Daniel was never late. Daniel was never late.
The rain seemed to settle on the tips of her hair instead of soaking into it the way rain usually did. Not even Mother Nature knew what to do with a dyed-blond Luce. She didn't feel like waiting for Daniel out in the open. There was a row of shops on the main street. Luce hung back there, standing on a long wooden porch under a rusty metal awning. FRED'S FISH, the closed shop's sign read in faded blue letters.
Fort Bragg wasn't quaint like Mendocino, the town where she and Daniel had stopped before he'd own her up the shoreline. It was more industrial, a real old-fashioned shing village with rotting docks tted into a curved inlet where the land tapered down toward the water. While Luce waited, a boatful of shermen were stepping ashore. She watched the line of rail-thin, hardened men in their soaking-wet slickers come up the rocky stairs from the docks below.
When they reached the street level, they walked alone or in silent clusters, past the empty bench and the sad slanted trees, past the shut-up storefronts to a gravel parking lot at the south edge of Noyo Point. They climbed into beat-up old trucks, turned over the engines, and drove away, the sea of grim-set faces thinning until one stood out--and he wasn't coming o any schooner. In fact, he seemed to have appeared suddenly out of the fog. Luce jumped back against the metal shutter of the sh store and tried to catch her breath.
Cam.
He was walking west along the gravel road right in front of her, anked by two dark-clad shermen who didn't seem to notice his presence. He was dressed in slim black jeans and a black leather jacket. His dark hair was shorter than when she'd last seen him, shining in the rain. A hint of the black sunburst tattoo was visible on the side of his neck. Against the colorless backdrop of the sky, his eyes were as intensely green as they had ever been.
The last time she'd seen him, Cam had been standing at the front of a sickening black army of demons, so callous and cruel and just plain ... evil. It had made her blood run cold. She had a string of curses and accusations ready to ing at him, but it would be better still if she could just avoid him altogether.
Too late. Cam's green gaze fell on her--and she froze. Not because he turned on any of the fake charm that she'd come too close to falling for at Sword & Cross. But because he looked genuinely alarmed to see her. He swerved, moving against the ow of the few nal straggling shermen, and was at her side in an instant.
"What are you doing here?"
Cam looked more than alarmed, Luce decided--he looked almost afraid. His shoulders were bunched up around his neck and his eyes wouldn't settle on anything for longer than a second. He hadn't said a thing about her hair; it almost seemed as if he hadn't noticed it. Luce was certain Cam was not supposed to know that she was out here in California. Keeping her away from guys like him was the whole point of her relocation. Now she'd blown that.
"I'm just--" She eyed the white gravel path behind Cam, cutting through the grass bordering the cli 's edge. "I'm just going for a walk."
"You are not."
"Leave me alone." She tried to push past him. "I have nothing to say to you."
"Which would be ne, since we're not supposed to be talking to one another. But you're not supposed to leave that school."
Suddenly she felt nervous, like he knew something she didn't. "How did you know I'm even going to school here?"
Cam sighed. "I know everything, okay?"
"Then you're here to ght Daniel?"
Cam's green eyes narrowed. "Why would I--Wait, are you saying you're here to see him?"
"Don't sound so shocked. We are together." It was like Cam still hadn't gotten over that she'd picked Daniel instead of him.
Cam scratched his forehead, looking concerned. When he nally spoke, his words were rushed. "Did he send for you? Luce?"
She winced, buckling under the pressure of his gaze. "I got a letter."
"Let me see it."
Now Luce sti ened, examining Cam's peculiar expression to try to understand what he knew. He looked about as uneasy as she felt. She didn't budge.
"You were tricked. Grigori wouldn't send for you right now."
"You don't know what he would do for me." Luce turned away, wishing Cam had never seen her, wishing herself far away. She felt a childish need to brag to Cam that Daniel had visited her last night. But the bragging would end there. There wasn't much glory in relaying the details of their argument.
"I know he would die if you died, Luce. If you want to live another day, you'd better show me the letter."
"You would kill me over a piece of paper?"
"I wouldn't, but whoever sent you that note probably intends to."
"What?" Feeling it almost burning in her pocket, Luce resisted the urge to thrust the letter into his hands. Cam didn't know what he was talking about. He couldn't. But the longer he stared at her, the more she began to wonder about the strange letter she was holding. That bus ticket, the directions. It had been weirdly technical and formulaic. Not like Daniel at all. She shed it out of her pocket, ngers trembling.
Cam snatched it from her, grimacing as he read. He muttered something under his breath as his eyes darted around the forest on the other side of the road. Luce looked around too, but she could see nothing suspicious about the few remaining shermen loading their gear into rusty truck beds.
"Come on," he said nally, grabbing her by the elbow. "It's past time to get you back to school."
She jerked away. "I'm not going anywhere with you. I hate you. What are you even doing here?"
He stepped around her in a circle. "I'm hunting."
She sized him up, trying not to let on that he still made her nervous. Slim, punk-rock-dressed, gunless Cam. "Really?" She cocked her head. "Hunting what?"
Cam stared past her, toward the dusk-swept forest. He nodded once. "Her."
Luce craned her neck to see who or what Cam was talking about, but before she could see anything, he pushed her sharply. There was a weird hu of air, and something silver zipped past her face.
"Get down!" Cam yelled, pressing hard on Luce's shoulders. She sank to the porch oor, feeling his weight on top of her, smelling the dust on the wood planks. the wood planks.
"Get o me!" she shouted. As she writhed in disgust, cold fear pressed into her. Whoever was out there must be really bad. Otherwise she'd never be in a situation where Cam was the one protecting her.
A moment later, Cam was sprinting across the empty parking lot. He was racing toward a girl. A very pretty girl about Luce's age, dressed in a long brown cloak. She had delicate features and white-blond hair pulled high into a ponytail, but something was strange about her eyes. They held a vacant expression that, even from this distance, struck Luce rigid with fear.
There was more: The girl was armed. She held a silver bow and was hurriedly nocking an arrow.
Cam barreled forward, his feet crunching on the gravel lot as he moved straight toward the girl, whose bizarre silver bow gleamed even in the fog. Like it was not of this earth.
Wresting her eyes away from the lunatic girl with the arrow, Luce rolled to her knees and scanned the parking lot to see whether anyone else looked as panicked as she felt. But the place was empty, eerily quiet.
Her lungs felt tight--she could hardly breathe. The girl moved almost like a machine, with no hesitation. And Cam was unarmed. The girl was pulling back on the bowstring and Cam was in point-blank range.
But it took her a split second too long. Cam plowed into her, knocking her onto her back. He brutally wrestled the bow out of her hands, snapping his elbow against her face until she let go. The girl yelped--a high, innocent sound--and recoiled on the ground as Cam turned the bow on her. She raised her open hand in supplication.
Then Cam loosed the arrow straight into her heart.
Across the parking lot, Luce cried out and bit down on her st. Though she wanted to be far, far away, she found herself lumbering to her feet and jogging closer. Something was wrong. Luce expected to nd the girl lying there bleeding, but this girl did not struggle, did not cry.
Because she was no longer there at all.
She, and the arrow that Cam had shot into her, had vanished.
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 nger, ba ed and more terri ed 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 at 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 xated on the silver bow in his hands.
"A what?"
"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 o 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 bene ts."
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 ashed 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 ipped the lock. "Be thankful you don't have to walk back to school. Come on, get in."