“But I love Francesca, too.” Dawn swatted Jasmine, then turned to Luce, her dark eyes smiling. “I defy you not to develop a couples crush on them.”
“Wait.” Luce paused. “The Silver Fox and Francesca are our teachers? And you call them by their first names? And they’re together? Who teaches what?”
“We call the whole morning block humanities,” Jasmine said, “though angelics would be more appropriate. Frankie and Steven teach it jointly. Part of the deal here, sort of yin and yang. You know, so none of the students get … swayed.”
Luce bit her lip. They’d reached the top of the stairs and were standing in a crowd of students on the deck. Everyone else was starting to amble through the sliding glass doors. “What do you mean, ‘swayed’?”
“They’re both fallen, of course, but have picked different sides. She’s an angel, and he’s more of a demon.” Dawn spoke nonchalantly, as if she were talking about the difference between frozen yogurt flavors. Seeing Luce’s eyes bulge, she added, “It’s not like they can get married or anything—though that would be the hottest wedding ever. They just sort of … live in sin.”
“A demon is teaching our humanities class?” Luce asked. “And that’s okay?”
Dawn and Jasmine looked at each other and chuckled. “Very okay,” Dawn said. “You’ll come around to Steven. Come on, we gotta go.”
Following the flow of other kids, Luce entered the classroom. It was broad and had three shallow risers, with desks on them, that led down to a couple of long tables. Most of the light came in through skylights. The natural lighting and high ceilings made the room seem even bigger than it was. An ocean breeze blew in through the open doors and kept the air comfortable and fresh. It could not have been more different from Sword & Cross. Luce thought she could almost have liked Shoreline, if it hadn’t been for the fact that her whole reason for being here—the most important person in her life—was missing. She wondered if Daniel was thinking about her. Did he miss her the way she missed him?
Luce chose a desk close to the windows, between Jasmine and a cute boy-next-door kind of guy who was wearing cutoffs, a Dodgers cap, and a navy sweatshirt. A few girls stood clustered near the door to the bathroom. One of them had curly hair and boxy purple glasses. When Luce saw the girl’s profile, she nearly bolted from her seat.
Penn.
But when the girl turned toward Luce, her face was a little squarer and her clothes were a little tighter and her laugh was a little louder and Luce almost felt like her heart was wilting. Of course it wasn’t Penn. It never would be, ever again.
Luce could feel the other kids glancing at her—some of them outright stared. The only one who didn’t was Shelby, who gave Luce an acknowledging nod.
It wasn’t a huge class, just twenty desks arranged on the risers, facing the two long mahogany tables at the front. There were two dry-erase white boards behind the tables. Two bookshelves on either side. Two trash cans. Two desk lamps. Two laptops, one on each table. And the two teachers, Steven and Francesca, huddled near the front of the room, whispering.
In a move Luce wasn’t expecting, they turned and stared at her too, then glided to the tables. Francesca sat on top of one, with one leg tucked beneath her and one of her high heels skimming the wood floor. Steven leaned against the other table, opened a heavy maroon leather portfolio, and rested his pen between his lips. For an older man, he was good-looking, sure, but Luce almost wished he weren’t. He reminded her of Cam, and of how deceptive a demon’s charm could be.
She waited for the rest of the class to take out textbooks she didn’t have, to plunge into some reading assignment she’d be behind on, so she could surrender to feeling overwhelmed and just daydream about Daniel.
But none of that happened. And most of the kids were still sneaking glances at her.
“By now you must all have noticed that we’re welcoming a new student.” Francesca’s voice was low and honey-thick, like a jazz singer’s.
Steven smiled, showing a flash of brilliant white teeth. “Tell us, Luce, how are you liking Shoreline so far?”
The color drained from Luce’s face as the other students’ desks made scraping sounds on the floor. They were actually turning in their seats to focus on her.
She could feel her heart race and her palms grow damp. She shrank in her seat, wishing she were just a normal kid at a normal school back home in normal Thunderbolt, Georgia. At times over the past few days, she’d wished she’d never seen a shadow, never gotten into the kind of trouble that left her dear friends dead, or got her involved with Cam, or made it impossible for Daniel to be near her. But there was where her anxious, tumbling mind always came to a full stop: How to be normal and still have Daniel? Who was so very far from normal. It was impossible. So here she was, sucking it up.
“I guess I’m still getting used to Shoreline.” Her voice wobbled, betraying her, echoing off the sloped ceiling. “But it seems all right so far.”
Steven laughed. “Well, Francesca and I thought to help you get used to it, we’d change gears from our usual Tuesday-morning student presentations—”
From across the room, Shelby hooted, “Yes!” and Luce noticed that she had a stack of notecards on her desk and a big poster at her feet that read APPARITIONS AIN’T SO BAD. So Luce had just gotten her out of a presentation. That had to be worth something in roommate points.
“What Steven means,” Francesca chimed in, “is that we’re going to play a game, as an icebreaker.” She slid down from her table and walked around the room, heels clicking as she distributed a sheet of paper to each student.
Luce expected the chorus of groans that those words usually evoked from a classroom of teens. But these kids all seemed so agreeable and well-adjusted. They were actually just going to go with the flow.
When she laid the sheet on Luce’s desk, Francesca said, “This should give you an idea of who some of your classmates are, and what goals we work toward in this class.”
Luce looked down at the paper. Lines had been drawn on the page, dividing it into twenty boxes. Each box contained a phrase. It was a game she’d played before, once at summer camp in western Georgia as a little kid, and again a couple of times in her classes at Dover. The object was to go around the room and match a different student with each phrase. Mostly, she was relieved; there were definitely more embarrassing icebreakers out there. But when she looked more closely at the phrases—expecting normal things like “Has a pet turtle” or “Wants to go skydiving someday”—she was a little unnerved to see things like “Speaks more than eighteen languages” and “Has visited the outerworld.”
It was about to be painfully obvious that Luce was the only non-Nephilim in the class. She thought back to the nervous waiter who had brought her and Shelby their breakfast. Maybe Luce would be more comfortable among the scholarship kids. Beaker Brady didn’t even know he’d dodged a bullet.
“If no one has questions,” Steven said from the front of the room, “you’re welcome to begin.”
“Go outside, enjoy yourselves,” Francesca added. “Take all the time you need.”
Luce followed the rest of the students onto the deck. As they walked toward the railing, Jasmine leaned over Luce’s shoulder, pointing a green-lacquered fingernail at one of the boxes. “I have a relative who’s a full-blooded cherub,” she said. “Crazy old Uncle Carlos.”