“Oh, wait.” Cam put a hand on her arm. “You can’t drink until we’ve toasted something.” He raised his glass and held her eyes. “What should it be? You pick.”
The screen door slammed and the guys who had been smoking on the porch came back in. The taller one, with oily black hair, a snub nose, and very dirty fingernails, took one look at Luce and started toward them.
“What are we celebrating?” He leered at her, nudging her raised glass with his tumbler. He leaned close, and she could feel the flesh of his hip pressing into hers through his flannel shirt. “Baby’s first night out? What time’s curfew?”
“We’re celebrating you taking your ass back outside right now,” Cam said as pleasantly as if he’d just announced it was Luce’s birthday. He fixed his green eyes on the man, who bared his small, pointed teeth and mouthful of gums.
“Outside, huh? Only if I take her with me.”
He grabbed for Luce’s hand. After the way the fight with Daniel had broken out, Luce expected Cam would need little excuse to fly off the handle again. Especially if he really had been drinking here all day. But Cam stayed remarkably cool.
All he did was swat the guy’s hand away with the speed, grace, and brutal force of a lion swatting a mouse.
Cam watched the guy stumble back several steps. Cam shook out his hand with a bored look on his face, then stroked Luce’s wrist where the guy had tried to grab it. “Sorry about that. You were saying, about last night?”
“I was saying …” Luce felt the blood drain from her face. Directly over Cam’s head, an enormous piece of pitch-dark had yawned open, stretching forth and unfolding from itself until it had become the largest, blackest shadow she had ever seen. An arctic gush of air blasted from its core, and Luce felt the shadow’s frost even on Cam’s fingers, still tracing her skin.
“Oh. My. God,” she whispered.
There was a crash of glass as the guy smashed his tumbler down on Cam’s head.
Slowly, Cam stood from his chair and shook some of the shards of glass from his hair. He turned to face the man, who was easily twice his age and several inches taller.
Luce cowered on her bar stool, rearing away from what she sensed was about to happen between Cam and this other guy. And what she feared could happen with the sprawling, dead-of-night black shadow overhead.
“Break it up,” the huge bartender said flatly, not even bothering to look up from his Fight magazine.
Immediately, the guy started swinging blindly at Cam, who took the senseless punches as if they were smacks from a child.
Luce wasn’t the only one stunned by Cam’s composure: The leather-pants-wearing dancer was cowering against the jukebox. And after the oily-haired guy had socked Cam a few times, even he stepped back and hung there, confused.
Meanwhile, the shadow was pooling against the ceiling, dark tendrils growing like weeds and dropping closer and closer to their heads. Luce winced and ducked just as Cam fended off one last punch from the seedy guy.
And then decided to fight back.
It was just a simple flick of his fingers, as if Cam were brushing away a dead leaf. One minute, the guy was all up in Cam’s face, but when Cam’s fingers connected with his opponent’s chest, the dude went flying—knocked off his feet and into the air, discarded beer bottles scattering in his wake, until his back slammed into the opposite wall near the jukebox.
He rubbed his head and, moaning, began to pull himself into a crouch.
“How did you do that?” Luce’s eyes were wide.
Cam ignored her, turned toward the guy’s shorter, stockier friend, and said, “You next?”
The second guy raised his palms. “Not my fight, man,” he said, shrinking away.
Cam shrugged, stepped toward the first guy, and lifted him off the floor by the back of his T-shirt. His limbs dangled helplessly in the air, like a puppet’s. Then, with an easy toss of his wrist, Cam threw the guy against the wall. He almost seemed to stick there while Cam cut loose, pounding the guy and saying again and again, “I said go outside!”
“Enough!” Luce shouted, but neither one of them heard her or cared. Luce felt sick. She wanted to tear her eyes away from the bloody nose and gums of the guy pinned against the wall, from Cam’s almost superhuman strength. She wanted to tell him to forget it, that she’d find her own way back to school. She wanted, most of all, to get away from the gruesome shadow now coating the ceiling and dripping down the walls. She grabbed her bag and ran out into the night—
And right into someone’s arms.
“Are you okay?”
It was Daniel.
“How did you find me here?” she asked, unabashedly burying her face in his shoulder. Tears she didn’t want to deal with were welling up inside her.
“Come on,” he said. “Let’s get you out of here.”
Without looking back, she slipped her hand into his. Warmth spread up her arm and through her body. And then the tears began to flow. It wasn’t fair to feel so safe when the shadows were still so close.
Even Daniel seemed on edge. He was dragging her across the lot so quickly, she nearly had to sprint to keep up.
She didn’t want to glance back when she sensed the shadows spilling out of the door of the bar and brewing in the air. But then, she didn’t have to. They flowed in a steady stream over her head, sucking up all light in their path. It was as if the whole world were being torn to pieces right before her eyes. A rotting sulfur stench stuck in her nose, worse than anything she knew.
Daniel glanced up, too, and scowled, only he looked like he was merely trying to remember where he’d parked. But then the strangest thing happened. The shadows flinched backward, boiled away in black splatters that pooled and scattered.
Luce narrowed her eyes in disbelief. How had Daniel done that? He hadn’t done that, had he?
“What?” Daniel asked, distracted. He unlocked the passenger-side door of a white Taurus station wagon. “Something wrong?”
“We do not have time for me to list all of the many, many things that are wrong,” Luce said, sinking into the car seat. “Look.” She pointed toward the entrance to the bar. The screen door had just swung open on Cam. He must have knocked out the other guy, but he didn’t look like he was done fighting. His fists were clenched.
Daniel smirked and shook his head. Luce was fruitlessly stabbing her seat belt again and again at the buckle until he reached over and pushed her hands away. She held her breath as his fingers grazed her stomach. “There’s a trick,” he whispered, fitting the clasp into the base.
He started the car, then backed out slowly, taking his time as they drove past the door to the bar. Luce couldn’t think of a single thing to say to Cam, but it felt perfect when Daniel rolled down the window and simply said, “Good night, Cam.”
“Luce,” Cam said, walking toward the car. “Don’t do this. Don’t leave with him. It will end badly.” She couldn’t look at his eyes, which she knew were pleading for her to come back. “I’m sorry.”
Daniel ignored Cam entirely and just drove. The swamp looked cloudy in the twilight, and the woods in front of them looked even cloudier.
“You still haven’t told me how you found me here,” Luce said. “Or how you knew I went to meet Cam. Or where you got this car.”