by Kate, Lauren
Their meeting was graceless and tense. They spoke to each other like strangers. Daniel remembered feeling most angry that Sem hadn’t even asked about Luce. When he took his leave, Sem was cursing, and Daniel knew he wouldn’t be back. He would ask to be taken off the case. He would ask for someone easier.
Daniel had accepted that he might never see his friend again. Which was why he was so floored to realize who the girl was.
Standing before him on skid row was one of Semihazah’s offspring. A daughter.
She must have had a mortal mother. Shelby was a Nephilim.
He stood to get a better look at her. She stiffened but didn’t back away when he got up in her face. About fourteen. Pretty, but a handful. Like her father. Did she even know who—or what—she was? Her cheeks flushed as Daniel studied her.
“Um. Are you okay?” she asked.
“Where’s this party?”
They spent an hour stuck in traffic in a van crammed with strangers. Daniel couldn’t have talked to Shelby even if he’d known what to say. Tell me about the father who abandoned you seemed like the wrong way to get started. When they finally made it over the hills into the vast, flat valley, the house they stopped in front of was dark. It didn’t look like a party at all.
Daniel was wary. He’d been on the lookout for signs that this gathering was something more than mortal. A setup. A sign that Shelby was in one of the Nephilim circles he’d heard Roland talk about. Daniel had never paid much attention before.
The front door was unlocked, so Daniel followed Shelby, who followed the rest of the carload, inside. This was no celestial gathering. No, the people at this party looked lifeless.
They were passed out, making out, checking out, strewn across the couch and in heaps on the floor. The only light in the room came from a refrigerator being opened when somebody pulled out a beer. It was stuffy and hot, and something in the corner smelled rotten.
Daniel didn’t know why he’d come, what he was doing there, and it made him ache for Luce. He could fly away from here and go to her right now! The time they spent together was the only time in Daniel’s whole existence when anything made sense.
Until Luce went out in a flash and everything went dark.
He kept forgetting his promise. To stay away this time. To let her live.
In the dark, disgusting living room, Daniel took a hard look at life without her, and he shuddered. If he’d had a way out, he would have taken it. But he didn’t.
“This sucks.” Shelby was standing at his side. She was shouting over the harsh, discordant music, and still Daniel could only read her lips. She jerked her head toward the back door. Daniel nodded, following her.
The backyard was small and fenced in, with scorched grass and patches of sandy dirt. They took a seat on the small cement ledge and Shelby cracked open a beer.
“Sorry I dragged you all the way out here for this shit show,” she said, taking a swig, then passing the warm can to Daniel.
“You hang out with this crowd often?”
“First and last time,” she said. “My mom and I, we move around a lot, so I don’t really get to hang out with any crowd for too long.”
“Good,” Daniel said. “I mean, I don’t think this is the kind of crowd you should be spending your time with. What are you, fourteen?”
Shelby snorted. “Um, thanks for the unsolicited advice, Dad, but I can look out for myself. Years of practice.”
Daniel put down the beer can and looked up at the sky. One reason he liked L.A. was that you could never really see the stars. Tonight, though, he missed them.
“What about your parents?” he finally asked.
“Mom means well, she just works all the time. Or, all the time she’s not in between jobs. She has a special talent for getting herself fired. So we keep moving and she keeps promising that one day things are going to get ‘stable’ for us. I’ve had some problems, you know, adjusting. It’s kind of a long story.…”
Shelby trailed off, like she thought she’d already said too much. The way she was avoiding his gaze made Daniel realize that she did know at least a little bit about her lineage.
“But Mom thinks she’s got the solution,” she went on, shaking her head. “She’s got this fancy school all picked out and everything. Talk about a pipe dream.”
“And your dad?”
“Skipped town before I was born. Real classy guy, huh?”
“He used to be,” Daniel said softly.
“What?”
Then—Daniel didn’t know why—he reached out and took Shelby’s hand. He didn’t even know her, but he felt an urge to protect her. She was Sem’s daughter, which made her strangely almost like Daniel’s niece. She looked surprised when his fingers clasped hers, but she didn’t pull away.
Daniel wanted to take her away from here. This was no place for a girl like Shelby. But at the same time, he knew it wasn’t just this party or this town that was the problem. It was Shelby’s whole life. She was totally screwed up. Because of Sem.
Just as Luce’s lives had been screwed up because of Daniel.
He swallowed hard and suppressed a fierce new urge to go to Luce. He didn’t belong here in this fenced-in yard. On this hot night, at this stupid party, with nothing to look forward to for the rest of eternity.
Now Shelby squeezed his hand. When he met her eyes, they looked different. Bigger. Softer. They looked like—
Uh-oh.
He pulled away and stood up quickly. Shelby thought he’d been making a move.
“Where are you going?” she said. “Did—did I do something wrong?”
“No.” He sighed. “I did.”
He wanted to clear things up, but he didn’t know how. His eyes fixed on the busted screen door, where a dark shadow wobbled slightly in the stiff, hot wind.
An Announcer.
Usually, Daniel ignored them. The past few years they’d started coming to him less and less. Maybe this one—maybe it had something to do with Shelby. Maybe he could show her instead of flailing for the words. He nodded at the Announcer and let it glide into his palm. A moment later he’d worked it into a flat black plane.
He could just begin to see the image coming clear: Luce. And he knew instantly that he’d made a big mistake. His wings burned and his heart ached as if it were breaking into pieces inside him. He didn’t know where or when in time he was viewing her, but it didn’t matter. It was all he could do not to dive inside and go after her. A single tear rolled down his cheek.
“What the—” Shelby’s shocked tone broke Daniel’s concentration.
But before Daniel could respond, a siren sounded on the street. Flashing lights illuminated the side of the house, then the blades of grass in the backyard. The Announcer splintered in Daniel’s hands. Shelby scrambled to her feet. She was looking at Daniel like something had just clicked but she didn’t have the words to express what it was.
Then the screen door whipped open behind them and a handful of kids from the party raced out.
“Cops,” one of them hissed at Shelby before they all dashed across the lawn toward the fence. They helped each other scramble over it and were gone.
A moment later, two cops jogged around the side of the house and stopped in front of Daniel and Shelby.
“Okay, kids, you’re coming with us.”
Daniel rolled his eyes. It wasn’t the first time he’d been booked. Dealing with the police always veered between a minor annoyance and a big joke. But Shelby wasn’t going in so easy.
“Oh yeah?” she cried. “On what grounds?”
“Breaking and entering a condemned residence. Illegal substance use. Underage drinking. Disturbing the peace. And somebody stole that shopping cart from Ralphs. Take your pick, sweetheart.”
At the station, Daniel waved to the two cops he knew and poured two cups of hot brown water from the coffeemaker, one for Shelby, one for himself. The girl looked nervous, but Daniel knew they didn’t have much to worry about. He was just about to p
lop down in the seat where the booking officer took your information, your personal items, and your mug shot when he noticed someone standing in the doorway of the station.
Sophia Bliss.
She was dressed in a smart black suit, with her silver hair spun into a tight twist. Her black heels clicked across the wood floor as she approached him. She ran her eyes over Shelby briefly, then turned to Daniel and smiled.
“Hello, dear,” she said. She turned to face the cops. “I’m the parole officer for this young man. What’s he in for?”
The cop handed over his report. Miss Sophia skimmed it quickly, clucking her tongue.
“Really, Daniel, theft of a shopping cart? And you knew this was your last violation before the court-mandated reform school. Oh, don’t give me that face,” she said, a weird smile pulling up the corners of her mouth. “You’ll like Sword and Cross. I promise.”
MILES IN THE DARK
Miles had never meant to splinter off a second Lucinda.
One moment she had been a single girl in danger—his friend, a beautiful girl he’d kissed once, too, but that wasn’t the point—and then a second later, Miles’s eyes went cloudy and his heart pounded and before he knew what he was doing, he had thrown a mirror image of Luce right into the standoff with the Outcasts. Conjured her out of thin air and his deep feelings for her.
Two of her, suddenly. Both as gorgeous as a starry sky: dark jeans, dark shirts, two dark heads of hair. And there was such a dark look in Luce’s mirror image’s eyes when she took flight with the Outcast. And then—Miles pinched his own eyes shut at the memory—with one loosed silver arrow, the mirage image was gone.
Too soon after that, his friend, the real Luce, had disappeared, too.
He was such an idiot! The stupid words he’d said to her the first time they talked about his so-called talent would not stop running through his mind: It’s easy to do with the people you, like, love.
Did Luce remember their conversation that day on the deck at Shoreline? Was what he told her then one of the things that had sent her plunging into the Announcer all alone?
She hadn’t even looked back.
Now the yard was buzzing with the angels and their disbelief. Miles and Shelby were having a tough time grappling with what Luce had just done, but they’d seen her open Announcers. The angels, though, looked ready to keel over from shock.
Miles watched her so-called boyfriend as he worked through his own shock. His stupid mouth opened and closed silently. Daniel didn’t know his girlfriend could do anything. He had no idea how very much she was capable of.
Miles turned away from them all and crossed his arms over his chest. It wouldn’t do him any good to get angrier with Daniel Grigori. Luce was crazy about him. They had been in love forever. Miles couldn’t compete with that.
He gave the dead grass a futile kick—and his foot bumped into something. It glinted in the dark.
An unclaimed starshot.
No one was looking. The angels were huddled together, arguing about how to find Lucinda.
Miles felt wild and unhinged and not like himself at all, but suddenly he snatched the starshot from the ground and tucked it into the inside pocket of his brown corduroy coat.
“Miles, what are you doing?” Shelby’s whisper made him jump.
“Nothing!”
“Good.” She waved to him from behind the shed, out of view of the bickering angels.
“Then get over here and help me with this Announcer. It’s being a royal pain in the—Argh!”
The dark shadow pooled in her hands, completely unresponsive.
“Shelby!” Miles whispered as he jogged over. “Why are you doing that?”
“Why do you think, blockhead?”
Miles laughed under his breath at the fierce determination on her face. It wasn’t the Announcer; it was Shelby. She was terrible at stepping through but would die before she ever admitted it. It was kind of cute.
“You—you want to go after her?” he asked.
“Duh,” she said. “Are you with me? Or are you too scared?” She glared at Miles, then swallowed, changed her pitch, and took his hand. “Please don’t make me go alone.”
Miles took the Announcer off Shelby’s hands and struggled to expand it in the dark. Soon it opened up into an inky portal very much like the one Luce had just stepped through.
“I’m with you,” he said, and took Shelby’s hand. And together, they entered the darkness.
INSIDE FRANCESCA’S OFFICE
Francesca was upset, and she wasn’t sure why. It was obvious in her short breaths and in the tense space behind her knees and in the incipient headache behind her eyes. She hated it when she was upset, hated being less than perfectly in control. But she wasn’t in control, and she didn’t know why. Certainly it wasn’t because of this callow new student.
When Roland Sparks had arrived at Shoreline, Francesca had not been surprised. Nearly all the fallen angels were on the move during the truce days, so it was only a matter of time before some of them came to her and Steven for help.
He sat before her desk now, in his starched white shirt, having just convinced Steven to allow him to “audit” some of their Nephilim classes. Ridiculous. If Roland wanted to spy on Lucinda, there were less obtrusive ways.
“You’re going to have to change your clothes,” she said to the fallen angel—or, as custom dictated he be called, demon—coolly. “Real students at Shoreline have never heard of an ironing board. Let alone … what are those?” She leaned down to eye his boots.
His smile almost seemed to taunt her. “Ferragamo.”
“Ferragamo? Pick up a sweatshirt and some sneakers at the Salvation Army down the street.” She looked away and pointlessly shuffled her papers. No matter how long she’d lived with Stephen, demons always managed to unnerve her.
“Francesca.” Steven swiveled in his desk chair to lean toward her. “Don’t you want to talk about what happened today?”
“What’s there to talk about?” she said, closing her eyes to block out the image of her best students’ white faces when she and Steven had offered them a glimpse inside that dark Announcer. “It was a mistake to even try.”
“We took a chance. We were unlucky.” Steven rested a warm hand on hers. He was always warm, and she was always cold. Usually, that made her draw closer to him every chance she got. But today, his heat oppressed her, and his open affection in front of Roland Sparks embarrassed her. She flinched.
“Unlucky?” She scoffed. She could feel herself about to launch into a tirade about statistics and class safety and those Nephilim kids not being ready to play hardball—and while every word she spoke would be absolutely true, all three of them in that office knew that her rant was a foolish cover-up for their real concern that day. For the real reason she was so off her game.
Lucinda Price was ready.
And that terrified Francesca.
CAM GOES HUNTING
Cam leaned back against the redwood tree and slipped a cigarette from his silver case. At the edge of the forest, he was just out of view from the Shoreline deck, where the Nephilim were engaged in another one of their inane class projects. He could keep watch from here. He could protect her without her knowing it.
A branch snapped behind him and Cam whirled around, fists clenched, the cigarette still clipped between his lips. Interesting. It was one of the females, alone. She hadn’t sensed his presence on the other side of the tree. Her silver bow was not even drawn.
“Got a light, Outcast?”
The girl blinked her white eyes, which made Cam feel nauseated and almost a little bit sorry for her. Almost.
“The Outcasts do not play with fire,” she said in a hollow voice, her pale fingers moving toward the inner pocket of her tan trench coat.
“Yes, that always was the Outcasts’ problem, wasn’t it?” Cam played it cool. No reason to alarm her. That would only draw the starshot faster. He snapped his fingers, igniting a small flame, and held it up to light
the cigarette.
“You are spying on her.” The girl jerked her blond head upward, toward the deck where—it was true—Lucinda was seated on a bench, looking striking in a rose-red sweater and her newly bleached hair. She was talking to some Nephilim friend, talking in the open, trusting way she used to talk to Cam. Her hazel eyes wide, her lips pursed with that old sadness. Cam could look at her all day.
Alas, he forced himself to turn back to the lifeless creature before him. “I’m protecting her from the likes of you,” he spat. “There’s a difference, baby, not that you’d be able to see it.”
He stole another glance at Luce. She had risen from the bench. Her eyes traveled down the deck stairs, which led too close to Cam’s hideout in the woods. What was she doing? He stiffened. Was she coming over?
The starshot whizzed through the air when Cam was least expecting it. He sensed it at the last possible second and dodged to the right, scraping his cheek against the tree trunk, catching the shaft of the arrow in his leather-gloved hand. He was trembling, but he would not give the Outcast the satisfaction of knowing how close she had come. He pocketed the arrow.
“I’d use this to extinguish you,” he said lightly, “but it would be a waste of a perfectly good starshot. Especially when it’s so much more fun to beat you Outcasts up.”
Before the girl could draw another arrow, Cam lunged at her and grabbed her by the ponytail. He kneed her in the stomach, hard, then jerked her head back and punched her sideways in the face. She cried out and something cracked, maybe the bone of her nose, but Cam kept punching, even as the blood began to flow—from her nose, from her lip, down his fist. From the moment he started whaling on the Outcast, he forced himself to tune out her girlish whimpers. Otherwise, he couldn’t have gone on like that. The Outcasts were sexless, lifeless, worthless—but in spite of all that, they were a threat to everything that mattered most to Cam.
“You will”—punch—“not”—knee snap—“get her.”