The Fallen Sequence (76 page)

Luce leaned forward in her chair. “But Shelby and Miles didn’t—”

“Exactly.” Francesca nodded. “Which is why, when you are dismissed, Shelby and Miles will report to Mr. Kramer in the main school for community service. Shoreline’s annual Harvest Fest food drive begins tomorrow, so I’m sure you’ll have your work cut out for you.”

“What a crock of—” Shelby broke off, looking up at Francesca. “I mean, Harvest Fest sounds like my kind of
fun
.”

“What about Luce?” Miles asked.

Steven’s arms were crossed and his complicated hazel eyes peered down at Luce over the tortoiseshell rims of his glasses. “Effectively, Luce, you’re grounded.”

Grounded? That was it?

“Class. Meals. Dorm,” Francesca recited. “Until you hear differently from us, and unless you are under our strict supervision—these are the only places you will be permitted. And
no
dipping into Announcers. Understand?”

Luce nodded.

Steven added: “Do not test us again. Even our patience comes to an end.”

Class-Meals-Dorm didn’t leave Luce with a lot of options on a Sunday morning. The lodge was dark, and the mess hall didn’t open for brunch until eleven. After Miles and Shelby shuffled off reluctantly toward Mr. Kramer’s community service boot camp, Luce had no choice but to go back to her room. She closed the window shade, which Shelby always liked to leave open, then sank into her desk chair.

It could have been worse. Compared to the stories of cramped cinder-block cells for solitary confinement at Sword & Cross, it almost seemed like she was getting off easy. No one was slapping a pair of wristband tracking devices on her. In fact, Steven and Francesca had
basically given her the same restrictions Daniel had. The difference was, her teachers really
could
watch over her night and day. Daniel, on the other hand, wasn’t supposed to be there at all.

Annoyed, she powered up her computer, half expecting her access to the Internet to be suddenly restricted. But she logged on just as usual and found three emails from her parents and one from Callie. Maybe the bright side of being grounded was that she’d be forced to finally stay in better contact with her friends and family.

To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Sent: Friday, 11/20 at 8:22 am
Subject: Turkey-dog

Check out this picture! We dressed Andrew up as a turkey for the neighborhood autumn block party. As you can tell from the bite marks on the feathers: He loved it. What do you think? Should we make him wear it again when you come for Thanksgiving?

To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Sent: Friday, 11/20 at 9:06 am
Subject: PS

Your dad read my email and thought it might have made you feel bad. No guilt trip intended, sweetie. If you’re allowed to come home for Thanksgiving, we’d love it. If you can’t, we’ll reschedule for another time. We love you.

To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Sent: Saturday, 11/21 at 12:12 am
Subject: no subject

Just let us know either way? xoxo, Mom

Luce held her head in her hands. She’d been wrong. All the grounding in the world wouldn’t make it easier for her to respond to her parents. They’d dressed their poodle up as a turkey, for crying out loud! It broke her heart to think of letting them down. So she procrastinated by opening Callie’s email.

To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Sent: Friday, 11/20 at 4:14 pm
Subject: HERE IT IS!

I believe the flight reservation below speaks for itself. Send me your address and I’ll take a cab when I get in on Thursday morning. My first time in Georgia! With my long-lost best friend! It’s going to be soooo peachy! See you in SIX DAYS!

In less than a week, Luce’s best friend would be showing up for Thanksgiving at her parents’ house, her parents would be expecting her, and Luce would be right here, grounded in her dorm room. An enormous sadness engulfed her. She would have given anything to go to them, to spend a few days with people who loved her, who would give her a break from the exhausting, confusing couple of weeks she’d spent shackled within these wooden walls.

She opened a new email and composed a hasty message:

To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Sent: Sunday, 11/22 at 9:33 am

Hi, Mr. Cole.

Don’t worry, I’m not going to beg you to let me go home for Thanksgiving. I know a hopeless waste of effort when I see one. But I don’t have the heart to tell my parents. Will you let them know? Tell them I’m sorry.

Things here are fine. Sort of. I am homesick.

Luce

A thumping knock at the door made Luce jump—and click Send on the email without proofreading it first for typos or embarrassing admissions of emotion.

“Luce!” Shelby’s voice called from the other side. “Open up! My hands are full of Harvest Fest crap. I mean,
bounty.
” The thuds continued on the other side of the door, louder now, with the occasional whimpering grunt thrown in.

Pulling open the door, Luce found a panting Shelby, sagging under the weight of an enormous cardboard box. She had several stretched-out plastic bags threaded through her fingers. Her knees trembled as she staggered into the room.

“Can I help with something?” Luce took the feather-light wicker cornucopia that was resting on Shelby’s head like a conical hat.

“They put me on Decorations,” Shelby grumbled, heaving the box onto the ground. “I’d give anything to be on Garbage, like Miles. Do you even know what happened the last time someone made me use a hot-glue gun?”

Luce felt responsible for both Shelby’s and Miles’s punishments. She pictured Miles combing the beach with one of those trash-poking sticks she’d seen convicts using on the side of the road in Thunderbolt. “I don’t even know what Harvest Fest is.”

“Obnoxious and pretentious, that’s what,” Shelby
said, digging through the box and tossing onto the floor plastic bags of feathers, tubs of glitter, and a ream of autumn-colored construction paper. “It’s basically a big banquet where all of Shoreline’s donors come out to raise money for the school. Everyone goes home feeling all charitable because they unloaded a few old cans of green beans on a food bank in Fort Bragg. You’ll see tomorrow night.”

“I doubt it,” Luce said. “Remember, I’m grounded?”

“Don’t worry, you’ll be dragged to this. Some of the biggest donors are angel advocates, so Frankie and Steven have to put on a show. Which means the Nephilim all have to be there, smiling pretty.”

Luce frowned, glancing up at her non-Nephilim reflection in the mirror. All the more reason she should stay right here.

Shelby cursed under her breath. “I left the stupid paint-by-number turkey centerpiece in Mr. Kramer’s office,” she said, standing up and giving the box of decorations a kick. “I have to go back.”

When Shelby pushed past her toward the door, Luce lost her balance and started to tumble, tripping over the box and snagging her foot on something cold and wet on the way down.

She landed face-first on the wood floor. The only thing breaking her fall was the plastic bag of feathers, which popped, shooting colorful fluff out from under
her. Luce looked back to see how much damage she had done, expecting Shelby’s eyebrows to be joined in exasperation. But Shelby was standing still with one hand pointing toward the center of the room. A smog-brown Announcer was quietly floating there.

“Isn’t that a little risky?” Shelby asked. “Summoning an Announcer an hour after getting busted for summoning an Announcer? You really don’t listen at all, do you? I kind of admire that.”

“I didn’t summon it,” Luce insisted, pulling herself up and picking the feathers out of her clothes. “I tripped and it was just there, waiting or something.” She stepped closer to examine the hazy, dun-colored sheet. It was as flat as a piece of paper and not large for an Announcer, but the way it hung in the air in front of her face, almost daring her to reject it, made Luce nervous.

It didn’t seem to need her to guide it into shape at all. It hovered, barely moving, looking like it could have floated there all day.

“Wait a minute,” Luce murmured. “This came in with the other one the other day. Don’t you remember?” This was the strange brown shadow that had flown in tandem with the darker shadow that took them to Vegas. They’d both come in through the window Friday afternoon; then this one had disappeared. Luce had forgotten about it until now.

“Well,” Shelby said, leaning against the ladder of the bunk bed. “Are you going to glimpse it or what?”

The Announcer was the color of a smoky room, noxious brown and mistlike to the touch. Luce reached for it, running her fingers along its clammy limits. She felt its cloudy breath brush back her hair. The air around this Announcer was humid, even briny. A far-away croon of seagulls echoed from within.

She shouldn’t glimpse it. Wouldn’t glimpse it.

But there was the Announcer, shifting from a smoky brown mesh into something clear and discernible, independently of Luce. There was the message cast by its shadow coming to life.

It was an aerial view of an island. At first, they were high above, so that all Luce could see was a small swell of steep black rock with a fringe of tapered pine trees ringing its base. Then, slowly, the Announcer zoomed in, like a bird swooping down to roost in the treetops, its focus a small, deserted beach.

The water was murky from the claylike silver sand. A scattering of boulders reckoned with the smooth intentions of the tide. And standing inconspicuously between two of the tallest rocks—

Daniel was staring at the sea. The tree branch in his hand was covered in blood.

Luce gasped as she leaned closer and saw what Daniel was looking at. Not the sea, but a bloody mess of a man. A dead man, lying stiff on the sand. Each time the waves reached the body, they receded stained a deep, dark red. But Luce couldn’t see the wound that had
killed the man. Someone else, in a long black trench coat, was crouched over the body, tying it up with thick braided rope.

Her heart thudding, Luce looked again at Daniel. His expression was even, but his shoulders were twitching.

“Hurry up. You’re wasting time. The tide’s going out now, anyway.”

His voice was so cold, it made Luce shiver.

A second later, the scene in the Announcer disappeared. Luce held her breath until it dropped to the ground in a heap. Then, across the room, the window shade Luce had pulled down earlier rattled open. Luce and Shelby shot each other an anxious look, then watched as a gust of wind caught the Announcer and lofted it up and out the window.

Luce clutched Shelby’s wrist. “You notice everything. Who else was there with Daniel? Who was crouched over that”—she shivered again—“guy?”

“Gee, I don’t know, Luce. I was kind of distracted by the
dead body
. Not to mention the bloody
tree
your boyfriend was holding.” Shelby’s attempt to be sarcastic was diminished by how terrified she sounded. “So he killed him?” she asked Luce. “Daniel killed whoever that was?”

“I don’t know.” Luce winced. “Don’t say it like that. Maybe there’s a logical explanation—”

“What do you think he was saying at the end?” Shelby asked. “I saw his lips move but I couldn’t make it out. I hate that about Announcers.”

Hurry up. You’re wasting time. The tide’s going out now, anyway
.

Shelby hadn’t heard that? How callous and unremorseful Daniel sounded?

Then Luce remembered: It wasn’t that long ago that she couldn’t hear the Announcers either. Before, their noises used to be just that—noises: rustlings and thick, wet whooshes through treetops. It was Steven who’d told her how to tune in the voices inside. In a way, Luce almost wished he hadn’t.

There had to be more to this message. “I have to glimpse it again,” Luce said, stepping toward the open window. Shelby tugged her back.

“Oh, no you don’t. That Announcer could be anywhere by now, and you’re under dorm arrest, remember?” Shelby pushed Luce down in her desk chair. “You’re going to stay right here while I go down to Kramer’s office to retrieve my turkey. We’re both going to forget this ever happened. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“Good. I’ll be back in five minutes, so don’t disappear on me.”

But as soon as the door closed, Luce was out the window, climbing to the flat part of the ledge where she and
Daniel had sat the night before. Putting what she’d just seen out of her mind was impossible. She had to summon that shadow again. Even if it got her in more trouble. Even if she saw something she didn’t like.