Unforgiven (4 page)

“Right, Lilith?” Mr. Davidson asked, making Lilith flinch. She shoved the note under her desk so she wouldn't get caught.

“Could you say that again?” Lilith asked. She really did not want to piss off Mr. Davidson. Poetry was the only class she liked, mostly because she wasn't failing it, and Mr. Davidson was the only teacher she'd ever met who seemed to enjoy his job. He'd even liked some of the song lyrics Lilith had turned in as poetry assignments. She still had the loose-leaf paper on which Mr. Davidson had written simply
Wow!
beneath the lyrics for a song she called “Exile.”

“I said you've signed up for the open mic, I hope?” Davidson asked.

“Yeah, sure,” she mumbled, but she hadn't and hoped not to. She didn't even know when it was.

Davidson smiled, pleased and surprised. He turned to the rest of the class. “Then we all have something to look forward to!”

As soon as Davidson turned back to his board, Kimi Grace nudged Lilith. When Lilith met Kimi's dark, pretty eyes, she wondered for a moment if Kimi wanted to talk about the open mic, if the idea of reading in front of an audience made her nervous, too. But all Kimi wanted from Lilith was the folded note in her hand.

Lilith sighed and passed it to her.

She tried to skip gym to study for her bio test, but of course she got caught and ended up having to do laps in her gym uniform and her combat boots. The school didn't issue tennis shoes, and her mom never had the cash to get her any, so the sound of her feet, running circles around the other kids who were playing volleyball in the gym, was deafening.

Everyone was looking at her. No one had to say the word
freak
out loud. She knew they were thinking it.

By the time Lilith made it to biology, she was beat down and worn out. And that was where she found her mom, wearing a lime-green skirt, her hair in a tight bun, handing out the tests.

“Just perfect,” Lilith said with a groan.

“Shhhhhh!” a dozen students replied.

Her mom was tall and dark, with an angular beauty. Lilith was fair, her hair as red as the fire in the hills. Her nose was shorter than her mother's, her eyes and mouth less fine. Their cheekbones sat at different angles.

Her mom smiled. “Won't you please take a seat?”

As if she didn't even know her daughter's name.

But her daughter knew hers. “Sure thing, Janet,” Lilith said, dropping into an empty desk in the row nearest the door.

Her mom's angry gaze flicked to Lilith's face; then she smiled and looked away.

Kill them with kindness
was one of her mom's favorite sayings, at least in public. At home, she wore a harsher manner. All that her mom loathed about her life she blamed on Lilith, because Lilith had been born when her mom was nineteen and beautiful, on her way to a remarkable future. By the time Bruce came along, her mom had recovered enough from the trauma of Lilith to become an actual mother. The fact that their dad was out of the picture—no one knew where he was—gave her mother all the more reason to live for her son.

The first page of the biology test was a grid in which they were expected to map dominant and recessive genes. The girl to her left was rapidly filling in boxes. Suddenly Lilith could not remember a single thing she had learned all year. Her throat itched, and she could feel the back of her neck begin to sweat.

The door to the hallway was open. It had to be cooler out there. Almost before she knew what she was doing, Lilith was standing in the doorway, her backpack in one hand, her guitar case in the other.

“Leaving class without a hall pass is an automatic detention!” Janet called. “Lilith, put down that guitar and come back here!”

Lilith's experience with authority had taught her to listen carefully to what she was told—and then do the opposite.

She bumped down the hall and hit the door running.

Outside, the air was white and hot. Ash twisted down from the sky, drifting onto Lilith's hair and the brittle gray-green grass. The most inconspicuous way to leave school grounds was through one of the exits beyond the cafeteria, which led out to a small area of gravel where kids ate lunch when the weather was okay. The area was “secured” with a flimsy chain-link fence that was easy enough to climb over.

She made it over the fence, then stopped herself. What was she doing? Bailing on an exam proctored by her own mother was a horrible idea. There would be no escaping punishment. But it was too late now.

If she kept going this way, she'd end up back at her rusting, peeling eyesore of a house. No thanks. She gazed up at the few cars zipping across the highway, then turned and crossed the parking lot on the west side of campus, where the carob trees grew thick and tall. She entered the little forest and moved toward the shady, hidden edge of Rattlesnake Creek.

She ducked between two heavy branches on the bank and let out her breath. Sanctuary. Sort of. This was what passed for nature, anyway, in the tiny town of Crossroads.

Lilith rested her guitar case in its customary place in the crook of a tree trunk, kicked up her feet atop a heap of crisp orange leaves, and let the sound of the creek trickling in its cement bed relax her.

At school she'd seen pictures of “beautiful” places in her textbooks—Niagara Falls, Mount Everest, waterfalls in Hawaii—but she liked Rattlesnake Creek better than any of those because she didn't know a soul beside herself who thought this little grove of withered trees was beautiful.

She opened her case and took out the guitar. It was a dark orange Martin 000-45 with a crack slanted down its body. Someone on her street had thrown it away, and Lilith couldn't afford to be picky. Besides, she thought the flaw made the instrument sound richer.

Her fingers strummed the strings, and as chords filled the air, she felt an invisible hand smoothing her rough edges. When she played, she felt surrounded by friends she didn't have.

What would it be like to meet someone who actually shared her taste in music? she wondered. Someone who didn't think the Four Horsemen sang “like whipped dogs,” as a cheerleader had once described Lilith's favorite band. It was Lilith's dream to see them play live, but it was impossible to imagine actually attending a Four Horsemen show. They were too big to play Crossroads. Even if they did come here, how could Lilith afford a ticket when her family barely had enough money for food?

She didn't notice when she tumbled into a song. It wasn't fully formed yet—just her sorrow melding with her guitar—but a few minutes later, when she stopped singing, someone behind her started clapping.

“Whoa.” Lilith spun around to face a black-haired boy leaning against a nearby tree. He wore a leather jacket, and his black jeans disappeared into scuffed combat boots.

“Hey,” he said as if he knew her.

Lilith didn't answer. They
didn't
know each other. Why was he talking to her?

He studied her intensely, his gaze penetrating. “You're still beautiful,” he said softly.

“You're…really creepy,” Lilith replied.

“You don't recognize me?” He sounded disappointed.

Lilith shrugged. “I don't watch
America's Most Wanted.
”

The boy looked down, laughed, then nodded at her guitar. “Aren't you afraid of making that worse?”

She flinched, confused. “My song?”

“Your song was a revelation,” he said, pushing off the tree and walking toward her. “I mean that crack in your guitar.”

Lilith watched the easy way he moved—coolly, slowly, as if no one had ever made him feel insecure about anything in his life. He stopped right in front of her and slid a canvas bag from his shoulder. The strap landed on Lilith's boot and she stared at it, as if the boy had put it there, touching her, intentionally. She kicked it off.

“I'm careful.” She cradled her guitar. “Right now, the ratio of guitar to crack is just right. If it ever became more crack than guitar, then it would be worse.”

“Sounds like you have it all figured out.” The boy stared at her long enough for Lilith to grow uncomfortable. His eyes were a spellbinding green. He clearly wasn't from around here. Lilith didn't know if she'd ever met anyone who wasn't from Crossroads.

He was gorgeous and intriguing, and therefore too good to be true. She hated him immediately. “This is my spot. Find your own,” she said.

But instead of going away, he sat down. Next to her. Close. Like they were friends. Or more than friends. “Do you ever play with anyone else?” the boy asked.

He tilted his head, and Lilith caught a glimpse of a starburst tattoo on his neck. She realized she was holding her breath.

“What, music? Like a band?” She shook her head. “No. Not that it's any of your business.” This guy was invading her turf, interrupting the only real time she had to herself. She wanted him gone.

“What do you think of The Devil's Business?” he asked.

“What?”

“As a band name.”

Lilith's instinct was to get up and walk away, but nobody ever talked to her about music. “What kind of band is it?” she asked.

He picked up a carob leaf from the ground and studied it, twirling its stem between his fingers. “You tell me. It's your band.”

“I don't have a band,” she said.

He raised a dark eyebrow. “Maybe it's time you got one.”

Lilith had never dared allow herself to dream of what it might be like to play in an actual band. She shifted her weight to put more space between them.

“My name's Cam.”

“I'm Lilith.” She wasn't sure why telling this boy her name felt so monumental, but it did. She wished he weren't here, that he hadn't heard her play. She didn't share her music with anyone.

“I love that name,” Cam said. “It suits you.”

Now it really was time to leave. She didn't know what this guy wanted, but it definitely wasn't anything good. She picked up her guitar and got to her feet.

Cam went to stop her. “Where are you going?”

“Why are you talking to me?” she asked. Something about him made her blood boil. Why was he horning in on her private space? Who did he think he was? “You don't know me. Leave me alone.”

Lilith's bluntness usually made people uncomfortable. But not this guy. He laughed a little under his breath.

“I'm talking to you because you and your song are the most interesting things I've stumbled upon in ages.”

“Your life must be really boring,” Lilith said.

She started to walk away. She had to stop herself from looking back. Cam didn't ask where she was going or seem surprised that she was leaving in the middle of their conversation.

“Hey,” he called.

“Hey what?” Lilith didn't even turn around. Cam was the kind of boy who hurt girls foolish enough to let him. And she didn't need any more hurt in her life.

“I play guitar, too,” he said as she started back through the forest. “All we'd need is a drummer.”

C
am watched Lilith disappear into the woods of Rattlesnake Creek, suppressing an overwhelming urge to race after her. She was as magnificent as she had been in Canaan, with the same bright, expressive soul shining through her outer beauty. He was amazed, and massively relieved, because when he'd discovered the shocking news that Lilith's soul was not in Heaven, as he'd expected, but in Hell with Lucifer, Cam had imagined the worst.

It was Annabelle who'd finally told him. He'd gone to her thinking she could slip him some details about Lilith's state in Heaven. The pink-haired angel had shaken her head and looked so sad when she pointed down,
way
down, and said to him, “You didn't know?”

Cam burned with questions about how Lilith—pure, kind Lilith—had ended up in Hell, but the most important one was this: Was she still the girl he loved, or had Lucifer broken her?

Five minutes with her had brought him right back to Canaan, to the breathtaking love they'd once known. Being next to her had filled him with hope. Except—

There was something different about Lilith. She wore a razor-sharp bitterness like a coat of armor.

“Enjoying yourself?” The voice came from somewhere above him.

Lucifer.

“Thanks for the glimpse,” Cam said. “Now get her out of here.”

Warm laughter shook the trees. “You came to me begging to know the state of her soul,” Lucifer said. “I offered to let you visit her—but only because you're one of my favorites. Now why don't we talk business?”

Before Cam could respond, the ground dropped out from underneath him. His stomach hurtled upward, a sensation only the devil could trigger, and as Cam plunged down, he pondered the limits of angelic strength. He rarely questioned his instincts, but this instinct, to love Lilith and be loved by her again—powerful as it was—would either require the devil's clemency or would pit Cam directly against Lucifer. He unpinned his wings and looked down as a blue spot grew and sharpened beneath his feet. He landed on a linoleum floor.

The forest and Rattlesnake Creek were gone, and Cam found himself standing in the center of a food court in a deserted mall. He folded his wings against his sides and took a seat on a stool at an orange laminate table.

The food court atrium was huge, filled with a hundred ugly tables identical to his. It was impossible to tell where it began and where it ended. A long skylight spanned the ceiling, but it was so dirty, Cam could see nothing beyond the gray grime coating its glass. The floor was strewn with trash—empty plates, greasy napkins, crushed to-go cups and their chewed-on plastic straws. A stale odor hung in the air.

Around him were typical vendors—Chinese food, pizza, wings—but the stores were all run-down: the burger place was shuttered, the lights of the sandwich shop were burned out, and the glass case at the yogurt stop was smashed. Only one vendor's lights were on. Its awning was black with the word
Aevum
spelled out in bold gold letters.

A youthful figure with wavy auburn hair stood behind its counter, wearing a white T-shirt, jeans, and a flat white chef's hat. He was cooking something Cam couldn't see.

The devil's post-Fall guise could be anything, but Cam always recognized Lucifer by the searing heat that emanated from him. Though twenty feet separated them, it felt like Cam was standing right over a hot grill.

“Where are we?” Cam called.

Lucifer glanced over and gave Cam a strange, alluring smile. He had the face of a handsome, charismatic twenty-two-year-old, a dusting of freckles on his nose.

“This is Aevum—sometimes referred to as Limbo,” the devil said, picking up a large spatula. “It is a state of being between time and eternity, and I'm running a special for first-time customers.”

“I'm not hungry,” Cam said.

Lucifer's wild eyes sparkled as he used the spatula to flip something sizzling onto a brown cafeteria tray. Then he moved behind a beige cash register and raised the plastic divider separating the little kitchen from the food court.

He rolled his shoulders and released his wings, which were huge and stiff and greenish-gold, like ancient, tarnished jewelry. Cam held his breath against their repulsive, musty smell and the tiny black damned critters that scuttled and nested in the folds.

With the cafeteria tray held high, Lucifer approached Cam. He narrowed his eyes at Cam's wings, where the fissure of white still glowed against the gold. “White's not a good color on you. Something you want to tell me?”

“What's she doing in Hell, Lucifer?”

Lilith had been one of the most virtuous people Cam had ever known. He couldn't fathom how she could ever have become one of Lucifer's subjects.

“You know I can't betray a confidence.” Lucifer smiled and set the plastic tray down in front of Cam. On it was a tiny snow globe with a golden base.

“What is this?” he asked. Dark gray ash filled the snow globe. It fell ceaselessly, magically, nearly obscuring the tiny lyre floating inside.

“See for yourself,” Lucifer said. “Turn it over.”

He turned the globe upside down and found a little golden knob at its base. He wound it and let the lyre's music wash over him. It was the same melody he'd been humming since he flew away from Troy: Lilith's song. That was how he thought of it.

He closed his eyes and was back on the riverbank in Canaan, three millennia ago, listening to her play.

This cheap music-box version was more piercing than Cam could have anticipated. His fingers tensed around the globe. Then—

Pop.

The snow globe shattered. The music dwindled as blood trickled down Cam's palm.

Lucifer tossed him a reeking gray dishrag and gestured for him to clean up the mess. “Lucky for you I have so many.” He nodded at the table behind Cam. “Go ahead, try another. Each one's a little different!”

Cam set down the shards of the first snow globe, wiped his hands, and watched the cuts in his palms heal. Then he turned and looked again at the food court: in the center of each of the once-empty orange tables was a snow globe atop a brown plastic tray. The number of tables in the food court had grown—there was now a sea of them, stretching into the dim distance.

Cam reached for the globe on the table behind him.

“Gently,” Lucifer said.

Inside this globe was a tiny violin. Cam turned the knob and heard a different version of the same bittersweet song.

The third globe contained a miniature cello.

Lucifer sat down and kicked his feet up as Cam moved around the food court, winding each snow globe into music. There were sitars, harps, violas. Lap steel guitars, balalaikas, mandolins—each one playing an ode to Lilith's broken heart. “These globes…,” Cam said slowly. “They represent all the different Hells you've trapped her in.”

“And every time she dies in one of them,” Lucifer said, “she ends up back here
,
where she is reminded anew of your betrayal.” He stood and paced the aisles between tables, taking in his creations with pride. “And then, to keep things interesting, I banish her to a new Hell crafted especially for her.” Lucifer grinned, exposing rows of razor-sharp teeth. “I really can't say what's worse—the endless Hells I subject her to again and again, or having to come back here and remember how much she hates you. But that's what keeps her going—her anger and her hatred.”

“Of me.” Cam swallowed.

“I work with the material I'm given. It's not my fault you betrayed her.” Lucifer let out a laugh that made Cam's eardrums pulse. “Want to know my favorite twist in Lilith's current Hell? No weekends! School every day of the year. Can you imagine?” Lucifer lifted a snow globe into the air, then let it fall to the ground and shatter. “As far as she's concerned, she's a typically gloomy teenager, suffering through a typically gloomy high school experience.”

“Why Lilith?” Cam asked. “Do you craft everyone's Hell this way?”

Lucifer smiled. “The dull ones make their own dull hells, fire and brimstone and all that crap. They need no help from me. But Lilith—she's special. Not that I have to tell you that.”

“What about the people suffering with her? Those kids at her school, her family—”

“Pawns,” Lucifer said. “Brought here from Purgatory to play a bit part in someone else's story—which is a hell of another sort.”

“I don't get it,” Cam said. “You've made her existence utterly miserable—”

“Oh, I can't take all the credit,” Lucifer said. “You helped!”

Cam ignored the guilt he felt lest it choke him. “But you've allowed her one thing she dearly loves. Why do you let her play music?”

“Existence is never so miserable as when you have a taste of something beautiful,” Lucifer said. “It serves to remind you of everything you can never have.”

Everything you can never have.

Luce and Daniel had shaken something loose in Cam, something he thought was lost for good: his ability to love. The realization that such a thing was possible for him, that he might have a second chance, had made him yearn to see Lilith.

Now that he had, now that he knew she was here…

He had to
do
something.

“I need to see her again,” Cam said. “That was too short—”

“I've done you enough favors,” Lucifer said with a snarl. “I showed you what eternity is like for her. I didn't have to do even that.”

Cam scanned the endless snow globes. “I can't believe you hid all this from me.”

“I didn't hide her; you didn't care,” Lucifer said. “You were always too busy. Luce and Daniel, the popular crowd at Sword and Cross, all that jazz. But now…well, would you like to see some of Lilith's previous Hells? It'll be fun.”

Without waiting for an answer, Lucifer put his palm on the back of Cam's head and pushed it at one of the snow globes. Cam squeezed his eyes shut, bracing for his face to smash into the glass—

Instead:

He stood with Lucifer beside a vast river delta. Torrential rain poured from the sky. People ran from a row of huts, clutching belongings, panic on their faces as the river swelled against its banks. Across the river, a girl with a sad, calm expression walked slowly, carrying a sitar, in stark contrast to the chaos around her. Though she looked nothing like the Lilith he had loved in Canaan or the girl he had just met in Crossroads, Cam recognized her instantly.

She was walking
toward
the surging river.

“Ah, Lilith,” Lucifer said with a sigh. “She really knows when to pack it in.”

She sat in the mud on the riverbank and began to play. Her hands flew over the long-necked instrument, producing sad, sonorous music.

“A blues for drowning,” Lucifer said with a hint of admiration.

“No—it's a blues for the moments before drowning,” Cam said. “Big difference.”

Then the river was over its banks, over Lilith and her sitar, over the houses, over the heads of all the fleeing people, over Cam and Lucifer.

Seconds later, Cam and Lucifer stood on a mountain bluff. Wisps of fog curled like fingers around the pine trees.

“This is one of my favorites,” Lucifer said.

Mournful banjo music sounded behind them. They turned and saw seven rail-thin children sitting on the porch of a sagging log cabin. They were barefoot, and their stomachs were bloated. A girl with strawberry-blond hair held the banjo in her lap, her fingers moving over the strings.

“I'm not going to stand here and watch Lilith play along to her starvation,” Cam said.

“It's not so bad—it's just like going to sleep,” Lucifer said.

The smallest boy now appeared to be doing just that. One of his sisters laid her head on his shoulder and followed suit. Then Lilith stopped playing and closed her eyes.

“That's enough,” Cam said.

He thought about the Lilith he'd just encountered at Rattlesnake Creek. All this past suffering, the imprint of all these deaths, was in her somewhere, but she had no conscious memory of it. Just like Luce.