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already hurt from missing Daniel. She didn’t need any more pain. She looked down, still trying to get her bearings, and remembered the bed she had indiscriminately collapsed into the night before.
    The woman in white who had appeared in Daniel’s wake had introduced herself as Francesca, one of the teachers at Shoreline. Even in her stunned stupor, Luce could tell that the woman was beautiful. She was in her mid-thirties, with blond hair brushing her shoulders, round cheekbones, and large, soft features.
    Angel , Luce decided almost instantly.
    Francesca asked no questions on the way to Luce’s room. She must have been expecting the late night drop-off, and she must have sensed Luce’s utter exhaustion.
    Now this stranger who’d pelted Luce back into consciousness looked ready to chuck another ball. “Good,” she said in a gravelly voice. “You’re awake.”
    “Who are you?” Luce asked sleepily.
    “Who are you , is more like it. Other than the stranger I wake to find squatting in my room. Other than the kid disrupting my morning mantra with her weirdly personal sleep-babbling. I’m Shelby. Enchantée. ”
    Not an angel, Luce surmised. Just a Californian girl with a strong sense of entitlement.
    Luce sat up in bed and looked around. The room was a little cramped, but it was nicely appointed, with light-colored hardwood floors; a working fireplace; a microwave; two deep, wide desks; and built-in bookshelves that doubled as a ladder to what Luce now realized was the top bunk.
    She could see a private bathroom through a sliding wooden door. And—she had to blink a few times to be certain—an ocean view out the window. Not bad for a girl who had spent the past month gazing out at a rank old cemetery in a room more appropriate for a hospital than a school. But then, at least that rank cemetery and that room had meant she was with Daniel. She had barely begun getting comfortable at Sword & Cross. And now she was back to starting from scratch.
    “Francesca didn’t mention anything about me having a roommate.” Luce knew instantly from the expression on Shelby’s face that this was the Wrong Thing to Say.
    So she took a quick glance at Shelby’s décor instead. Luce had never trusted her own interior design instincts, or maybe she’d never had the chance to indulge them. She hadn’t stuck around Sword & Cross long enough to do much decorating, but even before that, her room at Dover had been white-walled and bare. Sterile chic, as Callie had once said.
    This room, on the other hand—there was something about it that was strangely … groovy. Varieties of potted plants she’d never seen before lined the windowsill; prayer flags were strung across the ceiling. A patchwork quilt in muted colors was sliding off the top bunk, half obstructing Luce’s view of an astrology calendar taped over the mirror.
    “What’d you think? They were going to clear out the dean’s quarters just because you’re Lucinda Price?”
    “Um, no?” Luce shook her head. “That’s not what I meant at all. Wait, how did you know my name?”
    “So you are Lucinda Price?” The girl’s green-flecked eyes seemed to fix on Luce’s ratty gray pajamas. “Lucky me.”
    Luce was speechless.
    “Sorry.” Shelby exhaled and adjusted her tone, parking herself on the edge of Luce’s bed. “I’m an only child. Leon—that’s my therapist—he’s trying to get me to be less harsh when I first meet people.”
    “Is it working?” Luce was an only child too, but she wasn’t nasty to every stranger she came into contact with.
    “What I mean is …” Shelby shifted uncomfortably. “I’m not used to sharing. Can we”—she tossed her head—“rewind?”
    “That’d be nice.”
    “Okay.” Shelby took a deep breath. “Frankie didn’t mention your having a roommate last night because then she would have had to either notice—or, if she had already noticed, disclose—that I wasn’t in bed when you arrived. I came in through