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have meant that the world wasn’t completely different than what I’d thought all my life.
    I started to take the skates off and put my old ones back on.
    “Don’t,” the Coach said. “Those are indoor/outdoor wheels. You can wear those everywhere.”
    “Yeah, but I don’t want to mess up my special skates,” I said. Before I could get both skates all the way off, the Coach took my old ones and threw them through the window of the skate rental room. He pointed at the new skates. “Those are your skates now, Deb. Wear those.”
    There was no point in arguing, but I still felt guilty wearing them out on the street. As I pushed open the exit door, the Coach shrugged.
    “Special skates,” he said. “Tougher than they look.” He grinned, and I saw the tusks again, for a fleeting moment.
    I rolled out of the rink—straight into a black cloud. Smoke billowed from the windows of Coach’s van. The tinted fishbowl windows held dollops of flame, side-panel airbrushed mermaids warping brown and black in the heat.
    “My van!” Coach screamed. He ran to the passenger side and threw open the door. He fumbled with the glove compartment, the flames lighting his snazzy London Fog jacket.
    “Coach, let it go!” I said. “Get out before you get hurt!”
    “You get out, Deb!” he said. “Out of town!” He grabbed something from the dash of the van and jumped back out, patting the flames out with his bare hands. “I’ve told you too much already,” he repeated. “This is a warning—now go! Go, Deb, and don’t look back.”

Chapter 5.5
    Forever’s Gonna Start Tonight
    Harlow

    So much for the old guy’s mansa. What was left of it amounted to the size of a small camping tent, but even that much was engulfed in flame.
    Coach leaned into it desperately, rooting for something inside. Probably some favorite talisman. There was the girl, with him. But was she a girl? Her scent hit me in patches—there’d be nothing but a trace, then it would hit me, like a prairie caught on fire. The sooty odor of the mansa on fire hung all around me, and through it, I tried to shake her out. She looked fully human, but she smelled familiar, like a long-lost friend.
    Whatever she was, Coach’s glamour worked on her. She appeared to be seeing a burning passenger van, although since Coach had glamoured over top of other spells, there were also flickers of his wooden gypsy cabin spiraling up through the smoke, as well. I wondered how she was interpreting that.
    I stood on a hilltop overlooking the parking lot. There were no sirens blaring, and though the smoke was thick, I began to wonder if anyone could see it at all, except for us magical folk. If that was the case, then McJagger himself might be responsible. Dave surely was privy to all the same sort of spells and bewitcheries that his father had, but he wasn’t likely to think outside the box while his dad was still around to do it for him. Why be a hardworking king when he could skate by as a lazy prince? But did Jag have the time to be cleaning up Dave’s messes?
    Speaking of skating, the girl took off. These were not the same skates I’d seen her in before—and they had a sort of glow about them, so that when she strode over the asphalt street, she seemed to be skating on smooth glass. She looked over her shoulder at Coach, who was gesturing for her to go.
    He cocked his head in my direction and I knew he had either seen or smelled me.
    “Don’t look back, Roller Deb!” he yelled.
    Roller Deb.
    He spoke to her like she was a human, but why would a periphery troll like Coach give a pair of enchanted skates to a mortal? Certainly the price he’d pay for stirring up trouble like that was not going to end with the burning of his mansa.
    Coach was lucky. Although some trolls find power within their mansa and seek to build bigger and bigger homes, the Coach was never into that sort of power trip. Like me, his home was temporary in nature, movable, and he was free. Someone like