Torment

Luce rolled her eyes. Arriane didn't need to act so coy. It was obvious her rescue e ort hadn't been coincidental. "You know what I mean."



"These are strange days, Luce. I gured I'd pass them in an equally strange city."



"Yeah, well, they're almost over. Aren't they, according to the truce timeline?"



Arriane put down her co ee cup and cradled her chin in her palm. "Well, hallelujah. They are teaching you something at that school after all."



"Yes and no," Luce said. "I just overheard Roland saying something about how Daniel would be counting down the minutes. He said it had something to do with a truce, but I didn't know exactly how many minutes we were talking about."



Beside her, Miles's body seemed to have sti ened at the mention of Daniel. When the waitress arrived to take their orders, he barked his out rst, practically shoving the menu back at her. "Steak and eggs, rare."



"Oooh, manly," Arriane said, eyeing Miles approvingly in the midst of the eeny, meeny, miny, moe game she was playing on her menu. "Rooty Tooty Fresh 'N Fruity it is." She enunciated as properly as the Queen of England might, keeping a remarkably straight face.



"Pigs in a blanket for me," Shelby said. "Actually, make that an egg-white omelet, no cheese. Aw, what the hell. Pigs in a blanket."



The waitress turned to Luce. "How 'bout you, hon?"



"Breakfast Sampler." Luce smiled apologetically on behalf of her friends. "Scrambled, hold the meat."



The waitress nodded, padding o toward the kitchen.



"Okay, so what else did you hear?" Arriane asked.



"Um." Luce started playing with the carafe of syrup next to the salt and pepper. "There was some talk of, you know, End Times."



Snickering, Shelby splashed three little tubs of creamer into her co ee. "End Times! You actually buy into that crap? I mean, how many millennia have we been waiting around for that? And humans think they've been patient for a mere couple thousand years! Hah. Like anything is ever going to change."



Arriane looked about a second away from putting Shelby in her place, but then she set down her co ee. "How rude of me to not even introduce myself to your friends, Luce." myself to your friends, Luce."



"Um, we know who you are," Shelby said.



"Yeah, there was a whole chapter on you in my eighth-grade History of Angels textbook," Miles said.



Arriane clapped. "And they told me that book had been banned!"



"Seriously? You're in a textbook?" Luce laughed.



"Why so surprised? You don't nd me historic?" Arriane turned back to Shelby and Miles. "Now, tell me all about yourselves. I need to know who my girl's been palling around with."



"Lapsed nonbelieving Nephilim." Shelby raised her hand.



Miles stared at his food. "And the ine ectual great-great-great-to-the-nth-degree-grandson of an angel."



"That's not true." Luce bumped Miles's shoulder. "Arriane, you should have seen how he helped us step through this shadow tonight. He was great. That's why we're here, because he read this book and the next thing you know, he could--"



"Yeah, I was wondering about that," Arriane said sarcastically. "But what concerns me more is this one." She gestured at Shelby. Arriane's face was much graver than Luce was accustomed to. Even her manic light blue eyes looked steady. "It's not a good time to be a lapsed anything right now. Everything's in ux, but there will be a reckoning. And you will have to choose one side or the other." Arriane stared deliberately at Shelby. "We all have to know where we stand."



Before anyone could respond, the waitress reappeared, wielding a huge brown plastic tray of food.



"Well, how's this for speedy service?" she asked. "Now, which one of you had the pigs--"



"Me!" Shelby startled the waitress with the quickness of her reach for the plate.



"Anybody need any ketchup?"



They shook their heads.



"Extra butter?"



Luce pointed down at the ice cream scoop of butter already on her pancakes. "We're all set. Thanks."



"If we need anything," Arriane said, beaming down at the whipped cream happy face on her plate, "we'll holler."



"Oh, I know you will." The waitress chuckled, tucking the tray under her arm. "Holler like the world's about to end, this one will."



After she left, Arriane was the only one who ate. She plucked a blueberry from the pancake's nose, popped it into her mouth, and licked her



ngers with relish. Finally she glanced around the table.



"Dig in," Arriane said. "There's nothing good about cold steak and eggs." She sighed. "Come on, guys. You've read the history books. Don't you know the drill--"



"I haven't," Luce said. "I don't know any drills."



Arriane sucked meditatively on her fork. "Good point. In that case, allow me to present my version to you. Which is more fun than the history books anyway because I won't censor the big ghts and curses and all the sexy stu . My version has everything but 3-D, which, I have to say, is totally overrated. Did you see that movie with"--she noticed the blank looks on their faces. "Oh, never mind. Okay, it starts millennia ago. Now, do I need to catch you up on Satan?"



"Waged an early power struggle against God." Miles's voice was a monotone, as if he were repeating a third-grade lesson plan while he speared a bit of steak with his fork.



"Before then they were super-tight," Shelby added, dousing her pigs in blankets with syrup. "I mean, God called Satan his morning star. So it's not like Satan wasn't worthy or beloved."



"But he would rather reign in Hell than serve in Heaven," Luce chimed in. She might not have read the Nephilim histories, but she'd read Paradise Lost. Or at least, the Cli sNotes.



"Very nice." Arriane beamed, leaning toward Luce. "You know, Gabbe was big friends with Milton's daughters back in the day. She likes to take credit for that phrase, and I'm all `Aren't you enough people's darling already?' But whatever." Arriane moved in on a forkful of Luce's eggs. "Damn, these are good. Can we get some hot sauce over here?" she bellowed toward the kitchen. "Okay, where were we?"



"Satan," Shelby said through a mouthful of pancake.



"Right. So. Say what you will about El Diablo Grande, but he is"--Arriane tossed her head--"somewhat responsible for introducing the idea of free will among angels. I mean: He really gave the rest of us something to think about. On which side do you throw your weight? Given the choice, a whole lotta angels fell."



"How many?" Miles asked.



"The Fallen? Enough to cause something of a stalemate." Arriane looked thoughtful for a moment, then grimaced and called out to the waitress. "Hot sauce! Does it exist in this establishment?"



"What about the angels who fell, but didn't side with--" Luce broke o , thinking of Daniel. She was aware that she was whispering, but this felt like a really big thing to be discussing in the middle of a diner. Even a mostly empty diner in the middle of the night.



Arriane lowered her voice too. "Oh, there are plenty of angels who fell but still technically ally with God. But then there are those who threw in with Satan. We call them demons, even though they're just fallen angels who made really poor choices.



"Not like it's been easy for anyone. Since the Fall, angels and demons have been neck and neck, split down the middle, yada yada yada." She slathered butter into the pancake's nose. "But all that may be about to change."



Luce looked down at her eggs, unable to eat.



"So, um, before, you seemed to be suggesting that my allegiance had something to do with that?" Shelby looked slightly less doubtful than she usually did.



"Not yours exactly." Arriane shook her head. "I know it feels like we've all been hanging in the balance forever. But in the end, it's going to come down to one powerful angel choosing a side. When that happens, the scale nally tips. That's when it matters which side you're on."



Arriane's words reminded Luce of being locked all the way up in that tiny chapel with Miss Sophia, how she kept saying the fate of the universe had something to do with Luce and Daniel. It had sounded crazy at the time, and Miss Sophia was evil bananas. And even though Luce wasn't certain exactly what everyone was talking about, she knew it had to do with Daniel coming back around.



"It's Daniel," she said softly. "The angel who can tip the scales is Daniel." "It's Daniel," she said softly. "The angel who can tip the scales is Daniel."



It explained the agony he carried all the time, like a two-ton suitcase. It explained why he'd been away from her so long. The only thing it didn't explain was why there seemed to be some question in Arriane's mind about which side the scales would tip onto. Which side would win the war.



Arriane opened her mouth, but instead of answering, she attacked Luce's plate again. "Can I get some freaking hot sauce over here?" she yelled.



A shadow fell over their table. "I'll give you something ery."



Luce looked behind her and recoiled at the sight: A very tall boy in a long brown trench coat, unbuttoned so that Luce could see a ash of something silver tucked inside his belt. He had a shaved head, a slim, straight nose, a mouthful of perfect teeth.



And white eyes. Eyes utterly empty of color. No irises, no pupils, none at all.



His strange, vacant expression reminded Luce of the Outcast girl. Though Luce hadn't seen that girl closely enough to gure out what was wrong with her eyes, she now had a pretty good guess.



Shelby looked at the boy, swallowed hard, and tucked into her breakfast. "Nothing to do with me," she mumbled.



"Save it," Arriane said to the boy. "You can put it on the st sandwich I'm about to serve you." Luce watched wide-eyed as tiny Arriane stood up and wiped her hands on her jeans. "BRB, guys. Oh, and Luce, remind me to berate you for this when I get back." Before Luce could ask what this guy had to do with her, Arriane had grabbed him by the earlobe, twisted hard, and slammed his head down on the glass display counter near the bar.



The noise shattered the lazy, late-night quiet of the restaurant. The guy yelped like a child as Arriane twisted his ear the other way and climbed on top of him. Bellowing in pain, he started bucking his lean body until he'd ung Arriane o and onto the glass case.



She rolled along its length and came to a stop at the end, knocking over a towering lemon meringue pie, then leaped to her feet on the bar. She somersaulted back toward him and caught him in a headlock with her legs, then set to work pounding his face with her small sts.



"Arriane!" the waitress shrieked. "Not my pies! I try to be tolerant! But I have my livelihood to look after!"



"Aw, ne!" Arriane shouted. "We'll take it to the kitchen." She released the guy, slid to the oor, and booted him with her platform heel. He blindly stumbled toward the door that led to the diner's kitchen. "Come on, you three," she called to their table. "Might as well learn something."



Miles and Shelby threw down their napkins, reminding Luce of the way kids at Dover used to drop everything and run screaming through the halls yelling "Fight! Fight!" anytime there was the slightest rumor of a scu e.