Unforgiven (20 page)

Lilith didn't think so, either. Dobbs was a long, straight street that had been closed down to car traffic entirely. There were no houses here. No apartments. Between their idling car and the burning hills in the distance were hundreds of patchwork tents and cardboard lean-tos set up in the middle of the road. People milled among the tents, and they didn't look anything like Cam. They were ragged, down on their luck, many of them strung out.

“Maybe the database is wrong,” Luis said, pulling out his phone.

“Let's go check it out,” Lilith said, and opened the passenger door.

Luis and Jean followed her to the edge of the tent city, stepping over broken bottles and moldy cardboard boxes. It was strangely cold here, and the wind was sharp. Lilith didn't know what she was looking for; she was no longer expecting to find Cam here.

The smell was overwhelming, like a sweaty landfill that someone had doused with gasoline. Lilith breathed through her mouth as she tried to make sense of this scene. At first, it looked like total chaos: Scrawny children running everywhere, men bickering over the contents of shopping carts, fires raging in trash cans. But the longer Lilith studied the world of Dobbs Street, the more it started to make sense. It was its own little community, with its own rules.

“I saw them first,” a woman Lilith's mother's age said to another, younger woman, yanking a pair of canvas shoes out of her hand.

“But they're my size,” the second woman argued. She had blond dreadlocks and wore a gray midriff tank top. Lilith could see her ribs. “You couldn't even get your big toe in them.”

Lilith looked down at her own falling-apart combat boots, with the laces she kept having to knot together when they snapped. They were the only pair of shoes she'd had for years. She tried to imagine not having even them.

“Maybe we should take off,” Jean said, looking antsy. “We can talk to Cam tomorrow at school.”

“There,” Lilith said, pointing ahead at a boy with a messenger bag slung over his shoulder exiting a dark green tent.

Cam paused for a moment and gazed up at the sky, as if he could read something there that the rest of them could not.

Against this backdrop, in the fading dusk light, Cam seemed like somebody else entirely. He looked older, tired. Had he always looked like that? She felt bad for him. She wondered how much of a front Cam had to put up at school to appear so confident and mysterious.

Was this really his home? Lilith had never known people lived like this in Crossroads. She'd never imagined anyone worse off than her own family.

He was walking their way, but he hadn't seen them yet. Lilith tugged Jean and Luis's shirtsleeves to pull them out of his line of vision.

Cam nodded as he passed two older guys. One of them raised a fist for him to bump.

“Hey, brother.”

“How are you, August?” she heard Cam say.

“Can't complain. Just the toothache.”

“I'm pulling for you,” Cam said with a smile. He put a hand on the guy's shoulder and looked him deep in the eyes. The man seemed to relax, transfixed by Cam's gaze.

Lilith was transfixed, too. The people here shared a hungry, nervous look in their eyes. But not Cam. Beneath his exhaustion, he radiated a serenity that suggested nothing in this place could touch him. Maybe nothing in this world could touch him. It was one of the most beautiful things she'd ever seen. She wanted to be that way, too: at peace with herself, autonomous, free.

“I kind of get the feeling he does live here,” Jean said.

“If you can call this living,” Luis said, and started walking toward him. “He doesn't have to be here. We've got two extra bedrooms at my house. I'm sure my parents would let him crash.”

“Wait.” Lilith held him back. “It might embarrass him that we tracked him down here.” Lilith knew it would embarrass her if the situation were reversed. “Let's talk to him tomorrow.”

She watched as Cam strolled over to a burning trash can where a father was cooking two hot dogs for four small children over a metal grate. He cut each dog in two and turned them over on the grill, but when Cam paused before him, the man started to cut one of the hot dogs into smaller pieces.

“Hungry?” he said, and offered Cam a quarter of a dog.

“No,” Cam said. “Thank you. Actually…” He reached inside his messenger bag and pulled out a foil-wrapped parcel. “You guys should have this.”

The man unwrapped it and found a giant deli sandwich. He blinked at Cam and took a huge bite, then divided the rest between his children. As they ate, he hugged Cam in gratitude.

When they'd finished eating, the oldest boy—he looked about Bruce's age—held out a beat-up guitar. Cam tousled the boy's hair, then took a seat among them. He tried tuning it, but Lilith could hear it was hopeless. Two of the strings were broken. Still, Cam didn't give up, and soon the guitar sounded a little better than it had before.

“Any requests?” he said.

“A lullaby,” the youngest boy said with a yawn.

Cam thought a moment. “I learned this one from a talented musician,” he said, “named Lilith.”

When Cam broke into the first bars of “Exile,” Lilith sucked in her breath. Cam sang her song beautifully, slowly and with great emotion, bringing to it a depth she'd never imagined possible. He sang it twice. By the time he finished, the children in the group were nodding into sleep. Behind them, their father applauded Cam softly.

“Whoa,” Jean whispered.

“Yeah,” Lilith said. She was shaking, near tears, so moved that she could say no more.

“We should go,” Luis said.

Hours earlier, Lilith had been certain she'd written Cam off for the last time. Now she followed her friends to Jean's car feeling dizzy, as if the world around her were shifting with each step.

The only thing she was sure of was how wrong she'd been about Cam.

Six Days

C
am woke in a green tent on Dobbs Street with a stiff back and a stray dog at his feet. He'd slept here a couple times since he arrived in Crossroads. It was less lonesome than the roof of the Trumbull gym.

He nudged the dog off and peeked outside at the pale pink sunrise. Mornings started early here. Everyone was hungry, bleary from a rough night. The soup kitchen opened at seven, and Cam had volunteered to work the breakfast shift before he went to school.

He meandered down the street, passing families getting ready for the day, unzipping their tents, stretching their limbs, rocking fussy babies. At the abandoned office building that had been repurposed as a soup kitchen, he pushed open the glass door.

“Morning.” A gaunt older man named Jax welcomed Cam inside. “You can start right there.” He nodded toward the dented steel counter where a giant box of Bisquick sat beside a mixing bowl.

Not a lot of small talk—which was fine by Cam. He added the milk and eggs and started mixing up the pancake batter, knowing that the Ballard boys, who loved his music, would be among the first in line. Half a hot dog and a few bites of sandwich was no kind of dinner for a growing kid. In a short time, Cam had come to care about the families that lived on Dobbs Street. He was addicted to mortal lives, and not just Lilith's. Humans fascinated him. All those little flames, forever lighting and going out.

“You okay there, Cam?” Jax asked from the range, where he was grilling slices of Spam. “You don't look so good.”

Cam put down the bowl of pancake batter and walked toward the tinted window to look at his reflection. His green eyes were recessed behind dark purple sockets. Since when did he have jowls? And now even his hands looked ancient, mottled and wrinkly.

“I'm okay,” he said, but his voice faltered. He looked—and felt—awful.

“Get yourself some breakfast before school,” Jax said kindly, patting Cam on the back, as if a plate of pancakes would make every problem the devil was serving him simply fade away.

“Cam—”

Lilith found him at his locker before homeroom. He'd flown from Dobbs Street to campus so he could squeeze in a shower before the locker room filled up with track-team kids. He had thought a shower would make him look a little bit better, but when he'd dressed for school, the mirror in the locker room had been just as unkind as the soup-kitchen window.

Even his feet were changing now, turning black and cloven, like the hooves of the damned. He could no longer fit into his own boots. He'd had to steal a pair from a motorcycle shop downtown.

“Hey.” Cam couldn't help but stare at Lilith's lovely face.

“How are you?” she asked softly.

“Been better.” It wasn't the kind of thing he wanted to admit, but the truth slipped out before he could censor it.

Kids streamed past them through the hall. Everyone was talking about prom. Someone kicked a soccer ball at Cam's head. He ducked just in time.

“Anything I can do to help?” Lilith said, leaning against his locker and offering him a slight smile. She was wearing a Four Horsemen T-shirt tied in a knot at her narrow waist. Her hair was still wet from her shower, and it smelled like freesias. He couldn't help leaning in.

Remember me,
he longed to say, because if she could remember Cam as he'd been when they first fell in love, she wouldn't only see him as the withering shell he was today.

“I thought you were mad at me,” he said.

To his amazement, Lilith reached for his hand. Her fingers were cool and strong, calloused at the tips where she strummed her guitar. “There are more important things to worry about,” she said.

Cam seized his chance and stepped closer, yearning to move his hand to her hair. He knew how it would feel: damp and gloriously soft, just as it had been in Canaan when she lay in his arms by the riverbank after a swim, her hair splayed against his bare chest.

“What could be more important than your trust?” he asked.

Lilith tilted her head toward Cam. A dreamy look came into her eyes, replacing the suspicion he'd grown accustomed to in this Hell. Her lips parted. Cam held his breath—

“So, kids…” Jean Rah appeared before them and raised his green plastic sunglasses. “Do we have a band, or what?”

Lilith stepped back and tugged down the hem of her shorts. She looked embarrassed, like someone coming out of hypnosis who couldn't remember what had happened a moment before.

Cam knew Jean meant well, but right at that moment he could have hit him.

“I assume that since you two are speaking,” Jean continued, seeing the look in Cam's eyes, “you've made up and we can once again—”

“We were just working on that,” Lilith said.

“Work faster,” Jean said, and snapped his fingers. “We have an important matter to discuss
re
prom.” He nudged Lilith. “Have you asked him yet?”

“Asked me what?” Cam said.

“To prom,” Jean said.

Lilith's face started turning many shades of red as Cam's eyebrows shot up. He'd been waiting for a far more romantic moment to ask
her
to prom. Was she actually planning to ask
him
?

“Of course,” he blurted out. “I'd love to.”

Jean winced. “No, man, that was a joke. Sorry. I thought you'd laugh. Thought you'd both laugh—”

Cam gulped. “Hilarious.”

“I don't need a date to play a song with my band,” Lilith said. “So everybody just chill.”

“Yeah, Prom King,” Jean said, laughing. “Chill.”

Cam shoved him into a locker. “Thanks, man.”

“But I
was
wondering, Cam,” Lilith said, twirling a lock of her red hair, “if you'd consider rejoining the band.” She glanced at Jean. “There. That's it. Okay?”

“Okay,” Cam said, knowing better than to question what had made her change her mind. “Of course. I'd love to.”

Jean placed one arm on Cam's shoulder, the other on Lilith's. “Now that
that's
settled, we can get down to business,” he said. “Meet me in the parking lot right after school. We're going on a field trip.”

“Destination where?” Cam asked. Whatever Jean's plans involved, Cam liked the idea of getting off Trumbull's campus with Lilith.

“Shopping for prom, the Battle of the Bands, aka our debut performance.” Jean tapped the face of his watch. “It's six days away and we have no look.”

“Jean, I sit next to Kimi in poetry,” Lilith said. “I know about the cranberry satin cummerbund you special ordered to match her prom dress.”

Cam burst out laughing.

“You shut up, and you shut up,” Jean said, pointing at each of them. “Yes, I will be wearing a cranberry satin cummerbund for a portion of prom.” He shook his head ruefully. “But not when Revenge performs. For that, we need to pull out all the stops.”

Lilith looked down at her jean shorts. “I was just gonna wear—”

“We cannot wear our everyday clothes onstage!” Jean said, more serious than Cam had ever seen him. “We don't want our audience to look at us like they do now.”

Cam cleared his throat and glanced down at his boots. Was Jean suggesting he
not
wear them onstage? Unfortunately, he didn't have much choice. He looked around the hall at the kids hurrying to class. “I'm not sure they see us at all.”

Jean rolled his eyes. “You know what I mean. You don't want that guy Luc to see you onstage and think of you sitting in detention, do you?”

“Probably not,” Cam admitted, though he knew no costume would disguise him from Lucifer.

“He needs to think you're from another world,” Jean continued.

“We're only playing one song,” Lilith said. “Seems like a waste for aliens to come all the way from outer space just to play one song.”

“Rock is about waste,” Jean said. “Wasted time, wasted youth, wasted talent, wasted money.”

Cam wondered where Lilith's apprehension about the new look was coming from; then he realized: She probably couldn't afford anything new. But that shouldn't stop her from finding something special. He would figure out a way to help her.

“Jean's right,” Cam said to Lilith. “We need a unified look. Just not a pricey one. I can't afford a lot at the moment.”

“No worries,” Jean said, and Cam watched Lilith breathe a sigh of relief. “I can work with a budget. So we'll meet at three-forty-five and head to the Salvation Army.”

Cam scratched his head. His leather jacket had been handmade in 1509 in Florence by Bartolomeo himself. He'd taken his last pair of boots from a dead American infantryman in a Rhineland field in 1945. His jeans were from the first batch made in 1873 by Levi Strauss. He'd brought them directly to Savile Row to be altered.

Oh, how times had changed.

“I'm in,” Lilith said, just before the bell rang. “Meet you after school. By the way, Cam, I like your new boots.”