Torment (15 page)

From the footpath leading up to their bungalow, Luce could see a light on through the window. She stepped closer until she had a clearer view.

It was uncanny: the same room she’d seen earlier in the Announcer. Even down to the fat white dog asleep on the rug. She could hear dishes being washed in the kitchen. She could see the thin, brown-socked ankles of the man who had been her father however many years ago.

He didn’t feel like her father. He didn’t look like her father, and the woman hadn’t looked at all like her mother. It wasn’t that there was anything wrong with them. They seemed perfectly nice. Like perfectly nice … strangers. If she knocked on the door and made up some lie about car washes, would they become any less strange?

No, she decided. But that wasn’t all. Even though
she
didn’t recognize her parents, if they really were her parents, of course they would recognize
her
.

She felt stupid for not thinking about that before. They’d take one look at her and know she was their daughter. Her parents were much older than most of the other people she’d seen outside. The shock of it might be too much for them. It was too much for Luce, and this couple had about seventy years on her.

By then she was pressed against their living room window, crouching behind a spiny sagebrush cactus bush. Her fingers were dirty from gripping the windowsill. If their daughter had died when she was seventeen, they must have been mourning her for close to fifty years. They’d be at peace with it by now. Wouldn’t they? Luce popping up uninvited from behind a cactus plant would be the very last thing they needed.

Shelby would be disappointed. Luce herself was disappointed. It hurt to realize that this was as close as she was ever going to get to them. Hanging on the windowsill outside her former parents’ house, she felt the tears roll down her cheeks. She didn’t even know their names.

EIGHT

ELEVEN DAYS

To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
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.”