Fallen 2. Torment(81)

Luce shook her head. "Maybe we could just watch?"

Across the table, the redhead was nodding off, her head falling onto Shelby's stiff

shoulder. Vera rolled her eyes at the whole scene and pushed Luce's money back,

pointing at the neon billboard advertising Cirque du Soleil. "Circus is that way, kids."

Luce sighed. They were going to have to wait until Vera got off work. And by

then she'd probably be even less interested in talking to them. Feeling defeated, Luce

reached out to take Miles's money back. Vera's fingers were drawing away just as Luce's

swept over the money, and their fingertips kissed. Both of them snapped up their heads.

The weird shock briefly blinded Luce. She sucked in her breath. She looked deep into

Vera's wide hazel eyes.

And she saw everything:

A two-story cabin in a snowy Canadian town. Webs of ice on the windows, wind

soughing at the panes. A ten-year-old girl watching TV in the living room, rocking a

baby on her lap. It was Vera, pale and pretty in acid-washed jeans and Doc Martens, a

thick navy turtleneck rising to her chin, a cheap wool blanket bunched up between her

and the back of the couch. A bowl of popcorn on the coffee table, reduced to a handful of

cold, unpopped kernels. A fat orange cat prowling the mantel, hissing at the radiator.

And Luce--Luce was her sister, the baby sister in her arms.

Luce felt herself rocking in her seat at the casino, aching to remember all of this.

Just as quickly, the impression faded, replaced by another.

Luce as a toddler chasing Vera, up the stairs, down the stairs, the worn wide

steps beneath her thumping feet, her chest tight from breathless laughter, when the

doorbell sounded and a fair, slick-haired boy arrived to pick Vera up for a date, and she

stopped and straightened her clothes and turned her back, turned away ... .

A heartbeat later and Luce was a teenager herself, with a mess of curly shoulder-

length black hair. Sprawled on Vera's denim bedspread, the coarse fabric somehow a

comfort, flipping through Vera's secret diary. He loves me, Vera had scrawled again and

again and again, her handwriting getting loopier and loopier. And then the pages pulled

away, her sister's angry face looming, the tracks of her tears clear. ...

And then again, a different scene, Luce older still, maybe seventeen. She braced

herself for what was coming.

Snow pouring from the sky like soft white static. Vera and a few friends ice-

skating on the frozen pond behind their house, gliding in swift circles, happy and

laughing, and at the frayed icy edge of the pond, Luce crouched down, the cold seeping

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through her thin clothes while she laced up her skates, in a hurry, as usual, to catch up

with her sister. And beside her, a warmth she didn't have tolook at to identify, Daniel,

who was silent, moody, his skates already tightly laced. She could feel the urge to kiss

him--and yet no shadows were visible. The evening and everything about it were star-

dotted and glittering, endlessly clear and full of possibility.

Luce searched for the shadows, then realized that their absence made sense. These

were Vera's memories. And the snow made everything harder to see. Still, Daniel must

know, as he had known when he dove into that lake. He must have sensed it every single

time. Did he ever care what became of people like Vera after Luce was killed?

There came a bursting sound from Luce's side of the lake, like the letting out of a

parachute. And then: A blooming shot of red-hot fire in the middle of a blizzard. A huge

column of bright orange flames shooting into the sky at the edge of the pond. Where Luce

had been. The other skaters rushed senselessly toward it, barreling across the pond. But

the ice was melting, rapidly, catastrophically, sending their skates plunging through to

the frigid water underneath. Vera's scream echoed through the blue night, her frozen

look of agony all that Luce could see.

In the casino, Vera yanked her hand back, shaking it as if she'd been burned. Her

lips quivered a few times before they formed the words: "It's you." She shook her head.

"But it can't be."

"Vera," Luce whispered, reaching her hand out again to her sister. She wanted to

hold her, to take all the pain Vera had ever been caused and transfer it to herself.

"No." Vera shook her head, backing away and wagging a finger at Luce. "No, no,

no." She backed into the dealer at the table behind her, tripping over him and sending a

giant stack of poker chips cascading off the table. The colored disks slid across the floor,

causing a ripple of oohs and aahs from gamblers who leaped from their seats to scoop

them up.

"Dammit, Vera!" a squat man bellowed over the din. As he waddled to their table

in a cheap gray polyester suit and scuffed black shoes, Luce shared a worried glance with