was relieved; there were de nitely 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 skyping 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 ngernail at one of the boxes. "I have a relative who's a full-blooded cherub," she said. "Crazy old Uncle Carlos."
Luce nodded, like she knew what that meant, and jotted in Jasmine's name.
"Ooh, and I can levitate," Dawn chirped, pointing to the top left corner of Luce's page. "Not, like, a hundred percent of the time, but usually after I've had my co ee."
"Wow." Luce tried not to stare--it didn't seem like Dawn was making a joke. She could levitate?
Trying not to show that she was feeling more and more inadequate, Luce searched the page for something, anything she knew anything about.
Has experience summoning the Announcers.
The shadows. Daniel had told her the proper name for them that last night at Sword & Cross. Though she'd never actually "summoned" them --they'd always just shown up--Luce did have some experience.
"You can write me in there." She pointed to the bottom left corner of the paper. Both Jasmine and Dawn looked up at her, a little awed but not disbelieving, before moving on to ll in the rest of their sheets. Luce's heart slowed down a little. Maybe this wasn't going to be so bad.
In the next few minutes she met Lilith, a prim redhead who was one of three Nephilim triplets ("You can tell us apart by our vestigial tails," she explained. "Mine's curly"); Oliver, a deep-voiced, squat boy who had visited the outerworld on summer vacation last year ("So totally overrated I can't even begin to tell you"); and Jack, who felt like he was on the cusp of being able to read minds and thought it would be all right if Luce wrote him down for that. ("I sense that you're okay with that, am I right?" He made a gun out of his ngers and clicked his tongue.) She had three boxes left when Shelby tugged the paper out of her hands.
"I can do both of these," she said, pointing at two of the boxes. "Which one do you want me for?"
Speaks more than eighteen languages or Has glimpsed a past life.
"Wait a minute," Luce whispered. "You've ... you can glimpse past lives?"
Shelby waggled her eyebrows at Luce and dashed her signature into the box, adding her name in the "eighteen languages" box for good measure. Luce stared at the paper, thinking about all her own past lives and how frustratingly o -limits they were to her. She had underestimated Shelby.
But her roommate was already gone. Standing in Shelby's place was the boy she'd sat next to inside the classroom. He was a good half foot taller than Luce, with a bright, friendly smile, a splash of freckles on his nose, and clear blue eyes. Something about him, even the way he was chewing on his pen, looked ... sturdy. Luce realized this was a strange word to describe someone she'd never spoken to, but she couldn't help it.
"Oh, thank God." He laughed, smacking his forehead. "The one thing I can do is the one thing you have left."
" `Can re ect a mirror image of self or others'?" Luce read slowly.
He tossed his head from side to side and wrote his name in the box. Miles Fisher. "Real impressive to someone like you, I'm sure."
"Um. Yeah." Luce turned away. Someone like her, who didn't even know what that meant.
"Wait, hey, where are you going?" He tugged her sleeve. "Uh-oh. You didn't catch the self-e acing joke?" When she shook her head, Miles's face fell. "I just meant, compared to everyone else in the class, I'm barely hanging on. The only person I've ever been able to re