Torment (17 page)

“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.