Torment (30 page)

“Oh my God,” Luce whispered. “We’re back at Sword and Cross.”

Arriane scanned the room quickly and without affection. “As far as your parents are concerned when they pick us up tomorrow morning, you’ve been here all along. Got it?”

Arriane acted as if returning to Sword & Cross for the night was no different than checking into a nondescript motel. The jolt back to this part of her life, however, hit Luce like a slap across the face. She hadn’t liked it here. Sword & Cross was a miserable place, but it was a place where things had
happened
to her. She’d fallen in love here, had watched a close friend die. More than anywhere else, this was a place where she had changed.

She closed her eyes and laughed bitterly. She’d known
nothing
then compared to what she knew now. And yet she’d felt surer of herself and her emotions than she could imagine ever feeling again.

“What the hell is this place?” Shelby asked.

“My last school,” Luce said, glancing at Miles. He seemed uneasy, huddling next to Shelby against the wall. Luce remembered: They were good kids—and though she’d never talked much about her time here, the Nephilim rumor mill could easily have filled their minds with enough vivid details to paint one scary night at Sword & Cross.

“Ahem,” Arriane said, looking at Shelby and Miles. “And when Luce’s parents ask, you guys go here too.”

“Explain to me how this is a school,” Shelby said. “What, do you swim and pray at the same time? That’s a level of freakish efficiency you’d never see on the West Coast. I think I just got homesick.”

“You think this is bad,” Luce said, “you should see the rest of campus.”

Shelby scrunched up her face, and Luce couldn’t blame her. Compared to Shoreline, this place was a gruesome sort of Purgatory. At least, unlike the rest of the kids here, they’d be gone after tonight.

“You guys look drained,” Arriane said. “Which is good, because I promised Cole we’d lie low.”

Roland had been leaning against the diving board, rubbing his temples, the Announcer shards quivering at his feet. Now he stood up and began to take charge. “Miles, you’re going to bunk up with me in my old room. And Luce, your room’s still empty. We’ll roll in a cot for Shelby. Let’s all drop our bags and meet back at my room. I’ll use the old black-market network to order a pizza.”

The mention of pizza was enough to shake Miles and Shelby out of their comas, but Luce was taking longer to adjust. It wasn’t that weird for her room to still be empty. Counting on her fingers, she realized she’d been gone from this place less than three weeks. It felt like so much longer, like every day had been a month, and it was impossible for Luce to imagine Sword & Cross without any of the people—or angels, or demons—who had made up her life here.

“Don’t worry.” Arriane stood next to Luce. “This place is like a reject revolving door. People come and go all the time because of some parole issue, crazy parents, whatever. Randy’s off tonight. No one else gives a damn. If anyone gives you a second look—just give ’em a third one. Or send them over to me.” She made a fist. “You ready to get out of here?” She pointed at the others already following Roland out the door.

“I’ll catch up with you guys,” Luce said. “There’s something I need to do first.”

In the far east corner of the cemetery, next to her father’s plot, Penn’s grave was modest but neat.

The last time Luce had seen this cemetery, it had been coated in a thick felt of dust. The aftermath of every angel battle, Daniel had told her. Luce didn’t know whether the wind had carried the dust away by now, or whether angel dust just disappeared over time, but the cemetery seemed to be back to its neglected old self. Still ringed by an ever-advancing forest of kudzu-strangled live oaks. Still barren and depleted under the no-color sky. Only, there was something missing, something vital Luce couldn’t put her finger on, but that still made her feel lonely.

A sparse layer of dull green grass had grown up and around Penn’s grave, so it didn’t look so jarringly new, compared to the centuries-old graves surrounding it. A bouquet of fresh lilies lay in front of the simple gray tombstone, which Luce stooped down to read:

PENNYWEATHER VAN SYCKLE-LOCKWOOD
A DEAR FRIEND
1991–2009

Luce inhaled a jagged breath, and tears sprang to her eyes. She’d left Sword & Cross before there’d been time to bury Penn, but Daniel had taken care of everything. It was the first time in several days that her heart ached for him. Because he had known, better than she would have known herself, exactly how Penn’s tombstone should read. Luce knelt down on the grass, her tears flowing freely now, her hands combing the grass uselessly.

“I’m here, Penn,” she whispered. “I’m sorry I had to leave you. I’m sorry you got mixed up with me in the first place. You deserved better than this. A better friend than me.”

She wished her friend were still here. She wished she could talk to her. She knew Penn’s death was her fault, and it almost broke her heart.

“I don’t know what I’m doing anymore, and I’m scared.”

She wanted to say she missed Penn all the time, but what she really missed was the idea of a friend she could have known better if death hadn’t taken her away too soon. None of it was right.

“Hello, Luce.”

She had to wipe away the tears before she could see Mr. Cole standing on the other side of Penn’s grave. She’d gotten so used to her crisply elegant teachers at Shoreline that Mr. Cole looked almost frumpy in his bunched-up tawny suit, with his mustache, and his brown hair parted straight as a ruler just above his left ear.

Luce scrambled to her feet, sniffling against herwrist. “Hi, Mr. Cole.”

He smiled kindly. “You’re doing well over there, I hear. Everyone says you’re doing very well.”

“Oh … n-no …,” she stammered. “I don’t know about that.”

“Well, I do. I also know your parents are very happy to get to see you. It’s good when these things can work out.”

“Thank you,” she said, hoping he understood how grateful she was.

“I won’t keep you but for just one question.”

Luce waited for him to ask her about something deep and dark and over her head about Daniel and Cam, good and evil, right and wrong, trust and deceit. …

But all he said was “What did you do to your hair?”

Luce’s head was upside down in the sink in the girls’ bathroom down the hall from the Sword & Cross cafeteria. Shelby carried in the last two slices of cheese pizza stacked on a paper plate for Luce. Arriane held out a bottle of cheap black hair dye—the best Roland could do on such short notice, but not a bad match for Luce’s natural color.

Neither Arriane nor Shelby had questioned Luce about her sudden need for a change. She’d been grateful for that. Now she saw they’d only been waiting for her to be in a vulnerable half-dyed position to begin their inquisition.

“I guess Daniel will be pleased,” Arriane said in her coyest leading-question tone of voice. “Not that you’re doing this for Daniel. Are you?”

“Arriane,” Luce warned. She wasn’t going there. Not tonight.

But Shelby seemed to want to. “You know what I’ve always liked about Miles? That he likes you for who you are, not for what you do with your hair.”

“If you two were going to be that obvious about it, why didn’t you guys come down in your Team Daniel and Team Miles T-shirts?”

“We should order those,” Shelby said.

“Mine’s in the laundry,” Arriane said.

Luce tuned them out, focusing instead on the warm water and the strange confluence of things flowing over her head, into her scalp, and down the drain: Shelby’s stubby fingers had helped with Luce’s first dye job, back when Luce thought that was the only way to start afresh. Arriane’s first act of friendship toward Luce had been the command to chop off her black hair, to make her look like Luce. Now their hands worked through Luce’s scalp in the same bathroom where Penn had rinsed her clean of the meat loaf Molly had dumped on her head her first day at Sword & Cross.

It was bittersweet, and beautiful, and Luce couldn’t figure out what any of it meant. Only that she didn’t want to hide anymore—not from herself, or from her parents; not from Daniel, or even from those who sought to harm her.

She’d been seeking a cheap transformation when she first got out to California. Now she realized that the only worthwhile way to make a change was to earn a real one. Dying her hair black wasn’t the answer either—she knew she wasn’t there yet—but at least it was a step in the right direction.

Arriane and Shelby stopped arguing over which guy was Luce’s soul mate. They looked at her silently and nodded. She felt it before she even saw her reflection in the mirror: The heavy weight of melancholy, one she hadn’t even known she was shouldering, had lifted from her body.

She was back to her roots. She was ready to go home.

EIGHTEEN

THANKSGIVING

W
hen Luce stepped through the front door of her parents’ house in Thunderbolt, everything was just the same: The coatrack in the foyer still looked like it was about to topple under the weight of too many jackets. The smell of dryer sheets and Pledge still made the house feel cleaner than it was. The floral couch in the living room was faded from the morning sun that fell through the blinds. A stack of tea-stained southern decorating magazines covered the coffee table, favorite pages bookmarked with grocery receipts, for the distant time when her parents’ dream came true of the mortgage’s being paid off and their finally having a little extra money for remodeling. Andrew, her mom’s hysterical toy poodle, trotted over to sniff the guests and give the back of Luce’s ankle a familiar chomp.

Luce’s dad set down her duffel in the foyer, draping an easy arm around her shoulder. Luce watched their reflection in the narrow entryway mirror: father and daughter.

His rimless glasses slipped down on his nose as he kissed the crown of her back-to-black hair. “Welcome home, Lucie,” he said. “We missed you around here.”

Luce closed her eyes. “I missed you, too.” It was the first time in weeks she hadn’t lied to her parents.

The house was warm and full of intoxicating Thanksgiving scents. She inhaled and could instantly picture every foil-wrapped dish staying hot in the oven. Deep-fried turkey with mushroom stuffing—her dad’s specialty. Apple-cranberry sauce, light-as-air yeast rolls, and enough pumpkin-pecan pies—her mom’s—to feed the whole state. She must have been cooking all week.

Luce’s mom took hold of her wrists. Her hazel eyes were a little damp around the edges. “How are you, Luce?” she asked. “Are you all right?”

It was such a relief to be home. Luce could feel her eyes grow damp too. She nodded, folding into her mom for a hug.

Her mother’s chin-length dark hair was sculpted and sprayed, like she’d just been to the beauty parlor the day before. Which, knowing her, she probably had. She looked younger and prettier than Luce remembered. Compared to the elderly parents she’d tried to visit in Mount Shasta—even compared to Vera—Luce’s mom seemed happy and alive, untainted by sorrow.

It was because she’d never had to feel what the others had felt, losing a daughter. Losing Luce. Her parents had made their whole life around her. It would destroy them if she died.

She could not die the way she had in the past. She could not wreck her parents’ life this time around, now that she knew more about her past. She would do whatever it took to keep them happy.

Her mom gathered the coats and hats of the four other teenagers who were standing in her foyer. “I hope your friends brought their appetites.”

Shelby jerked her thumb at Miles. “Be careful what you wish for.”

It was just like Luce’s parents not to mind a carful of last-minute guests at their Thanksgiving table.

When her dad’s Chrysler New Yorker had rolled through Sword & Cross’s tall wrought iron gates just before noon, Luce had been waiting for him. She hadn’t been able to sleep at all the night before. Between the strangeness of being back at Sword & Cross and her nerves about mingling such an odd Thanksgiving crew the next day—her mind would not settle down.

Luckily, the morning had passed without incident; after giving her dad the longest, tightest hug she’d ever given someone, she’d mentioned that she had a few friends without places to go for the holiday.

Five minutes later, they were all in the car.

Now they were milling around Luce’s childhood home, picking up framed pictures of her at different awkward ages, gazing out the same French windows she’d been gazing out over bowls of cereal for more than a decade. It was kind of surreal. As Arriane bounded into the kitchen to help her mom whip some cream, Miles peppered her dad with questions about the enormous piece-of-junk telescope in his office. Luce felt a swell of pride in her parents for making everyone feel welcome.

The sound of a car horn outside made her jump.

She perched on the sagging couch and lifted a slat of the window blind. Outside, a red-and-white taxi was idling in front of the house, coughing exhaust into the cold fall air. The windows were tinted, but the passenger could be only one person.

Callie
.

One of Callie’s knee-high red leather boots extended from the back door, planting itself on the concrete sidewalk. A second later, Luce’s best friend’s heart-shaped face came into view. Callie’s porcelain skin was flushed, her auburn hair shorter, cut at a sleek angle close to her chin. Her pale blue eyes glittered. For some reason, she kept glancing back inside the cab.

“Whatcha looking at?” Shelby asked, pulling up another slat so she could see. Roland slid in on Luce’s other side and looked out too.

Just in time to see Daniel slide out of the taxi—

Followed by Cam, from the front seat.

Luce sucked in her breath at the sight of them.

Both guys were wearing long, dark coats, like the coats they’d worn on the shore in the scene she’d glimpsed. Their hair gleamed in the sunlight. And for a moment, just a moment, Luce remembered why she’d originally been intrigued by them both at Sword & Cross. They were
beautiful
. There was no getting around it. Surreally, unnaturally stunning.

But what the hell were they doing here?

“Right on time,” Roland murmured.

On her other side, Shelby asked, “Who invited them?”

“My thoughts exactly,” Luce said, but she couldn’t help swooning a little at the sight of Daniel. Even though things between them were a mess.

“Luce.” Roland was chuckling at her expression as she watched Daniel. “Don’t you think you should answer the door?”

The doorbell rang.

“Is that Callie?” Luce’s mom called from the kitchen over the whir of the stand mixer.

“Got it!” Luce shouted back, feeling a cold pain spread through her chest. Of course she wanted to see Callie. But more overwhelming than her joy at seeing her best friend, she realized, was her hunger to see Daniel. To touch him, to hold him and breathe him in. To introduce him to her parents.

They would be able to see, wouldn’t they? They’d be able to tell that Luce had found the person who had changed her life forever.

She opened the door.

“Happy Thanksgiving!” a high southern voice drawled. Luce had to blink a few times before her brain could connect with the sight before her eyes.

Gabbe, the most beautiful and the most perfectly mannered angel at Sword & Cross, was standing on Luce’s porch in a pink mohair sweater dress. Her blond hair was a gorgeous frenzy of braids, pinned up into little swirls on top of her head. Her skin had a soft, lovely shimmer—not unlike Francesca’s. She held a bouquet of white gladiolas in one hand and a frosty white plastic ice cream tub in the other.

Next to her, her bleached-blond hair grown brown at the roots, stood the demon Molly Zane. Her torn black jeans matched her frayed black sweater, like she was still following Sword & Cross’s dress code. Her facial piercings had multiplied since the last time Luce had seen her. She had a small black cast iron kettle balanced in the crook of her arm. She was glaring at Luce.

Luce could see the others walking up the long, curving walk. Daniel had Callie’s suitcase hoisted up over his shoulder, but it was Cam who was leaning in, smiling, his hand on Callie’s right forearm as he chatted with her. She didn’t seem to know whether to be slightly nervous or absolutely charmed.

“We were just in the neighborhood.” Gabbe beamed, holding out the flowers to Luce. “I made my homemade vanilla ice cream, and Molly brought an appetizer.”

“Shrimp Diablo.” Molly lifted up the lid of her kettle, and Luce breathed in a spicy garlic broth. “Family recipe.” Molly slapped the lid back down, then pushed past Luce into the foyer, stumbling over Shelby in her path.

“Excuse
you,
” they said gruffly at the same time, eyeing each other suspiciously.

“Oh, good.” Gabbe leaned in to give Luce a hug. “Molly’s made a friend.”

Roland took Gabbe into the kitchen, and Luce had her first clear view of Callie. When they locked eyes, they couldn’t help themselves: Both girls broke into involuntary grins and ran toward one another.

The impact of Callie’s body knocked the wind out of Luce, but it didn’t matter. Their arms were flung around each other, each girl’s face buried in the other’s hair; they were laughing the way you laugh only after too long a separation from a very good friend.

Reluctantly, Luce pulled away and turned to the two guys standing a few feet back. Cam looked as he always did: controlled and at ease, slick and handsome.

But Daniel looked uncomfortable—and he had good reason to be. They hadn’t spoken since he’d seen her kiss Miles, and now they were standing with Luce’s best friend and Daniel’s enemy-turned- … whatever Cam was to Daniel now.

But—

Daniel was
in her home
. Within shouting distance of her parents. Would they lose it if they knew who he really was? How did she introduce the guy who was responsible for a thousand of her deaths, whom she was magnetically drawn to almost all the time, who was impossible and elusive and secretive and sometimes even mean, whose love she didn’t understand, who was
working with the devil
, for crying out loud, and who—if he thought showing up here uninvited with that demon was a good idea—maybe didn’t know her very well at all.

“What are you doing here?” Her voice was bone-dry because she couldn’t talk to Daniel without talking to Cam, too, and she couldn’t talk to Cam without wanting to throw something heavy at him.

Cam spoke first. “Happy Thanksgiving to you, too. We heard your house was the place to be today.”

“We ran into your friend here at the airport,” Daniel added, using the flat tone he spoke in when he and Luce were in public. It was more formal, making her yearn to be alone with him so they could just be real. And so she could grab him by the lapels of his stupid coat and shake him until he explained everything. This had gone on long enough.

“Got to talking, shared a cab,” Cam picked up, winking at Callie.

Callie smiled at Luce. “Here I was picturing some intimate gathering at the Price household, but this is so much better. Now I can get the real scoop.”

Luce could feel her friend searching her face for clues about what the deal was with these two guys. Thanksgiving was about to get really awkward, really fast. This was not the way things were supposed to go.

“Turkey time!” her mother called from the doorway. Her smile changed into a confused grimace when she saw the crowd outside. “Luce? What’s going on?” Her old green-and-white-striped apron was tied around her waist.

“Mom,” Luce said, gesturing with her hand, “this is Callie, and Cam, and …” She wanted to reach out to put her hand on Daniel, something, anything to let her mom know that he was special, that this was the one. To let him know, too, that she still loved him, that everything between them was going to be okay. But she couldn’t. She just stood there. “ …    Daniel.”

“Okay.” Her mom squinted at each of the newcomers. “Well, um, welcome. Luce, honey, can I have a word?”

Luce went to her mother at the front door, holding up a finger to let Callie know she’d be right back. She followed her mother through the foyer, through the dim hallway hung with framed pictures from Luce’s childhood, and into her parents’ cozy, lamplit bedroom. Her mom sat down on the white bedspread and crossed her arms. “Feel like telling me anything?”

“I’m so sorry, Mom,” Luce said, sinking down on the bed.

“I don’t want to shut anyone out of a Thanksgiving meal, but don’t you think we need to draw the line somewhere? Wasn’t one unexpected carful of people enough?”

“Yes, of course you’re right,” Luce said. “I didn’t invite all these people. I’m as stunned as you are that they all showed up.”

“It’s just that we have so little time with you. We love to meet your friends,” Luce’s mom said, stroking her hair. “But we cherish our time with you more.”

“I know this is such a huge imposition, but Mom”—Luce turned her cheek into her mother’s open palm—“he is special. Daniel. I didn’t know he was going to come, but now that he’s here, I need this time with him as much as I need it with you and Dad. Does that make any sense?”

“Daniel?” her mom repeated. “That beautiful blond boy? You two are—”

“We’re in love.” For some reason, Luce was trembling. Even though she had her doubts about their relationship, saying out loud, to her mother, that she loved Daniel made it seem true—made her remember that she did, despite everything, truly love him.

“I see.” When her mom nodded, her sprayed brown curls stayed in place. She smiled. “Well, we can’t very well kick out everyone else but him, can we?”

“Thank you, Mom.”

“Thank your father, too. And honey? Next time, a little more advance notice, please. If I’d known you were bringing home ‘the one,’ I would have grabbed your baby album from the attic.” She winked, planting a kiss on Luce’s cheek.