Torment (Fallen 2)

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 lled 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 e ciency 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 ping 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 ngers, 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 o 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 st. "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 rst."

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 nger 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 rst 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 owing 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 rst place. You deserved better than this. A better friend than me." 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, sni ing 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 con uence of things owing over her head, into her scalp, and down the drain: Shelby's stubby ngers had helped with Luce's rst dye job, back when Luce thought that was the only way to start afresh. Arriane's rst act of friendship toward Luce had been the command to chop o 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 rst day at Sword & Cross.

It was bittersweet, and beautiful, and Luce couldn't gure 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 rst 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 re ection 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.

Chapter Eighteen

THANKSGIVING

When 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 oral 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 co ee table, favorite pages bookmarked with grocery receipts, for the distant time when her parents' dream came true of the mortgage's being paid o and their nally having a little extra money for remodeling. Andrew, her mom's hysterical toy poodle, trotted over to sni the guests and give the back of Luce's ankle a familiar chomp.

Luce's dad set down her du el in the foyer, draping an easy arm around her shoulder. Luce watched their re ection 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 rst 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 stu ng--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.