"No one else appreciates my Lilith impersonation. That's all." Shelby straightened her spine, heaved her chest forward, and made the right side of her top lip quiver disapprovingly.
Shelby's Lilith impersonation had never failed to crack Luce up. But today all she could manage was a thin closed-mouth smile.
"Hmmm," Shelby said. "Not that you'd care what you missed at the party. I noticed Daniel ying away over the beach last night. You two must have had a lot to catch up on."
Shelby had seen Daniel? Why hadn't she mentioned it sooner? Could anyone else have seen him?
"We didn't even talk."
"That's hard to believe. He's usually so full of orders to give you--"
"Shelby, Miles kissed me," Luce interrupted. Her eyes were closed. For some reason, that made it easier to confess. "Last night. And Daniel saw everything. He took o before I could--"
"Yeah, that would do it." Shelby let out a low whistle. "This is kind of huge."
Luce's face burned with shame. Her mind couldn't shake the image of Daniel taking ight. It felt so nal.
"So is it, you know, over between you and Daniel?"
"No. Never." Luce couldn't even hear that phrase without shuddering. "I just don't know." "No. Never." Luce couldn't even hear that phrase without shuddering. "I just don't know."
She hadn't told Shelby the rest of what she'd glimpsed in the Announcer, that Daniel and Cam were working together. Were secret pals, as far as she could tell. Shelby wouldn't know who Cam was, anyway, and the history was way too complicated to explain. Besides, Luce wouldn't be able to stand it if Shelby, with her oh-so-deliberately-controversial views about angels and demons, tried to make a case that a partnership between Daniel and Cam wasn't that big a deal.
"You know Daniel's gonna be all screwed up over it right now. Isn't that Daniel's big thing--the undying devotion you two share?"
Luce sti ened in her white iron chair.
"I wasn't being sarcastic, Luce. So maybe, I don't know, Daniel's been involved with other people. It's all pretty nebulous. The take-home message, like I said before, is that there was never a question in his mind that you were the only one that mattered."
"That's supposed to make me feel better?"
"I don't claim to be in the business of making you feel better, I'm just trying to illustrate a point. For all Daniel's annoying aloofness--and there's plenty of it--the guy's clearly devoted. The real question here is: Are you? As far as Daniel knows, you could drop him as soon as someone else comes along. Miles has come along. And he's obviously a great guy. A little sappy for my taste, but--"
"I would never drop Daniel," Luce said aloud, desperately wanting to believe it.
She thought about the horror on his face the night they'd argued on the beach. She was stunned when he'd been so quick to ask: Are we breaking up? Like he suspected that was a possibility. Like she hadn't swallowed whole his entire insane story about their endless love when he'd told her under the peach trees at Sword & Cross. She had swallowed it, in one single believing gulp, ingesting all its ssures, too--the jagged pieces that made no sense but begged her to believe them at the time. Now, every day, another of them gnawed at her insides. She could feel the biggest one rising up in her throat:
"Most of the time, I don't even know why he likes me."
"Come on," Shelby groaned. "Do not be one of those girls. He's too good for me, wah wah wah. I'll have to punt you over to Dawn and Jasmine's table. That's their expertise, not mine."
"I don't mean it like that." Luce leaned in and dropped her voice. "I mean, ages ago, when Daniel was, you know, up there, he chose me. Me, out of everyone else on earth--"
"Well, there were probably a lot fewer options back then--Ouch!" Luce had swatted her. "Just trying to lighten the mood!"
"He chose me, Shelby, over some big role in Heaven, over some elevated position. That's pretty major, don't you think?" Shelby nodded. "There had to be more to it than just him thinking I was cute."
"But ... you don't know what it was?"
"I've asked, but he's never told me what happened. When I brought it up, it was almost like Daniel couldn't remember. And that's crazy, because it means we're both just going through the motions. Based on thousands of years of some fairy tale neither one of