Torment

NINE TEN DAYS

When Luce woke up on Tuesday morning, Shelby was already gone. Her bed was made, the handmade patchwork quilt folded at its foot, and her puffy red vest and tote bag had been plucked from their peg by the door.

Still in her pajamas, Luce stuck a mug of water in the microwave to make tea, then sat down to check her email.

To: lucindap44@gmail.com

From: callieallieoxenfree@gmail.com

Sent: Monday, 11/16 at 1:34 am

Subject: Trying Not to Take It Personally

Dear L,

Got your text, and first things first, I miss you too. But I’ve got a really out-of-left-field suggestion: it’s called you-and-I-catch-up. Crazy Callie and her wild ideas. I know you’re busy. I know you’re under heavy surveillance and it’s hard to sneak away. What I don’t know is a single detail about your life. Who do you eat lunch with? Which class do you like the most? What ever happened with that guy? See, I don’t even know his name. I hate that.

I’m glad you got a phone, but don’t text me to say you’re going to call. Just call. I haven’t heard your voice in ages. I ain’t mad at ya. Yet.

xoC

Luce closed the email. It was next to impossible to piss Callie off. She’d never actually done it before. The fact that Callie didn’t suspect that Luce was lying was only further proof of how distant they’d become. The shame Luce felt was heavy, settling right between her shoulders.

On to the next email:

To: lucindap44@gmail.com

From: thegaprices@aol.com

Sent: Monday, 11/16 at 8:30 pm

Subject: Well, honey, we love you too

Luce Baby,

Your emails always brighten our days. How’s the swim team going? Are you drying your hair now that it’s cold outside? I know, I’m nagging, but I miss you.

Do you think Sword & Cross will grant you permission to leave campus for Thanksgiving next week? Dad could call the dean? We won’t count our chickens yet, but your father did go out and buy a Tofurky just in case. I’ve been filling up the extra freezer with pies. Do you still like the one with the sweet potatoes? We love you and we think about you all the time.

Mom

Luce’s hand hung frozen on her mouse. It was Tuesday morning. Thanksgiving was a week and a half away. It was the first time that her favorite holiday had even crossed her mind. But as quickly as it had come in, Luce tried to banish it. There was no way Mr. Cole would let her go home for Thanksgiving.

She was about to click Respond when a blinking orange box at the bottom of the screen caught her attention. Miles was online. He’d been trying to chat with her.

Miles (8:08): Mornin’, Miss Luce.

Miles (8:09): I am STARVING. Do you wake up as hungry as I wake up?

Miles (8:15): Wanna get breakfast? I’ll swing by your room on my way. 5 min?

Luce looked at her clock. 8:21. There was a booming knock on her door. She was still in her pajamas. Still had bed head. She opened the door a little.

The morning sun poured onto the hallway’s hardwood floors. It reminded Luce of coming down the always-sunlit wooden staircase at her parents’ house for breakfast, the way the whole world looked brighter through the lens of one hallway filled with light.

Miles wasn’t wearing his Dodgers cap today, so it was one of the few times she could clearly see his eyes. They were really deep blue, a nine-o’clock-in-summer sky blue. His hair was wet, dripping on the shoulders of his white T-shirt. Luce swallowed, unable to stop her mind from picturing him in the shower. He grinned at her, showing off a dimple and his super-white smile. He seemed so California today; Luce was surprised to realize how good he made it look.

“Hey.” Luce wedged as much of her pajamaed body as she could behind the door. “I just saw your messages. I’m in for breakfast, but I’m not dressed yet.”

“I can wait.” Miles leaned against the hallway wall. His stomach growled loudly. He tried to cross his arms over his waist to cover the sound.

“I’ll hurry.” Luce laughed, closing the door. She stood before her closet, trying not to think about Thanksgiving or her parents or Callie or why so many important people were slipping away from her at once.

She yanked a long gray sweater from her dresser and threw it on over a pair of black jeans. She brushed her teeth, put on big silver hoop earrings and a squirt of hand lotion, grabbed her bag, and studied herself in the mirror.

She didn’t look like a girl who was stuck in some bickering power struggle of a relationship, or a girl who couldn’t go home to her family for Thanksgiving. At the moment, she just looked like a girl who was excited to open a door and find a guy there who made her feel normal and happy and really sort of all-around wonderful.

A guy who was not her boyfriend.

She sighed, opening the door to Miles. His face lit up.

When they got outside, Luce realized the weather had changed. The sunlit morning air was just as brisk as it had been on the roof’s ledge last night with Daniel. And it had felt icy then.

Miles held out his enormous khaki jacket to her, but she waved it away. “I just need some coffee to warm me up.”

They sat at the same table where they had sat the week before. Immediately, a couple of student waiters rushed over. Both guys seemed to be friends with Miles and had an easy joking manner. Luce certainly never got this level of service when she sat with Shelby. While the guys fired away with questions—how had Miles’s fantasy football team done the night before, had he watched that YouTube clip of the guy pranking his girlfriend, did he have plans after class today—Luce looked around the terrace for her roommate but couldn’t find her.

Miles answered all the guys’ questions but seemed uninterested in extending the conversation any further. He pointed at Luce. “This is Luce. She wants a big cup of your hottest coffee and …”

“The scrambled eggs,” Luce said, folding up the small menu that the Shoreline mess hall printed up each day.

“Same for me, guys, thanks.” Miles handed back the two menus and turned full-focus on Luce. “Seems like I haven’t seen you around much recently outside class. How are things?”

Miles’s question surprised her. Maybe because she was already feeling like a guilt magnet this morning. She liked that there was no “Where have you been hiding?” or “Are you avoiding me?” tacked on at the end. Just a question: “How are things?”

She beamed at him, then somehow lost track of her smile and was almost wincing by the time she said, “Things are okay.”

“Uh-oh.”

Horrible fight with Daniel. Lying to my parents. Losing my best friend. Part of her wanted to unleash all of that on Miles, but she knew she shouldn’t. Couldn’t. That would be taking their friendship to a level she wasn’t sure was a good idea. She’d never had a really close guy friend before, the kind of friend you shared everything with and relied on like a girlfriend. Wouldn’t things get … complicated?

“Miles,” she finally said, “what do people do around here for Thanksgiving?”

“I don’t know. I guess I’ve never stuck around to find out. I wish I could sometimes. Thanksgiving at my house is obnoxiously enormous. At least a hundred people. Like ten courses. And it’s black-tie.”

“You’re joking.”

He shook his head. “I wish I were. Seriously. We have to hire parking attendants.” After a pause: “Why do you ask—wait, do you need a place to go?”

“Uhh …”

“You’re coming.” He laughed at her shocked expression. “Please. My brother’s not coming home from college this year and he was my only lifeline. I can show you around Santa Barbara. We can ditch the turkey and get the world’s best tacos at Super Rica.” He raised an eyebrow. “It’ll be so much less torturous to have you there with me. It might even be fun.”

While Luce was mulling over his offer, she felt a hand on her back. She knew the touch by now—soothing to the point of having healing powers—Francesca’s.

“I spoke to Daniel last night,” Francesca said.

Luce tried not to react as Francesca leaned down. Had Daniel gone to see her after Luce had shut him out? The idea made her jealous, though she didn’t really know why.

“He’s worried about you.” Francesca paused, seeming to search Luce’s face. “I told him you’re doing very well, considering your new surroundings. I told him I would make myself available to you for anything you need. Please understand that you should come to me with your questions.” A sharpness entered her gaze, a hard, fierce quality. Come to me instead of Steven seemed to lie there, unspoken.

And then Francesca left, as quickly as she’d appeared, the silk lining of her white wool coat swishing against her black pantyhose.

“So … Thanksgiving,” Miles finally said, rubbing his hands together.

“Okay, okay.” Luce swallowed the rest of her coffee. “I’ll think about it.”

Shelby didn’t show at the Nephilim lodge for that morning’s class—a lecture on summoning angelic forebears, kind of like sending a celestial voice mail. By lunchtime, Luce was starting to get nervous. But heading into her math class, she finally spotted the familiar puffy red vest and practically sprinted toward it.

“Hey!” She tugged her roommate’s thick blond ponytail. “Where’ve you been?”

Shelby turned around slowly. The look on her face took Luce back to her very first day at Shoreline. Shelby’s nostrils were flared and her eyebrows were hunched forward.

“Are you okay?” Luce asked.

“Fine.” Shelby turned away and started fiddling with the nearest locker, twirling a combination, then popping it open. Inside were a football helmet and about a case worth of empty Gatorade bottles. A poster of the Laker Girls was slapped on the inside of the door.

“Is that even your locker?” Luce asked. She didn’t know a single Nephilim kid who used a locker, but Shelby was rooting through this one, tossing dirty sweat socks recklessly over her shoulder.

Shelby slammed the locker shut, then moved on to twirl the combination of the next one. “Now you’re judging me?”

“No.” Luce shook her head. “Shel, what is going on? You disappeared this morning, you missed class—”

“I’m here now, aren’t I?” Shelby sighed. “Frankie and Steven are a lot more lax about letting a girl take a personal day than the humanoids over here.”

“Why do you need a personal day? You were fine last night, until—”

Until Daniel showed up.

Right around the time Daniel appeared at the window, Shelby had gone all pale and quiet and straight to bed and—

While Shelby stared at Luce as if her IQ had suddenly dropped by half, Luce became aware of the rest of the hall. Where the rust-colored lockers ended, the gray-carpeted walls were lined with girls: Dawn and Jasmine and Lilith. Preppy, cardiganed girls like Amy Branshaw from Luce’s afternoon classes. Punky pierced girls who looked kind of like Arriane but were way less fun to talk to. A few girls Luce had never seen before. Girls with books clutched against their chests, gum popping in their mouths, and eyes darting at the carpet, at the wood-beamed ceiling, at each other. Anywhere but directly at Luce and Shelby. Though it was clear that all of them were eavesdropping.

A sick feeling in her stomach was starting to tell her why. It was the biggest collision of Nephilim and non-Nephilim Luce had seen so far at Shoreline. And every girl in this hallway had figured out before her:

Shelby and Luce were about to duke it out over a guy.

“Oh.” Luce swallowed. “You and Daniel.”

“Yeah. We. A long time ago.” Shelby wouldn’t look at her.

“Okay.” Luce focused on breathing. She could handle this. But the whispers flying around the wall of girls made her skin crawl, and she shuddered.

Shelby scoffed. “I’m sorry the idea disgusts you so much.”

“That’s not it.” But Luce did feel disgusted. Disgusted with herself. “I always … I thought I was the only—”

Shelby put her hands on her hips. “You thought every time you disappeared for seventeen years that Daniel just twiddled his thumbs? Earth to Luce, there is a Before You for Daniel. Or an In Between, or whatever.” She paused to give Luce a sideways squint. “Are you really that self-involved?”

Luce was speechless.

Shelby grunted and turned to face the rest of the hall. “This estrogen force field needs to dissipate,” she barked, waggling her fingers at them. “Move along. All of you. Now!”

As the girls scurried off, Luce pressed her head against the cold metal locker. She wanted to crawl inside it and hide.

Shelby leaned her back against the wall next to Luce’s face. “You know,” she said, her voice softening, “Daniel’s a crap boyfriend. And a liar. He’s lying to you.”

Luce straightened up and went at Shelby, feeling her cheeks flush. Luce might be pissed off at Daniel right now, but nobody talked smack about her boyfriend.

“Whoa.” Shelby ducked away. “Calm down, there. Jeez.” She slid down the wall to sit on the floor. “Look, I shouldn’t have brought it up. It was one stupid night a long time ago and the guy was clearly miserable without you. I didn’t know you then, so I thought all the lore about you two was … supremely boring. Which, if you must know, explains the huge grudge I’ve held with your name on it.”

She patted the floor next to her, and Luce slid down the wall to sit too. Shelby gave a tentative smile. “I swear, Luce, I never thought I’d meet you. I definitely never expected you to be … cool.”

“You think I’m cool?” Luce asked, laughing quietly to herself. “You were right about me being self-absorbed.”

“Ugh, just what I thought. You’re one of those impossible-to-stay-mad-at people, aren’t you?” Shelby sighed. “Fine. I’m sorry for going after your boyfriend and, you know, hating you before I knew you. I won’t do it again.”

This was weird. The thing that could have driven two friends instantly apart was actually drawing them closer together. This wasn’t Shelby’s fault. Any flash of anger Luce felt about it was something she needed to take up with … Daniel. One stupid night, Shelby had said. But what had really happened?

Sunset found Luce walking down the rocky steps to the beach. It was cold outside, colder still as she got closer to the water. The day’s last rays of light danced off thin sheets of cloud, staining the ocean orange, pink, and pastel blue. The calm sea stretched out in front of her, looking like a path to Heaven.

Until she got to the wide circle of sand, still blackened from Roland’s bonfire, Luce didn’t know what she was doing down there. Then she found herself crawling behind the tall lava rock where Daniel had tugged her away. Where the two of them had danced and then spent the precious few moments they’d had together fighting about something as stupid as the color of her hair.

Callie had once had a boyfriend at Dover whom she’d broken up with after a fight over a toaster. One of them had jammed the thing with an oversized New York bagel; the other one had flipped out. Luce couldn’t remember all the details now, but she remembered thinking, Who breaks up over a kitchen appliance?

But it was never really about the toaster, Callie had told her. The toaster was just a symptom, something that represented everything else that was wrong between them.

Luce hated that she and Daniel kept getting into fights. The one on the beach, over her dye job, reminded her of Callie’s story. It felt like a preview of some bigger, uglier argument on the way.

Bracing herself against the wind, Luce realized she’d come down here to try to trace where they’d gone wrong the other night. She was idiotically looking for signs in the water, some clue carved into the rough volcanic rock. She was looking everywhere except inside herself. Because what was inside Luce was just the vast enigma of her past. Maybe the answers were still somewhere in the Announcers, but for now, they remained frustratingly out of her grasp.

She didn’t want to blame Daniel. She was the one who’d been naïve enough to assume that their relationship had been exclusive across time. But he’d never told her otherwise. So he’d practically set her up to walk right into this shock. It was embarrassing. And one more item to tick off on the long list of things that Luce thought she deserved to know and that Daniel didn’t see fit to tell her.

She felt something she thought was rain, a drizzly sensation on her cheeks and her fingertips. But it was warm instead of cold. It was powdery and light, not wet. She turned her face toward the sky and was blinded by shimmering violet light. Not wanting to shield her eyes, she watched even when it grew so bright it hurt. The particles slowly drifted toward the water just offshore, falling into a pattern and limning the shape she’d know anywhere.

He seemed to have grown more gorgeous. His bare feet hovered inches off the water as he approached the shore. His broad white wings seemed to be edged with violet light and were pulsing nearly imperceptibly in the rough wind. It wasn’t fair. The way he made her feel when she looked at him—awed and ecstatic and a little bit afraid. She could hardly think of anything else. Every annoyance or nagging frustration vanished. There was just that undeniable pull toward him.

“You keep turning up,” she whispered.

Daniel’s voice carried over the water. “I told you I wanted to talk to you.”

Luce felt her mouth pucker up. “About Shelby?”

“About the danger you keep putting yourself in.” Daniel spoke so plainly. She’d been expecting her mention of Shelby to elicit some reaction. But Daniel just cocked his head. He reached the wet edge of the beach, where the water foamed and rolled away, and floated just above the sand in front of her. “What about Shelby?”

“Are you really going to pretend like you don’t know?”

“Hold on.” Daniel lowered his feet to the ground, bending his knees in a deep plié when his bare soles touched the sand. When he straightened, his wings pulled backward, away from his face, and sent a wave of wind back with them. Luce got her first sense of how heavy they must be.

It took less than two seconds for Daniel to reach her, but when his arms slipped around her back and pulled her to him, he couldn’t have come quickly enough.

“Let’s not get off to another bad start,” he said.

She closed her eyes and let him lift her off the ground. His mouth found hers and she tilted her face to the sky, letting the feel of him overwhelm her. There was no darkness, no more cold, just the lovely sensation of being bathed in his violet glow. Even the rush of the ocean was canceled out by a soft hum, the energy Daniel carried in his body.

Her hands were wrapped tight around his neck, then stroked the firm muscles on his shoulders, brushing the soft, thick perimeter of his wings. They were strong and white and shimmering, always so much bigger than she remembered. Two great sails extending from his sides, every inch of them perfect and smooth. She could feel a tension against her fingers, like touching a tightly stretched canvas. But silkier, and deliciously velvet soft. They seemed to respond to her touch, even extending forward to rub against her, pulling her closer, until she was buried in them, nestling deeper and deeper, and still never getting enough. Daniel shuddered.

“Is this okay?” she whispered, because sometimes he grew nervous when things between them started to heat up. “Does it hurt you?”

Tonight his eyes looked greedy. “It feels wonderful. Nothing compares.”

His fingers glided along her waist, slipping inside her sweater. Usually, the softest caress from Daniel’s hands made her go weak. Tonight his touch was more forceful. Almost rough. She didn’t know what had gotten into him, but she liked it.

His lips traced hers, then drifted higher, following the bridge of her nose, coming down tenderly on each of her eyelids. When he pulled back, she opened her eyes and gazed at him.

“You are so beautiful,” he whispered.

It was exactly what most girls would have wanted to hear—only, as soon as he said it, Luce felt ripped out of her body, replaced by someone else’s.

Shelby’s.

But not just Shelby’s, because what were the odds that she had been the only one? Had other eyes and noses and cheekbones taken Daniel’s kisses? Had other bodies huddled with him on a beach? Other lips tangled, other hearts pounded? Had other whispered compliments been exchanged?

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

Luce felt sick. They could steam up windows with their kisses, but as soon as they started using their mouths for other things—like talking—everything got so complicated.

She turned her face away. “You lied to me.”

Daniel didn’t scoff or get angry, as she was expecting him to—almost wanting him to. He sat down on the sand. He propped his hands on his knees and stared out at the frothy waves. “About what, exactly?”

Even as the words came out, Luce regretted where she was going. “I could take your approach—not tell you anything, ever.”

“I can’t tell you whatever it is you want to know if you won’t tell me what’s bothering you.”

She thought about Shelby, but when she imagined playing the jealousy card, only to have him treat her like a child, Luce felt pathetic. Instead, she said, “I feel like we’re strangers. Like I don’t know you any better than anyone else.”

“Oh.” His voice was quiet, but his face was so infuriatingly stoic, Luce wanted to shake him. Nothing riled him up.

“You’re holding me hostage out here, Daniel. I know nothing. I know no one. I’m lonely. Every time I see you, you’ve put up some new wall, and you never let me in. You never let me in. You dragged me all the way out here—”

She was thinking to California, but it was more than that. Her past, what limited conception of it that she had, rolled out in her mind like the dropped reel of a movie, unwinding onto the floor.

Daniel had dragged her much, much further than California. He’d dragged her through centuries of fights like this one. Through agonizing deaths that caused pain to everyone around her—like those nice old people she’d visited last week. Daniel had ruined that couple’s life. Killed their daughter. All because he’d been some hotshot angel who saw something he wanted and went after it.

No, he hadn’t just dragged her to California. He’d dragged her into a cursed eternity. A burden that should have been his alone to bear. “I am suffering—me and everyone who loves me—for your curse. For all time. Because of you.”

He winced as though she’d struck him. “You want to go home,” he said.

She kicked the sand. “I want to go back. I want you to take back whatever it was you did to get me into this. I just want to live and die a normal life and break up with normal people over normal things like toasters, not the supernatural secrets of the universe that you don’t even trust me with.”

“Hold on.” Daniel’s face had gone completely white. His shoulders stiffened and his hands were shaking. Even his wings, which moments ago had seemed so powerful, looked frail. Luce wanted to reach out and touch them, as if somehow they would tell her whether the pain she saw in his eyes was real. But she held her ground.

“Are we breaking up?” he asked, his voice weak and low.

“Are we even together, Daniel?”

He got to his feet and cupped her face. Before she could jerk away, she felt the heat subside from her cheeks. She closed her eyes, trying to resist the magnetic force of his touch, but it was so strong, stronger than anything else.

It erased her anger, left her identity in tatters. Who was she without him? Why did the pull toward Daniel always defeat anything that pulled her away? Reason, sensibility, self-preservation: None of them could ever compete. It must have been part of Daniel’s punishment. That she was bound to him forever, like a marionette to its puppeteer. She knew she shouldn’t want him with every fiber of her being, but she couldn’t help herself. Gazing at him, feeling his touch—the rest of the world faded into the background.

She just wished loving him didn’t always have to be so hard.

“What’s this business about wanting a toaster?” Daniel whispered in her ear.

“I guess I don’t know what I want.”

“I do.” His eyes were intent, holding hers. “I want you.”

“I know, but—”

“Nothing will ever change that. No matter what you hear. No matter what happens.”

“But I need more than to be wanted. I need for us to be together—actually together.”

“Soon. I promise. All of this is only temporary.”

“So you’ve said.” Luce saw that the moon had risen overhead. It was brilliant orange and waning, a quiet blaze. “What did you want to talk to me about?”

Daniel tucked her blond hair behind her ear, examining the lock for way too long. “School,” he said with a hesitancy that made her think he was being less than truthful. “I asked Francesca to look after you, but I wanted to see for myself. Are you learning anything? Are you having an okay time?”

She felt the sudden urge to brag to him about her work with the Announcers, about her talk with Steven and the glimpses she’d had of her parents. But Daniel’s face looked more eager and open than she had seen it all evening. He seemed to be trying to avoid a fight, so Luce decided to do the same.

She closed her eyes. She told him what he needed to hear. School was fine. She was fine. Daniel’s lips came down on hers again, briefly, hotly, until her whole body was tingling.

“I have to go,” he said at last, getting to his feet. “I shouldn’t even be here, but I cannot keep myself away from you. I worry about you in every waking moment. I love you, Luce. So much it hurts.”

She closed her eyes against the beat of his wings and the sting of the sand he raised in his wake.