Fallen - By Lauren Kate Page 0,94

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 andSlipping 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.
Chapter 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