remembered the day Francesca and Steven had glimpsed the Sodom and Gomorrah Announcer in front of the class. Afterward, the other students had reeled, but Luce kept thinking that whether or not they had glimpsed that gruesome scene didn't matter in the least: It would still have happened. Just like her past.
For the sakes of all her former selves, Luce couldn't turn away now. "Let's do it," she said to her friends.
Miles gave the girls a few minutes to get dressed, and they reconvened in the hallway. But then Shelby refused to go out to the forest where Luce had summoned the Announcers.
"Don't look at me like that. Dawn just got nabbed, and the woods are dark and creepy. I don't really want to be next, you know?"
That was when Miles insisted it would be good for Luce to try to practice summoning the Announcers somewhere new, like the dorm room.
"Just whistle and bring 'em running," he said. "Make those Announcers your bitches. You know you want to."
"I don't want them to start lurking around here, though," Shelby said, turning to Luce. "No o ense, but a girl likes her privacy."
Luce wasn't o ended. But it wasn't like the Announcers ever really stopped following her, regardless of when she summoned them. She didn't want the shadows dropping by the dorm room unannounced any more than Shelby did.
"The thing with the Announcers is demonstrating control. It's like training a new puppy. You just have to let it know who's boss."
Luce cocked her head at Miles. "Since when do you know so much useful stu about the Announcers?"
Miles blushed. "I may not always `apply myself' in class, but I am capable of a few things."
"So what? She just stands there and summons?" Shelby asked.
Luce stood on Shelby's rainbow-colored yoga mat in the center of the room and thought about how Steven had coached her. "Let's open a window," she said.
Shelby hopped up to raise the sash of the broad window, letting in a fresh blast of chilling sea air. "Good idea. Makes it more hospitable."
"And cold," Miles said, pulling up the hood of his sweatshirt.
Then the two of them sat on the bed facing Luce, as if she were a performer on a stage.
She closed her eyes, trying not to feel on the spot. But instead of thinking of the shadows, instead of summoning them in her mind, all she could think of was Dawn and how terri ed she must have been the night before, how she must be feeling even now, back with her family. She'd bounced back after the freakish incident on the yacht, but this was so much more serious. And it was Luce's fault. Well, Luce's and Daniel's, for bringing her here.
He kept saying he was taking her to a safer place. Now Luce wondered whether all he was really doing was making Shoreline dangerous for everyone else.
A gasp from Miles made Luce open her eyes. She looked just above the window, where a large charcoal-gray Announcer was pressed against the ceiling. At rst it looked like it could have been a normal shadow, cast by the oor lamp Shelby moved into the corner when she did her Vinyasa. But then the Announcer began to spread across the ceiling until the room looked as if it had been given a deathly coat of paint, leaving a cold, foul-smelling wake over Luce's head. Out of her reach.
The Announcer she hadn't even summoned--the Announcer that could contain, well, anything--was taunting her.
She inhaled nervously, remembering what Miles had said about control. She concentrated so ercely that her brain began to hurt. Her face was red and her eyes were strained to the point where she was going to have to just give up. But then:
The Announcer buckled, sliding down to Luce's feet like a thick bolt of dropped fabric. Squinting, she discerned a smaller, plumper brownish shadow hovering over the larger, darker one, tracing its movements, almost the way a sparrow might y closely in line with a hawk. What was this one after?
"Incredible," Miles whispered. Luce tried to let Miles's words sink in as a compliment. These things that had terrorized her all her life, that made "Incredible," Miles whispered. Luce tried to let Miles's words sink in as a compliment. These things that had terrorized her all her life, that made her miserable? That she had always feared? Now they served her. Which really was kind of incredible. It hadn't occurred to her until she'd seen the intrigue