Lilith didn't answer, but Cam could tell from the change in her expression that he'd said something right. She leaned in to the mic again. Her voice came soft and clear. "This one's called 'Exile,' " she said, and began to sing.
"Where love spurs me I must turn
My rhymes, my rhymes,
Which follow my afflicted mind
My mind, my mind.
What shall be last, what shall be first?
Shall I drown from this thirst?"
The song poured out of her like she'd been born to sing it. At the microphone, with her eyes closed, Lilith didn't seem so twisted by anger. There was the hint of the girl she'd once been, the girl Cam had fallen in love with.
The girl he was still in love with.
When she finished, Cam was trembling with emotion. Her song was a version of the one he'd been humming as he left Troy. She still knew it. Some remnant of their love story was still alive in her. Just as he'd hoped it would be.
Lilith's fingers lifted off the strings of her guitar. The audience was silent. She waited for applause, hope in her eyes.
But all she got was laughter.
"Your song sucks worse than you!" someone hollered, throwing an empty soda bottle on stage. It hit Lilith in the knees, and the hope in her eyes died.
"Cut it out!" Mr. Davison said, returning to the stage. He turned to Lilith. "Nice job."
But Lilith was rushing off the stage and out of the cafeteria. Cam ran after her, but she was too fast, and it was too dark outside to see where she had gone. She knew this place better than he did.
The door closed behind him, silencing the distant sound of another student reading poetry. He sighed and leaned against the stucco wall. He thought of Daniel, who had suffered through so many bleak periods when his longing for Luce consumed him, made him wish he could die and escape their curse, only to be rewarded with a single brush of her fingertips in the next life before she was gone again.
Is it worth it? Cam had often asked his friend.
Now Cam understood Daniel's unchanging answer. Of course it is, he'd say. It's the only thing that makes my existence worthwhile.
"Rookie mistake."
Cam turned his head and saw Luc emerge from the shadows.
"What?" Cam muttered.
"Getting cocky on the first day." Lucifer snarled. "We've got two more weeks together, and there are so many ways for you to lose."
Cam was feeling far from cocky. If the devil got his way, Cam wasn't the only one who would lose.
"Up your game at any time," he told Lucifer through his teeth. "I'm ready."
"We'll see how ready you are," Lucifer snickered just before he disappeared, leaving Cam alone.
Approximately 1000 BCE
In the moonlight, the blond boy dove into the Jordan River. His name was Dani, and though he had been in the village for only a month, his loveliness was already legendary from here to southern Beer-sheba.
From the banks of the river, a dark-haired girl watched him, fingering her necklace. Tomorrow she would turn seventeen.
And--out of sight--Cam was watching her. She seemed more beautiful now that she'd fallen for the night swimmer. Of course, Cam knew what the girl's fate would be, but nothing could stop her from loving Dani. Her love, Cam thought to himself, was pure.
"He's like a religion," a soft voice said from behind him. He turned to find a stunning redhead. "She is devoted to him."
Cam stepped toward the girl on the riverbank. He had never seen a mortal like her. Her waist-length red hair shimmered like a garnet. She was as tall as he was and graceful even standing still. Freckles kissed her slender shoulders and her smooth cheeks. He marveled at the intimacy in her blue eyes, as if the two of them were already complicit in some delightful brand of mischief. When she smiled, the tiny gap between her front teeth thrilled him in a way he'd never known.
"Do you know them?" Cam asked. This marvelous girl was only talking to him because she'd caught him watching Daniel and Lucinda.
Her laughter was clear as rainwater. "I grew up with Liat. And everyone knows Dani, though he only found our tribe near the end of the last moon. There is something unforgettable about him, don't you think?"
"Perhaps," Cam said. "If you like that type."
The girl studied Cam. "Did you travel here on the giant star that fell through the sky last night?" she asked. "My sisters and I were sitting by the fire, and we thought the star bore the wondrous shape of a man."
Cam knew she was teasing, flirting, but he was impressed that she had guessed correctly. His wings had carried him here the night before; he'd been chasing the tail of a shooting star.
"What's your name?" he asked.
"My friends call me Lilith."
"What do your enemies call you?"
"Lilith," she growled, baring her teeth. Then she laughed.
When Cam laughed, too, Liat whirled around a few feet below. "Who's there?" she called from the bank into the darkness.
"Let's get out of here," Lilith said quietly to Cam, and held out her hand.
This girl was amazing. Fierce, full of life. He took her hand and let her lead him, a little worried he might do so forever, following wherever she went.
Lilith guided him to a bank of irises farther down the curving river, then reached inside the hollow trunk of an enormous carob tree and pulled out a lyre. Sitting among the flowers, she tuned the instrument by ear, so deftly Cam could see that she did it every day.
"Will you play for me?" Cam asked.
She nodded. "If you'll listen." Then she began to play a series of notes that entwined like lovers, curled like the bends in the river. Miraculously, her glorious, humming melody assumed the shape of words.
She sang a sad love song that made everything else vanish from his mind.
Wrapped in her song, he couldn't care less about Lucifer or the Throne, Daniel or Lucinda. There was only Lilith's breathtaking, lingering song.
Had she composed it here, among the irises by the river? Which came to her first, melody or lyric? Who had been the inspiration?
"You had your heart broken?" he asked her, hoping to mask his jealousy. He lifted the lyre from her hands, but his fingers were clumsy. He was unable to play anything remotely as beautiful as the music that had flowed from Lilith.
She leaned close to Cam, her eyelids lowering as she gazed at his lips. "Not yet." She reached for her instrument and strummed a twinkling chord. "No one's broken my lyre yet either, but a girl can't be too careful."
"Will you teach me to play?" he asked.
He wanted more time with Lilith--a strange feeling for him. He wanted to sit close and watch the sunlight sparkle in her hair, to memorize the graceful rhythms of her fingers as she pulled beauty from string and wood. He wanted her to look at him the way Liat looked at Dani. And he wanted to kiss those lips every day, all the time.
"Something tells me you already know how to play," she said. "Meet me here tomorrow night." She glanced at the sky. "When the moon sits in the same place, you sit in the same place."
Then she laughed, tucked her lyre into the tree, and skipped away, leaving a dark-haired, green-eyed angel falling madly in love for the very first time.
Thirteen Days
Lilith wasn't expecting her world to change after her performance at the open mic. And it didn't. Not really.
Life still sucked.
"Lilith?" Her mother screamed before Lilith's alarm clock had even gone off. "Where is my marigold cardigan with the cheetah-print elbow patches?"
Lilith groaned and buried her head beneath her pillow. "The fashion police swung by to pick it up yesterday," she muttered to herself. "It was a menace to society."
Three soft raps on her open door made Lilith's head pop up. That was her brother's knock.
"Hey, Bruce," she said to the bed-headed boy chewing on a frozen waffle.
"Mom thinks you stole her fancy knockoff yellow sweater. She's getting kinda Incredible Hulk-y about it."
&n
bsp; "Does she honestly think I would be caught dead in 'marigold'?" Lilith asked, and Bruce chuckled. "How you feeling, kid?"
Bruce shrugged. "Okay."
People often called Lilith's younger brother fragile because he was so thin and pale. But Bruce was the strongest force in Lilith's life. He was hopeful against all odds. He was fun just sitting around on the couch. He knew how to make her laugh. She wished he had a better life.
"Just okay?" Lilith asked, sitting up in bed.
Bruce shrugged. "Not great. My oxygen read was low today, so I have to stay home again." He sighed. "You're lucky."
A brutal laugh escaped Lilith's lips. "I'm lucky?"
"You get to go to school every day and hang out with your friends."
Bruce was so sincere Lilith couldn't even think of describing at length all the ways her entire school hated her.
"My only friend is Alastor," Bruce added, and at the sound of his name, the little dog trotted into Lilith's room. "And all he does is poop on the rug."
"Oh no you don't." Lilith scooped the mutt up before he ruined the pile of laundry she hadn't folded yet. Her one clean pair of jeans was in there. On her way into the bathroom, she touched her brother's shoulder. "Maybe your oxygen read will be better tomorrow. There's always hope."
As she got into the shower--the water was back on, but ever since the pipes had been shut off, the water smelled like rust--she thought about what she'd said to Bruce. Since when did Lilith believe there was always hope that tomorrow might be better?
She must have said it because she was trying to cheer him up. Her brother brought out the soft side no one else knew Lilith had. Bruce had such a good heart, and he so rarely got out of this house that only Lilith and her mom ever felt its warmth. He made it virtually impossible for Lilith to feel sorry for herself.
As Lilith got dressed, she closed her door and hummed the song she'd sung last night. It made her think, accidentally, about the longing in Cam's eyes when he'd handed her that guitar. As if she mattered to him. As if he needed her--or needed something from her.
Lilith scowled. Whatever Cam wanted from her, she wasn't going to give it up.
"Out of my way, poser." Some football jock with a square head knocked Lilith sideways into a row of beaten-up metal lockers. No one even blinked.
"Ow." Lilith rubbed her arm.
The fluorescent light above her flickered and buzzed. She kneeled on the snot-green tile to enter her combination and get her books for the day. A few lockers over, Chloe King was showing off the new angel-wing tattoo on her right shoulder to her latest boyfriend and as many of her friends as could crowd around.
When Chloe spotted Lilith, she smiled a big, suspicious smile. "Great performance last night, Lil!" she sang.
No way was Chloe actually being nice. Lilith knew she should exit the scene before this got nasty. "Um, thanks," she said, hurrying to unlock her locker.
"Oh my God, you thought I was being serious? That was a joke. Like your performance." Chloe burst out laughing and was joined by her entire clique.
"And...another awful day," Lilith muttered, turning back to her locker.
"Doesn't have to be."
Lilith looked up.
Luc, the intern she'd met the day before, was standing right over her. He leaned against the lockers, flipping a strange golden coin into the air.
"I heard you were always late to school," he said.
Lilith's chronic tardiness didn't strike her as fascinating gossip. Aside from Tarkenton, a few teachers, Jean, and now Cam, no one at Trumbull had ever cared to notice Lilith. "If you were expecting me to be late, why are you waiting for me before the bell?"
"Isn't that what one does in high school?" Luc glanced around the hallway. "Wait at a classmate's locker in hopes of being asked to prom?"
"You're not a classmate. And I hope you're not trying to get me to ask you to prom. Because you would be waiting a long time." Lilith opened her locker and tossed in some books. Luc rested his elbows on the locker door and stared down at her. She glared up at him, waiting for him to move so she could close it.
"Have you ever heard of the Four Horsemen?" he asked.
"Everyone's heard of them." Chloe King turned away from her admirers to face Luc. Silver eyeliner glittered against her flawless dark skin, and she wore her hair in a hundred tiny braids. She glanced down at Lilith. "Even trash like her."
"Since when do you listen to the Four Horsemen?" Lilith asked.
The Four Horsemen were haunting and profound. Their rock ballads were smart and sad, and every album was different from the last, so true fans could see a real evolution in their style. Their lead singer, Ike Ligon, wrote songs that were the reason Lilith wanted to be a musician. There was no way a girl like Chloe could relate to the pain they expressed in their music.
"It's cruel to get her hopes up," Chloe said to Luc, and started humming the chorus of the Four Horsemen's latest single, "Sequins of Events."
Lilith shut her locker and stood. "Get my hopes up about what?"
"If you didn't skip school so often," Luc said to Lilith, "you might have heard the news."
"What news?" Lilith asked.
"The Four Horsemen are the closing band at prom," Chloe said. Behind her, her three girlfriends squealed. One of them had a soft guitar case slung over her shoulder, and Lilith realized these girls were probably in Chloe's band.
Lilith's blood drummed in her ears. "No way."
"I'm getting Ike's name tattooed right here." Chloe turned back to her boyfriend and his friends, undoing a button over her cleavage to show off her future ink site. "Right above my heart. See?"
The boys definitely saw.
"The Four Horsemen are coming to Crossroads?" Lilith said. "Why?"
Chloe shrugged, as if she couldn't imagine an amazing band not wanting to visit their dismal town. "They're helping Tarkenton judge the Battle of the Bands."
"Wait. You mean the Four Horsemen are going to watch bands from this school perform?" Lilith asked quietly. "At prom?"
Luc nodded as if he understood how world-altering this news was. "I pitched the idea to Ike myself."
"You know Ike Ligon?" Lilith blinked at Luc.
"We were texting last night," Luc said. "I hope this doesn't embarrass you, but your performance at the open mic got me thinking about how amazing it would be for the Four Horsemen to perform a song written by a Trumbull student."
Luc had been there last night? Lilith was about to ask why, but all that came out of her mouth was, "Whoa." It had finally hit her: The Four Horsemen were going to be here, in Crossroads. At Trumbull. This was the closest she'd ever come to fangirling in public.
"Ike loved the idea," Luc said. "Starting today, we're accepting lyrics, even MP3s of student-written material, and Ike will sing the winning song to close out the prom."
"Daddy thinks it's a way to make prom more inclusive," Chloe added. "Except for freaks like you."
But Lilith was barely listening to Chloe. In her mind, she imagined Ike Ligon's scruffy face lighting up at her lyrics. For a split second she even imagined meeting him, and soon her fantasy had flown her to a real recording studio, with Ike producing her first album.
Chloe squinted at Lilith. "I'm sorry. Are you, like, imagining one of your songs getting picked?" Chloe turned back to her friends and laughed.
Lilith felt herself flush. "I don't--"
"You don't even have a band," Chloe said. "Whereas mine already has three singles Ike is going to love." She slammed her locker. "It will be so amazing to be prom queen and win the battle and have the Four Horsemen cover one of my songs."
"Don't you mean one of our songs?" the girl with the guitar asked Chloe.
"Sure," Chloe said with a snort. "Whatever. Let's go." She snapped her fingers and started down the hallway, her friends nipping at her heels.
"She's not going to win," Luc whispered in Lilith's ear as Chloe walked away.
"She wins everything," Lilith murmured as she slung her
backpack over her shoulder.
"Not this." Something in Luc's tone made Lilith stop and turn around. "You have a real shot at winning, Lilith, only...Never mind."
"What?"
Luc frowned. "Cam." He glanced at the other students flowing past them toward their classes. "I know he pressured you to start a band with him yesterday. Don't do it."
"I wasn't planning to," Lilith said. "But why do you care?"
"You don't know Cam like I do."
"No," Lilith agreed. "But I don't need to know him to know I hate him." Saying it out loud made her realize how strange it sounded. She did hate Cam, and she didn't even know why. He hadn't done anything to her, and yet the thought of him made her tense up and want to break something.
"Don't tell anyone I told you this"--Luc leaned in--"but a while back, Cam was in a band with this chick singer--"
"Chick singer?" Lilith narrowed her eyes. Guys sucked.
"Female vocalist, I mean," Luc said with a slight eye roll. "She wrote all the songs. And she was totally in love with him."
Lilith wasn't interested in Cam, but it wasn't a huge surprise that other girls were. She got it: Cam was sexy and magnetic, but he wasn't her type. When he turned his charm on her, it only made Lilith despise him more.
"Who cares?" she asked.
"You should," Luc replied. "Especially if you're going to get into bed with him--musically speaking."
"I'm not getting into bed with Cam in any sense," Lilith said. "I just want to be left alone."
"Good," Luc said with a cryptic smile. "Because Cam is...how should I put this? He's more the love-'em-and-leave-'em type."
Lilith thought she might throw up. "So what?"
"So one day, after things had been going so well--or at least so this young girl thought," Luc said, "Cam just disappeared. No one heard from him for months. Though we did hear of him, eventually. You remember that song 'Death of Stars'?"
"By Dysmorphia?" Lilith nodded. She'd only ever heard that one single, but she'd loved it. "It was never not on the radio last summer."
"That's because of Cam." Luc frowned. "He stole the girl's lyrics, claimed them as his own, and sold the song to Lowercase Records."
"Why would he do that?" Lilith said. She thought back to that moment the day before when he'd gently coaxed her from paralyzing stage fright into song. She loathed him, and yet...that had been one of the nicest things anyone had ever done for her.