way down.
She landed face-first on the wood floor. The only thing breaking her fall was the
plastic bag of feathers, which popped, shooting colorful fluff out from under her. Luce
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looked back to see how much damage she had done, expecting Shelby's eyebrows to be
joined in exasperation. But Shelby was standing still with one hand pointing toward the
center of the room. A smog-brown Announcer was quietly floating there.
"Isn't that a little risky?" Shelby asked. "Summoning an Announcer an hour after
getting busted for summoning an Announcer? You really don't listen at all, do you? I
kind of admire that."
"I didn't summon it," Luce insisted, pulling herself up and picking the feathers out
of her clothes. "I tripped and it was just there, waiting or something." She stepped closer
to examine the hazy, dun-colored sheet. It was as flat as a piece of paper and not large for
an Announcer, but the way it hung in the air in front of her face, almost daring her to
reject it, made Luce nervous.
It didn't seem to need her to guide it into shape at all. It hovered, barely moving,
looking like it could have floated there all day.
"Wait a minute," Luce murmured. "This came in with the other one the other day.
Don't you remember?" This was the strange brown shadow that had flown in tandem with
the darker shadow that took them to Vegas. They'd both come in through the window
Friday afternoon; then this one had disappeared. Luce had forgotten about it until now.
"Well," Shelby said, leaning against the ladder of the bunk bed. "Are you going to
glimpse it or what?"
The Announcer was the color of a smoky room, noxious brown and mistlike to
the touch. Luce reached for it, running her fingers along its clammy limits. She felt its
cloudy breath brush back her hair. The air around this Announcer was humid, even briny.
A far-away croon of seagulls echoed from within.
She shouldn't glimpse it. Wouldn't glimpse it.
But there was the Announcer, shifting from a smoky brown mesh into something
clear and discernible, independently of Luce. There was the message cast by its shadow
coming to life.
It was an aerial view of an island. At first, they were high above, so that all Luce
could see was a small swell of steep black rock with a fringe of tapered pine trees ringing
its base. Then, slowly, the Announcer zoomed in, like a bird swooping down to roost in
the treetops, its focus a small, deserted beach.
The water was murky from the claylike silver sand. A scattering of boulders
reckoned with the smooth intentions of the tide. And standing inconspicuously between
two of the tallest rocks-Daniel was staring at the sea. The tree branch in his hand was covered in blood.
Luce gasped as she leaned closer and saw what Daniel was looking at. Not the
sea, but a bloody mess of a man. A dead man, lying stiff on the sand. Each time the
waves reached the body, they receded stained a deep, dark red. But Luce couldn't see the
wound that had killed the man. Someone else, in a long black trench coat, was crouched
over the body, tying it up with thick braided rope.
Her heart thudding, Luce looked again at Daniel. His expression was even, but his
shoulders were twitching.
"Hurry up. You're wasting time. The tide's going out now, anyway."
His voice was so cold, it made Luce shiver.
A second later, the scene in the Announcer disappeared. Luce held her breath
until it dropped to the ground in a heap. Then, across the room, the window shade Luce
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had pulled down earlier rattled open. Luce and Shelby shot each other an anxious look,
then watched as a gust of wind caught the Announcer and lofted it up and out the
window.
Luce clutched Shelby's wrist. "You notice everything. Who else was there with
Daniel? Who was crouched over that"--she shivered again--"guy?"
"Gee, I don't know, Luce. I was kind of distracted by the dead body. Not to
mention the bloody tree your boyfriend was holding." Shelby's attempt to be sarcastic
was diminished by how terrified she sounded. "So he killed him?" she asked Luce.
"Daniel killed whoever that was?"
"I don't know." Luce winced. "Don't say it like that. Maybe there's a logical
explanation--"
"What do you think he was saying at the end?" Shelby asked. "I saw his lips move
but I couldn't make it out. I hate that about Announcers."
Hurry up. You're wasting time. The tide's going out now, anyway.
Shelby hadn't heard that? How callous and unremorseful Daniel sounded?
Then Luce remembered: It wasn't that long ago that she couldn't hear the
Announcers either. Before, their noises used to be just that--noises: rustlings and thick,
wet whooshes through treetops. It was Steven who'd told her how to tune in the voices