who, Daniel? Because if you know the answer to that, feel free to clue me in." Her voice grew louder as frustration overtook the passion slipping through her ngers. "I'm on my own here, trying to gure out why. Trying to gure out what I'm doing here with all these ... when I'm not even ..."
"When you're not what?"
How had they gone so quickly from dancing on air to this?
"I don't know. I'm just trying to take it day by day. Make friends, you know? Yesterday I joined a club, and we're planning a yacht trip somewhere. Things like that." What she really wanted to tell him about were the shadows. And especially what she'd done in the woods. But Daniel had narrowed his eyes like she'd already done something wrong.
"You're not going on a yacht trip anywhere."
"What?"
"You'll stay right here on this campus until I say so." He exhaled, sensing her rising anger. "I hate giving you these rules, Luce, but ... I'm doing so much to keep you safe. I won't let anything happen to you."
"Literally." Luce gritted her teeth. "Good or bad or otherwise. Seems like when you're not around you don't want me doing anything at all."
"That's not true." He shook a nger at her. She'd never seen him lose his temper so quickly. Then he looked up at the sky, and Luce followed his gaze. A shadow zipped over their heads--like an all-black rework leaving a deadly, smoky tail. Daniel seemed to be able to read it instantly.
"I have to go," he said. "I have to go," he said.
"How shocking." She turned away. "Turn up out of nowhere, pick a ght, then duck out. This must be real, true love."
He grabbed her shoulders and shook them until she met his eyes. "It is true love," he said, with such desperation that Luce couldn't tell whether it chipped away at or added to the pain in her heart. "You know it is." His eyes burned violet--not with anger but with intense desire. The kind of look that made you love a person so much, you missed him even when he was standing right in front of you.
Daniel ducked his head to kiss her cheek, but she was too close to tears. Embarrassed, she turned away. She heard his sigh, and then: the beat of wings.
No.
When she whipped her head around, Daniel was soaring across the sky, halfway between the ocean and the moon. His wings were lit bright white under a moonbeam. A moment later, it was hard to tell him apart from any of the stars in the sky.
Chapter Five
FOURTEEN DAYS
During the night, a windless layer of fog moved in like an army, settling over the town of Fort Bragg. It didn't lift with the sunrise, and its gloom seeped into everything and everyone. So all day Friday in school, Luce felt like she was being dragged along by a slow-moving tide. The teachers were out of focus, noncommittal, and slow with their lectures. The students sat in a heap of lethargy, struggling to stay awake though the long, damp drone of the day.
By the time classes let out, the dreariness had penetrated Luce to her very core. She didn't know what she was doing at this school that wasn't really hers, in this temporary life that only highlighted her lack of a real, permanent one. All she wanted to do was crawl into her bottom bunk and sleep it all away--not just the weather or her long rst week at Shoreline, but also the argument with Daniel and the jumble of questions and anxieties that had shaken loose in her mind.
Sleep the night before had been impossible. In the darkest hours of the morning she'd stumbled alone back to her dorm room. She'd tossed and turned without ever really dozing o . Daniel's shutting her out no longer surprised her, but that didn't mean it had gotten any easier. And that insulting, chauvinistic order he'd given her to stay on the school grounds? What was this, the nineteenth century? It crossed her mind that maybe Daniel had spoken to her like that centuries ago, but--like Jane Eyre or Elizabeth Bennet--Luce was certain no former self of hers would ever have been cool with that. And she certainly wasn't now.
She was still angry and annoyed after class, moving through the fog toward the dorm. Her eyes were bleary and she was practically sleepwalking by the time her hand clasped her doorknob. Tumbling into the dim,