Torment (11 page)

Cam barreled forward, his feet crunching on the gravel lot as he moved straight toward the girl, whose bizarre silver bow gleamed even in the fog. Like it was not of this earth.

Wresting her eyes away from the lunatic girl with the arrow, Luce rolled to her knees and scanned the parking lot to see whether anyone else looked as panicked as she felt. But the place was empty, eerily quiet.

Her lungs felt tight—she could hardly breathe. The girl moved almost like a machine, with no hesitation. And Cam was unarmed. The girl was pulling back on the bowstring and Cam was in point-blank range.

But it took her a split second too long. Cam plowed into her, knocking her onto her back. He brutally wrestled the bow out of her hands, snapping his elbow against her face until she let go. The girl yelped—a high, innocent sound—and recoiled on the ground as Cam turned the bow on her. She raised her open hand in supplication.

Then Cam loosed the arrow straight into her heart.

Across the parking lot, Luce cried out and bit down on her fist. Though she wanted to be far, far away, she found herself lumbering to her feet and jogging closer. Something was wrong. Luce expected to find the girl lying there bleeding, but this girl did not struggle, did not cry.

Because she was no longer there at all.

She, and the arrow that Cam had shot into her, had vanished.

Cam scoured the parking lot, snatching up the arrows the archer had spilled as if it was the most urgent task he’d ever performed. Luce crouched down where the girl had fallen. She traced the rough gravel with her finger, baffled and more terrified than she’d been a moment before. There was no sign that anyone had ever been there.

Cam returned to Luce’s side with three arrows in one hand and the silver bow in the other. Instinctively, Luce reached out to touch one. She’d never seen anything like it. For some reason, it sent a strange ripple of fascination through her. Goose bumps rose on her skin. Her head swam.

Cam jerked the arrows away. “Don’t. They’re deadly.”

They didn’t look deadly. In fact, the arrows didn’t even have heads. They were just silver sticks that dead-ended in a flat tip. And yet one had made that girl disappear.

Luce blinked a few times. “What just happened, Cam?” Her voice felt heavy. “Who was she?”

“She was an Outcast.” Cam wasn’t looking at her. He was fixated on the silver bow in his hands.

“A what?”

“The worst kind of angel. They sided with Satan during the revolt but wouldn’t actually set foot in the underworld.”

“Why not?”

“You know the type. Like those girls who want to be invited to the party but don’t actually plan to show up.” He grimaced. “As soon as the battle ended, they tried to backpedal up to Heaven pretty fast, but it was already too late. You only get one shot at those clouds.” He glanced at Luce. “Most of us do, anyway.”

“So, if they’re not with Heaven …” She was still getting used to talking concretely about these things. “Are they … with Hell?”

“Hardly. Though I remember when they came crawling back.” Cam gave a sinister laugh. “Usually, we’ll take just about anyone we can get, but even Satan has his limits. He cast them out permanently, struck them blind to add injury to insult.”

“But that girl wasn’t blind,” Luce whispered, recalling the way her bow had followed Cam’s every move. The only reason she hadn’t hit him was because he’d moved so fast. And yet Luce had known there was
something
off about that girl.

“She was. She just uses other senses to feel her way through the world. She can
see
after a fashion. It has its limitations and its benefits.”

His eyes never stopped combing the tree line. Luce clammed up at the thought of more Outcasts nested in the forest. More of those silver bows and arrows.

“Well, what happened to her? Where is she now?”

Cam stared at her. “She’s dead, Luce.
Poof
. Gone.”

Dead?
Luce looked at the place on the ground where it had happened, now just as empty as the rest of the lot. She dropped her head, feeling dizzy. “I … I thought you couldn’t kill angels.”

“Only for lack of a good weapon.” He flashed the arrows at Luce one last time before wrapping them up in a cloth he pulled from his pocket and tucking them inside his leather jacket. “These things are hard to come by. Oh, stop trembling, I’m not going to kill
you.
” He turned away and started testing the doors of the cars in the lot, smirking when he spotted the rolled-down driver’s-side window of a gray-and-yellow truck. He reached inside and flipped the lock. “Be thankful you don’t have to walk back to school. Come on, get in.”

When Cam popped open the passenger-side door, Luce’s jaw dropped. She peered in through the open window and watched him jimmying the ignition. “You think I’m just going to get in some hot-wired car with you right after I watched you murder someone?”

“If I hadn’t killed her”—he fumbled around beneath the steering wheel—“she would have killed you, okay? Who do you think sent you that note? You were lured out of school to be murdered. Does that make it go down any easier?”

Luce leaned against the hood of the truck, not knowing what to do. She thought back to the conversation she’d had with Daniel, Arriane, and Gabbe right before she’d left Sword & Cross. They’d said Miss Sophia and the others in her sect might come after her. “But she didn’t look like—are the Outcasts part of the Elders?”

By then Cam had the engine running. He quickly hopped out, walked around, and hustled Luce into the passenger seat. “Move along, chop-chop. This is like herding a cat.” Finally he had her sitting and pulled her seat belt around her. “Unfortunately, Luce, you’ve got more than one kind of enemy. Which is why I’m taking you back to school where it’s safe. Right. Now.”

She didn’t think it would be smart to be alone in a car with Cam, but she wasn’t sure staying here on her own was any smarter. “Wait a minute,” she said as he turned back toward Shoreline. “If these Outcasts aren’t part of Heaven or Hell, whose side are they on?”

“The Outcasts are a sickening shade of gray. In case you hadn’t noticed, there are worse things out there than me.”

Luce folded her hands on her lap, anxious to get back to her dorm room, where she could feel—or at least pretend to feel—safe. Why should she believe Cam? She’d fallen for his lies too many times before.

“There’s nothing worse than you. What you want … what you tried to do at Sword and Cross was horrible and wrong.” She shook her head. “You’re just trying to trick me again.”

“I’m not.” His voice had less argument in it than she would have expected. He seemed thoughtful, even glum. By then, he had pulled into Shoreline’s long, arched driveway. “I never wanted to hurt you, Luce, never.”

“Is that why you called all those shadows to battle when I was in the cemetery?”

“Good and evil aren’t as clear-cut as you think.” He looked out the window toward the Shoreline buildings, which appeared dark and uninhabited. “You’re from the South, right? This time around, anyway. So you should understand the freedom that the victors have to rewrite history. Semantics, Luce. What you think of as evil—well, to my kind, it’s a simple problem of connotation.”

“Daniel doesn’t think so.” Luce wished she could have said
she
didn’t think so, but she didn’t know enough yet. She still felt like she was taking so much of Daniel’s explanations on faith.

Cam parked the truck on a patch of grass behind her dorm, got out, and walked around to open the passenger door. “Daniel and I are two sides of the same coin.” He offered his hand to help her down; she ignored him. “It must pain you to hear that.”

She wanted to say it couldn’t possibly be true, that there were no similarities between Cam and Daniel no matter how Cam tried to whitewash things. But in the week she’d been at Shoreline, Luce had seen and heard things that conflicted with what she’d once believed. She thought of Francesca and Steven. They were born of the same place: Once upon a time, before the war and the Fall, there had only been one side. Cam wasn’t the only one who claimed that the divide between angels and demons wasn’t entirely black and white.

The light was on in her window. Luce imagined Shelby on the orange area rug, her legs crossed in the lotus position, meditating. How could Luce go in and pretend she hadn’t just seen an angel die? Or that everything that had happened this week hadn’t left her riddled with doubts?

“Let’s keep this evening’s happenings between us, shall we?” Cam said. “And going forward, do us all a favor and stay on campus, where you won’t get into trouble.”

She pushed past him, out of the beam of the stolen truck’s headlights and into the shadows cloaking the walls of her dorm.

Cam got back into the truck, revving the engine obnoxiously. But before he pulled away, he rolled down the window and called out to Luce, “You’re welcome.”

She turned around. “For what?”

He grinned and hit the gas. “For saving your life.”

SIX

THIRTEEN DAYS

“I
t’s
here,
” a loud voice sang outside Luce’s door early the next morning. Someone was knocking. “It’s finally here!”

The knocking grew more insistent. Luce didn’t know what time it was, other than way too early for all the giggling she could hear on the other side of the door.

“
Your
friends,” Shelby called from the top bunk.

Luce groaned and slid out of bed. She glanced up at Shelby, who was propped up on her stomach on the top bunk, already fully dressed in jeans and a puffy red vest, doing the Saturday crossword.

“Do you ever sleep?” Luce muttered, reaching into her closet to yank on the purple tartan robe her mother had sewn for her thirteenth birthday. It still fit her—sort of.

She pressed her face against the peephole and saw the convex smiling faces of Dawn and Jasmine. They were geared up with bright scarves and fuzzy earmuffs. Jasmine raised a cup holder with four coffees as Dawn, who had a large brown paper bag in her hand, knocked again.

“Are you going to shoo them away or should I call campus security?” Shelby asked.

Ignoring her, Luce swung open the door and the two girls flooded past her into the room, talking a mile a minute.

“Finally.” Jasmine laughed, handing Luce a cup of coffee before plopping down on the unmade bottom bunk. “We have so much to discuss.”

Neither Dawn nor Jasmine had ever come over before, but Luce was enjoying the way they acted right at home. It reminded her of Penn, who’d “borrowed” the spare key to Luce’s room so she could barrel in whenever the need arose.

Luce looked down at her coffee and swallowed hard. No way could she get emotional here, now, in front of these three.

Dawn was in the bathroom, rooting through the cupboards next to the sink. “As an integral member of the planning committee, we think you should be a part of the welcome address today,” she said, looking up at Luce in disbelief. “How are you not even dressed yet? The yacht leaves in, like, under an hour.”

Luce scratched her forehead. “Remind me?”

“Ugh.” Dawn groaned dramatically. “Amy Branshaw? My lab partner? The one whose father owns the monster yacht? Is any of this ringing a bell?”

It was all coming back to her. Saturday. The yacht trip up the coast. Jasmine and Dawn had pitched the distantly educational idea to Shoreline’s events committee—aka Francesca—and had somehow gotten it approved. Luce had agreed to help, but she hadn’t done a thing. All she could think about now was Daniel’s face when she’d told him about it, instantly dismissing the idea of Luce’s having fun without him.

Now Dawn was rifling through Luce’s closet. She pulled out a long-sleeved eggplant-colored jersey dress, tossed it at Luce, and shooed her into the bathroom. “Don’t forget leggings underneath. It’s cold out on the water.”

On her way, Luce grabbed her cell phone from its charger. Last night, after Cam had dropped her off, she’d felt so terrified and alone, she’d broken Mr. Cole’s number one rule and texted Callie. If Mr. Cole knew how badly she needed to hear from a friend … he’d probably still be furious with her. Too late now.

She opened her text message folder and recalled how her fingers had been shaking when she wrote the lie-filled text:

Finally scored a cell phone! Reception’s spotty, but I’ll call when I can. Everything’s great here, but I miss you! Write soon!

No response from Callie.

Was she sick? Busy? Out of town?

Ignoring Luce for ignoring her?

Luce glanced in the mirror. She looked and felt like crap. But she’d agreed to help Dawn and Jasmine, so she tugged on the jersey dress and twisted her blond hair back with a few bobby pins.

By the time Luce came out of the bathroom, Shelby was helping herself to the breakfast the girls had brought with them in the paper bag. It did look really good—cherry Danishes and apple fritters and muffins and cinnamon rolls and three different kinds of juice. Jasmine handed her an oversized bran muffin and a tub of cream cheese.

“Brain food.”

“What’s all this?” Miles stuck his head in through the slightly ajar door. Luce couldn’t see his eyes under his tugged-down baseball cap, but his brown hair was flipping up on the sides and his giant dimples showed when he smiled. Dawn went into an instant fit of giggles, for no other reason than that Miles was cute and Dawn was Dawn.

But Miles didn’t seem to notice. He was almost more relaxed and casual around a group of very girly girls than Luce was herself. Maybe he had a whole bunch of sisters or something. He wasn’t like some of the other kids at Shoreline, whose coolness seemed to be a front. Miles was genuine, the real thing.

“Don’t you have any friends your own gender?” Shelby asked, pretending to be more annoyed than she really was. Now that she knew her roommate a little better, Luce was starting to find Shelby’s abrasive humor almost charming.

“ ’Course.” Miles stepped into the room totally unfazed. “It’s just, my guy friends don’t usually show up with breakfast.” He slid a huge cinnamon roll out of the bag and took a giant bite. “You look pretty, Luce,” he said with his mouth full.

Luce blushed and Dawn stopped giggling and Shelby coughed into her sleeve: “Awkward!”

At the first sound of the loudspeaker in the hallway, Luce jumped. The other kids looked at her like she was nuts, but Luce was still used to Sword & Cross’s punishing PA pronouncements. Instead, Francesca’s amber voice poured into the room:

“Good morning, Shoreline. If you’re joining us on today’s yachting trip, the bus to the marina leaves in ten minutes. Let’s convene at the south entrance for a head count. And don’t forget to dress warmly!”

Miles grabbed another pastry for the road. Shelby pulled on a pair of polka-dot galoshes. Jasmine tightened the band of her pink earmuffs and shrugged at Luce. “So much for planning! We’ll have to wing the welcome address.”

“Sit by us on the bus,” Dawn instructed. “We’ll totally map it out on the way to Noyo Point.”

Noyo Point
. Luce had to force herself to swallow a mouthful of bran muffin. The Outcast girl’s dead expression even when she was alive; the awful ride home with Cam—the memory brought goose bumps to Luce’s skin. It didn’t help that Cam had rubbed it in about saving her life. Right after he told her not to leave campus again.

Such a weird thing to say. Almost like he and Daniel were in cahoots.

Stalling, Luce sat on the edge of her bed. “So we’re all going?”

She’d never broken a promise to Daniel before. Even though she’d never really promised
not
to go on the yacht. The restriction felt so harsh and out of line, her instinct was to blow it off. But if she agreed to play by Daniel’s rules, maybe she wouldn’t have to face someone else’s getting killed. Though that was probably just her paranoia rearing up again. That note had deliberately lured her off campus. A school yacht trip was something else entirely. It wasn’t as though the Outcasts were piloting the boat.

“Of course we’re all going.” Miles grabbed Luce’s hand, pulling her to her feet and toward the door. “Why wouldn’t we?”

This was the moment of choice: Luce could stay safely on campus the way Daniel (and Cam) had told her. Like a prisoner. Or she could walk out this door and prove to herself that her life was her own.

Half an hour later, Luce was staring, along with half of Shoreline’s student body, at a shining white 130-foot Austal luxury yacht.

The air up at Shoreline had been clearer, but down on the water at the marina adjacent to the docks, there was still a thin felt of fog left over from the day before. When Francesca descended from the bus, she muttered, “Enough is enough,” and raised her palms in the air.

Very casually, as if she were pushing aside curtains from a window, she literally parted the fog with her fingers, opening up a rich plane of clear sky directly over the gleaming boat.

It was done so subtly, none of the non-Nephilim students or teachers could tell that anything other than nature was at work. But Luce gaped, not sure she had just seen what she thought she had seen until Dawn started clapping very quietly.

“Stunning, as usual.”

Francesca smiled slightly. “Yes, that’s better, isn’t it?”

Luce was beginning to notice all the small touches that could have been the work of an angel. The chartered coach ride had been so much smoother than the public bus she’d taken in the rain the day before. The storefronts seemed refreshed, as if the whole town had gotten a new coat of paint.

The students lined up to board the yacht, which was dazzling in the way very expensive things were. Its sleek profile curved like a seashell, and each of its three levels had its own broad white deck. From where they entered on the foredeck, Luce could see through the enormous windows into three plushly furnished cabins. In the warm, still sunshine down at the marina, Luce’s worries about Cam and the Outcasts seemed ridiculous. She was surprised to feel them melt away.

She followed Miles into the cabin on the second level of the yacht. The walls were a sedate taupe, with long black-and-white banquettes hugging the curved walls. A half dozen students had already thrown themselves down on the upholstered benches and were picking at the huge array of food that covered the coffee tables.

At the bar, Miles popped open a can of Coke, split it between two plastic glasses, and handed one to Luce. “So the demon says to the angel: ‘
Sue
me?
Where do you think you’re going to have to go to find a lawyer?’ ” He nudged her. “Get it? ’Cause lawyers are supposed to all …”

A punch line. Her mind had been elsewhere and she’d missed the fact that Miles had even been telling a joke. She forced herself to crack up, laughing loudly, even slapping the top of the bar. Miles looked relieved, if not a little suspicious of her overblown reaction.

“Wow,” Luce said, feeling crummy as she scaled back her fake laughter. “That was a good one.”

To their left, Lilith, the tall redheaded triplet Luce had met on the first day of school, stopped the bite of tuna tartare on its way into her mouth. “What kind of lame half-breed joke is that?” She was scowling mostly at Luce, her glossy lips set in a snarl. “You actually think that’s funny? Have you ever even
been
to the underworld? It’s no laughing matter. We expect that from Miles, but I would have thought you had better taste.”

Luce was taken aback. “I didn’t realize it was a question of taste,” she said. “In that case, I’m definitely sticking with Miles.”

“Shhhh.” Francesca’s manicured hands were suddenly on both Luce’s and Lilith’s shoulders. “Whatever this is about, remember: You’re on a ship with seventy-three non-Nephilim students. The word of the day is
discretion
.”

That was still one of the weirdest parts about Shoreline as far as Luce was concerned. All the time they spent with the regular kids at the school, pretending they weren’t doing whatever it was they were actually doing inside the Nephilim lodge. Luce still wanted to talk to Francesca about the Announcers, to bring up what she had done earlier that week in the woods.

Francesca glided away and Shelby shoved up next to Luce and Miles. “Exactly how discreet do you think I need to be while giving seventy-three non-Nephilim swirlies in the cabin toilets?”

“You’re bad.” Luce laughed, then did a double take when Shelby held out her plate of antipasti. “Look who’s sharing,” Luce said. “And you call yourself an only child.”

Shelby jerked the plate back after Luce had helped herself to one olive. “Yeah, well, don’t get used to it or anything.”

When the engine revved beneath their feet, the whole boatful of students cheered. Luce preferred moments like this at Shoreline, when she really couldn’t tell who was Nephilim and who wasn’t. A line of girls braved the cold outside, laughing as their hair tumbled in the wind. Some of the guys from her history class were getting a game of poker together in one corner of the main cabin. That table was where Luce would have expected to find Roland, but he was conspicuously absent.

Near the bar, Jasmine was taking pictures of the whole scene while Dawn motioned to Luce, miming with a pen and paper in the air that they still had to write out their speech. Luce was heading over to join them when, out of the corner of her eye, she spotted Steven through the windows.