Fallen

CHAPTER 5. THE INNER CIRCLE

"Don't ever scare me like that again!" Callie reprimanded Luce on Wednesday evening.

It was just before sundown and Luce was folded into the Sword & Cross phone cubby, a tiny beige confine in the middle of the front office area. It was far from private, but at least no one else was loafing around. Her arms were still sore from the graveyard shift at yesterday's detention, her pride still wounded from Daniel's fleeing the second they'd been pulled out from under the statue. But for fifteen minutes, Luce was trying hard to push all that out of her mind, to soak up every blissfully frantic word her best friend could spit out in the allotted time. It felt so good to hear Callie's high-pitched voice, Luce almost didn't care that she was being yelled at.

"We promised we wouldn't go an hour without speaking," Callie continued accusingly. "I thought someone had eaten you alive! Or that maybe they stuck you in solitary in one of those straitjackets where you have to chew through your sleeve to scratch your face. For all I knew, you could have descended into the ninth circle of—"

"Okay, Mom," Luce said, laughing and settling into her role as Callie's breathing instructor. "Relax." For a split second, she felt guilty that she hadn't used her one phone call to dial up her real mom. But she knew Callie would wig out if she ever discovered Luce hadn't seized her very first opportunity to get in touch. And in a weird way, it was always soothing to hear Callie's hysterical voice. It was one of the many reasons the two were such a good fit: Her best friend's over-the-top paranoia actually had a calming effect on Luce. She could just picture Callie in her dorm room at Dover, pacing her bright orange area rug, with Oxy smeared over her t-zone and pedicure foam separating her still-wet fuchsia toenails.

"Don't Mom me!" Callie huffed. "Start talking. What are the other kids like? Are they all scary and popping diuretics like in the movies? What about your classes? How's the food?"

Through the phone, Luce could hear Roman Holiday playing in the background on Callie's tiny TV. Luce's favorite scene had always been the one where Audrey Hepburn woke in Gregory Peck's room, still convinced the night before had all been a dream. Luce closed her eyes and tried to picture the shot in her mind. Mimicking Audrey's drowsy whisper, she quoted the line she knew Callie would recognize: "There was a man, he was so mean to me. It was wonderful."

"Okay, Princess, it's your life I want to hear about," Callie teased.

Unfortunately, there was nothing about Sword & Cross that Luce would even consider describing as wonderful. Thinking about Daniel for, oh, the eightieth time that day, she realized that the only parallel between her life and Roman Holiday was that she and Audrey both had a guy who was aggressively rude and uninterested in them. Luce rested her head against the beige linoleum of the cubby walls. Someone had carved the words BIDING MY TIME. Under normal circumstances, this would be when Luce would spill everything about Daniel to Callie.

Except, for some reason, she didn't.

Whatever she might want to say about Daniel wouldn't be based on anything that had actually happened between them. And Callie was big on guys making an effort to show they were worthy of you. She'd want to hear things like how many times he'd held open a door for Luce, or whether he'd noticed how good her French accent was. Callie didn't think there was anything wrong with guys writing the kind of sappy love poems Luce could never take seriously. Luce would come up severely short on things to say about Daniel. In fact, Callie'd be much more interested in hearing about someone like Cam.

"Well, there is this guy here," Luce whispered into the phone.

"I knew it!" Callie squealed. "Name."

Daniel. Daniel, Luce cleared her throat. "Cam."

"Direct, uncomplicated. I can dig it. Start from the beginning."

"Well, nothing's really happened yet."

"He thinks you're gorgeous, blah blah blah. I told you the cropped cut made you look like Audrey. Get to the good stuff."

"Well—" Luce broke off. The sound of footsteps in the lobby silenced her. She leaned out the side of the cubby and craned her neck to see who was interrupting the best fifteen minutes she'd had in three whole days.

Cam was walking toward her.

Speak of the devil. She swallowed the horrifically lame words on the tip of her tongue: He gave me his guitar pick. She still had it tucked in her pocket.

Cam's demeanor was casual, as if by some stroke of luck he hadn't heard what she'd been saying. He seemed to be the only kid at Sword & Cross who didn't change out of his school uniform the minute classes were over. But the black-on-black look worked for him, just as much as it worked to make Luce look like a grocery store checkout girl.

Cam was twirling a golden pocket watch that swung from a long chain looped around his index finger. Luce followed its bright arc for a moment, almost mesmerized, until Cam clapped the face of the watch to a stop in his fist. He looked down at it, then up at her.

"Sorry." His lips pursed in confusion. "I thought I signed up for the seven o'clock phone call." He shrugged. "But I must have written it down wrong."

Luce's heart sank when she glanced at her own watch. She and Callie had barely said fifteen words to each other—how could her fifteen minutes already be up?

"Luce? Hello?" Callie sounded impatient on the other end of the phone. "You're being weird. Is there something you're not telling me? Have you replaced me already with some reform school cutter? What about the boy?"

"Shhh," Luce hissed into the phone. "Cam, wait," she called, holding the phone away from her mouth. He was already halfway out the door. "Just a second, I was" — she swallowed—"I was just getting off."

Cam slipped the pocket watch into the front of his black blazer and doubled back toward Luce. He raised his eyebrows and laughed when he heard Callie's voice growing louder from the earpiece. "Don't you dare hang up on me," Callie protested. "You've told me nothing. Nothing!"

"I don't want to piss anyone off," Cam joked, gesturing at the barking telephone. "Take my slot, you can get me back another time."

"No," Luce said quickly. As badly as she wanted to keep talking to Callie, she imagined Cam probably felt the same way about whomever he'd come here to call. And unlike a lot of the people at this school, Cam had been nothing but nice to her. She didn't want to make him give up his turn at the telephone, especially now, when she'd be way too nervous to gossip with Callie about him.

"Callie," she said, sighing into the phone. "I gotta go. I'll call again as soon as—" But by then there was just the vague buzz of a dial tone in her ear. The phone itself had been rigged to cap each call at fifteen minutes. Now she saw the tiny timer blinking 0:00 on its base. They hadn't even gotten to say goodbye and now she'd have to wait another whole week to call. Time stretched out in Luce's mind like an endless gulf.

"BFF?" Cam asked, leaning up against the cubby next to Luce. His dark eyebrows were still arched. "I've got three younger sisters, I can practically smell the best-friend vibe through the phone." He bent forward as if he was going to sniff Luce, which made her chuckle… and then freeze. His unexpected closeness had made her heart pick up.

"Let me guess." Cam straightened back up and lifted his chin. "She wanted to know all about the reform school bad boys?"

"No!" Luce shook her head to deny vehemently that guys were on her mind at all… until she realized Cam was only kidding. She blushed and took a stab at joking back. "I mean, I told her there's not a single good one here."

Cam blinked. "Precisely what makes it so exciting. Don't you think?" He had a way of standing very still, which made Luce stand very still, which made the ticking sound of the pocket watch inside his blazer seem louder than it possibly could have been.

Frozen next to Cam, Luce suddenly shivered as something black swooped into the hall. The shadow seemed to hopscotch across the panels in the ceiling in a very deliberate way, blacking out one and then the next and then the next. Damn. It was never good to be alone with someone—especially someone as focused on her as Cam was at the moment—when the shadows arrived. She could feel herself twitching, trying to appear calm as the darkness swirled around the ceiling fan in a dance. That alone she could have endured. Maybe. But the shadow was also making the worst of its terrible noises, a sound like the one Luce had heard when she'd watched a baby owl fall from its palmetto tree and choke to death. She wished Cam would just stop looking at her. She wished something would happen to divert his attention. She wished—

Daniel Grigori would walk in.

And then he did. Saved by the gorgeous boy wearing holey jeans and a holier white T-shirt. He didn't look much like salvation—slouched over his heavy stack of library books, gray bags under his gray eyes. Daniel actually looked kind of wrecked. His blond hair drooped over his eyes, and when they settled on Luce and Cam, Luce watched them narrow. She was so busy fretting over what she'd done to annoy Daniel this time, she almost didn't realize the momentous thing that happened: The second before the lobby door closed behind him, the shadow slipped through it and into the night. It was like someone had taken a vacuum and cleared out all the grit from the hall.

Daniel just nodded in their direction and didn't slow down as he passed.

When Luce looked at Cam, he was watching Daniel. He turned to Luce and said, more loudly than he needed to, "I almost forgot to tell you. Having a little party in my room tonight after Social. I'd love for you to come."

Daniel was still within earshot. Luce had no idea what this Social thing was, but she was supposed to meet Penn beforehand. They were supposed to walk over together.

Her eyes were fixed on the back of Daniel's head, and she knew she needed to answer Cam about his party, and it really shouldn't be so hard, but when Daniel turned around and looked back at her with eyes she swore were mournful, the phone behind her started ringing, and Cam reached for it and said, "I've got to take this, Luce. You'll be there?"

Almost imperceptibly, Daniel nodded.

"Yes," Luce told Cam. "Yes."

"I still don't see why we have to run," Luce was panting twenty minutes later. She was trying to keep up with Penn as they scrambled back across the commons toward the auditorium for the mysterious Wednesday Night Social, which Penn still hadn't explained. Luce had barely enough to time to make it upstairs to her room, to slick on lip gloss and her better jeans just in case it was that kind of social. She was still trying to slow her breath down from her run-in with Cam and Daniel when Penn barged into her room to drag her back out the door.

"People who are chronically tardy never understand the many ways in which they screw up the schedules of people who are punctual and normal," Penn told Luce as they splashed through a particularly soggy portion of the lawn.

"Ha!" A laugh erupted behind them.

Luce looked back and felt her face light up when she saw Arriane's pale, skinny frame jogging to catch up with them. "Which quack said you were normal, Penn?" Arriane nudged Luce and pointed down. "Watch out for the quicksand!"

Luce sloshed to a halt just before she'd have landed in a scarily muddy patch on the lawn. "Somebody please tell me where we're going!"

"Wednesday night," Penn said flatly. "Social Night."

"Like… a dance or something?" Luce asked, visions of Daniel and Cam already moving across the dance floor of her mind.

Arriane hooted. "A dance with death by boredom. The term 'social' is typical Sword & Cross doublespeak. See, they're required to schedule social events for us, but they are also terrified of scheduling social events for us. Sticky predicky."

"So instead," Penn added, "they have these really awful events like movie nights followed by lectures about the movie, or—God, do you remember last semester?"

"There was that whole symposium on taxidermy?"

"So, so creepy." Penn shook her head.

"Tonight, my dear," Arriane drawled, "we get off easy. All we have to do is snore through one of the three movies on rotation in the Sword & Cross video library. Which one do you think it'll be tonight, Pennyloafer? Starman? Joe Versus the Volcano? Or Weekend at Bernie's?"

"It's Starman." Penn groaned.

Arriane shot Luce a baffled look. "She knows everything."

"Hold on," Luce said, tiptoeing around the quicksand and lowering her voice to a whisper as they approached the front office of the school. "If you've all seen these movies so many times, why the rush to get here?"

Penn pulled open the heavy metal doors to the "auditorium," which, Luce realized, was a euphemism for a regular old room with low, drop-paneled ceilings and chairs arranged to face a blank white wall.

"Don't want to get stuck in the hot seat next to Mr. Cole," Arriane explained, pointing at the teacher. His nose was buried deep inside a thick book, and he was surrounded by the few remaining empty chairs in the room.

As the three girls stepped through the metal detector at the door, Penn said, "Whoever sits there has to help pass out his weekly 'mental health' surveys."

"Which wouldn't be so bad—" Arriane chimed in.

"— if you didn't have to stay late to analyze the findings," Penn finished.

"Thereby missing," Arriane said with a grin, steering Luce toward the second row as she whispered, "the after-party."

Finally they'd gotten down to the heart of the matter. Luce chuckled.

"I heard about that," she said, feeling slightly with it for a change. "It's in Cam's room, right?"

Arriane looked at Luce for a second and ran her tongue across her teeth. Then she looked past, almost through, Luce. "Hey, Todd," she called, waving with just the tips of her fingers. She pushed Luce into one seat, claimed the safe spot next to her (still two seats down from Mr. Cole), and patted the hot seat. "Come sit with us, T-man!"

Todd, who'd been shifting his weight in the doorway, looked immensely relieved to be given the directive, any directive. He started toward them, swallowing. No sooner had he fumbled into the seat than Mr. Cole looked up from his book, cleaned his glasses on his handkerchief, and said, "Todd, I'm glad you're here. I'm wondering if you can help me with a small favor after the film. You see, the Venn diagram is a very useful tool for…"

"Mean!" Penn popped her face up between Arriane and Luce.

Arriane shrugged and produced a giant bag of popcorn from her carpetbag. "I can only look after so many new students," she said, tossing a buttery kernel at Luce. "Lucky you."

As the lights in the room dimmed, Luce looked around until her eyes landed on Cam. She thought about her abbreviated dish session on the phone with Callie, and how her friend always said that watching a movie with a guy was the best way to get to know things about him, things that might not come out in a conversation. Looking at Cam, Luce thought she knew what Callie meant: There would be something sort of thrilling about glancing out of the corner of her eye to see what jokes Cam thought were funny, to join his laughter with her own.

When his eyes met hers, Luce felt an embarrassed instinct to look away. But then, before she could, Cam's face lit up in a broad smile. It made her feel remarkably unabashed about being caught staring. When he put his hand up in a wave, Luce couldn't help thinking about how the exact opposite had happened the few times Daniel had caught her looking at him.

Daniel rolled in with Roland, late enough that Randy had already taken a head count, late enough that the only remaining seats were on the floor at the front of the room. He passed through the beam of light from the projector and Luce noticed for the first time a silver chain around his neck, and some sort of medallion tucked inside his T-shirt. Then he dipped completely out of her view. She couldn't even see his profile.

As it turned out, Starman wasn't very funny, but the other students' constant Jeff Bridges impersonations were. It was hard for Luce to stay focused on the plot. Plus, she was getting that uncomfortable icy feeling at the back of her neck. Something was about to happen.

When the shadows came this time, Luce was expecting them. Then she started to think about it and counted a tally on her fingers. The shadows had been popping up at an increasingly alarming rate, and Luce couldn't figure out whether she was just nervous at Sword & Cross… or whether it meant something else. They'd never been this bad before…

They oozed overhead in the auditorium, then slithered along the sides of the movie screen, and finally traced the lines of the floorboards like spilled ink. Luce gripped the bottom of her chair and felt an ache of fear swell through her legs and arms. She tightened all the muscles in her body, but she couldn't keep from trembling. A squeeze on her left knee made her look over at Arriane.

"You okay?" Arriane mouthed.

Luce nodded and hugged her shoulders, pretending she was merely cold. She wished she was, but this particular chill had nothing to do with Sword & Cross's overzealous air conditioner.

She could feel the shadows tugging at her feet under her chair. They stayed like that, deadweight for the whole movie, and every minute dragged on like an eternity.

An hour later, Arriane pressed her eye up against the peephole of Cam's bronze-painted dorm room door. "Yoo-hoo," she sang, giggling. "The festivities are here!"

She produced a hot-pink feather boa from the same magic carpetbag the bag of popcorn had come from. "Give me a boost," she said to Luce, dangling her foot in the air.

Luce hooked her fingers together and positioned them under Arriane's black boot. She watched as Arriane pushed off the ground and used the boa to cover the face of the hallway surveillance camera while she reached around the back of the device and switched it off.

"That's not suspicious or anything," Penn said.

"Does your allegiance lie with the after-party?" Arriane shot back. "Or the red party?"

"I'm just saying there are smarter ways." Penn snorted as Arriane hopped down. Arriane slung the boa over Luce's shoulders, and Luce laughed and started to shimmy to the Motown song they could hear through the door. But when Luce offered the boa to Penn for a turn, she was surprised to see her still looking nervous. Penn was biting her nails and sweating at the brow. Penn wore six sweaters in the swampy southern September heat—she was never hot.

"What's wrong?" Luce whispered, leaning in.

Penn picked at the hem of her sleeve and shrugged. She looked like she was just about to answer when the door behind them opened up. A whoosh of cigarette smoke, blasting music, and suddenly Cam's open arms greeted them.

"You made it," he said, smiling at Luce. Even in the dim light, his lips had a berry-stained glow. When he folded her in for a hug, she felt tiny and safe. It lasted only a second; then he turned to nod hello at the other two girls, and Luce felt a little proud to have been the one who got the hug.

Behind Cam, the small, dark room was crammed with people. Roland was in one corner, at the turntable, holding up records to a black light. The couple Luce had seen on the quad a few days before cozied up against the window. The preppy boys with the white oxford shirts were all huddled up together, occasionally checking out the girls. Arriane wasted no time shooting across the room toward Cam's desk, which looked like it was doubling as a bar. Almost immediately, she had a champagne bottle between her legs and was laughing as she tried to pry off the cork.

Luce was baffled. She hadn't even known how to get booze at Dover, where the outside world had been a lot less off-limits. Cam had been back at Sword & Cross for only a few days, but already, he seemed to know how to smuggle everything he needed to throw a Dionysian soiree the entire school showed up to. And somehow everyone else inside thought this was normal.

Still standing at the threshold, she heard the pop, then the cheers from the rest of the crowd, then Arriane's voice calling out: "Lucindaaa, get in here. I'm about to make a toast."

Luce could feel the party's magnetism, but Penn looked much less ready to budge.

"You go ahead," she said, waving a hand at Luce.

"What's wrong? You don't want to go in?" The truth was, Luce was a little nervous herself. She had no idea what might go down at these things, and since she still wasn't sure how reliable Arriane was, it would definitely make her feel better to have Penn at her side.

But Penn frowned. "I'm… I'm out of my element. I do libraries… workshops on how to use PowerPoint. You want a file hacked into, I'm your girl. But this—" She stood on tiptoes and peered into the room. "I don't know. People in there just think I'm some kind of know-it-all."

Luce attempted her best give-me-a-break frown. "And they think I'm a slab of meat loaf, and we think they're all totally bananas." She laughed. "Can't we all just get along?"

Slowly Penn curled her lip, then took the feather boa and draped it around her shoulders. "Oh, all right," she said, clomping inside ahead of Luce.

Luce blinked as her eyes adjusted. A cacophony filled the room, but she could hear Arriane's laughing voice. Cam shut the door behind her and tugged Luce's hand so she'd hang back, away from the heart of the party.

"I'm really glad you came," he said, putting his hand on the small of her back and bending his head so she could hear him in the loud room. Those lips looked almost tasty, especially when they said things like "I jumped up every time someone knocked, hoping it'd be you."

Whatever had drawn Cam to her so quickly, Luce didn't want to do anything to mess it up. He was popular and unexpectedly thoughtful, and his attention made her feel more than flattered. It made her feel more comfortable in this strange new place. She knew if she tried to respond to his compliment, she'd stumble over the words. So she just laughed, which made him laugh, and then he pulled her in for another hug.

Suddenly there was no place to put her own hands but around his neck. She felt a little light-headed as Cam squeezed her, lifting her feet slightly off the ground.

When he put her back down. Luce turned to the rest of the party, and the first thing she saw was Daniel. But she didn't think he liked Cam. Still, he was sitting cross-legged on the bed, his white T-shirt glowing violet in the black light. As soon as her eyes found him, it was hard to look anywhere else. Which didn't make sense, because a gorgeous and friendly guy was standing right behind her, asking her what she'd like to drink. The other gorgeous, infinitely less friendly guy sitting across from her should not be the one she couldn't stop looking at. And he was staring at her. So intently, with a cryptic, squinting look in his eyes that Luce thought she'd never decode, even if she saw it a thousand times.

All she knew was the effect it had on her. Everyone else in the room went out of focus and she melted. She could have stared back all night if it hadn't been for Arriane, who had climbed on top of the desk and called out to Luce, her glass raised in the air.

"To Luce," she toasted, giving Luce a saintly smile. "Who was obviously zoning and missed my entire welcome speech and who will never know how utterly fabulous it was— wasn't it fabulous, Ro?" she leaned down to ask Roland, who patted her ankle affirmatively.

Cam slipped a plastic cup of champagne into Luce's hand. She blushed and tried to laugh it off as the whole rest of the party echoed, "To Luce! To Meat Loaf!"

At her side, Molly slithered up and whispered a shorter version in her ear: "To Luce, who will never know."

A few days before, Luce would have flinched away. Tonight, she simply rolled her eyes, then turned her back on Molly. The girl had never said a word that didn't leave Luce feeling bitten, but showing it seemed only to egg her on. So Luce just hunkered down to share the desk chair with Penn, who handed her a rope of black licorice.

"Can you believe it? I think I'm actually having fun," Penn said, chewing happily.

Luce bit down on the licorice and took a tiny sip of the fizzy champagne. Not a very palatable combination. Kind of like her and Molly. "So is Molly that evil to everyone, or am I a special case?"

For a second Penn looked like she was going to give a different answer, but then she patted Luce on the back. "Just her usual charming demeanor, my dear."

Luce looked around the room at all the free-flowing champagne, at Cam's fancy vintage turntable, at the disco ball spinning over their heads, casting stars on everyone's faces.

"Where do they get all this stuff?" she wondered aloud.

"People say Roland can smuggle anything into Sword & Cross," Penn said matter-of-factly. "Not that I've ever asked him."

Maybe this was what Arriane meant when she said Roland knew how to get things. The only off-limits item Luce could imagine wanting badly enough to ask about was a cell phone. But then… Cam had said not to listen to Arriane about the inner workings of the school. Which would have been fine, except so much of his party seemed to be courtesy of Roland. The more she tried to untangle her questions, the less things added up. She should probably stick to being just «in» enough to get invited to the parties.

"Okay, all you rejects," Roland said loudly to get everyone's attention. The record player had quieted down to the static between songs. "We're going to start the open-mike portion of the night, and I'm taking requests for karaoke."

"Daniel Grigori!" Arriane hooted through her hands.

"No!" Daniel hooted back without missing a beat.

"Aww, the silent Grigori sits another one out," Roland said into the microphone. "You sure you don't want to do your version of 'Hellhound on My Trail'?"

"I believe that's your song, Roland," Daniel said. A faint smile spread across his lips, but Luce got the feeling it was an embarrassed smile, a someone-else-take-the-spotlight-please smile.

"He's got a point, folks." Roland laughed. "Though karaoke-ing Robert Johnson has been known to clear out a room." He plucked an R. L. Burnside album from the stack and cued the record player in the corner. "Let's go down south instead."

As the bass notes of an electric guitar picked up, Roland took center stage, which was really just a few square feet of moonlit empty space in the middle of the room. Everyone else was clapping or stomping their feet in time, but Daniel was looking down at his watch. She kept seeing the image of him nodding at her in the lobby earlier that night, when Cam invited her to the party. Like Daniel wanted her there for some reason. Of course, now that she'd shown up, he made no move to acknowledge her existence.

If only she could get him alone…

Roland so monopolized the attention of the guests that only Luce noticed when, midway through the song, Daniel stood up, edged himself around Molly and Cam, and slipped silently out the door.

This was her chance. While everyone around her was applauding, Luce slowly got to her feet.

"Encore!" Arriane called out. Then, noticing Luce rising from her chair, she said, "Oh, snap, is that my girl stepping up to sing?"

"No!" Luce did not want to sing in front of this roomful of people any more than she wanted to admit the real reason why she was standing up. But there she was, standing right in the middle of her first party at Sword & Cross, with Roland thrusting the mike under her chin. Now what?

"I–I just feel bad for, uh, Todd. That he's missing out." Luce's voiced echoed back to her over the speakers. She was already regretting her bad lie, and the fact that there was no turning back now. "I thought I'd run down and see if he's done with Mr. Cole."

None of the other kids seemed to know quite what to do with this. Only Penn called out timidly, "Hurry back!"

Molly was smirking down her nose at Luce. "Geek love," she said, fake-swooning. "So romantic."

Wait, did they think she liked Todd? Oh, who cared—the one person Luce would really not want thinking that was the one person she'd been trying to follow outside.

Ignoring Molly, Luce scooted toward the door, where Cam met her with crossed arms. "Want company?" he asked hopefully.

She shook her head. On any other errand, she probably would have wanted Cam's company. But not right now.

"I'll be right back," she said brightly. Before she could register the disappointment on his face, she slinked out into the hall. After the roar of the party, the quiet rang in her ears. It took a second before she could make out hushed voices just around the corner.

Daniel, She'd recognize his voice anywhere. But she was less certain who he was talking to. A girl.

"Ah'm sorrrry," whoever she was said… with a distinctive southern twang.

Gabbe? Daniel had been sneaking out to see blond and airbrushed Gabbe?

"It won't happen again," Gabbe continued, "I swear to—"

"It can't happen again," Daniel whispered, but his tone practically screamed lovers' quarrel, "You promised you'd be there, and you weren't."

Where? When? Luce was in agony. She inched along the hallway, trying not to make a sound.

But the two of them had fallen silent. Luce could picture Daniel taking Gabbe's hands in his. Could picture him leaning in to her for a long, deep kiss. A sheet of all-consuming envy spread across Luce's chest. Around the corner, one of them sighed.

"You're going to have to trust me, honey," she heard Gabbe say, in a saccharine voice that made Luce decide once and for all that she hated her. "I'm the only one you've got."