The Fallen Sequence (48 page)

SEVENTEEN DAYS

T
hwap
.

Luce winced and rubbed her face. Her nose stung.

Thwap. Thwap
.

Now it was her cheekbones. Her eyelids drifted open and, almost immediately, she scrunched up her face in surprise. A stocky dishwater-blond girl with a grimly set mouth and major eyebrows was leaning over her. Her hair was piled messily on top of her head. She wore yoga pants and a ribbed camouflage tank top that matched
her green-flecked hazel eyes. She held a Ping-Pong ball between her fingers, poised to pelt.

Luce scrambled backward in her bedsheets and shielded her face. Her heart already hurt from missing Daniel. She didn’t need any more pain. She looked down, still trying to get her bearings, and remembered the bed she had indiscriminately collapsed into the night before.

The woman in white who had appeared in Daniel’s wake had introduced herself as Francesca, one of the teachers at Shoreline. Even in her stunned stupor, Luce could tell that the woman was beautiful. She was in her mid-thirties, with blond hair brushing her shoulders, round cheekbones, and large, soft features.

Angel
, Luce decided almost instantly.

Francesca asked no questions on the way to Luce’s room. She must have been expecting the late night drop-off, and she must have sensed Luce’s utter exhaustion.

Now this stranger who’d pelted Luce back into consciousness looked ready to chuck another ball. “Good,” she said in a gravelly voice. “You’re awake.”

“Who are you?” Luce asked sleepily.

“Who are
you
, is more like it. Other than the stranger I wake to find squatting in my room. Other than the kid disrupting my morning mantra with her weirdly personal sleep-babbling. I’m Shelby.
Enchantée.
”

Not an angel, Luce surmised. Just a Californian girl with a strong sense of entitlement.

Luce sat up in bed and looked around. The room was a little cramped, but it was nicely appointed, with light-colored hardwood floors; a working fireplace; a microwave; two deep, wide desks; and built-in bookshelves that doubled as a ladder to what Luce now realized was the top bunk.

She could see a private bathroom through a sliding wooden door. And—she had to blink a few times to be certain—an ocean view out the window. Not bad for a girl who had spent the past month gazing out at a rank old cemetery in a room more appropriate for a hospital than a school. But then, at least that rank cemetery and that room had meant she was with Daniel. She had barely begun getting comfortable at Sword & Cross. And now she was back to starting from scratch.

“Francesca didn’t mention anything about me having a roommate.” Luce knew instantly from the expression on Shelby’s face that this was the Wrong Thing to Say.

So she took a quick glance at Shelby’s décor instead. Luce had never trusted her own interior design instincts, or maybe she’d never had the chance to indulge them. She hadn’t stuck around Sword & Cross long enough to do much decorating, but even before that, her room at Dover had been white-walled and bare. Sterile chic, as Callie had once said.

This room, on the other hand—there was something about it that was strangely … groovy. Varieties of
potted plants she’d never seen before lined the windowsill; prayer flags were strung across the ceiling. A patchwork quilt in muted colors was sliding off the top bunk, half obstructing Luce’s view of an astrology calendar taped over the mirror.

“What’d you think? They were going to clear out the dean’s quarters just because you’re Lucinda Price?”

“Um, no?” Luce shook her head. “That’s not what I meant at all. Wait, how did you know my name?”

“So you
are
Lucinda Price?” The girl’s green-flecked eyes seemed to fix on Luce’s ratty gray pajamas. “Lucky me.”

Luce was speechless.

“Sorry.” Shelby exhaled and adjusted her tone, parking herself on the edge of Luce’s bed. “I’m an only child. Leon—that’s my therapist—he’s trying to get me to be less harsh when I first meet people.”

“Is it working?” Luce was an only child too, but she wasn’t nasty to every stranger she came into contact with.

“What I mean is …” Shelby shifted uncomfortably. “I’m not used to sharing. Can we”—she tossed her head—“rewind?”

“That’d be nice.”

“Okay.” Shelby took a deep breath. “Frankie didn’t mention your having a roommate last night because then she would have had to either notice—or, if she had already noticed, disclose—that I wasn’t in bed when
you arrived. I came in through that window”—she pointed—“around three.”

Out the window, Luce could see a wide ledge connecting to an angled portion of the roof. She pictured Shelby darting across a whole network of ledges on the roof to get back here in the middle of the night.

Shelby made a show of yawning. “See, when it comes to the Nephilim kids at Shoreline, the only thing the teachers are strict about is the
pretense
of discipline. Discipline itself doesn’t so much exist. Though, of course, Frankie’s not going to advertise that to the new girl. Especially not Lucinda Price.”

There it was again. That edge in Shelby’s voice when she said Luce’s name. Luce wanted to know what it meant. And where Shelby had been until three. And how she’d come in through the window in the dark without knocking over any of those plants. And who were the Nephilim kids?

Luce had sudden vivid flashbacks to the mental jungle gym Arriane had taken her through when they’d first met. Her Shoreline roommate’s tough exterior was a lot like Arriane’s, and Luce remembered a similar how-will-I-ever-be-friends-with-you feeling her first day at Sword & Cross.

But though Arriane had seemed intimidating and even a little dangerous, there had been something charmingly off-kilter about her from the start. Luce’s new roommate, on the other hand, just seemed annoying.

Shelby popped off the bed and lumbered into the bathroom to brush her teeth. After digging through her duffel bag to find her toothbrush, Luce followed her in and gestured sheepishly at the toothpaste.

“I forgot to pack mine.”

“No doubt the dazzle of your celebrity blinded you to the small necessities of life,” Shelby replied, but she picked up the tube and extended it toward Luce.

They brushed in silence for about ten seconds until Luce couldn’t take it anymore. She spat out a mouthful of froth. “Shelby?”

With her head in the belly of the porcelain sink, Shelby spat and said, “What?”

Instead of asking any of the questions that had been running through her head a minute before, Luce surprised herself and asked, “What was I saying in my sleep?”

This morning was the first in at least a month of vivid, complicated, Daniel-ridden dreams on which Luce had woken up unable to remember a single thing from her sleep.

Nothing. Not one brush of an angel wing. Not one kiss of his lips.

She stared at Shelby’s gruff face in the mirror. Luce needed the girl to help jog her memory. She
must
have been dreaming about Daniel. If she hadn’t been … what could it mean?

“Beats me,” Shelby said finally. “You were all muffled and incoherent. Next time, try enunciating.” She left the
bathroom and slipped on a pair of orange flip-flops. “It’s breakfast time. You coming or what?”

Luce scurried out of the bathroom. “What do I wear?” She was still in her pajamas. Francesca hadn’t said anything last night about a dress code. But then, she’d also failed to mention the roommate situation.

Shelby shrugged. “What am I, the fashion police? Whatever takes the least amount of time. I’m hungry.”

Luce hustled into a pair of skinny jeans and a black wraparound sweater. She would have liked to spend a few more minutes on her first-day-of-school look, but she just grabbed her backpack and followed Shelby out the door.

The dormitory hallway was different in the daylight. Everywhere she looked were bright, oversized windows with ocean views, or built-in bookshelves crammed full of thick, colorful hardcover books. The floors, the walls, the recessed ceilings and steep, curving staircases were all made from the same maple wood used to build the furniture inside Luce’s room. It should have given the whole place a warm log cabin feel, except that the school’s layout was as intricate and bizarre as Sword & Cross’s dorm had been boring and straightforward. Every few steps, the hallway seemed to split off into small tributary hallways, with spiral staircases leading further into the dimly lit maze.

Two flights of stairs and what looked like one secret door later, Luce and Shelby stepped through a set of
double-paned French windows and into the daylight. The sun was incredibly bright, but the air was cool enough that Luce was glad she’d worn a sweater. It smelled like the ocean, but not really like home. Less briny, more chalky than the East Coast shore.

“Breakfast is served on the terrace.” Shelby gestured at a broad green expanse of land. This lawn was bordered on three sides by thick blue hydrangea bushes, and on the fourth by the steep, straight drop into the sea. It was hard for Luce to believe how very beautiful the school’s setting was. She couldn’t imagine being able to stay inside long enough to make it through a class.

As they approached the terrace, Luce saw another building, a long, rectangular structure with wooden shingles and cheery yellow-trimmed windowpanes. A large hand-carved sign hung over the entrance: “
MESS HALL
,” it read in quotes, like it was trying to be ironic. It was certainly the nicest mess Luce had ever seen.

The terrace was filled with whitewashed iron lawn furniture and about a hundred of the most laid-back-looking students Luce had ever seen. Most of them had their shoes kicked off, their feet propped up on the tables as they dined on elaborate breakfast dishes. Eggs Benedict, fruit-topped Belgian waffles, wedges of rich-looking, flaky spinach-flecked quiche. Kids were reading the paper, gabbing on cell phones, playing croquet on the lawn. Luce knew from rich kids at Dover, but East Coast rich kids were pinched and snotty, not sun-kissed
and carefree. The whole scene looked more like the first day of summer than a Tuesday in early November. It was all so pleasant, it was almost hard to begrudge the self-satisfied looks on these kids’ faces. Almost.

Luce tried to imagine Arriane here, what she would think of Shelby or this oceanside dining, how she probably wouldn’t know what to make fun of first. Luce wished she could turn to Arriane now. It would be good to be able to laugh.

Looking around, she accidentally caught the eyes of a couple of students. A pretty girl with olive skin, a polka-dot dress, and a green scarf tied in her glossy black hair. A sandy-haired guy with broad shoulders tackling an enormous stack of pancakes.

Luce’s instinct was to turn her head away as soon as she made eye contact—always the safest bet at Sword & Cross. But … neither one of these kids glared at her. The biggest surprise about Shoreline was not the crystal sunshine or the cushy breakfast terrace or the buckets-of-money aura hovering over everyone. It was that the students here were smiling.

Well, most of them were smiling. When Shelby and Luce reached an unoccupied table, Shelby picked up a small placard and flung it to the ground. Luce leaned sideways to see the word
RESERVED
written on it just as a kid their age in a full-on black-tie waiter suit approached them with a silver tray.

“Um, this table is re—” he began to say, his voice cracking inopportunely.

“Coffee, black,” Shelby said, then abruptly asked Luce, “What do you want?”

“Uh, same,” Luce said, uncomfortable at being waited on. “Maybe a little milk.”

“Scholarship kids. Gotta slave to get by.” Shelby rolled her eyes at Luce as the waiter darted away to get their coffees. She picked up the
San Francisco Chronicle
from the middle of the table and unfolded the front page with a yawn.

It was right around then that Luce had had enough.

“Hey.” She shoved Shelby’s arm down so she could see her face behind the paper. Shelby’s heavy eyebrows rose in surprise. “I used to
be
a scholarship kid,” Luce told her. “Not at my last school, but the school before that—”

Shelby shrugged off Luce’s hand. “Should I be impressed by that part of your résumé, too?”

Luce was just about to ask what it was Shelby had heard about her when she felt a warm hand on her shoulder.

Francesca, the teacher who’d met Luce at the door last night, was smiling down at her. She was tall, with an imperious bearing, and was put together with a style that came across as effortless. Francesca’s soft blond hair was cleanly flipped to one side. Her lips were glossy pink.
She wore a cool fitted black sheath dress with a blue belt and matching peep-toe stilettos. It was the kind of outfit that would make anyone feel dowdy by comparison. Luce wished she’d at least put on mascara. And maybe not worn her mud-crusted Converses.

“Oh, good, you two connected.” Francesca smiled. “I knew you’d become fast friends!”

Shelby was silent but rustled her paper. Luce just cleared her throat.

“I think you’ll find Shoreline a very simple adjustment, Luce. It’s designed that way. Most of our gifted students just ease right in.”
Gifted?
“Of course, you can come to me with any questions. Or just lean on Shelby.”

For the first time all morning, Shelby laughed. Her laugh was a gruff, gravelly thing, the kind of chortle Luce would have expected from an old man, a lifetime smoker, not a teenage yoga enthusiast.

Luce could feel her face pinching up into a scowl. The last thing she wanted was to “ease right in” to Shoreline. She didn’t belong with a lot of spoiled gifted kids on a cliff overlooking the ocean. She belonged with real people, people with soul instead of squash rackets, who knew what life was like. She belonged with Daniel. She still had no idea what she was doing here, other than hiding out
very
temporarily while Daniel took care of his … war. After that, he was going to take her back home. Or something.

“Well, I’ll see you both in class. Enjoy breakfast!” Francesca called over her shoulder as she glided away. “Try the quiche!” She waved her hand, signaling to the waiter to bring each girl a plate.