Torment (Fallen 2)

The town of Shasta was wacky and artistic, with a good number of elderly people walking leisurely down the wide avenues. Shelby rolled down the windows and let in the brisk early-evening air. It helped settle Luce's stomach, which was knotting up at the prospect of actually having to talk to the people she'd seen in the Announcer.

"What am I supposed to say to them? Surprise, I'm your daughter back from the dead," Luce practiced aloud as they were sitting at a stoplight. "What am I supposed to say to them? Surprise, I'm your daughter back from the dead," Luce practiced aloud as they were sitting at a stoplight.

"Unless you want to totally freak out a sweet old couple, we're going to have to work on that," Shelby said. "Why don't you pretend you're a solicitor, just to get in the door and feel them out?"

Luce looked down at her jeans, beat-up tennis shoes, and purple backpack. She didn't look like a very impressive salesperson. "What would I sell?"

Shelby started to drive again. "Hawk car washes or something cheesy like that. You can say you've got vouchers in your bag. I did that one summer, door to door. Almost got shot." She shuddered, then looked at Luce's white face. "Come on, your own mom and dad are not going to shoot you. Oh, hey, look, here we are!"

"Shelby, can we just sit in silence for a little while? I think I need to breathe."

"Sorry." Shelby pulled into a large parking lot facing a compound of small, single-story connected bungalow-style buildings. "Breathing I can do."

Through her nerves, Luce had to admit it was a pretty nice place. A series of the bungalows stood in a semicircle around a pond. There was a main lobby building with a row of wheelchairs lined up outside the doors. A big banner read WELCOME TO SHASTA SHIRE RETIREMENT COMMUNITY.

Her throat felt so dry it hurt to swallow. She didn't know if she even had it in her to say two words to these people. Maybe it was one of those things you just couldn't think about too much. Maybe she needed to get up there and force her hand down on that knocker and then gure out how to act.

"Apartment thirty-four." Shelby squinted at a square stucco building with a red Spanish-tile roof. "That looks like it over there. If you want me to--"

"Wait in the car till I get back? That would be great, thanks so much. I won't be long!"

Before Luce could lose her nerve, she was out the car door and jogging up the winding sidewalk toward the building. The air was warm and

lled with a heady scent of roses. Cute old people were everywhere. Split into teams on the shu eboard court near the entrance, taking an evening stroll through a neatly pruned ower garden next to the pool. In the early-evening light, Luce's eyes strained as she tried to locate the couple somewhere in this crowd, but no one looked familiar. She would have to go straight to their house.

From the footpath leading up to their bungalow, Luce could see a light on through the window. She stepped closer until she had a clearer view.

It was uncanny: the same room she'd seen earlier in the Announcer. Even down to the fat white dog asleep on the rug. She could hear dishes being washed in the kitchen. She could see the thin, brown-socked ankles of the man who had been her father however many years ago.

He didn't feel like her father. He didn't look like her father, and the woman hadn't looked at all like her mother. It wasn't that there was anything wrong with them. They seemed perfectly nice. Like perfectly nice ... strangers. If she knocked on the door and made up some lie about car washes, would they become any less strange?

No, she decided. But that wasn't all. Even though she didn't recognize her parents, if they really were her parents, of course they would recognize her.

She felt stupid for not thinking about that before. They'd take one look at her and know she was their daughter. Her parents were much older than most of the other people she'd seen outside. The shock of it might be too much for them. It was too much for Luce, and this couple had about seventy years on her.

By then she was pressed against their living room window, crouching behind a spiny sagebrush cactus bush. Her ngers were dirty from gripping the windowsill. If their daughter had died when she was seventeen, they must have been mourning her for close to fty years. They'd be at peace with it by now. Wouldn't they? Luce popping up uninvited from behind a cactus plant would be the very last thing they needed.

Shelby would be disappointed. Luce herself was disappointed. It hurt to realize that this was as close as she was ever going to get to them. Hanging on the windowsill outside her former parents' house, she felt the tears roll down her cheeks. She didn't even know their names.

Chapter Eight

ELEVEN DAYS

To: [email protected]

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From: [email protected]

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Sent: Monday, 11/15 at 9:49 am

Subject: Hanging in there

Dear Mom and Dad,

I'm sorry I've been out of touch. Things at school have been busy, but I'm having a lot of good experiences. My favorite class these days is humanities. Right now I'm working on

an extra-credit assignment that takes up a lot of my time. I miss you guys and hope to see you soon. Thanks for being such great parents. I don't think I tell you that enough.

Love,

Luce

Luce clicked Send on her laptop and quickly switched her browser back to the online presentation Francesca was giving at the front of the room. Luce was still getting used to being at a school where they handed out computers, complete with wireless Internet, right in the middle of class. Sword & Cross had a total of seven student computers, all of which were in the library. Even if you managed to get your hands on the encrypted password to access the Web, every site was blocked except for a few dry academic research ones.

The email to her parents had been prompted by guilt. The night before, she'd had the strangest feeling that merely by driving out to the retirement community in Mount Shasta, she was cheating on her real parents, the ones who had raised her in this lifetime. Sure, at some point, these other parents had been real, too. But that was still too strange a thought for Luce to really absorb.

Shelby hadn't been one-tenth as pissed o as she could have been about driving Luce all the way up there for no reason. Instead, she just red up the Mercedes and drove to the nearest In-N-Out Burger so they could get a couple of o -the-menu grilled cheese sandwiches with special sauce.

"Do not give it a second thought," Shelby said, wiping her mouth with a napkin. "Do you know how many panic attacks my screwed-up family's given me? Believe me, I'm the last person who's going to judge you about this."

Now Luce looked across the classroom at Shelby and felt an intense gratitude for the girl who, a week before, had terri ed her. Shelby's thick blond hair was pulled back by a terry-cloth headband, and she was taking diligent notes on Francesca's lecture.

Every screen Luce could see in her peripheral vision was xed on the blue and gold PowerPoint presentation that Francesca was clicking through at a snail's pace. Even Dawn's. She looked especially spunky today in a hot-pink T-shirt dress and a high side ponytail. Was it possible she'd already recovered from what had happened on the boat? Or was she covering up the terror she must have felt--and maybe still felt?

Glancing over at Roland's monitor, Luce scrunched up her face. It didn't surprise her that he'd been mostly invisible since he arrived at Shoreline, but when he did turn up in class, she was actually upset to see her former reform school cohort following the rules.

At least Roland didn't look especially interested in the lecture on "Career Opportunities for Nephilim: How Your Special Skills Can Give You a Wing Up." In fact, the look on Roland's face was more disappointed than anything else. His mouth was set in a frown and he kept lightly shaking his head. Also strange was the fact that every time Francesca made eye contact with the students, she distinctly passed over Roland.

Luce pulled up the class chat room board to see whether Roland was logged on. It was supposed to be a tool for the class to bounce questions o each other, but the questions Luce had for Roland were not for class discussion. He knew something, something more than he'd let on the other day --surely it had to do with Daniel. She also wanted to ask him where he'd been on Saturday, whether he'd heard about Dawn's trip overboard.

Except Roland wasn't online. The only other person in the class who was logged on to the chat room was Miles. A text box with his name on it popped up on her screen:

Helloooo over there!

He was sitting right next to her. Luce could even hear him chuckling. It was cute that he got a kick out of his own dumb jokes. This was exactly the kind of goofy, teasing rapport she would love to have with Daniel. If he weren't so brooding all the time. If he were actually around.

But he wasn't.

She wrote back: How's the weather in your neck of the woods?

Getting sunnier now, he typed, still smiling. Hey, what'd you do last night? I swung by your room to see if you wanted to grab dinner.

She looked up from her computer, straight at Miles. His deep blue eyes were so sincere, she had an urge to turn to spill everything about what had happened. He'd been so amazing the other day, listening to her talk about her time at Sword & Cross. But there was no way to answer his question via chat. As much as she wanted to tell him, she didn't know whether she should talk about it. Even letting Shelby in on her secret project was practically wooing trouble from Steven and Francesca.

Miles's expression changed from his normal casual smile into an awkward frown. It made Luce feel terrible, and also slightly surprised, that she could elicit this kind of reaction in him.

Francesca clicked o the projector. When she crossed her arms over her chest, the pink silk sleeves of her peasant blouse bloomed out of her cropped leather jacket. For the rst time, Luce noticed how far away Steven was. He was seated on the windowsill at the western corner of the room. He had barely said a word in class all day.

"Let's see how well you paid attention," Francesca said, smiling widely at the students. "Why don't you break up into pairs and take turns conducting mock interviews."

At the sound of all the other students rising from their chairs, Luce groaned internally. She'd heard next to nothing of Francesca's lecture and had no idea what the assignment was. no idea what the assignment was.

Also, she knew she was just squatting in the Nephilim program temporarily, but was it too much to ask for her teachers to remember every once in a while that she wasn't like the rest of the kids in the class?

Miles tapped her computer screen where he had messaged her: You wanna partner up? Just then, Shelby appeared.

"I say we do CIA or Doctors Without Borders," Shelby said. She motioned for Miles to surrender the desk next to Luce. Miles stayed put. "There's no way I'm ctitiously applying for some lame dental hygienist position."

Luce looked back and forth between Shelby and Miles. Both of them seemed to feel proprietary about her, something she hadn't realized until now. Truthfully, she wanted to be partners with Miles--she hadn't seen him since Saturday. She'd kind of been missing him. In a friendly way. Like in a let's-catch-up-over-a-cup-of-co ee way, more than a let's-wander-along-the-beach-at-sunset-and-you-can-smile-at-me-with-those-incredible-blue- eyes way. Because she was with Daniel, she didn't think about other guys. She de nitely didn't start blushing intensely in the middle of class while reminding herself that she didn't think about other guys.