Torment (Fallen 2)

"Steven and I expect that the rest of you will be quite shaken up," Francesca continued, widening her gaze to include Miles and Shelby. "Classes are canceled today, and we'll be in our o ces if you'd like to come by and talk." She smiled in that dazzling angelic way of hers, then turned on her high heels and clicked down the hallway.

Shelby got up and shut the door behind Francesca. "Can you believe she used the term `borrowed' to refer to a human being? Is Dawn a library book?" She balled her hands up. "We have to do something to take our minds o this. I mean I'm glad Dawn's safe, and I trust Steven--I think book?" She balled her hands up. "We have to do something to take our minds o this. I mean I'm glad Dawn's safe, and I trust Steven--I think --but I'm still thoroughly creeped out."

"You're right," said Luce, looking over at Miles. "We'll distract ourselves. We could go for a walk--"

"Too dangerous." Shelby's eyes darted from side to side.

"Or watch a movie--"

"Too inactive. My mind will drift."

"Eddie said something about a soccer game during lunch," Miles threw out.

Shelby clamped a hand over her forehead. "Need I remind you I am done with Shoreline boys?"

"How about a board game--"

Finally Shelby's eyes lit up. "How about the game of life? As in ... your past lives? We could do that thing where we track down your relatives again. I could help you."

Luce chewed on her lower lip. Punching through that Announcer yesterday had seriously rocked her foundation. She was still physically disoriented, emotionally exhausted, and that didn't even begin to address how it had made her feel about Daniel.

"I don't know," she said.

"You mean, more of what you were doing yesterday?" Miles asked.

Shelby cranked her head around and glared at Miles. "Are you still here?"

Miles picked up a pillow that had fallen on the oor and chucked it at her. She swatted it back at him, seeming impressed with her own re exes.

"Okay, ne. Miles can stay. Mascots are always handy. And we may need someone to throw under a bus. Right, Luce?"

Luce closed her eyes. Yes, she was dying to know more about her past, but what if it was as hard to swallow as it had been the day before? Even with Miles and Shelby at her side, she was scared to try again.

But then she remembered the day Francesca and Steven had glimpsed the Sodom and Gomorrah Announcer in front of the class. Afterward, the other students had reeled, but Luce kept thinking that whether or not they had glimpsed that gruesome scene didn't matter in the least: It would still have happened. Just like her past.

For the sakes of all her former selves, Luce couldn't turn away now. "Let's do it," she said to her friends.

Miles gave the girls a few minutes to get dressed, and they reconvened in the hallway. But then Shelby refused to go out to the forest where Luce had summoned the Announcers.

"Don't look at me like that. Dawn just got nabbed, and the woods are dark and creepy. I don't really want to be next, you know?"

That was when Miles insisted it would be good for Luce to try to practice summoning the Announcers somewhere new, like the dorm room.

"Just whistle and bring 'em running," he said. "Make those Announcers your bitches. You know you want to."

"I don't want them to start lurking around here, though," Shelby said, turning to Luce. "No o ense, but a girl likes her privacy."

Luce wasn't o ended. But it wasn't like the Announcers ever really stopped following her, regardless of when she summoned them. She didn't want the shadows dropping by the dorm room unannounced any more than Shelby did.

"The thing with the Announcers is demonstrating control. It's like training a new puppy. You just have to let it know who's boss."

Luce cocked her head at Miles. "Since when do you know so much useful stu about the Announcers?"

Miles blushed. "I may not always `apply myself' in class, but I am capable of a few things."

"So what? She just stands there and summons?" Shelby asked.

Luce stood on Shelby's rainbow-colored yoga mat in the center of the room and thought about how Steven had coached her. "Let's open a window," she said.

Shelby hopped up to raise the sash of the broad window, letting in a fresh blast of chilling sea air. "Good idea. Makes it more hospitable."

"And cold," Miles said, pulling up the hood of his sweatshirt.

Then the two of them sat on the bed facing Luce, as if she were a performer on a stage.

She closed her eyes, trying not to feel on the spot. But instead of thinking of the shadows, instead of summoning them in her mind, all she could think of was Dawn and how terri ed she must have been the night before, how she must be feeling even now, back with her family. She'd bounced back after the freakish incident on the yacht, but this was so much more serious. And it was Luce's fault. Well, Luce's and Daniel's, for bringing her here.

He kept saying he was taking her to a safer place. Now Luce wondered whether all he was really doing was making Shoreline dangerous for everyone else.

A gasp from Miles made Luce open her eyes. She looked just above the window, where a large charcoal-gray Announcer was pressed against the ceiling. At rst it looked like it could have been a normal shadow, cast by the oor lamp Shelby moved into the corner when she did her Vinyasa. But then the Announcer began to spread across the ceiling until the room looked as if it had been given a deathly coat of paint, leaving a cold, foul-smelling wake over Luce's head. Out of her reach.

The Announcer she hadn't even summoned--the Announcer that could contain, well, anything--was taunting her.

She inhaled nervously, remembering what Miles had said about control. She concentrated so ercely that her brain began to hurt. Her face was red and her eyes were strained to the point where she was going to have to just give up. But then:

The Announcer buckled, sliding down to Luce's feet like a thick bolt of dropped fabric. Squinting, she discerned a smaller, plumper brownish shadow hovering over the larger, darker one, tracing its movements, almost the way a sparrow might y closely in line with a hawk. What was this one after?

"Incredible," Miles whispered. Luce tried to let Miles's words sink in as a compliment. These things that had terrorized her all her life, that made "Incredible," Miles whispered. Luce tried to let Miles's words sink in as a compliment. These things that had terrorized her all her life, that made her miserable? That she had always feared? Now they served her. Which really was kind of incredible. It hadn't occurred to her until she'd seen the intrigue on Miles's face. For the rst time, she felt pretty badass.

She controlled her breathing and took her time guiding it o the oor and into her hands. Once the large gray Announcer was within reach, the smaller one poured to the oor like a golden bend of the light from the window, blending in with the hardwood planks.

Luce took the edges of the Announcer and held her breath, praying that the message inside was more innocent than yesterday's. She tugged, surprised to feel this shadow give her more resistance than any of the others had. It looked so sheer and insubstantial, but felt sti in her hands. By the time she'd coaxed it into a window about a foot square, her arms were aching.

"This is the best I can do," she told Miles and Shelby. They stood up, drawing close.

The gray veil within the Announcer lifted, or Luce thought it did, but then another gray veil lay underneath. She squinted until she saw the gray texture roiling and moving, realizing it wasn't the shadow she was seeing anymore: The gray veil they were looking at was a thick cloud of cigarette smoke. Shelby coughed.

The smoke never really cleared, but Luce's eyes got used to it; soon she could see a broad half-moon table with a red felt top. Playing cards were arrayed in neat rows across its surface. A row of strangers sat crowded at one side. Some looked jumpy and nervous, like the bald man who kept loosening his polka-dot tie and whistling under his breath. Others looked exhausted, like the hairsprayed woman ashing a cigarette into a half-full glass of something. Her gloopy mascara was wearing o her upper lashes, leaving a seam of black grit under her eyes.

And across the table, a pair of hands were ying through a deck of cards, expertly ipping over a card at a time to each person at the table. Luce inched closer to Miles so she could get a better look. She was distracted by the ashing neon lights from a thousand slot machines just beyond the tables. That was before she saw the dealer.

She thought she'd get used to seeing versions of herself in the Announcers. Young, hopeful, ever na?ve. But this was di erent. The woman dealing cards in the seedy casino wore a white oxford shirt, snug black pants, and a black vest that bulged at the chest. Her ngernails were long and red, with sequins sparkling on both pinkies, and she kept using them to ick her black hair out of her face. Her focus hovered just above the hairlines of the players, so she never really looked anyone in the eye. She was three times as old as Luce, but there was still something between them.

"Is that you?" Miles whispered, trying hard not to sound horri ed.

"No!" Shelby said atly. "That broad is old. And Luce only lives to be seventeen." She shot Luce a nervous look. "I mean, in the past, that's been the deal. This time, though, I'm sure she'll live to a ripe old age. Maybe as old as this lady. I mean--"

"Enough, Shelby," Luce said.

Miles shook his head. "I have so much catching up to do."

"Okay, if it's not me, we must be ... I don't know, somehow related." Luce watched as the woman cashed out chips for the bald man with the tie. Her hands looked sort of like Luce's. The way her mouth set was similarly serious. "Do you think it's my mom? Or my sister?"

Shelby was scribbling notes furiously on the inside back cover of a yoga manual. "Only one way to nd out." She ashed her notes at Luce: Vegas: Mirage Hotel and Casino, night shift, table stationed near the Bengal tiger show, Vera with the Lee press-on nails.

She looked back at the dealer. Shelby was a stickler for the details that Luce never noticed. The dealer's name tag read VERA in lopsided white letters. But the image was starting to wobble and fade. Soon the whole image broke apart into tiny shadow shreds that fell to the oor and curled up like the ash from burning paper.

"But wait, isn't this the past?" Luce asked.

"Don't think so," Shelby said. "Or, at least, it's not far in the past. There was an ad for the new Cirque du Soleil in the background. So what do you say?"

Go all the way to Las Vegas to nd this woman? A middle-aged sister would probably be easier to approach than parents well into their eighties, but still. What if they made it all the way to Vegas and Luce choked again?

Shelby nudged her. "Hey, I must really like you if I'm agreeing to go to Vegas. My mom was a waitress there for a couple of years when I was a kid. I'm telling you, it's Hell on earth."

"How would we get there?" Luce asked, not wanting to ask Shelby if they could borrow SAEB's car again. "How far is Vegas, anyway?"

"Too far to drive." Miles spoke up. "Which is ne with me because I've been wanting to practice stepping through."

"Stepping through?" Luce asked.