by Lauren Kate
At last, Daniel returned to her lips, kissing her with such intensity—sucking her bottom lip, then edging his soft tongue just past her teeth. She opened her mouth wider, desperate to let more of him in, finally unafraid to show how much she yearned for him. To match the force of his kisses with her own.
She had sand in her mouth and between her toes, the briny wind raising goose bumps on her skin, and the sweetest, spellbound feeling spilling from her heart.
She could, at that moment, have died for him.
He pulled away and stared down at her, as if he wanted her to say something. She smiled up at him and pecked him softly on the lips, letting hers linger on his. She knew no words, no better way to communicate what she was feeling, what she wanted.
“You’re still here,” he whispered.
“They couldn’t drag me away.” She laughed.
Daniel took a step back, and with a dark look at her, his smile was gone. He began pacing in front of her, rubbing his forehead with his hand.
“What’s wrong?” she asked lightly, pulling his sleeve so he’d come back in for another kiss. He ran his fingers over her face, through her hair, around her neck. Like he was making sure she wasn’t a dream.
Was this her first real kiss? She didn’t think she was supposed to count Trevor, so technically it was. And everything felt so right, like she had been destined for Daniel, and he for her. He smelled … beautiful. His mouth tasted sweet and rich. He was tall and strong and …
Slipping from her embrace.
“Where are you going?” she asked.
His knees bent and he sank a few inches, leaning up against the wooden railing and looking at the sky. He looked like he was in pain.
“You said nothing could drag you away,” he said in a hushed voice. “But they will. Maybe they’re just running late.”
“They? Who?” Luce asked, looking around at the deserted beach. “Cam? I think we lost him.”
“No.” Daniel started walking away down the boardwalk. He was shivering. “It’s impossible.”
“Daniel.”
“It will come,” he whispered.
“You’re scaring me.” Luce followed behind, trying to keep up. Because suddenly, even though she didn’t want to, she had a feeling she knew what he meant. Not Cam, but something else, some other threat.
Luce’s mind felt foggy. His words knocked on her brain, ringing eerily true, but the reasoning behind them eluded her. Like the wisp of a dream she couldn’t remember the whole of.
“Talk to me,” she said. “Tell me what’s going on.”
He turned, his face pale as the bloom of a peony, his arms held out in surrender. “I don’t know how to stop it,” he whispered. “I don’t know what to do.”
SIXTEEN
HANGING IN THE BALANCE
Luce stood at the crossroads between the cemetery on the north side of campus and the path to the lake on the south. It was early evening and the construction workers had gone home. Light sifted down through the branches of the oaks behind the gym, casting dappled shadows on the lawn that led to the lake. Tempting Luce toward it. She wasn’t sure which way to go. She held two letters in her hands.
The first, from Cam, was the apology she had expected, and a plea for her to meet him after school to talk it out. The second, from Daniel, said nothing other than “Meet me at the lake.” She couldn’t wait to. Her lips still tingled from their kiss last night. She couldn’t get the thought of his fingers in her hair, or his lips on her neck, out of her mind.
Other parts of the night were hazier, like what had happened after she sat down next to Daniel on the beach. Compared to the way his hands had ravished her body not ten minutes earlier, Daniel had seemed almost terrified to touch her.
Nothing could shake him from his daze. He kept murmuring the same thing over and over—“Something must have happened. Something changed”—and staring at her with pain in his eyes, as if she held the answer, as if she had any idea what his words meant. At last, she’d fallen asleep leaning on his shoulder, looking out at the ethereal sea.
When she woke up hours later, he was carrying her up the stairs back to her dorm room. She was startled to realize she’d slept through the whole ride back to school—and even more startled by the strange glow in the hallway. It was back. Daniel’s light. Which she didn’t even know if he could see.
Everything around them was bathed in that soft violet light. The white bumper-stickered doorways of the other students had taken on a neon hue. The dull linoleum tiles seemed to glow. The windowpane looking out on the cemetery cast a violet shine on the first hint of dull yellow morning light outside. All of it directly under the gaze of the reds.
“We’re so busted,” she whispered, nervous and still half asleep.
“I’m not worried about the reds,” Daniel said calmly, following her eyes to the cameras. At first his words were soothing, but then she started to wonder about something uneasy in his tone: If Daniel wasn’t worried about the reds, he was worried about something else.
When he laid her down in her bed, he kissed her lightly on the forehead, then took a deep breath. “Don’t disappear on me,” he said.
“No chance of that.”
“I’m serious.” He closed his eyes for a long time. “Get some rest now—but find me in the morning before class. I want to talk to you. Promise?”
She squeezed his hand to pull him to her for one last kiss. She held his face between her palms and melted into him. Every time her eyes flickered open, his were watching her. And she loved it.
At last, he backed away, and stood in the doorway gazing at her, his eyes still doing as much to make her heart race as his lips had done a moment before. When he slinked back into the hallway and closed the door behind him, Luce drifted off into the deepest sleep.
She’d slept through her morning classes and had awoken in the early afternoon feeling reborn and alive. Not caring at all that she had no excuse for missing school. Only worried that she’d slept through meeting Daniel. She would find him as soon as she could, and he would understand.
Around two o’clock, when it finally occurred to her to eat something or maybe pop in on Miss Sophia’s religion class, she grudgingly crawled out of bed. That was when she saw the two envelopes that had been slipped underneath her door, which set her back severely in her goal of leaving her room.
She had to tell Cam off first. If she went to the lake before the cemetery, she knew she’d never be able to make herself leave Daniel. If she went first to the cemetery, her desire to see Daniel again would make her bold enough to say to Cam the things she’d been too nervous to say before. Before everything had gotten so scary and out of control last night.
Pushing through her fears about seeing him, Luce started across the commons toward the cemetery. The early evening was warm, and the air was sticky with humidity. It was going to be one of those sweltering nights when the breeze from the distant sea never got strong enough to cool things down. There was no one out on campus, and the leaves on all the trees were still. Luce could have been the only thing at Sword & Cross that was actually on the move. Everyone else would be released from class, herded into the dining hall for dinner, and Penn—and possibly others—would be wondering about Luce by now.
Cam was leaning up against the lichen-speckled gates of the cemetery when she got there. His elbows rested on the carved vine-shaped iron posts, his shoulders hunched forward. He was kicking up a dandelion with the steel tip of his thick black boot. Luce couldn’t remember seeing him look so internally consumed—most of the time Cam seemed to have a keen interest in the world around him.
But this time, he didn’t even look up at her until she was directly in front of him. And when he did, his face was ashen. His hair was flat against his head and she was surprised to notice that he could have used a shave. His eyes rolled over her face, as if focusing on each of her features required effort. He looked wrecked, not beaten up from the fight, but simply as if he hadn’t slept i
n a few days.
“You came.” His voice was hoarse, but his words ended with a small smile.
Luce cracked her knuckles, thinking he wouldn’t be smiling much longer. She nodded and held up his letter.
He reached for her hand, but she pulled her arm away, pretending she needed the hand to brush the hair from her eyes.
“I figured you’d be mad about last night,” he said, pushing himself away from the gate. He took a few steps into the cemetery, then sat cross-legged on a short gray marble bench among the first row of graves. He wiped the dirt and brittle leaves away, then patted the empty spot next to him.
“Mad?” she said.
“That’s generally why people storm out of bars.”
She sat down facing him, cross-legged too. From up here, she could see the top branches of the enormous old oak down in the center of the graveyard, where she and Cam had had their afternoon picnic what seemed like a very long time ago.
“I don’t know,” Luce said. “More like baffled. Confused, maybe. Disappointed.” She shuddered at the memory of that seedy guy’s eyes when he grabbed her, the sick flurry of Cam’s fists, the deep black roof of shadow … “Why did you take me there? You know what happened when Jules and Phillip snuck out.”
“Jules and Phillip were morons whose every move was monitored by tracking wristbands. Of course they were going to get busted.” Cam smiled darkly, but not at her. “We’re nothing like them, Luce. Believe me. And besides, I wasn’t trying to get in another fight.” He rubbed his temples, and the skin around them bunched up, looking leathery and too thin. “I just couldn’t stand the way that guy talked to you, touched you. You deserve to be handled with the utmost care.” His green eyes widened. “I want to be the one to do it. The only one.”
She tucked her hair behind her ears and took a deep breath. “Cam, you seem like a really great guy—”
“Oh no.” He covered his face with his hand. “Not the let-him-down-easy speech. I hope you’re not going to say we should be friends.”
“You don’t want to be my friend?”
“You know I want to be much more than your friend,” he said, spitting out “friend” as if it were a dirty word. “It’s Grigori, isn’t it?”
She felt her stomach constrict. She guessed it wasn’t too hard to figure it out, but she’d been so wrapped up in her own feelings, she’d barely had time to consider what Cam thought about the two of them.
“You don’t really know either of us,” Cam said, standing and stepping away, “but you’re prepared to choose right now, huh?”
It was presumptuous of him to assume he was even still in the running. Especially after last night. That he could think there was some contest between him and Daniel.
Then Cam crouched before her on the bench. His face was different—pleading, earnest—as he cupped her hands in his.
Luce was surprised to see him so wound up. “I’m sorry,” she said, pulling back. “It just happened.”
“Exactly! It just happened. What was it, let me guess—last night he looked at you some new romantic way. Luce, you’re rushing into a decision before you even know what’s at stake. There could be … a lot at stake.” He sighed at the confused look on her face. “I could make you happy.”
“Daniel makes me happy.”
“How can you say that? He won’t even touch you.”
Luce closed her eyes, remembering the tangle of their lips last night on the beach. Daniel’s arms encircling her. The whole world had felt so right, so harmonious, so safe. But when she opened her eyes now, Daniel was nowhere to be seen.
It was only Cam.
She cleared her throat. “Yes, he will. He does.”
Her cheeks felt warm. Luce pressed a cool hand to them, but Cam didn’t notice. His hands curled into fists.
“Elaborate.”
“The way Daniel kisses me is none of your business.” She bit her lip, furious. He was mocking her.
Cam chuckled. “Oh? I can do just as good as Grigori,” he said, picking up her hand and kissing the back of it before abruptly letting it drop back at her side.
“It was nothing like that,” Luce said, turning away.
“How about this, then?” His lips grazed her cheek before she could shrug him off.
“Wrong.”
Cam licked his lips. “You’re saying Daniel Grigori actually kissed you the way you deserve to be kissed?” Something in his charcoal eyes was beginning to look baleful.
“Yes,” she said, “the best kiss I’ve ever had.” And even though it had been her only real kiss, Luce knew that if you asked her again in sixty years, a hundred years, she would say the same thing.
“And yet here you are,” Cam said, shaking his head in disbelief.
Luce didn’t like what he was insinuating. “I’m only here to tell you the truth about me and Daniel. To let you know that you and I—”
Cam burst out laughing, a loud, hollow cackle that echoed across the empty cemetery. He laughed so long and hard, he gripped his sides and wiped a tear away from his eyes.
“What’s so funny?” Luce said.
“You have no idea,” he said, still laughing.
Cam’s you-wouldn’t-get-it tone wasn’t far off from the one Daniel had used last night when, almost inconsolable, he kept repeating, “It’s impossible.” But Luce’s reaction to Cam was entirely different. When Daniel walled her out, she felt even more of a pull toward him. Even when they argued, she yearned to be with Daniel more than she ever wanted to be with Cam. But when Cam made her feel like an outsider, she was relieved. She didn’t want to be any closer to him.
In fact, right now she felt too close.
She’d had enough. Gritting her teeth, she rose and stalked toward the gates, angry at herself for wasting even this much time.
But Cam caught up to her, swinging around in front of her and blocking her exit. He was still laughing at her, biting his lip, trying not to. “Don’t go,” he chuckled.
“Leave me alone.”
“Not yet.”
Before she could stop him, Cam caught her up in his arms and bent her backward into a sweeping dip so that her feet came off the ground. Luce cried out, struggling for a moment, but he smiled.
“Let go of me!”
“Grigori and I have fought a pretty fair fight so far, don’t you think?”
She glared at him, her hands pushing against his chest. “Go to Hell.”
“You’re misunderstanding,” he said, drawing her face closer to his. His green eyes bored down at her and she hated that a part of her still felt swept away in his gaze.
“Look, I know things have gotten crazy the past couple of days,” he said in a hushed voice, “but I care for you, Luce. Deeply. Don’t pick him before you let me have one kiss.”
She felt his arms tighten around her, and suddenly, she was scared. They were out of sight of the school, and no one knew where she was.
“It won’t change anything,” she told him, trying to sound calm.
“Humor me? Pretend I’m a soldier and you’re granting my dying wish. I promise, just one kiss.”
Luce’s mind went to Daniel. She pictured him waiting at the lake, keeping his hands busy skipping stones over the water, when he should have had her in his arms. She didn’t want to kiss Cam, but what if he really wouldn’t let her go? The kiss could be the smallest, most insignificant thing. The easiest way to break loose. And then she’d be free to get back to Daniel. Cam had promised.
“Just one kiss—” she started, but then his lips were on hers.
Her second kiss in as many days. Where Daniel’s kiss had been hungry and almost desperate, Cam’s kiss was gentle and too perfect, as if he had been practicing on a hundred girls before her.
And yet she felt something in her rise up, wanting her to respond, taking hold of the anger she’d felt only seconds before and blowing it away into nothing. Cam still had her tilted back in his arms, balancing all her weight on his knee. She felt safe in his s
trong, capable hands. And she needed to feel safe. It was such a change from, well, every moment when she wasn’t kissing Cam. She knew that she was forgetting something, someone—who? she couldn’t remember. There was only the kiss, and his lips, and—
Suddenly, she felt herself falling. She slammed into the ground so hard the wind was knocked out of her. Raising herself up on her arms, she watched as, a few inches away, Cam’s face came into contact with the ground. She winced despite herself.
The early-evening sun cast a dusty light on two figures in the graveyard.
“How many times must you ruin this girl?” Luce heard the sad southern drawl.
Gabbe? She looked up, blinking into the setting sun.
Gabbe and Daniel.
Gabbe rushed over to help her to her feet, but Daniel wouldn’t even look her in the eye.
Luce cursed herself under her breath. She couldn’t figure out what was worse—that Daniel had just seen her kissing Cam, or that—she was sure—Daniel was going to fight Cam again.
Cam stood up and faced them, ignoring Luce completely. “All right, which one of you is it going to be this time?” he snarled.
This time?
“Me,” Gabbe said, stepping forward with her hands on her hips. “That first little love tap was all me, Cam honey. What you going to do about it?”
Luce shook her head. Gabbe had to be joking. Surely this was some kind of game. But Cam didn’t seem to think anything was funny. He bared his teeth and rolled up his sleeves, raising his fists and moving forward.
“Again, Cam?” Luce scolded him. “You haven’t gotten in enough fights already this week?” As if that weren’t enough, he was actually going to hit a girl.
He shot her a sideways smile. “Third time’s the charm,” he said, his voice dripping malice. He turned back just as Gabbe came at him with a high kick to the jaw.
Luce scurried backward as Cam fell. His eyes were pinched shut and he was clutching his face. Standing over him, Gabbe looked as unfazed as if she’d just pulled a perfectly baked peach cobbler from the oven. She glanced down at her nails and sighed.
