Torment
"What a crock of--" Shelby broke o , looking up at Francesca. "I mean, Harvest Fest sounds like my kind of fun."
"What about Luce?" Miles asked.
Steven's arms were crossed and his complicated hazel eyes peered down at Luce over the tortoiseshell rims of his glasses. "E ectively, Luce, you're grounded."
Grounded? That was it?
"Class. Meals. Dorm," Francesca recited. "Until you hear di erently from us, and unless you are under our strict supervision--these are the only places you will be permitted. And no dipping into Announcers. Understand?"
Luce nodded.
Steven added: "Do not test us again. Even our patience comes to an end."
Class-Meals-Dorm didn't leave Luce with a lot of options on a Sunday morning. The lodge was dark, and the mess hall didn't open for brunch until eleven. After Miles and Shelby shu ed o reluctantly toward Mr. Kramer's community service boot camp, Luce had no choice but to go back to her room. She closed the window shade, which Shelby always liked to leave open, then sank into her desk chair.
It could have been worse. Compared to the stories of cramped cinder-block cells for solitary con nement at Sword & Cross, it almost seemed like she was getting o easy. No one was slapping a pair of wristband tracking devices on her. In fact, Steven and Francesca had basically given her the same restrictions Daniel had. The di erence was, her teachers really could watch over her night and day. Daniel, on the other hand, wasn't supposed to be there at all.
Annoyed, she powered up her computer, half expecting her access to the Internet to be suddenly restricted. But she logged on just as usual and found three emails from her parents and one from Callie. Maybe the bright side of being grounded was that she'd be forced to nally stay in better contact with her friends and family.
To: [email protected]/* */
From: [email protected]/* */
Sent: Friday, 11/20 at 8:22 am
Subject: Turkey-dog
Check out this picture! We dressed Andrew up as a turkey for the neighborhood autumn block party. As you can tell from the bite marks on the feathers: He loved it. What do
you think? Should we make him wear it again when you come for Thanksgiving?
To: [email protected]/* */
From: [email protected]/* */
Sent: Friday, 11/20 at 9:06 am
Subject: PS
Your dad read my email and thought it might have made you feel bad. No guilt trip intended, sweetie. If you're allowed to come home for Thanksgiving, we'd love it. If you
can't, we'll reschedule for another time. We love you.
To: [email protected]/* */
From: [email protected]/* */
Sent: Saturday, 11/21 at 12:12 am
Subject: no subject
Just let us know either way? xoxo, Mom
Luce held her head in her hands. She'd been wrong. All the grounding in the world wouldn't make it easier for her to respond to her parents. They'd dressed their poodle up as a turkey, for crying out loud! It broke her heart to think of letting them down. So she procrastinated by opening Callie's email.
To: [email protected]/* */
From: [email protected]/* */
Sent: Friday, 11/20 at 4:14 pm
Subject: HERE IT IS! I believe the ight reservation below speaks for itself. Send me your address and I'll take a cab when I get in on Thursday morning. My rst time in Georgia! With my long-lost
best friend! It's going to be soooo peachy! See you in SIX DAYS!
In less than a week, Luce's best friend would be showing up for Thanksgiving at her parents' house, her parents would be expecting her, and Luce would be right here, grounded in her dorm room. An enormous sadness engulfed her. She would have given anything to go to them, to spend a few days with people who loved her, who would give her a break from the exhausting, confusing couple of weeks she'd spent shackled within these wooden walls.
She opened a new email and composed a hasty message:
To: [email protected]/* */
From: [email protected]/* */
Sent: Sunday, 11/22 at 9:33 am
Hi, Mr. Cole.
Don't worry, I'm not going to beg you to let me go home for Thanksgiving. I know a hopeless waste of e ort when I see one. But I don't have the heart to tell my parents. Will
you let them know? Tell them I'm sorry.
Things here are ne. Sort of. I am homesick.
Luce
A thumping knock at the door made Luce jump--and click Send on the email without proofreading it rst for typos or embarrassing admissions of emotion.
"Luce!" Shelby's voice called from the other side. "Open up! My hands are full of Harvest Fest crap. I mean, bounty." The thuds continued on the other side of the door, louder now, with the occasional whimpering grunt thrown in.
Pulling open the door, Luce found a panting Shelby, sagging under the weight of an enormous cardboard box. She had several stretched-out plastic bags threaded through her ngers. Her knees trembled as she staggered into the room.
"Can I help with something?" Luce took the feather-light wicker cornucopia that was resting on Shelby's head like a conical hat.
"They put me on Decorations," Shelby grumbled, heaving the box onto the ground. "I'd give anything to be on Garbage, like Miles. Do you even know what happened the last time someone made me use a hot-glue gun?"
Luce felt responsible for both Shelby's and Miles's punishments. She pictured Miles combing the beach with one of those trash-poking sticks she'd seen convicts using on the side of the road in Thunderbolt. "I don't even know what Harvest Fest is."
"Obnoxious and pretentious, that's what," Shelby said, digging through the box and tossing onto the oor plastic bags of feathers, tubs of glitter, and a ream of autumn-colored construction paper. "It's basically a big banquet where all of Shoreline's donors come out to raise money for the school. Everyone goes home feeling all charitable because they unloaded a few old cans of green beans on a food bank in Fort Bragg. You'll see tomorrow night."
"I doubt it," Luce said. "Remember, I'm grounded?"
"Don't worry, you'll be dragged to this. Some of the biggest donors are angel advocates, so Frankie and Steven have to put on a show. Which means the Nephilim all have to be there, smiling pretty."
Luce frowned, glancing up at her non-Nephilim re ection in the mirror. All the more reason she should stay right here.
Shelby cursed under her breath. "I left the stupid paint-by-number turkey centerpiece in Mr. Kramer's o ce," she said, standing up and giving the box of decorations a kick. "I have to go back."
When Shelby pushed past her toward the door, Luce lost her balance and started to tumble, tripping over the box and snagging her foot on something cold and wet on the way down.
She landed face- rst on the wood oor. The only thing breaking her fall was the plastic bag of feathers, which popped, shooting colorful u out from under her. Luce looked back to see how much damage she had done, expecting Shelby's eyebrows to be joined in exasperation. But Shelby was standing still with one hand pointing toward the center of the room. A smog-brown Announcer was quietly oating there.
"Isn't that a little risky?" Shelby asked. "Summoning an Announcer an hour after getting busted for summoning an Announcer? You really don't listen at all, do you? I kind of admire that."
"I didn't summon it," Luce insisted, pulling herself up and picking the feathers out of her clothes. "I tripped and it was just there, waiting or something." She stepped closer to examine the hazy, dun-colored sheet. It was as at as a piece of paper and not large for an Announcer, but the way it hung in the air in front of her face, almost daring her to reject it, made Luce nervous.
It didn't seem to need her to guide it into shape at all. It hovered, barely moving, looking like it could have oated there all day.
"Wait a minute," Luce murmured. "This came in with the other one the other day. Don't you remember?" This was the strange brown shadow that had own in tandem with the darker shadow that took them to Vegas. They'd both come in through the window Friday afternoon; then this one had disappeared. Luce had forgotten about it until now.
"Well," Shelby said, leaning against the ladder of the bunk bed. "Are you going to glimpse it or what?"
The Announcer was the color of a smoky room, noxious brown and mistlike to the touch. Luce reached for it, running her ngers along its clammy limits. She felt its cloudy breath brush back her hair. The air around this Announcer was humid, even briny. A far-away croon of seagulls echoed from within.
She shouldn't glimpse it. Wouldn't glimpse it.
But there was the Announcer, shifting from a smoky brown mesh into something clear and discernible, independently of Luce. There was the But there was the Announcer, shifting from a smoky brown mesh into something clear and discernible, independently of Luce. There was the message cast by its shadow coming to life.
It was an aerial view of an island. At rst, they were high above, so that all Luce could see was a small swell of steep black rock with a fringe of tapered pine trees ringing its base. Then, slowly, the Announcer zoomed in, like a bird swooping down to roost in the treetops, its focus a small, deserted beach.
The water was murky from the claylike silver sand. A scattering of boulders reckoned with the smooth intentions of the tide. And standing inconspicuously between two of the tallest rocks--
Daniel was staring at the sea. The tree branch in his hand was covered in blood.
Luce gasped as she leaned closer and saw what Daniel was looking at. Not the sea, but a bloody mess of a man. A dead man, lying sti on the sand. Each time the waves reached the body, they receded stained a deep, dark red. But Luce couldn't see the wound that had killed the man. Someone else, in a long black trench coat, was crouched over the body, tying it up with thick braided rope.
Her heart thudding, Luce looked again at Daniel. His expression was even, but his shoulders were twitching.
"Hurry up. You're wasting time. The tide's going out now, anyway."
His voice was so cold, it made Luce shiver.
A second later, the scene in the Announcer disappeared. Luce held her breath until it dropped to the ground in a heap. Then, across the room, the window shade Luce had pulled down earlier rattled open. Luce and Shelby shot each other an anxious look, then watched as a gust of wind caught the Announcer and lofted it up and out the window.
Luce clutched Shelby's wrist. "You notice everything. Who else was there with Daniel? Who was crouched over that"--she shivered again--"guy?"
"Gee, I don't know, Luce. I was kind of distracted by the dead body. Not to mention the bloody tree your boyfriend was holding." Shelby's attempt to be sarcastic was diminished by how terri ed she sounded. "So he killed him?" she asked Luce. "Daniel killed whoever that was?"
"I don't know." Luce winced. "Don't say it like that. Maybe there's a logical explanation--"
"What do you think he was saying at the end?" Shelby asked. "I saw his lips move but I couldn't make it out. I hate that about Announcers."