Fallen 2. Torment(50)

working on an extra-credit assignment that takes up a lot of my time. I miss you guys and

hope to see you soon. Thanks for being such great parents. I don't think I tell you that

enough.

Love,

Luce

Luce clicked Send on her laptop and quickly switched her browser back to the

online presentation Francesca was giving at the front of the room. Luce was still getting

used to being at a school where they handed out computers, complete with wireless

Internet, right in the middle of class. Sword & Cross had a total of seven student

computers, all of which were in the library. Even if you managed to get your hands on the

encrypted password to access the Web, every site was blocked except for a few dry

academic research ones.

The email to her parents had been prompted by guilt. The night before, she'd had

the strangest feeling that merely by driving out to the retirement community in Mount

Shasta, she was cheating on her real parents, the ones who had raised her in this lifetime.

Sure, at some point, these other parents had been real, too. But that was still too strange a

thought for Luce to really absorb.

Shelby hadn't been one-tenth as pissed off as she could have been about driving

Luce all the way up there for no reason. Instead, she just fired up the Mercedes and drove

to the nearest In-N-Out Burger so they could get a couple of off-the-menu grilled cheese

sandwiches with special sauce.

"Do not give it a second thought," Shelby said, wiping her mouth with a napkin.

"Do you know how many panic attacks my screwed-up family's given me? Believe me,

I'm the last person who's going to judge you about this."

Now Luce looked across the classroom at Shelby and felt an intense gratitude for

the girl who, a week before, had terrified her. Shelby's thick blond hair was pulled back

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by a terry-cloth headband, and she was taking diligent notes on Francesca's lecture.

Every screen Luce could see in her peripheral vision was fixed on the blue and

gold PowerPoint presentation that Francesca was clicking through at a snail's pace. Even

Dawn's. She looked especially spunky today in a hot-pink T-shirt dress and a high side

ponytail. Was it possible she'd already recovered from what had happened on the boat?

Or was she covering up the terror she must have felt--and maybe still felt?

Glancing over at Roland's monitor, Luce scrunched up her face. It didn't surprise

her that he'd been mostly invisible since he arrived at Shoreline, but when he did turn up

in class, she was actually upset to see her former reform school cohort following the

rules.

At least Roland didn't look especially interested in the lecture on "Career

Opportunities for Nephilim: How Your Special Skills Can Give You a Wing Up." In fact,

the look on Roland's face was more disappointed than anything else. His mouth was set

in a frown and he kept lightly shaking his head. Also strange was the fact that every time

Francesca made eye contact with the students, she distinctly passed over Roland.

Luce pulled up the class chat room board to see whether Roland was logged on. It

was supposed to be a tool for the class to bounce questions off each other, but the

questions Luce had for Roland were not for class discussion. He knew something,

something more than he'd let on the other day--surely it had to do with Daniel. She also

wanted to ask him where he'd been on Saturday, whether he'd heard about Dawn's trip

overboard.

Except Roland wasn't online. The only other person in the class who was logged

on to the chat room was Miles. A text box with his name on it popped up on her screen:

Helloooo over there!

He was sitting right next to her. Luce could even hear him chuckling. It was cute

that he got a kick out of his own dumb jokes. This was exactly the kind of goofy, teasing

rapport she would love to have with Daniel. If he weren't so brooding all the time. If he

were actually around.

But he wasn't.

She wrote back: How's the weather in your neck of the woods?

Getting sunnier now, he typed, still smiling. Hey, what'd you do last night? I

swung by your room to see if you wanted to grab dinner.

She looked up from her computer, straight at Miles. His deep blue eyes were so

sincere, she had an urge to turn to spill everything about what had happened. He'd been

so amazing the other day, listening to her talk about her time at Sword & Cross. But there

was no way to answer his question via chat. As much as she wanted to tell him, she didn't

know whether she should talk about it. Even letting Shelby in on her secret project was

practically wooing trouble from Steven and Francesca.

Miles's expression changed from his normal casual smile into an awkward frown.

It made Luce feel terrible, and also slightly surprised, that she could elicit this kind of

reaction in him.