Luce was in here for.
"Heads up!" a voice called out. That had always been Luce's least favorite thing to hear. Sporting equipment of all sorts had a funny way of careening right at her. She winced, looking up directly into the sun. She couldn't see anything and didn't even have time to cover her face before she felt a smack against the side of her head and heard a loud
thwunk ringing in her ears. Ouch.
Roland's soccer ball.
"Nice one!" Roland called out as the ball sailed directly back to him. Like she'd intended to do that. She rubbed her forehead and took a few wobbly steps. A hand around her wrist. A spark of heat that made her gasp. She looked down to see tan fingers around her arm, then up into Daniel's deep gray eyes. "You okay?" he asked.
When she nodded, he raised an eyebrow. "If you wanted to play soccer, you could have said so," he said.
"I'd have been happy to explain some of the finer points of the game, like how most people use less delicate body parts of their body to return a kick."
He let go of her wrist, and Luce thought he was reaching toward her, to stroke the stinging side of her face. For a second, she hung there, holding her breath. Then her chest collapsed when Daniel's hand swept back to brush his own hair from his eyes.
That was when Luce realized Daniel was making fun of her.
And why shouldn't he? There was probably an imprint of a soccer ball on the side of her face.
Molly and Gabbe were still staring - and now Daniel - with their arms crossed over their chests.
"I think your girlfriend's getting jealous," Luce said, gesturing at the pair.
"Which one?" he asked.
"I didn't realize they were both your girlfriends."
"Neither one is my girlfriend," he said simply. "I don't have a girlfriend. I meant, which one did you think was my girlfriend?"
Luce was stunned. What about that whole whispered conversation with Gabbe? What about the way the girls were looking at them right now? Was Daniel lying? He was looking at her funny. "Maybe you hit your head harder than I thought," he said. "Come on, let's take a walk, get you some air."
Luce tried to locate the snide joke in Daniel's latest suggestion. Was he saying she was an airhead who needed more air? No, that didn't even make sense. She glanced at him. How could he look so simply sincere? And just when she was getting so used to the Grigori brush-off.
"Where?" Luce asked cautiously. Because it would be too easy to feel gleeful right now about the fact that Daniel didn't have a girlfriend, about him wanting to go somewhere with her. There had to be a catch.
Daniel merely squinted at the girls across the field. "Someplace where we won't be watched."
Luce had told Penn she'd meet her at the bleachers, but there'd be time to explain later, and of course Penn would understand. Luce let Daniel lead her past the scrutinizing gaze of the girls and the little grove of half-rotted peach trees, around the back of the old church-gym. They were coming up on a forest of gorgeously twisted live oak trees, which Luce never would have guessed were tucked away there. Daniel looked back to make sure she was keeping up. She smiled as though following him were no big deal, but as she picked her way among the gnarled old roots, she couldn't help thinking about the shadows.
Now she was going into the bosky woods, the dark under the thick foliage pierced every so often by a small shaft of sunlight from above. The stench of rich, dank mud filled the air, and Luce suddenly knew there was water nearby.
If she were the kind of person who prayed, this would be when she would pray for the shadows to stay away, just for this sliver of time she had with Daniel, so he wouldn't have to see how crazy she sometimes got. But Luce had never prayed. Didn't know how. Instead, she just crossed her fingers.
"The forest opens right up here," Daniel said. They'd reached a clearing, and Luce gasped in wonder.
Something had changed while she and Daniel had been walking through the forest, something more than just the mere distance from phlegm-colored Sword & Cross. Because when they came out of the trees and stood on this high red rock, it was like they were standing in the middle of a postcard, the kind that spun around a metal rack in a small-town drugstore, a dreamy image of an idyllic South that didn't exist anymore. Every color Luce's eyes fell on was brilliant, brighter than it had seemed just a moment before.
From the crystal blue lake just below them to the dense emerald forest surrounding it. Two seagulls banked in the clear sky overhead. When she stood on her toes, she could see the beginnings of a tawny-colored salt marsh, one she knew gave way to the white foam of the ocean somewhere on the invisible horizon.
She glanced up at Daniel. He looked brilliant, too. His skin was golden in this light, his eyes almost like rain. The feel of them on her face was a heavy, remarkable thing.
"What do you think?" he asked. He seemed so much more relaxed now that they were away from everyone else.
"I've never seen anything so wonderful," she said, scanning the pristine surface of the lake, feeling the urge to pe in. About fifty feet out on the water was a large, flat, moss-covered rock. "What's that?"
"I'll show you," Daniel said, kicking off his shoes. Luce tried unsuccessfully not to stare when he tugged his T-shirt over his head, exposing his muscled torso. "Come on," he said, making her realize how rooted to the spot she must have looked. "You can swim in that," he added, pointing at her gray tank top and cutoffs. "I'll even let you win this time."
She laughed. "Versus what? All those times I let you win?"