"Has a pet turtle" or "Wants to go skydiving someday"--she was a little unnerved to see
things like "Speaks more than eighteen languages" and "Has visited the outerworld."
It was about to be painfully obvious that Luce was the only non-Nephilim in the
class. She thought back to the nervous waiter who had brought her and Shelby their
breakfast. Maybe Luce would be more comfortable among the scholarship kids. Beaker
Brady didn't even know he'd dodged a bullet.
"If no one has questions," Steven said from the front of the room, "you're
welcome to begin."
"Go outside, enjoy yourselves," Francesca added. "Take all the time you need."
Luce followed the rest of the students onto the deck. As they walked toward the
railing, Jasmine leaned over Luce's shoulder, pointing a green-lacquered fingernail at one
of the boxes. "I have a relative who's a full-blooded cherub," she said. "Crazy old Uncle
Carlos."
Luce nodded, like she knew what that meant, and jotted in Jasmine's name.
"Ooh, and I can levitate," Dawn chirped, pointing to the top left corner of Luce's
page. "Not, like, a hundred percent of the time, but usually after I've had my coffee."
"Wow." Luce tried not to stare--it didn't seem like Dawn was making a joke. She
could levitate?
Trying not to show that she was feeling more and more inadequate, Luce searched
the page for something, anything she knew anything about.
Has experience summoning the Announcers.
The shadows. Daniel had told her the proper name for them that last night at
Sword & Cross. Though she'd never actually "summoned" them--they'd always just
shown up--Luce did have some experience.
"You can write me in there." She pointed to the bottom left corner of the paper.
Both Jasmine and Dawn looked up at her, a little awed but not disbelieving, before
moving on to fill in the rest of their sheets. Luce's heart slowed down a little. Maybe this
wasn't going to be so bad.
In the next few minutes she met Lilith, a prim redhead who was one of three
Nephilim triplets ("You can tell us apart by our vestigial tails," she explained. "Mine's
curly"); Oliver, a deep-voiced, squat boy who had visited the outerworld on summer
vacation last year ("So totally overrated I can't even begin to tell you"); and Jack, who
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felt like he was on the cusp of being able to read minds and thought it would be all right
if Luce wrote him down for that. ("I sense that you're okay with that, am I right?" He
made a gun out of his fingers and clicked his tongue.) She had three boxes left when
Shelby tugged the paper out of her hands.
"I can do both of these," she said, pointing at two of the boxes. "Which one do
you want me for?"
Speaks more than eighteen languages or Has glimpsed a past life.
"Wait a minute," Luce whispered. "You've ... you can glimpse past lives?"
Shelby waggled her eyebrows at Luce and dashed her signature into the box,
adding her name in the "eighteen languages" box for good measure. Luce stared at the
paper, thinking about all her own past lives and how frustratingly off-limits they were to
her. She had underestimated Shelby.
But her roommate was already gone. Standing in Shelby's place was the boy she'd
sat next to inside the classroom. He was a good half foot taller than Luce, with a bright,
friendly smile, a splash of freckles on his nose, and clear blue eyes. Something about
him, even the way he was chewing on his pen, looked ... sturdy. Luce realized this was a
strange word to describe someone she'd never spoken to, but she couldn't help it.
"Oh, thank God." He laughed, smacking his forehead. "The one thing I can do is
the one thing you have left."
" 'Can reflect a mirror image of self or others'?" Luce read slowly.
He tossed his head from side to side and wrote his name in the box. Miles Fisher.
"Real impressive to someone like you, I'm sure."
"Um. Yeah." Luce turned away. Someone like her, who didn't even know what
that meant.
"Wait, hey, where are you going?" He tugged her sleeve. "Uh-oh. You didn't
catch the self-effacing joke?" When she shook her head, Miles's face fell. "I just meant,
compared to everyone else in the class, I'm barely hanging on. The only person I've ever
been able to reflect other than myself was my mom. Freaked my dad out for about ten
seconds, but then it faded."
"Wait." Luce blinked at Miles. "You made a mirror image of your mother?"
"By accident. They say it's easy to do with the people you, like, love." He
blushed, the faintest rosy pink across his cheekbones. "Now you're going to think I'm