freak myself out.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Finn shake his head. “That isn’t the point, and you know it. You can’t keep taking risks like that. I’m good at my job, but I’m not invincible. And right now, you’re making my job a lot harder than it has to be.”

I hunched my shoulders a bit at the rebuke. If he’d yelled at me, or started barking orders at me, I’d have dug in my heels and fought back. His calm, quiet reasoning was a lot harder to fight against.

“I’m sorry,” I mumbled. “I didn’t really think about it at the time. I just saw that he was getting away, and I reacted.”

He sighed. “And what about last night? Did you think about it before you went gallivanting about at night without a bodyguard?”

So much for my hope that last night was water under the bridge. The fact was, at the time I’d decided to sneak out with Keane, I’d felt pretty safe with him. Yes, I’d known I was taking a risk, but it hadn’t seemed like a particularly big one. After seeing how badly outmatched Keane was against Finn, I knew I’d taken a much bigger risk than I’d realized. I couldn’t come up with anything to say in my defense, so I kept my mouth shut.