Torment

THIRTEEN SIX DAYS

Rushing them through the labyrinth of the dark casino, Arriane moved as if she had night vision.

“Stay cool, you three,” she sang. “I’ll have you out of here in a flash.”

She held Luce’s wrist in a tight grip, and Luce in turn held Miles’s hand; Miles held Shelby’s, as she cursed at the indignity of having to bring up the escape caboose.

Arriane led them unerringly, and though Luce couldn’t see what she was doing, she could hear people grunt and exclaim as Arriane shouldered them aside. “Sorry ’bout that!” she’d call. “Whoops!” and “Excuse me!”

She took them down dark hallways packed with anxious tourists using their cell phones as flashlights. Up darker staircases, stuffy with disuse and crammed with empty cardboard boxes. Finally she kicked open an emergency exit, ushering them through it and into a dark, narrow alley.

The alleyway was tucked between the Mirage and another towering hotel. A row of Dumpsters sent out the foul odor of expensive rotting food. A trickle of acid-green gutter water formed a vile little river, splitting the alley in half. Straight ahead, in the middle of the bright, bustling neon-lit Strip, an old-fashioned black street clock struck twelve.

“Ahhh.” Arriane inhaled deeply. “The beginning of another glorious day in Sin City. I like to start it off right, with a big breakfast. Who’s hungry?”

“Um … er …,” Shelby stammered, looking at Luce, then Arriane, then at the casino. “What just … How did …”

Miles’s gaze was fixed on the shiny, marbled scar that spanned one side of Arriane’s neck. Luce was used to Arriane by now, but it was clear that her friends didn’t know what to make of her.

Arriane waved her finger at Miles. “This guy looks like he can eat his weight in waffles. Come on, I know a filthy diner.”

As they clipped up the alley toward the street, Miles turned to Luce and mouthed, “That was awesome.”

Luce nodded. It was all she could do to keep up with Arriane as she jogged across the Strip. Vera. She couldn’t get over it. All those memories, glimpsed in a flash. They’d been painful and startling, and she could only imagine what it had been like for Vera. But for Luce, they had also been deeply satisfying. More than with any of her glimpses through the Announcers so far, this time she felt as if she’d experienced one of her past lives. Strangely, she’d also seen something she’d never even thought about: Her previous selves had lives. Lives that had been full and meaningful before Daniel had shown up.

Arriane led them to an IHOP, a squat brown stucco building that looked so ancient it could have predated everything else on the Strip. It seemed more claustrophobic and sadder than other IHOPs.

Shelby led the way inside, pushing through the glass doors, chiming the cheap jingle bells duct-taped to the top. She grabbed a fistful of mints from the bowl by the register before claiming a booth in the far back corner. Arriane slid in next to her, while Luce and Miles took the other side of the cracked orange leather booth.

With a whistle and a quick circular gesture, Arriane ordered a round of coffee from the plump, pretty waitress with the pencil stuck in her hair.

The rest of them focused on the thick, spiral-bound laminated menu. Turning the pages was a battle against the ancient maple syrup welding the whole thing together—and a good way to avoid talking about the trouble they’d just narrowly escaped.

Finally Luce had to ask. “What are you doing here, Arriane?”

“Ordering something with a funny name. Rooty Tooty, I guess, since they don’t have Moons Over My Hammy here. I can never decide.”

Luce rolled her eyes. Arriane didn’t need to act so coy. It was obvious her rescue effort hadn’t been coincidental. “You know what I mean.”

“These are strange days, Luce. I figured 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 coffee 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 stiffened at the mention of Daniel. When the waitress arrived to take their orders, he barked his out first, 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 off 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 coffee. “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 coffee. “How rude of me to not even introduce 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 find 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 ineffectual 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 flux, 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 fingers 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 fights and curses and all the sexy stuff. 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 CliffsNotes.

“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 off, 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 finally 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 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 fiery.”

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 flash 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 figure 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 fist 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 flung Arriane off 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 fists.

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

“Aw, fine!” Arriane shouted. “We’ll take it to the kitchen.” She released the guy, slid to the floor, 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 scuffle.

Luce followed behind, a little more hesitantly. If Arriane was suggesting that this guy had showed up because of her, it raised a lot of other hairy questions. What about the people who’d taken Dawn? And that arrow-shooting Outcast girl Cam had killed at Noyo Point?

A loud slam sounded from inside the kitchen and three terrified men in dirty aprons rushed out. By the time Luce made it past them through the swinging door, Arriane was holding down the boy with her foot on his head while Miles and Shelby tied him up with the kind of twine used to secure a tenderloin. His empty eyes stared up at Luce, but also through her.

They’d gagged him with a kitchen rag, so when Arriane taunted, “You want to chill out for a little bit? In the meat cooler?” the boy could only groan. He’d stopped putting up any kind of fight.

Grabbing him by the collar, Arriane dragged him across the floor and into the walk-in refrigerator, gave him a few more kicks for good measure, then calmly shut the door. She dusted off her hands and turned to Luce with a ticked-off look on her face.

“Who’s after me, Arriane?” Luce’s voice was shaking.

“A lot of people, babe.”

“Was that”—Luce thought back to her meeting with Cam—“an Outcast?”

Arriane cleared her throat. Shelby coughed.

“Daniel said he couldn’t be with me because he attracted too much attention. He said I’d be safe at Shoreline, but they came there, too—”

“Only because they traced you leaving campus. You attract attention too, Luce. And when you’re out in the world tearing up casinos and the like, we can sense it. That goes for the bad guys, too. That’s why you’re at that school in the first place.”

“What?” It was Shelby. “You guys are just hiding her with us? What about our safety? What if these Outcasts people just showed up on campus?”

Miles said nothing, just looked with alarm from Luce to Arriane.

“You didn’t understand that the Nephilim camouflage you?” Arriane asked. “Daniel didn’t tell you about their—whatever, protective coloration?”

Luce’s mind rolled back to the night Daniel dropped her off at Shoreline. “Maybe he did say something about a shield, but—” There had been so many other things racing through her mind that night. It had been enough to try to process Daniel’s leaving her. Now she felt a queasy wave of guilt. “I didn’t understand. He didn’t elaborate, just kept saying I had to stay on campus. I thought he was being too protective.”

“Daniel knows what he’s doing.” Arriane shrugged. “Most of the time.” She poked her tongue at the corner of her mouth thoughtfully. “Okay, sometimes. Every now and then.”

“So you mean whoever’s after her can’t see her when she’s with a bunch of Nephilim?” This was Miles, who seemed to have found his tongue again.

“Actually, the Outcasts can’t see at all,” Arriane said. “They were blinded during the Revolt. I was getting to that part of the story—it’s good! The putting out of eyes and all that Oedipal jazz.” She sighed. “Oh, well. Yeah, the Outcasts. They can see the burning of your soul—which is a lot more difficult to discern when you’re with a bunch of other Nephilim.”

Miles’s eyes grew wide. Shelby was chewing nervously on her nails.

“So that’s how they mistook Dawn for me.”

“It’s how meat-cooler boy found you tonight, anyway,” Arriane said. “Hell, it’s how I found you too. You’re like a candle in a dark cave out here.” She grabbed a can of whipped cream from the counter and shot a squirt into her mouth. “I like a little nondairy pick-me-up after a brawl.” She yawned, which made Luce look up at the green digital clock on the counter. It was two-thirty in the morning.

“Well, as much as I love kicking asses and taking names, it’s way past curfew for you three.” Arriane whistled through her teeth and a thick blob of an Announcer bled out from the shadows under the prep tables. “I never do this, okay? If anyone asks, I never do this. Traveling by Announcers is ver-ry dangerous. Hear that, hero?” She bopped Miles on his forehead, then flicked her fingers open. The shadow bounced instantly into a perfect door shape in the middle of the kitchen. “But I’m on the clock here and it’s the fastest way to get you guys home and to safety.”

“Nice,” Miles said, like he was taking notes.

Arriane shook her head at him. “Don’t get any ideas. I’m taking you back to school, where you will stay”—she made eye contact with each of them—“or you’re going to have to answer to me.”

“You’re coming with us?” Shelby asked, finally showing just a little glimmer of awe toward Arriane.

“Looks that way.” Arriane winked at Luce. “You’ve turned into some kind of firecracker. Someone’s gotta keep an eye on you.”

Stepping through with Arriane was even smoother than it had been on the way to Vegas. It felt like coming inside after being out in the sun: The light was a little dimmer when you walked through the door, but you blinked a few times and got used to it.

Luce was almost disappointed to find herself back in her dorm room after the flash and excitement of Las Vegas. But then she thought of Dawn, and of Vera. Almost disappointed. Her eyes settled on all the familiar signs that they were back: two unmade bunk beds, the clutter of plants on the windowsill, Shelby’s yoga mats stacked in the corner, Steven’s copy of Plato’s Republic sitting bookmarked on Luce’s desk—and one thing she was not expecting to see.

Daniel, dressed all in black, tending a blazing fire in the hearth.

“Aaaugh!” Shelby screamed, tumbling back into Miles’s arms. “You scared the hell out of me! And in my own place of sanctuary. Not cool, Daniel.” She shot Luce a dirty look, like she’d had something to do with his appearance.

Daniel ignored Shelby, just said calmly to Luce, “Welcome back.”

She didn’t know whether to run to him or burst into tears. “Daniel—”

“Daniel?” Arriane gasped. Her eyes widened as if she’d seen a ghost.

Daniel froze, clearly not having expected to encounter Arriane, either. “I—I just need her for a moment. Then I’ll go.” He sounded guilty, even scared.

“Right,” Arriane said, gripping Miles and Shelby by the scruffs of their neck. “We were just leaving. None of us saw you here.” She herded the others before her. “We’ll catch you later, Luce.”

Shelby looked like she couldn’t get out of their dorm room quickly enough. Miles’s eyes looked stormy, and they stayed fixed on Luce until Arriane practically threw him into the hall, slamming the door behind them with a great boom.

Then Daniel came to Luce. She closed her eyes and let the brush of his nearness warm her. She breathed him in, glad to be home. Not home to Shoreline, but the home that Daniel made her feel. Even when she was in the strangest of places. Even when their relationship was a mess.

As it seemed to be now.

He wasn’t kissing her yet, wasn’t even taking her in his arms. It surprised her that she wanted him to do those things, even after all she had seen. The absence of his touch caused a pain deep within her chest. When she opened her eyes he was standing there, only inches away, poring over every part of her with his violet eyes.

“You scared me.”

She’d never heard him say that. She was used to being the one who was afraid.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

Luce shook her head. Daniel took her hand and guided her wordlessly to the window, out of the warm room near the fire and back into the cold night, onto the rough ledge under the window where he’d come to her before.

The moon was oblong and low in the sky. The owls were asleep in the redwoods. From up here Luce could see the waves breaking smoothly on the shore; on the other side of campus, a single light on high in the Nephilim lodge, but she couldn’t tell whether it was Francesca’s or Steven’s.

She and Daniel sat down on the ledge and dangled their legs. They leaned against the slight slope of the roof behind them and looked up at the stars, which were dim in the sky, as if cloaked by the thinnest sheen of cloud. It wasn’t long before Luce began to cry.

Because he was mad at her or she was mad at him. Because her body had just been through so much, in and out of Announcers, across state lines, into the recent past and right back here. Because her heart and her head were tangled up and confused, and being close to Daniel mucked everything up even more. Because Miles and Shelby seemed to hate him. Because of the plain horror on Vera’s face when she recognized Luce. Because of all the tears that her sister must have cried for her, and because Luce had hurt her all over again by showing up at her blackjack table. Because of all of her other bereaved families, sunk into sadness because their daughters had the bad luck to be the reincarnation of a stupid girl in love. Because thinking of those families made Luce desperately miss her parents back in Thunderbolt. Because she was responsible for Dawn’s kidnapping. Because she was seventeen, and still alive, against thousands of years’ worth of odds. Because she knew enough to fear what the future would bring. Because in the meantime it was three-thirty in the morning, and she hadn’t slept in days, and she didn’t know what else to do.

Now he held her, encasing her body in his warmth, drawing her into him and rocking her in his arms. She sobbed and hiccupped and wished for a tissue to blow her nose. She wondered how it was possible to feel so bad about so many things at once.

“Shhh,” Daniel whispered. “Shhh.”

A day ago, she’d been sick watching Daniel love her into oblivion in that Announcer. The inescapable violence sewn into their relationship had seemed insurmountable. But now, especially after talking with Arriane, Luce could feel something big coming on. Something shifting—maybe the whole world shifting—with Luce and Daniel hovering right on the edge. It was all around them, in the ether, and it affected the way she saw herself, and Daniel, too.

The helpless looks she’d seen in his eyes in those just-before-dying moments: Now they felt like—they were—the past. It reminded her of the way he’d looked at her after their first kiss in this life on the marshy beach near Sword & Cross. The taste of his lips on hers, the feel of his breath on her neck, his strong hands wrapped around her: It had all been so wonderful—except for the fear in his eyes.

But Daniel hadn’t looked at her like that in a while. The way he looked at her now surrendered nothing. He looked at her as if she were going to stick around, almost as if she had to. Things were different in this life. Everyone was saying it, and Luce could feel it, too: a revelation growing ever larger inside her. She’d watched herself die, and she’d survived it. Daniel didn’t have to shoulder his punishment alone anymore. It was something they could do together.

“I want to say something,” she said into his shirt, wiping her eyes on her sleeve. “I want to talk before you say anything.”

She could feel his chin brushing the top of her head. He was nodding.

“I know you have to be careful about what you tell me. I know I’ve died before. But I’m not going anywhere this time, Daniel, I can feel it. At least, not without a fight.” She tried to smile. “I think it will help us both to stop treating me like a fragile piece of glass. So I’m asking you, as your friend, as your girlfriend, as, you know, the love of your life, to let me in a little more. Otherwise I just feel isolated and anxious and—”

He caught her chin with his finger and tilted her head up. He was eyeing her curiously. She waited for him to interrupt, but he didn’t.

“I didn’t leave Shoreline to spite you,” she continued. “I left because I didn’t understand why it mattered. And I put my friends in danger because of it.”

Daniel held her face in front of his. The violet in his eyes practically glowed. “I have failed you too many times before,” he whispered. “And in this life maybe I’ve erred on the side of caution. I should have known you’d test whatever boundary you were given. You wouldn’t be … the girl I loved if you didn’t.” Luce waited for him to smile down at her. He didn’t. “There’s just so much at stake this time around. I’ve been so focused on—”

“The Outcasts?”

“They’re the ones who took your friend,” Daniel said. “They can barely identify right from left, let alone which side they’re working for.”

Luce thought back to the girl Cam had shot with the silver arrow, to the good-looking empty-eyed boy in the diner. “Because they’re blind.”

Daniel looked down at his hands, rubbing his fingers together. He looked as if he might be sick. “Blind but very brutal.” He reached up and traced one of her blond curls with his finger. “You were smart to dye your hair. It kept you safe when I couldn’t get there fast enough.”

“Smart?” Luce was horrified. “Dawn could have died because I got my hands on a cheap bottle of bleach. How is that smart? If … if I dyed my hair black tomorrow, you mean the Outcasts would suddenly be able to find me?”

Daniel shook his head roughly. “They shouldn’t have found their way onto this campus at all. They should never have been able to get their hands on any of you. I am working night and day to keep them from you—from this whole school. Someone’s aiding them, and I don’t know who—”

“Cam.” What else would he have been doing here?

But Daniel shook his head. “Whoever it is will regret it.”

Luce crossed her arms over her chest. Her face still felt hot from crying. “I guess this means I don’t get to go home for Thanksgiving?” She closed her eyes, trying not to picture her parents’ crestfallen faces. “Don’t answer that.”

“Please.” Daniel’s voice was so earnest. “It’s only for a little while longer.”

She nodded. “The truce timeline.”

“What?” His hands gripped her shoulders tightly. “How did you—”

“I know.” Luce hoped he couldn’t feel that her body had begun to tremble. It got worse when she tried to act more assured than she felt. “And I know that at some point soon, you will tip the balance between Heaven and Hell.”

“Who told you that?” Daniel was arching his shoulders back, which she knew meant he was trying to keep his wings from unfurling.

“I figured it out. A lot goes on here when you’re not around.”

A hint of envy flashed through Daniel’s eyes. At first, it felt almost good to be able to provoke that in him, but Luce didn’t want to make him jealous. Especially with so many bigger things at hand.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “The last thing you need right now is me distracting you. What you’re doing … it sounds like a pretty big deal.”

She left it at that, hoping Daniel would feel comfortable enough to tell her more. This was the most open, honest, and mature conversation they’d had, maybe ever.

But then, too soon, the cloud she hadn’t even known she’d been dreading passed over Daniel’s face. “Put all of that out of your head. You don’t know what you think you know.”

Disappointment flooded through Luce’s body. He was still treating her like a child. One step forward, ten steps back.

She gathered her feet under her and stood up on the ledge.

“I know one thing, Daniel,” she said, staring down at him. “If it were me, there wouldn’t be a question. If it were me the whole universe was waiting on to tip the scales, I would just pick the side of good.”

Daniel’s violet eyes stared straight ahead, into the shadowy forest.

“You would just pick good,” he repeated. His voice sounded both numb and desperately sad. Sadder than she’d ever heard him sound before.

Luce had to resist the urge to crouch down and apologize. Instead, she turned, leaving Daniel behind her. Wasn’t it obvious that he was supposed to pick good? Wouldn’t anyone?