Fortunately, the only ones in the playground were him and a guard whom he'd already thralled.
Yaaf drifted closer to the group and scanned their minds one more time to make sure there were no traitors in their midst.
The teacher walked over to Sullha and sat next to her on the ground. "I told the mothers of the children in my class that I'm taking the day off because of a sore throat."
The collective berated itself for not realizing that Saphira needed a backup story, and they were glad she'd thought of one. They marked it with newfound respect for the teacher, a reminder that the people they were helping had minds of their own and could come up with good ideas.
"Smart," Sullha said. "The rest of us won't be missed because everyone will assume we are somewhere else in the compounddoing a different chore. The only one whose absence would have gotten noticed is you."
Saphira leaned closer to her. "You said something about the sons having the ability to make everyone ignore our absence, but I wasn't sure. Can they do that?"
Sullha nodded. "For a time. They can do that effectively while they are near, but once they are on the other side of the island, their influence will fade, so the cover is not going to last long."
Saphira shook her head. "It still sounds like magic to me. I didn't know immortals could do that."
"Neither did I," Sullha admitted. "We live and learn."
"Speaking of invisible immortals," Burda said. "Weren't they supposed to get me something?"
Yaaf touched the new communication device in his shirt pocket. The clan had delivered it as requested, using a drone, which now seemed ironic. They could have sent the device with their Guardians, but then they hadn't planned on letting the Eight know that they were about to infiltrate the island.
It still rankled, despite them understanding the clan's motives. It wasn't a good feeling not to be trusted.
After the Eight had left the mansion, they had stopped by the water tower of the resort and removed the old transmitter. They'd then stopped at the enclosure's water tower and placed the new one there, where it would serve Burda the best.
She still needed him to explain to her how the device worked, and that meant showing himself.
After weeks of moving through this place unseen, the prospect of dropping his cover and stepping into the light felt strange, almost transgressive, but it had to be done today anyway so he could lead them out of the enclosure.
30
SULLHA
Yaaf was close.
Sullha could feel him as a pressure at the edge of her senses, and then she caught his scent, clean and male and particular to him, and her body answered it before her mind could intervene. A flush of heat. A tightening low in her belly.
The dream surged up unbidden.
Yaaf's weight, his hands, the sounds he'd pulled out of her.
She sat very still and willed it down.
It had been just a silly dream. It meant nothing. Dreams were the mind's refuse, the day's scraps churned into nonsense while the body slept, and she would not let it change how she reacted to Yaaf, because she couldn't allow him to see the effect that dream had on her.
If she let it show, it would become something that needed to be acknowledged, and she had no intention of ever doing so. She would carry it alongside all the other things she refused toexamine, like the thing he'd told her that she'd answered with silence.
They had spent the early hours of the morning as friends and accomplices, and that had been bearable because they'd been busy rushing from room to room in the predawn hours, with Yaaf shrouding them while she woke woman after woman with a hand on a shoulder and a whisper, telling each of them that the day had come, telling them where to go and reminding them what to carry and how to behave.
The sense of purpose and urgency had left no space for awkwardness, but now that the work paused and the waiting had begun, the awkwardness crept back in.
The scent of him. The heat.
She wondered whether he'd eaten.
She had breakfast with Tomek, and the women had all eaten, the meal functioning as one more piece of their cover, but also necessary to sustain them. She didn't know when or where their next meal would be.
Perhaps he'd taken something from the kitchen, lifted bread from a tray with no one any the wiser. Yaaf could do that. It seemed that he could do almost anything, but it still bothered her that she didn't know whether he'd eaten.
