Torment

EIGHT ELEVEN DAYS

To: thegaprices@aol.com

From: lucindap44@gmail.com

Sent: Monday, 11/15 at 9:49 am

Subject: Hanging in there

Dear Mom and Dad,

I’m sorry I’ve been out of touch. Things at school have been busy, but I’m having a lot of good experiences. My favorite class these days is humanities. Right now I’m working on an extra-credit assignment that takes up a lot of my time. I miss you guys and hope to see you soon. Thanks for being such great parents. I don’t think I tell you that enough.

Love,

Luce

Luce clicked Send on her laptop and quickly switched her browser back to the online presentation Francesca was giving at the front of the room. Luce was still getting used to being at a school where they handed out computers, complete with wireless Internet, right in the middle of class. Sword & Cross had a total of seven student computers, all of which were in the library. Even if you managed to get your hands on the encrypted password to access the Web, every site was blocked except for a few dry academic research ones.

The email to her parents had been prompted by guilt. The night before, she’d had the strangest feeling that merely by driving out to the retirement community in Mount Shasta, she was cheating on her real parents, the ones who had raised her in this lifetime. Sure, at some point, these other parents had been real, too. But that was still too strange a thought for Luce to really absorb.

Shelby hadn’t been one-tenth as pissed off as she could have been about driving Luce all the way up there for no reason. Instead, she just fired up the Mercedes and drove to the nearest In-N-Out Burger so they could get a couple of off-the-menu grilled cheese sandwiches with special sauce.

“Do not give it a second thought,” Shelby said, wiping her mouth with a napkin. “Do you know how many panic attacks my screwed-up family’s given me? Believe me, I’m the last person who’s going to judge you about this.”

Now Luce looked across the classroom at Shelby and felt an intense gratitude for the girl who, a week before, had terrified her. Shelby’s thick blond hair was pulled back by a terry-cloth headband, and she was taking diligent notes on Francesca’s lecture.

Every screen Luce could see in her peripheral vision was fixed on the blue and gold PowerPoint presentation that Francesca was clicking through at a snail’s pace. Even Dawn’s. She looked especially spunky today in a hot-pink T-shirt dress and a high side ponytail. Was it possible she’d already recovered from what had happened on the boat? Or was she covering up the terror she must have felt—and maybe still felt?

Glancing over at Roland’s monitor, Luce scrunched up her face. It didn’t surprise her that he’d been mostly invisible since he arrived at Shoreline, but when he did turn up in class, she was actually upset to see her former reform school cohort following the rules.

At least Roland didn’t look especially interested in the lecture on “Career Opportunities for Nephilim: How Your Special Skills Can Give You a Wing Up.” In fact, the look on Roland’s face was more disappointed than anything else. His mouth was set in a frown and he kept lightly shaking his head. Also strange was the fact that every time Francesca made eye contact with the students, she distinctly passed over Roland.

Luce pulled up the class chat room board to see whether Roland was logged on. It was supposed to be a tool for the class to bounce questions off each other, but the questions Luce had for Roland were not for class discussion. He knew something, something more than he’d let on the other day—surely it had to do with Daniel. She also wanted to ask him where he’d been on Saturday, whether he’d heard about Dawn’s trip overboard.

Except Roland wasn’t online. The only other person in the class who was logged on to the chat room was Miles. A text box with his name on it popped up on her screen:

Helloooo over there!

He was sitting right next to her. Luce could even hear him chuckling. It was cute that he got a kick out of his own dumb jokes. This was exactly the kind of goofy, teasing rapport she would love to have with Daniel. If he weren’t so brooding all the time. If he were actually around.

But he wasn’t.

She wrote back: How’s the weather in your neck of the woods?

Getting sunnier now, he typed, still smiling. Hey, what’d you do last night? I swung by your room to see if you wanted to grab dinner.

She looked up from her computer, straight at Miles. His deep blue eyes were so sincere, she had an urge to turn to spill everything about what had happened. He’d been so amazing the other day, listening to her talk about her time at Sword & Cross. But there was no way to answer his question via chat. As much as she wanted to tell him, she didn’t know whether she should talk about it. Even letting Shelby in on her secret project was practically wooing trouble from Steven and Francesca.

Miles’s expression changed from his normal casual smile into an awkward frown. It made Luce feel terrible, and also slightly surprised, that she could elicit this kind of reaction in him.

Francesca clicked off the projector. When she crossed her arms over her chest, the pink silk sleeves of her peasant blouse bloomed out of her cropped leather jacket. For the first time, Luce noticed how far away Steven was. He was seated on the windowsill at the western corner of the room. He had barely said a word in class all day.

“Let’s see how well you paid attention,” Francesca said, smiling widely at the students. “Why don’t you break up into pairs and take turns conducting mock interviews.”

At the sound of all the other students rising from their chairs, Luce groaned internally. She’d heard next to nothing of Francesca’s lecture and had no idea what the assignment was.

Also, she knew she was just squatting in the Nephilim program temporarily, but was it too much to ask for her teachers to remember every once in a while that she wasn’t like the rest of the kids in the class?

Miles tapped her computer screen where he had messaged her: You wanna partner up? Just then, Shelby appeared.

“I say we do CIA or Doctors Without Borders,” Shelby said. She motioned for Miles to surrender the desk next to Luce. Miles stayed put. “There’s no way I’m fictitiously applying for some lame dental hygienist position.”

Luce looked back and forth between Shelby and Miles. Both of them seemed to feel proprietary about her, something she hadn’t realized until now. Truthfully, she wanted to be partners with Miles—she hadn’t seen him since Saturday. She’d kind of been missing him. In a friendly way. Like in a let’s-catch-up-over-a-cup-of-coffee way, more than a let’s-wander-along-the-beach-at-sunset-and-you-can-smile-at-me-with-those-incredible-blue-eyes way. Because she was with Daniel, she didn’t think about other guys. She definitely didn’t start blushing intensely in the middle of class while reminding herself that she didn’t think about other guys.

“Is everything okay over here?” Steven laid his tan palm on Luce’s desk and gave her a big-brown-eyed you-can-tell-me nod.

But Luce was still nervous around him after what he’d said to her and Dawn on the life raft the other day. Nervous enough that she’d even avoided bringing it up again with Dawn.

“Everything’s great,” Shelby responded. She took Luce by the elbow and jerked her toward the deck, where some of the other students were paired up, already conducting their mock interviews. “Luce and I were just about to talk résumés.”

Francesca appeared behind Steven. “Miles,” she said softly, “Jasmine still needs a partner if you’d like to pull up a desk next to her.”

A few desks down, Jasmine said, “Dawn and I couldn’t agree on who should play indie starlet and who should play”—her voice dropped an octave—“casting director. So she abandoned me for Roland.”

Miles looked disappointed. “Casting director,” he mumbled. “Finally, I’ve found my calling.” He headed off to join his partner, and Luce watched him go.

With the situation diffused, Francesca steered Steven back to the front of the room. But even as he walked beside Francesca, Luce could feel him watching her.

She subtly checked her phone. Callie still hadn’t texted her back. This wasn’t like her, and Luce blamed herself. Maybe it would be better for both of them if Luce just kept her distance. It was only for a little while.

She followed Shelby outside to a seat on the wooden bench built into the curve of the deck. The sun was bright in the clear sky, but the only part of the deck that wasn’t already packed with students was under the cool shade of a towering redwood. Luce brushed a layer of dull green needles off the bench and zipped her chunky sweater a little higher on her neck.

“You were really cool about everything last night,” she said in a low voice. “I was … freaking out.”

“I know,” Shelby laughed. “You were all—” She made a trembling zombie face.

“Give me a break. That was rough. My one chance to learn something about my past, and I totally choked.”

“You Southerners and your guilt.” Shelby gave a one-shouldered shrug. “You gotta cut yourself some slack. I’m sure there are plenty more relatives where those two old geezers came from. Maybe even some who aren’t so close to death’s door.” Before Luce’s face could collapse, Shelby added, “All I’m saying is, if you ever feel up for tracking down another family member, just say the word. You’re growing on me Luce, it’s kinda weird.”

“Shelby,” Luce whispered suddenly, through clenched teeth. “Don’t move.” Beyond the deck, the biggest, most ominous Announcer Luce had ever seen was rippling in the long shadow cast by an enormous redwood tree.

Slowly, following Luce’s eyes, Shelby looked out at the ground. The Announcer was using the real shadow of the tree as camouflage. Parts of it kept twitching.

“It looks sick, or skittish, or, I don’t know …” Shelby trailed off, curling her lip. “There’s something wrong with it, right?”

Luce was looking past Shelby at the staircase winding down to the ground level of the lodge. Below them were a bunch of unpainted wooden supports that propped up the deck. If Luce could get hold of the shadow, Shelby could join her under the deck before anyone saw anything. She could help Luce glimpse its message and they could make it back upstairs in time to rejoin the class.

“You’re not seriously considering what I think you’re seriously considering,” Shelby said. “Are you?”

“Keep watch up here for a minute,” Luce said. “Be ready when I call you.”

Luce descended a few steps, so that her head was just level with the deck where the rest of the students were busy carrying out their interviews. Shelby had her back to Luce. She’d give a sign if anyone noticed Luce was gone.

Luce could hear Dawn in the corner, ad-libbing with Roland: “You know, I was stunned when I was nominated for a Golden Globe. …”

Luce looked back at the darkness stretched out along the grass. It occurred to her to wonder whether the other students had seen it. But she couldn’t worry about that. She was wasting time.

The Announcer was a good ten feet away, but where she stood close to the deck, Luce was shielded from the other students’ eyes. It would be too obvious if she walked right over to it. She was going to have to try to coax it off the ground and over to her without using her hands. And she had no idea how to do that.

That was when she noticed the figure leaning up against the other side of the redwood tree. Also hidden from the view of the students on the deck.

Cam was smoking a cigarette, humming to himself like he didn’t have a care in the world. Except that he was covered entirely in blood and gore. His hair was matted to his forehead, his arms were scratched and bruised. His T-shirt was wet and stained with sweat, and his jeans were splattered too. He looked filthy and disgusting, as though he’d just emerged from battle. Only, there was no one else around—no bodies, no anything. Just Cam.

He winked at her.

“What are you doing here?” she whispered. “What did you do?” Her head swam from the sick reek coming off his bloodied clothes.

“Oh, just saved your life. Again. How many times does this make?” He tapped ash off his cigarette. “Today it was Miss Sophia’s crew, and I can’t say I didn’t enjoy it. Bloody monsters. They’re after you, too, you know. Word has gotten out that you’re here. And that you like to wander into that dark forest unchaperoned.” He pointed.

“You just killed them?” She was horrified, glancing up at the deck to see whether Shelby, or anyone, could see them. No.

“A couple of them, yes, just now, with my own two hands.” Cam showed off his palms, caked with something red and slimy that Luce really did not want to see. “I agree the woods are lovely, Luce, but they’re also full of things that want you dead. So do me a favor—”

“No. You don’t get to ask me for favors. Everything about you disgusts me.”

“Fine.” He rolled his eyes. “Then do it for Grigori. Stay on campus.” He flicked his cigarette onto the grass, rolled back his shoulders, and unfurled his wings. “I can’t always be here to watch over you. And God knows Grigori can’t.”

Cam’s wings were tall and narrow and pulled tight behind his shoulders, sleek and gold and flecked with brindled stripes of black. She wished they repulsed her, but they didn’t. Like Steven’s wings, Cam’s were jagged, rough—they too looked as though they’d survived a lifetime of fights. The black stripes gave Cam’s wings a dark, sensual quality. There was something magnetic about them.

But no. She loathed everything about Cam. She would forever.

Cam beat his wings once, lifting his feet off the ground. The wings’ flapping was tremendously loud and kicked back a swirl of wind that raised leaves from the ground.

“Thank you,” Luce said, crisply, before he coasted under the deck. Then he was gone in the shadows of the woods.

Cam was protecting her now? Where was Daniel? Wasn’t Shoreline supposed to be safe?

In Cam’s wake, the Announcer—the reason Luce had come down here in the first place—spiraled up from its shadow like a small black cyclone.

Closer. Then a little closer still.

Finally, the shadow wandered into the air just over her head.

“Shelby,” Luce whispered loudly. “Get down here.”

Shelby looked down at Luce. At the cyclone-shaped Announcer teetering over her. “What took you so long?” she asked, sprinting down the stairs just in time to watch the whole massive Announcer tumble down.

Straight into Luce’s arms.

Luce screamed—but luckily, Shelby clapped a hand over her mouth.

“Thank you,” Luce said, her words muffled against Shelby’s fingers.

The girls were still huddled three steps down from the deck, in plain view of anyone who might cross over to the shady side. Luce couldn’t straighten her knees under the weight of the shadow. It was the heaviest one she’d ever touched, and the coldest on her skin. It wasn’t black like most of the others, but a sickly greenish gray. Parts of it were still twitching, lighting up like bolts of distant lightning.

“I don’t have a good feeling about this,” Shelby said.

“Come on,” Luce whispered. “I summoned it. Now it’s your turn to do the glimpsing.”

“My turn? Who said anything about me having a turn? You’re the one who dragged me down here.” Shelby waved her hands like the last thing on earth she wanted to do was touch the beast in Luce’s arms. “I know I said I’d help you track down your relatives, but whatever kind of relative you’ve got in here … I don’t think either of us wants to meet.”

“Shelby, please,” Luce begged, groaning from the weight, the chill, and the general nastiness of the shadow. “I’m not a Nephilim. If you don’t help me, I can’t do this.”

“What exactly are you trying to do?” A voice behind them from the top of the stairs. Steven had his hands clamped down on the banister and was glaring at the girls. He seemed larger than he did in class, towering over them, as if he had doubled in size. His deep brown eyes looked stormy, but Luce could feel the heat coming off them, and she was scared. Even the Announcer in her arms trembled and edged away.

Both girls were so startled they screamed.

Jarred by the sound, the shadow bolted from Luce’s arms. It moved so fast she had no chance to stop it, and it left nothing behind but a freezing, foul-smelling wake.

In the distance, a bell rang. Luce could sense all the other kids trooping off toward the mess hall for lunch. On his way out, Miles stuck his head over the railing and peered down at Luce, but he took one look at Steven’s red-hot expression, widened his eyes, and moved along.

“Luce,” Steven said, more politely than she expected. “Would you mind seeing me after school?”

When he lifted his hands off the railing, the wood underneath them was scorched black.

Steven opened the door before Luce even knocked. His gray shirt was a bit wrinkled and his black knit tie was loosened at the neck. But he had regained the appearance of serenity, which Luce was beginning to realize took effort for a demon. He wiped his glasses on a monogrammed handkerchief and stepped aside.

“Please come in.”

The office wasn’t big, just wide enough for a large black desk, just long enough for three tall black bookshelves, each one crammed with hundreds of well-worn books. But it was comfortable and even welcoming—not like what Luce had imagined a demon’s office would be like. There was a Persian carpet in the center of the room, a wide window looking east at the redwoods. Now, at dusk, the forest had an ethereal, almost lavender hue.

Steven sat down in one of two maroon desk chairs and motioned for Luce to take the other. She surveyed the framed pieces of art, jigsawed onto every spare inch of the wall. Most of them were portraits in varying degrees of detail. Luce recognized a few sketches of Steven himself and several flattering depictions of Francesca.

Luce took a deep breath, wondering how to begin. “I’m sorry I summoned that Announcer today; I—”

“Have you told anyone about what happened with Dawn in the water?”

“No. You told me not to.”

“You haven’t told Shelby? Miles?”

“I haven’t told anyone.”

He considered this for a moment. “Why did you call the Announcers the shadows the other day when we were talking on the boat?”

“It just slipped out. When I was growing up, they always were part of the shadows. They’d detach and come to me. So that’s what I called them, before I knew what they were.” Luce shrugged. “Stupid, really.”

“It’s not stupid.” Steven stood up and went to the farthest bookshelf. He pulled down a thick book with a dusty red cover and brought it back to the desk. Plato: The Republic. Steven opened it to the exact page he’d been looking for, turning the book right side up in front of Luce.

It was an illustration of a group of men inside a cave, shackled beside one another, facing a wall. A fire blazed behind them. They were pointing at the shadows cast on the wall by a second group of men who walked behind them. Below the image, a caption read: The Allegory of the Cave.

“What is this?” Luce asked. Her knowledge of Plato started and ended with the fact that he palled around with Socrates.

“Proof of why your name for the Announcers is actually quite smart.” Steven pointed at the illustration. “Imagine that these men spend their lives seeing only the shadows on this wall. They come to understand the world and what happens in it from these shadows, without ever seeing what casts the shadows. They don’t even understand that what they are seeing are shadows.”

She looked just beyond Steven’s finger to the second group of men. “So they can never turn around, never see the people and things creating the shadows?”

“Exactly. And because they can’t see what is actually casting the shadows, they assume that what they can see—these shadows on the wall—are reality. They have no idea that the shadows are mere representations and distortions of something much truer and more real.” He paused. “Do you understand why I’m telling you this?”

Luce shook her head. “You want me to stop messing with the Announcers?”

Steven closed the book with a snap, then crossed to the other side of the room. She felt as if she’d disappointed him somehow.

“Because I don’t believe you will stop … messing with the Announcers, even if I do ask you to. But I do want you to understand what you’re dealing with the next time you summon one. The Announcers are shadows of past events. They can be helpful, but they also contain some very distracting, sometimes dangerous distortions. There’s a lot to learn. A clean, safe summoning technique; then, of course, once you have honed your talents, the Announcer’s noise can be screened out and its message be heard clearly through—”

“You mean that whooshing noise? There’s a way to hear through that?”

“Never mind. Not yet.” Steven turned and sank his hands into his pockets. “What were you and Shelby after today?”

Luce felt flushed and uncomfortable. This meeting was not going at all as she’d expected. She’d thought maybe detention, some trash pickup.

“We were trying to learn more about my family,” she finally managed to get out. Thankfully, Steven seemed to have no idea she had seen Cam earlier. “Or my families, I guess I should say.”

“That’s all?”

“Am I in trouble?”

“You weren’t doing anything else?”

“What else would I be doing?”

It shot through her mind that Steven might think she was reaching out to Daniel, trying to send him a message or something. As if she’d even know how to do that.

“Summon one now,” Steven said, opening the window. It was past dusk and Luce’s stomach told her that most of the other students would be sitting down to dinner.

“I—I don’t know if I can.”

Steven’s eyes looked warmer than they had earlier, excited almost. “When we summon Announcers, we’re making a sort of wish. Not a wish for anything material, but a wish to better understand the world, our role in it, and what’s to become of us.”

Immediately, Luce thought of Daniel, what she wanted most for their relationship. She didn’t feel she had much of a role in what was to become of them—and she wanted one. Was that why she’d been able to summon the Announcers before she’d even known how?

Nervously, she centered herself in her chair. She closed her eyes. She imagined a shadow detaching itself from the long darkness that stretched from the tree trunks outside, imagined it rolling away and rising, filling the space of the open window. Then floating closer to her.

She smelled the soft mildewy scent first, almost like black olives, then opened her eyes at the brush of coolness on her cheek. The temperature in the room had dropped a few degrees. Steven rubbed his hands together in the suddenly damp, drafty office.

“Yes, there you go,” he murmured.

The Announcer was drifting in the air of his office, thin and transparent, no bigger than a silk scarf. It glided straight toward Luce, then wrapped a fuzzy tendril of nothingness around a blown-glass paperweight on the desk. Luce gasped. Steven was smiling when he stepped toward her, guiding it upright until it became a blank black screen.

Then it was in her hands, and she began to pull. The careful motion felt like trying to stretch out a piecrust without breaking it, something Luce had watched her mother do at least a hundred times. The darkness swirled into muted grays; then the faintest black-and-white image came into view.

A dark bedroom with a single bed. Luce—a former Luce, clearly—lying on her side, staring out the open window. She must have been sixteen years old. The door behind the bed opened, and a face, lit up by the hallway light, appeared in it. The mother.

The mother Luce had gone to see with Shelby! But younger, much younger—maybe by as many as fifty years, glasses perched at the end of her nose. She smiled, as if pleased to find her daughter sleeping, then pulled the door shut.

A moment later, a pair of fingertips gripped the bottom of the windowpane. Luce’s eyes widened as the former Luce sat up in bed. Outside the window, the fingertips strained; then a pair of hands became visible, then two strong arms, lit up blue in the moonlight. Then Daniel’s glowing face as he came in through the window.

Luce’s heart was racing. She wanted to dive into the Announcer, as she’d wanted to yesterday with Shelby. But then Steven clicked his fingers and the whole thing snapped up like a venetian blind rolling to the top of a window frame. Then it broke apart and showered down.

The shadow lay in soft fragments on the desk. Luce reached for one, but it disintegrated in her hands.

Steven sat down behind his desk, probing Luce with his eyes as if to see what the glimpse had done to her. It suddenly felt very private, what she’d just witnessed in the Announcer; she didn’t know whether she wanted Steven to know how powerfully it had rocked her. After all, he was technically on the other side. In the past few days she’d seen more and more of the demon in him. Not just the fiery temper, welling up until he literally steamed—but the dark-glorious golden wings, too. Steven was magnetic and charming, just like Cam—and, she reminded herself, just like Cam, a demon.

“Why are you helping me with this?”

“Because I don’t want you to get hurt,” Steven barely whispered.

“Did that really happen?”

Steven looked away. “It’s a representation of something. And who knows how distorted it is. It’s a shadow of a past event, not reality. There is always some truth to the Announcer, but it’s never the simple truth. That’s what makes Announcers so problematic, and so dangerous to those without proper training.” He glanced at his watch. From below them came the sound of the door opening and closing on the landing. Steven stiffened when he heard a quick set of high heels clicking up the stairs.

Francesca.

Luce tried to read Steven’s face. He handed her The Republic, which she slipped into her backpack. Just before Francesca’s beautiful face appeared in the doorway, Steven said to Luce, “The next time you and Shelby choose not to complete one of your assignments, I will ask you to write a five-page research paper with citations. This time, I let you off with a warning.”

“I understand.” Luce caught Francesca’s eye in the doorway.

She smiled at Luce—though whether it was an off-you-go dismissal smile or a don’t-think-you’re-fooling-me-kid smile, it was impossible to tell. Trembling a little as she stood and flung her bag over her shoulder, Luce made for the door, calling back to Steven, “Thank you.”

Shelby had the fire going in the hearth when Luce got back to her dorm room. The hot pot was plugged in next to the Buddha night-light and the whole room smelled like tomatoes.

“We were out of mac and cheese, but I made you some soup.” Shelby ladled out a piping-hot bowlful, cracked some fresh black pepper on top, and brought it over to Luce, who’d collapsed on top of her bed. “Was it terrible?”

Luce watched the steam rise from her bowl and tried to figure out what to say. Bizarre, yes. Confusing. A little scary. Potentially … empowering.

But it hadn’t been terrible, no.

“It was okay.” Steven seemed to trust her, at least to the extent that he was going to allow her to continue summoning the Announcers. And the other students seemed to trust him, even admire him. No one else acted concerned about his motives or his allegiances. But with Luce he was so cryptic, so difficult to read.

Luce had trusted the wrong people before. A careless pursuit at best. At worst, it’s a good way to get yourself killed. That was what Miss Sophia had said about trust the night she’d tried to murder Luce.

It was Daniel who’d advised Luce to trust her instincts. But her own feelings seemed the most unreliable. She wondered whether Daniel had already known about Shoreline when he’d told her that, whether his advice was a way to prepare her for this long separation, when she would become less and less certain about everything in her life. Her family. Her past. Her future.

She looked up from the bowl at Shelby. “Thanks for the soup.”

“Don’t let Steven thwart your plans,” Shelby huffed. “We should totally keep working on the Announcers. I am just so sick of these angels and demons and their power trips. ‘Oooh, we know better than you because we’re full-on angels and you’re just the bastard child of some angel who got his rocks off.’ ”

Luce laughed, but she was thinking that Steven’s mini-lecture on Plato and giving her The Republic tonight was the opposite of a power trip. Of course, there was no telling Shelby that now, not when she’d dropped into her usual I’m-on-a-tirade-against-Shoreline routine on Luce’s bottom bunk.

“I mean, I know you have whatever going on with Daniel,” Shelby continued, “but seriously, what good has an angel ever done for me?”

Luce shrugged apologetically.

“I’ll tell you: nothing. Nothing besides knock up my mom and then totally ditch both of us before I was born. Real celestial behavior.” Shelby snorted. “The kicker is, my whole life, my mom’s telling me I should be grateful. For what? These watered-down powers and this enormous forehead I inherited from my dad? No thanks.” She kicked the top bunk glumly. “I’d give anything to just be normal.”

“Really?” Luce had spent the whole week feeling inferior to her Nephilim classmates. She knew the grass was always greener, but this she couldn’t believe. What advantage could Shelby possibly see in not having her Nephilim powers?

“Wait,” Luce said, “the sorry-ass ex-boyfriend. Did he …”

Shelby looked away. “We were meditating together, and, I don’t know, somehow during the mantra, I accidentally levitated. It wasn’t even a big deal, I was, like, two inches off the floor. But Phil wouldn’t let it go. He started bugging me about what else I could do, and asking all these weird questions.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know,” Shelby said. “Some stuff about you, actually. He wanted to know if you’d taught me to levitate. Whether you could levitate too.”

“Why me?”

“Probably more of his pervy roommate fantasies. Anyway, you should have seen the look on his face that day. Like I was some sort of circus freak. I had no choice but to break things off.”

“That’s awful.” Luce squeezed Shelby’s hand. “But it sounds like his problem, not yours. I know the rest of the kids at Shoreline look at the Nephilim funny, but I’ve been to a lot of high schools, and I’m starting to think that’s just the way most kids’ faces naturally bend. Besides, no one’s ‘normal.’ Phil must have had something freakish about him.”

“Actually, there was something about his eyes. They were blue, but faded, almost washed out. He had to wear these special contacts so people wouldn’t stare at him.” Shelby tossed her head to the side. “Plus, you know, that third nipple.” She burst out laughing, was red in the face by the time Luce joined in and practically in tears when a light tapping on the windowpane shut both of them up.

“That better not be him.” Shelby’s voice instantly sobered as she hopped up from the bed and flung open the window, knocking over a potted yucca in her haste.

“It’s for you,” she said, almost numbly.

Luce was at the window in a heartbeat, because by then, she could feel him. Bracing her palms on the sill, she leaned forward into the brisk night air.

She was face to face, lip to lip, with Daniel.

For the briefest moment, she thought he was looking past her, into the room, at Shelby, but then he was kissing her, cupping the back of her head with his soft hands and pulling her to him, taking her breath away. A week’s worth of warmth flowed through her, along with an unspoken apology for the harsh words they’d said the other night on the beach.

“Hello,” he whispered.

“Hello.”

Daniel was wearing jeans and a white T-shirt. She could see the cowlick in his hair. His tremendous pearl-white wings beat gently behind him, probing the black night, luring her in. They seemed to beat in the sky almost in time with her heart. She wanted to touch them, to bury herself in them the way she had the other night on the beach. It was a stunning thing to see him floating outside her third-story window.

He took her hand and pulled her over the windowsill and out into the air and his arms. But then he set her down on a wide, flat ledge under the window that she’d never noticed before.

She always felt the urge to cry when she was happiest. “You’re not supposed to be here. But I’m so glad you are.”

“Prove it,” he said, smiling as he pulled her back against his chest so that his head was just over her shoulder. He looped one arm around her waist. Warmth radiated from his wings. When she looked over her shoulder, all she could see was white; the world was white, all softly textured and aglow with moonlight. And then Daniel’s great wings began to beat—

Her stomach dropped a little and she knew she was being lifted—no, rocketed, straight into the sky. The ledge below them grew smaller and the stars above shone brighter and the wind ripped across her body, tousling her hair across her face.

Up they soared, higher into the night, until the school was just a black smudge on the ground below. Until the ocean was just a silver blanket on the earth. Until they pierced a feathery layer of cloud.

She wasn’t cold or afraid. She felt free of everything that weighed her down on earth. Free of danger, free of any pain she’d ever felt. Free of gravity. And so in love. Daniel’s mouth traced a line of kisses up the side of her neck. He wrapped his arms tight around her waist and turned her to face him. Her feet were on top of his, just as when they’d danced over the ocean at the bonfire. There was no wind anymore; the air around them was silent and calm. The only sounds were the beating of Daniel’s wings as they hovered in the sky and the beating of her own heart.

“Moments like this,” he said, “make everything we’ve had to go through worthwhile.”

Then he kissed her as he’d never kissed her before. A long, extended kiss that seemed to claim her lips forever. His hands traced the line of her body, lightly at first and then more forcefully, delighting in her curves. She melted into him, and he ran his fingers along the backs of her thighs, her hips, her shoulders. He took control of every part of her.

She felt the muscles beneath his cotton shirt, his taut arms and neck, the hollow at the small of his back. She kissed his jaw, his lips. Here in the clouds, with Daniel’s eyes sparkling brighter than any star she had ever seen, this was where Luce belonged.

“Can’t we just stay here forever?” she asked. “I’ll never get enough of this. Of you.”

“I hope not.” Daniel smiled, but soon, too soon, his wings shifted, flattening out. Luce knew what was coming next. A slow descent.

She kissed Daniel one last time and loosened her arms from around his neck, preparing herself for flight—but then she lost her grip.

And fell.

It seemed to happen in slow motion. Luce tipping backward, her arms flailing wildly, and then the rush of cold and wind as she plummeted and her breath left her. Her last glimpse was of Daniel’s eyes, the shock in his face.

But then everything sped up, and she was falling so furiously she couldn’t breathe. The world was a spinning black void, and she felt nauseated and scared, her eyes burning from the wind, her vision dimming and tunneling. She was going to pass out.

And that would be it.

She would never know who she really was, never know whether it had all been worth it. Would never know whether she was worthy of Daniel’s love, and he of hers. It was all over; this was it.

The wind was a fury in her ears. She closed her eyes and waited for the end.

And then he caught her.

There were arms around her, strong, familiar arms, and she was gently slowing, no longer falling—she was being cradled. By Daniel. Her eyes were closed, but Luce knew him.

She began to sob, so relieved that Daniel had caught her, had saved her. In that moment, she had never loved him more—no matter how many lifetimes she had lived.

“Are you okay?” Daniel whispered, his voice soft, his lips so close to hers.

“Yes.” She could feel the beating of his wings. “You caught me.”

“I will always catch you when you fall.”

Slowly they dropped back to the world they’d left behind. To Shoreline and the ocean lapping up against the cliffs. When they neared the dormitory, he clasped her tightly, and gently coasted to the ledge, alighting with a feather-light touch.

Luce planted her feet on the ledge and looked up at Daniel. She loved him. It was the only thing she was certain of.

“There,” he said, looking serious. His smile hardened, and the sparkle in his eyes seemed to fade. “That should satisfy your wanderlust, at least for a little while.”

“What do you mean, wanderlust?”

“The way you keep leaving campus?” His voice held a lot less warmth than it had a moment ago. “You have to stop doing that when I’m not around to look after you.”

“Oh, come on, it was just a stupid field trip. Everyone was there. Francesca, Steven—” She broke off, thinking about the way Steven had reacted to what had happened to Dawn. She didn’t dare bring up her road trip with Shelby. Or running into Cam under the deck.

“You’ve been making things very difficult for me,” Daniel said.

“I haven’t been having the easiest time either.”

“I told you there were rules. I told you not to leave this campus. But you haven’t listened. How many times have you disobeyed me?”

“Disobeyed you?” She laughed, but inside she felt dizzy and sick. “What are you, my boyfriend or my master?”

“Do you know what happens when you stray from here? The danger you put yourself in just because you’re bored?”

“Look, the cat’s out of the bag,” she said. “Cam already knew I was here.”

“Of course Cam knows you’re here,” Daniel said, exasperated. “How many times do I have to tell you Cam is not the threat right now? He won’t try to sway you.”

“Why not?”

“Because he knows better. And you should know better too than to sneak off like that. There are dangers you can’t possibly fathom.”

She opened her mouth but didn’t know what to say. If she told Daniel she’d spoken with Cam that day, that he had killed several of Miss Sophia’s entourage, it would only prove his point. Anger flared up in Luce, at Daniel, at his mysterious rules, at his treating her like a child. She would have given anything to stay with him, but his eyes had hardened into flat gray sheets and their time in the sky felt like a distant dream.

“Do you understand what kind of Hell I go through to keep you safe?”

“How am I supposed to understand when you don’t tell me anything?”

Daniel’s beautiful features distorted into a scary expression. “Is this her fault?” He jerked his thumb toward her dorm room. “What kind of sinister ideas has she been putting in your head?”

“I can think for myself, thank you.” Luce narrowed her eyes. “But how do you know Shelby?”

Daniel ignored the question. Luce couldn’t believe the way he was talking to her, like she was some kind of badly behaved pet. All the warmth that had filled her a moment ago when Daniel had kissed her, held her, looked at her—it wasn’t enough when she felt this cold every time he spoke to her.

“Maybe Shelby is right,” she said. She hadn’t seen Daniel in so long—but the Daniel she wanted to see, the one who loved her more than anything, the one who’d followed her for millennia because he couldn’t live without her—was still up there in the clouds, not down here, bossing her around. Perhaps, even after all these lifetimes, she didn’t really know him. “Maybe angels and humans shouldn’t …”

But she couldn’t say it.

“Luce.” His fingers wrapped around her wrist, but she shook him off. His eyes were open and dark, and his cheeks were white from the cold. Her heart was urging her to grab him and keep him close, to feel his body pressed against hers, but she knew deep down that this wasn’t the kind of fight that could be cured with a kiss.

She pushed past him to a narrower part of the ledge and slid open her window, surprised to find that the room was already dark. She climbed inside, and when she turned back to Daniel, she noticed that his wings were trembling. Almost like he was about to cry. She wanted to go back to him, to hold and soothe and love him.

But she couldn’t.

She closed the shutters and stood in her dark room alone.