Torment by Lauren Kate Page B

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 fingers 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 off-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 reflect 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-effacing 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 reflect other than myself was my mom. Freaked my dad out for about ten seconds, but then it faded.”
    “Wait.” Luce blinked at Miles. “You made a mirror image of your mother?”
    “By accident. They say it’s easy to do with the people you, like, love.” He blushed, the faintest rosy pink across his cheekbones. “Now you’re going to think I’m some kind of mama’s boy. I just mean ‘easy’ is about where my powers end. Whereas you—you’re the famous Lucinda Price.” He waved his hands in a very masculine version of spirit fingers.
    “I wish everyone would stop saying that,” she snapped. Then, feeling rude, she sighed and leaned against the deck’s railing to look out at the water. It was just so hard to process all these hints that other people here knew more about her than she knew about herself. She didn’t mean to take it out on this guy. “I’m sorry, it’s just, I thought I was the only one barely hanging on. What’s your story?”
    “Oh, I’m what they call ‘diluted,’ ” he said, making exaggerated air quotes. “Mom has angel in her blood a few generations back, but all my other relatives are mortal. My powers are embarrassingly low-grade. But I’m here because my parents endowed the school with, um, this deck you’re standing on.”
    “Whoa.”
    “It’s really not impressive. My family’s obsessed with me being at Shoreline. You should hear the pressure I get at home to date a ‘nice Nephilim girl for once.’ ” Luce laughed—one of the first real laughs she’d had in days. Miles rolled his eyes good-naturedly. “So, I saw you having breakfast with Shelby this morning. She your roommate?”
    Luce nodded. “Speaking of nice Nephilim girls,” she joked.
    “Well, I know she’s kind of, um …” Miles hissed and made a clawing motion with one hand, causing Luce to crack up again. “Anyway, I’m not the star student here or anything, but I’ve been around a while, and half the time I still think this place is pretty crazy. So if you ever