Unforgiven (24 page)

Four Days

T
he morning after he met Lilith and Bruce at the arcade, Cam sat next to Lucifer atop a splintery wooden scoreboard. They gazed down at the football field and, beyond it, the ever-burning hills.

The air was damp and cloaked with smoke. At seven a.m., the school was even quieter than the cemetery at Sword & Cross had been back before Cam had discovered that Lilith lived on in endless Hells, when all he had to worry about was playing games with Luce and Daniel. He wished he'd appreciated how charmingly simple his life had been back then.

Four days remained in his wager with the devil, and Cam had no idea how it would end. There had been moments—like when Lilith tried on her wedding dress—when Cam had known she could almost glimpse their shattered past. And while he hoped with all his heart that she was close to loving him, she had not yet said the words.

They hadn't even kissed.

Lucifer reached into a paper bag and handed Cam a steaming Styrofoam cup. He was in the guise of Luc, but when he and Cam were alone, the devil let his true, terrifying growl come out. “If you lived another sixteen trillion years,” he said, “you'd never stop being naïve.”

“I'd rather be naïve than cynical,” Cam said, and sipped his coffee. “Besides, how do you account for what's happened? She's changed. Once you set a ball rolling, you can't tell where it will go.”

“That's the beauty of being number two.” Lucifer smiled, and Cam glimpsed the maggots running through the gaps in his teeth. “No one expects you to succeed. Behold!”

Beneath them the wooden scoreboard lit up, the words
Home
and
Away
glittering in the morning light. The devil released his tarnished wings and swooped down to the bleachers, beckoning for Cam to join him.

Putting down his coffee, Cam sighed, glanced around to be sure they were alone, then let out his wings. He'd wanted to release them every time he was with Lilith, but he couldn't show her his true self, not yet. Maybe not ever.

Cam felt his wings extend behind him, then saw Lucifer's eyes trolling over them.

“What's going on there?” the devil asked with narrowed eyes.

Cam tried not to look surprised at the sight of his brindled wings, which were now equal parts white and gold. “You tell me,” he said as he swooped from the top of the scoreboard to hover next to Lucifer. It felt good to be in the air, to feel weightless, the wind surrounding him. “My hair, my waist, my wings. You're the brilliant stylist, right?”

The bleachers creaked underneath Cam and Lucifer's feet, and from somewhere, Cam heard a rustling, a whisper of fabric. Or maybe that was just the sound of Lucifer's scaly wings folding back in upon themselves. Cam also drew his wings back, lest a pair of mortal eyes fall upon them.

“We are now in what I'll call the third quarter,” Lucifer said, exhaling a cloud of black smoke. It spiraled through the air until it was hovering over the scoreboard, then it disappeared. The box designating football quarters lit up with the number three. “Let's see how our teams are stacking up.”

Lucifer's mouth twitched, and Cam realized the devil wasn't sure how their game would play out, either. He'd brought Cam here to gauge the Away team's confidence. Cam couldn't allow Lucifer to see any weakness—any crack the devil spotted in his façade would immediately become a target.

“Your first move was a strong one, I'll admit,” Lucifer said. “Starting a band with Lilith: one point!” A numeral 1 appeared under the
Away
box on the scoreboard. Then he laughed. “Stealing her journal, followed by distributing those song lyrics? Definitely a point for
moi.
”

When the numeral 100 appeared under
Home,
Luc zipped out his wings, flew forward, and slapped the scoreboard a few times. “What's wrong with this thing?”

He swooped back to the bleachers, and Cam watched his wings recede into his shoulders, noting the way they glittered darkly in the morning light.

“I cured her brother,” Cam said. “That's worth more than anything you've tried to undo.”

“I will allow you that,” Luc said. Under
Away,
the number 1 became a 2. “But you also got old and flabby and bald, which everyone can agree is a big
fat
point for me.” The figure 200 appeared on the
Home
scoreboard.

Cam rolled his eyes. “If you haven't noticed, Lilith doesn't care how you manipulate my appearance.”

“It's not that she doesn't care!” Luc spat. “For some reason, she doesn't see how your body is changing.”

Cam was confused. “You mean I'm ugly to everyone
but
Lilith?”

“Ding ding ding.”
The scoreboard lit up a 3 under
Away.
Luc looked directly into the sun without squinting. “I don't get it, either. I was sure that altering the way you look would disgust her, but—”

“It's Lilith,” Cam said, realizing something for the first time. “She sees what's inside of me, and even you can't taint that.” He gazed down at himself, feeling more confident than he had in days. “I don't know why it took losing my looks for me to realize that.” He nudged the devil. “You should give yourself an extra point for that.”

“Don't mind if I do.” Lucifer turned toward the scoreboard, which now read,
Home: 300; Away: 3.
Then he narrowed his eyes at Cam. “I can't imagine why you're so confident. You're losing.”

“How do you figure?” Cam asked.

“For the first time in any of her lifetimes, Lilith is learning to enjoy her Hell,” Lucifer said. “She's quit comparing her dreams to her reality.”

“She's adapting, learning to survive,” Cam agreed. “She's almost…”

He paused, thinking about the way Lilith had smiled at him the other day from across the cafeteria, and the sound of her voice yesterday when she'd sang along with Bruce at the arcade, and the look in her eyes when they'd toasted her winning lyrics with warm cups of root beer.

“…happy,” Cam finished.

“But a happy girl doesn't need saving by someone like you,” Lucifer said with a snarl. “Face it, Cam: You need her to hate her life so that she can love you. Or else you lose the bet—and her.”
Home
rang up 2,000 on the scoreboard. The sound of the numbers changing so rapidly pinged like rain on a tin roof. “Yes, a Prom-night defeat is certain,” Lucifer said. “But then, it always was.”

“You're wrong,” Cam said.

“Tell you what I'll do.” Lucifer leaned close. The devil smelled like anise mixed with burning coal. Cam's stomach turned. “I'll let you off the hook.”

“What do you mean?” Cam asked.

“I'll call off the bet. You can go back to moping around the middle reaches of the universe, never realizing your potential. I'll go back to keeping everyone confused.”

In the devil's red-rimmed eyes, Cam recognized something desperate.

“You think you're going to lose,” Cam found himself saying.

Lucifer let out a burst of laughter that seemed to shake the ground beneath them.

“Why else would you offer to cancel our wager?” Cam asked.

His laughter ended abruptly. “Maybe what happened with Luce and Daniel changed me, too,” Lucifer growled. “Maybe I'm showing mercy to you. Disgusting as that sounds.”

“You're bluffing,” Cam said. It didn't matter what the devil said. There was no chance of Cam backing out of their deal. “I won't abandon Lilith. I can't go on without her.”

“I applaud your perseverance,” Lucifer said as the numeral 4 lit up under the
Away
side of the scoreboard. “But you don't know what you're talking about. Do you even know
why
Lilith is one of my subjects?”

Cam swallowed. The question had haunted him since before he got here, since Annabelle had told him where to find her.

“Suicide,”
Lucifer said, slowly, enunciating each syllable.

“She wouldn't—” Cam whispered.

“You think you know her? You don't. And you don't have a chance.” Lucifer glanced down at the desolate campus he had created. “And everyone—even all those silly kids down there—knows it but you.”

“Tell me what happened,” Cam said, hearing the tremor in his own voice. “When did she take her life? Why?”

“You have till the end of the day to forfeit,” Lucifer said, his eyes a wilderness of evil. “Otherwise? Things are about to get dirty.”

“For a change?” Cam asked.

The devil flashed him a dangerous look. “You'll see.”

Cam paced the parking lot, waiting for the buses to arrive, for another day at Trumbull to begin. The devil's warning had put him on edge.

He needed to see Lilith. He closed his eyes and tried to picture her walking to school, but all he could focus on was the suicide Lucifer had mentioned. When had she done it? Where?

Could Cam have been responsible?

From the moment he'd met Lilith, Cam had known there would be no way to disentangle her existence from his own. She was his one true love. If Cam had learned anything from Luce and Daniel, it was this: When you find that soul you cherished above all others, you do
not
let it go.

The high-pitched squeal of brakes announced the arrival of the school buses. When the yellow fleet had filled the circular drive, kids marched down their steps and flowed toward the school, just as they did every day. But something was different this morning. Something dark was in the air.

The students spoke in whispers, and when their eyes fell on Cam, they stiffened, they recoiled, they turned quickly away.

A girl he'd never seen spit as she walked past him. “How do you sleep at night, pig?!”

As more and more suspicious gazes fell on him, Cam's wings began to burn within his shoulders. Lucifer had warned him that things would get ugly, but what exactly had the devil done?