Torment - Lauren Kate [61]
“Exactly. And because they can’t see what is actually casting the shadows, they assume that what they can see—these shadows on the wall—are reality. They have no idea that the shadows are mere representations and distortions of something much truer and more real.” He paused. “Do you understand why I’m telling you this?”
Luce shook her head. “You want me to stop messing with the Announcers?”
Steven closed the book with a snap, then crossed to the other side of the room. She felt as if she’d disappointed him somehow.
“Because I don’t believe you will stop … messing with the Announcers, even if I do ask you to. But I do want you to understand what you’re dealing with the next time you summon one. The Announcers are shadows of past events. They can be helpful, but they also contain some very distracting, sometimes dangerous distortions. There’s a lot to learn. A clean, safe summoning technique; then, of course, once you have honed your talents, the Announcer’s noise can be screened out and its message be heard clearly through—”
“You mean that whooshing noise? There’s a way to hear through that?”
“Never mind. Not yet.” Steven turned and sank his hands into his pockets. “What were you and Shelby after today?”
Luce felt flushed and uncomfortable. This meeting was not going at all as she’d expected. She’d thought maybe detention, some trash pickup.
“We were trying to learn more about my family,” she finally managed to get out. Thankfully, Steven seemed to have no idea she had seen Cam earlier. “Or my families, I guess I should say.”
“That’s all?”
“Am I in trouble?”
“You weren’t doing anything else?”
“What else would I be doing?”
It shot through her mind that Steven might think she was reaching out to Daniel, trying to send him a message or something. As if she’d even know how to do that.
“Summon one now,” Steven said, opening the window. It was past dusk and Luce’s stomach told her that most of the other students would be sitting down to dinner.
“I—I don’t know if I can.”
Steven’s eyes looked warmer than they had earlier, excited almost. “When we summon Announcers, we’re making a sort of wish. Not a wish for anything material, but a wish to better understand the world, our role in it, and what’s to become of us.”
Immediately, Luce thought of Daniel, what she wanted most for their relationship. She didn’t feel she had much of a role in what was to become of them—and she wanted one. Was that why she’d been able to summon the Announcers before she’d even known how?
Nervously, she centered herself in her chair. She closed her eyes. She imagined a shadow detaching itself from the long darkness that stretched from the tree trunks outside, imagined it rolling away and rising, filling the space of the open window. Then floating closer to her.
She smelled the soft mildewy scent first, almost like black olives, then opened her eyes at the brush of coolness on her cheek. The temperature in the room had dropped a few degrees. Steven rubbed his hands together in the suddenly damp, drafty office.
“Yes, there you go,” he murmured.
The Announcer was drifting in the air of his office, thin and transparent, no bigger than a silk scarf. It glided straight toward Luce, then wrapped a fuzzy tendril of nothingness around a blown-glass paperweight on the desk. Luce gasped. Steven was smiling when he stepped toward her, guiding it upright until it became a blank black screen.
Then it was in her hands, and she began to pull. The careful motion felt like trying to stretch out a piecrust without breaking it, something Luce had watched her mother do at least a hundred times. The darkness swirled into muted grays; then the faintest black-and-white image came into view.
A dark bedroom with a single bed. Luce—a former Luce, clearly—lying on her side, staring out the open window. She must have been sixteen years old. The door behind the bed opened, and a face, lit up by the hallway light, appeared