Cam scoured the parking lot, snatching up the arrows the archer had spilled as if it
was the most urgent task he'd ever performed. Luce crouched down where the girl had
fallen. She traced the rough gravel with her finger, baffled and more terrified than she'd
been a moment before. There was no sign that anyone had ever been there.
Cam returned to Luce's side with three arrows in one hand and the silver bow in
the other. Instinctively, Luce reached out to touch one. She'd never seen anything like it.
For some reason, it sent a strange ripple of fascination through her. Goose bumps rose on
her skin. Her head swam.
Cam jerked the arrows away. "Don't. They're deadly."
They didn't look deadly. In fact, the arrows didn't even have heads. They were just
silver sticks that dead-ended in a flat tip. And yet one had made that girl disappear.
Luce blinked a few times. "What just happened, Cam?" Her voice felt heavy.
"Who was she?"
"She was an Outcast." Cam wasn't looking at her. He was fixated on the silver
bow in his hands.
"A what?"
63
"The worst kind of angel. They sided with Satan during the revolt but wouldn't
actually set foot in the underworld."
"Why not?"
"You know the type. Like those girls who want to be invited to the party but don't
actually plan to show up." He grimaced. "As soon as the battle ended, they tried to
backpedal up to Heaven pretty fast, but it was already too late. You only get one shot at
those clouds." He glanced at Luce. "Most of us do, anyway."
"So, if they're not with Heaven ..." She was still getting used to talking concretely
about these things. "Are they ... with Hell?"
"Hardly. Though I remember when they came crawling back." Cam gave a
sinister laugh. "Usually, we'll take just about anyone we can get, but even Satan has his
limits. He cast them out permanently, struck them blind to add injury to insult."
"But that girl wasn't blind," Luce whispered, recalling the way her bow had
followed Cam's every move. The only reason she hadn't hit him was because he'd moved
so fast. And yet Luce had known there was something off about that girl.
"She was. She just uses other senses to feel her way through the world. She can
see after a fashion. It has its limitations and its benefits."
His eyes never stopped combing the tree line. Luce clammed up at the thought of
more Outcasts nested in the forest. More of those silver bows and arrows.
"Well, what happened to her? Where is she now?"
Cam stared at her. "She's dead, Luce. Poof. Gone."
Dead? Luce looked at the place on the ground where it had happened, now just as
empty as the rest of the lot. She dropped her head, feeling dizzy. "I ... I thought you
couldn't kill angels."
"Only for lack of a good weapon." He flashed the arrows at Luce one last time
before wrapping them up in a cloth he pulled from his pocket and tucking them inside his
leather jacket. "These things are hard to come by. Oh, stop trembling, I'm not going to
kill you. " He turned away and started testing the doors of the cars in the lot, smirking
when he spotted the rolled-down driver's-side window of a gray-and-yellow truck. He
reached inside and flipped the lock. "Be thankful you don't have to walk back to school.
Come on, get in."
When Cam popped open the passenger-side door, Luce's jaw dropped. She peered
in through the open window and watched him jimmying the ignition. "You think I'm just
going to get in some hot-wired car with you right after I watched you murder someone?"
"If I hadn't killed her"--he fumbled around beneath the steering wheel--"she
would have killed you, okay? Who do you think sent you that note? You were lured out
of school to be murdered. Does that make it go down any easier?"
Luce leaned against the hood of the truck, not knowing what to do. She thought
back to the conversation she'd had with Daniel, Arriane, and Gabbe right before she'd left
Sword & Cross. They'd said Miss Sophia and the others in her sect might come after her.
"But she didn't look like--are the Outcasts part of the Elders?"
By then Cam had the engine running. He quickly hopped out, walked around, and
hustled Luce into the passenger seat. "Move along, chop-chop. This is like herding a cat."
Finally he had her sitting and pulled her seat belt around her. "Unfortunately, Luce,
you've got more than one kind of enemy. Which is why I'm taking you back to school
where it's safe. Right. Now."
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She didn't think it would be smart to be alone in a car with Cam, but she wasn't
sure staying here on her own was any smarter. "Wait a minute," she said as he turned