Shelby marched into the forest ahead of Luce, shoving through the long, clawlike leaves of the vine maple trees among the redwoods and stopping under a giant fern.
It was dark under the redwoods, and Luce was glad of Shelby's company. She thought back to the other day, how quickly time had passed while she was harassing that shadow, getting nowhere. Suddenly she felt overwhelmed.
"If we can nd and catch an Announcer, and if we can even get a glimpsing to work," she said, "what do you think the chances are that the Announcer will have anything to show about me and Daniel? What if we just get another awful Bible scene like we saw in class?"
Shelby shook her head. "Daniel I don't know about. But if we can summon and then glimpse an Announcer, then it will have to do with you. They're supposed to be summoner-speci c--though you won't always be interested in what they have to say. Like how you get junk mail mixed with your important mail, but it's still addressed to you."
"How can they be ... summoner-speci c? That would mean Francesca and Steven were at the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah."
"Well, yeah. They have been around forever. Rumor has it their r?sum?s are pretty impressive." Shelby stared oddly at Luce. "Put your bug eyes back in your head. How else do you think they scored jobs at Shoreline? This is a really good school."
Something dark and slippery moved over them: a heavy cloak of an Announcer stretching sleepily in the lengthening shadows from the limb of a redwood tree.
"There." Luce pointed, not wasting any time. She swung herself up onto a low branch that stretched behind Shelby. Luce had to balance on one foot and lean out all the way to the left just to graze the Announcer with her ngertips. "I can't reach it."
Shelby picked up a pinecone and pitched it at the center of the shadow where it draped down from the branch.
"Don't!" Luce whispered. "You'll piss it o ."
"It's pissing me o , being so coy. Just hold out your hand."
Grimacing, Luce did as she was told.
She watched the pinecone ricochet o the shadow's exposed side, then heard the soft swishing sound that used to ll her ears with dread. One side of the shadow was sliding, very slowly, away from the branch. It slipped o and landed across Luce's shaking extended arm. She pinched its edges with her ngers.
Luce hopped o the branch where she'd been standing and approached Shelby, her cold, musty o ering in her hands.
"Here," Shelby said. "I'll take half and you take half, just like we saw in class. Ew, it's squishy. Okay ... loosen your grip, he's not going anywhere. Let him just kind of chill and take shape."
It seemed like a long time passed before the shadow did anything at all. Luce felt almost like she was playing with the old Ouija board she'd had as a kid. An inexplicable energy on the tips of her ngers. The feeling of slight, continual movement before she could see any di erence in the Announcer's shape.
Then there was a whoosh: It was contracting, folding slowly in on its dark self. Soon the whole thing had taken on the size and shape of a large box. It hovered just above their ngertips.
"Do you see that?" Shelby gasped. Her voice was almost inaudible over the whooshing sound of the shadow. "Look, there in the middle."
As had happened during class, a dark veil seemed to lift o the Announcer, revealing a shocking burst of color. Luce shielded her eyes, watching as the bright light seemed to settle back inside the shadow screen, into a foggy out-of-focus image. Then, nally, into distinct shapes in muted colors.
They were looking at a living room. The back of a blue plaid recliner with the footrest kicked up and a badly fraying bottom corner. An old wood-paneled television airing a rerun of Mork & Mindy with the volume o . A fat Jack Russell terrier curled on a round patchwork rug.
Luce watched a swinging door push open from what looked like a kitchen. A woman, older than Luce's grandmother had been when she died, walked through. She was wearing a pink-and-white patterned dress, heavy white tennis shoes, and thick glasses on a string around her neck. She was carrying a tray of cut fruit.
"Who are these people?" Luce wondered aloud.
When the old woman put down the tray on the co ee table, a liver-spotted hand extended from around the chair and selected a chunk of banana.
Luce leaned in to see more clearly, and the focus of the image shifted with her. Like a 3-D panorama. She hadn't even noticed the old man sitting in the recliner. He was frail, with a few thin patches of white hair and age spots all over his forehead. His mouth was moving, but Luce couldn't hear a thing. A row of framed pictures lined the mantel of the replace.
The whooshing in Luce's ears got louder, so loud it made her wince. Without her doing anything other than wonder about those pictures, the Announcer's image zoomed in. It left Luce with a feeling of whiplash--and an extreme close-up of one framed photograph.
A thin gold-plated frame around a smudged glass plate. Inside, the small photograph had a ne scalloped border around a yellowing black-and- white image. Two faces in the photograph: Hers and Daniel's.
Holding her breath, she studied her own face, which looked just a little younger than it did now. Dark shoulder-length hair set in pincurls. A white blouse with a Peter Pan collar. A wide A-line skirt brushing the middles of her calves. White-gloved hands, holding Daniel's. He was looking directly at her, smiling.
The Announcer started vibrating, then quaking; then the image inside started to icker and fade away.
"No," Luce called, ready to lunge inside. Her shoulders connected with the edge of the Announcer, but that was as far as she got. A brush of bitter cold pushed her back and left her skin feeling damp. A hand clamped around her wrist.