Fallen

CHAPTER 16. HANGING IN THE BALANCE

Luce stood at the crossroads between the cemetery on the north side of campus and the path to the lake on the south. It was early evening and the construction workers had gone home. Light sifted down through the branches of the oaks behind the gym, casting dappled shadows on the lawn that led to the lake. Tempting Luce toward it. She wasn't sure which way to go. She held two letters in her hands.

The first, from Cam, was the apology she had expected, and a plea for her to meet him after school to talk it out. The second, from Daniel, said nothing other than "Meet me at the lake." She couldn't wait to. Her lips still tingled from their kiss last night. She couldn't get the thought of his fingers in her hair, or his lips on her neck, out of her mind.

Other parts of the night were hazier, like what had happened after she sat down next to Daniel on the beach. Compared to the way his hands had ravished her body not ten minutes earlier, Daniel had seemed almost terrified to touch her.

Nothing could shake him from his daze. He kept murmuring the same thing over and over—"Something must have happened. Something changed" — and staring at her with pain in his eyes, as if she held the answer, as if she had any idea what his words meant. At last, she'd fallen asleep leaning on his shoulder, looking out at the ethereal sea.

When she woke up hours later, he was carrying her up the stairs back to her dorm room. She was startled to realize she'd slept through the whole ride back to school—and even more startled by the strange glow in the hallway. It was back. Daniel's light. Which she didn't even know if he could see.

Everything around them was bathed in that soft violet light. The white bumper-stickered doorways of the other students had taken on a neon hue. The dull linoleum tiles seemed to glow. The windowpane looking out on the cemetery cast a violet shine on the first hint of dull yellow morning light outside. All of it directly under the gaze of the reds.

"We're so busted," she whispered, nervous and still half asleep.

"I'm not worried about the reds," Daniel said calmly, following her eyes to the cameras. At first his words were soothing, but then she started to wonder about something uneasy in his tone: If Daniel wasn't worried about the reds, he was worried about something else.

When he laid her down in her bed, he kissed her lightly on the forehead, then took a deep breath. "Don't disappear on me," he said.

"No chance of that."

"I'm serious." He closed his eyes for a long time. "Get some rest now—but find me in the morning before class. I want to talk to you. Promise?"

She squeezed his hand to pull him to her for one last kiss. She held his face between her palms and melted into him. Every time her eyes flickered open, his were watching her. And she loved it.

At last, he backed away, and stood in the doorway gazing at her, his eyes still doing as much to make her heart race as his lips had done a moment before. When he slinked back into the hallway and closed the door behind him, Luce drifted off into the deepest sleep.

She'd slept through her morning classes and had awoken in the early afternoon feeling reborn and alive. Not caring at all that she had no excuse for missing school. Only worried that she'd slept through meeting Daniel. She would find him as soon as she could, and he would understand.

Around two o'clock, when it finally occurred to her to eat something or maybe pop in on Miss Sophia's religion class, she grudgingly crawled out of bed. That was when she saw the two envelopes that had been slipped underneath her door, which set her back severely in her goal of leaving her room.

She had to tell Cam off first. If she went to the lake before the cemetery, she knew she'd never be able to make herself leave Daniel. If she went first to the cemetery, her desire to see Daniel again would make her bold enough to say to Cam the things she'd been too nervous to say before. Before everything had gotten so scary and out of control last night.

Pushing through her fears about seeing him, Luce started across the commons toward the cemetery. The early evening was warm, and the air was sticky with humidity. It was going to be one of those sweltering nights when the breeze from the distant sea never got strong enough to cool things down. There was no one out on campus, and the leaves on all the trees were still. Luce could have been the only thing at Sword & Cross that was actually on the move. Everyone else would be released from class, herded into the dining hall for dinner, and Penn—and possibly others—would be wondering about Luce by now.

Cam was leaning up against the lichen-speckled gates of the cemetery when she got there. His elbows rested on the carved vine-shaped iron posts, his shoulders hunched forward. He was kicking up a dandelion with the steel tip of his thick black boot. Luce couldn't remember seeing him look so internally consumed—most of the time Cam seemed to have a keen interest in the world around him.

But this time, he didn't even look up at her until she was directly in front of him. And when he did, his face was ashen. His hair was flat against his head and she was surprised to notice that he could have used a shave. His eyes rolled over her face, as if focusing on each of her features required effort. He looked wrecked, not beaten up from the fight, but simply as if he hadn't slept in a few days.

"You came." His voice was hoarse, but his words ended with a small smile.

Luce cracked her knuckles, thinking he wouldn't be smiling much longer. She nodded and held up his letter.

He reached for her hand, but she pulled her arm away, pretending she needed the hand to brush the hair from her eyes.

"I figured you'd be mad about last night," he said, pushing himself away from the gate. He took a few steps into the cemetery, then sat cross-legged on a short gray marble bench among the first row of graves. He wiped the dirt and brittle leaves away, then patted the empty spot next to him.

"Mad?" she said.

"That's generally why people storm out of bars."

She sat down facing him, cross-legged too. From up here, she could see the top branches of the enormous old oak down in the center of the graveyard, where she and Cam had had their afternoon picnic what seemed like a very long time ago.

"I don't know," Luce said. "More like baffled. Confused, maybe. Disappointed." She shuddered at the memory of that seedy guy's eyes when he grabbed her, the sick flurry of Cam's fists, the deep black roof of shadow… "Why did you take me there? You know what happened when Jules and Phillip snuck out."

"Jules and Phillip were morons whose every move was monitored by tracking wristbands. Of course they were going to get busted." Cam smiled darkly, but not at her. "We're nothing like them, Luce. Believe me. And besides, I wasn't trying to get in another fight." He rubbed his temples, and the skin around them bunched up, looking leathery and too thin. "I just couldn't stand the way that guy talked to you, touched you. You deserve to be handled with the utmost care." His green eyes widened. "I want to be the one to do it. The only one."

She tucked her hair behind her ears and took a deep breath. "Cam, you seem like a really great guy—"

"Oh no." He covered his face with his hand. "Not the let-him-down-easy speech. I hope you're not going to say we should be friends."

"You don't want to be my friend?"

"You know I want to be much more than your friend," he said, spitting out "friend" as if it were a dirty word. "It's Grigori, isn't it?"

She felt her stomach constrict. She guessed it wasn't too hard to figure it out, but she'd been so wrapped up in her own feelings, she'd barely had time to consider what Cam thought about the two of them.

"You don't really know either of us," Cam said, standing and stepping away, "but you're prepared to choose right now, huh?"

It was presumptuous of him to assume he was even still in the running. Especially after last night. That he could think there was some contest between him and Daniel.

Then Cam crouched before her on the bench. His face was different—pleading, earnest—as he cupped her hands in his.

Luce was surprised to see him so wound up. "I'm sorry," she said, pulling back. "It just happened."

"Exactly! It just happened. What was it, let me guess—last night he looked at you some new romantic way. Luce, you're rushing into a decision before you even know what's at stake. There could be… a lot at stake." He sighed at the confused look on her face. "I could make you happy."

"Daniel makes me happy."

"How can you say that? He won't even touch you."

Luce closed her eyes, remembering the tangle of their lips last night on the beach. Daniel's arms encircling her. The whole world had felt so right, so harmonious, so safe. But when she opened her eyes now, Daniel was nowhere to be seen.

It was only Cam.

She cleared her throat. "Yes, he will. He does."

Her cheeks felt warm. Luce pressed a cool hand to them, but Cam didn't notice. His hands curled into fists.

"Elaborate."

"The way Daniel kisses me is none of your business." She bit her lip, furious. He was mocking her.

Cam chuckled. "Oh? I can do just as good as Grigori," he said, picking up her hand and kissing the back of it before abruptly letting it drop back at her side.

"It was nothing like that," Luce said, turning away.

"How about this, then?" His lips grazed her cheek before she could shrug him off.

"Wrong."

Cam licked his lips. "You're saying Daniel Grigori actually kissed you the way you deserve to be kissed?" Something in his charcoal eyes was beginning to look baleful.

"Yes," she said, "the best kiss I've ever had." And even though it had been her only real kiss, Luce knew that if you asked her again in sixty years, a hundred years, she would say the same thing.

"And yet here you are," Cam said, shaking his head in disbelief.

Luce didn't like what he was insinuating. "I'm only here to tell you the truth about me and Daniel. To let you know that you and I—"

Cam burst out laughing, a loud, hollow cackle that echoed across the empty cemetery. He laughed so long and hard, he gripped his sides and wiped a tear away from his eyes.

"What's so funny?" Luce said.

"You have no idea," he said, still laughing.

Cam's you-wouldn't-get-it tone wasn't far off from the one Daniel had used last night when, almost inconsolable, he kept repeating, "It's impossible." But Luce's reaction to Cam was entirely different. When Daniel walled her out, she felt even more of a pull toward him. Even when they argued, she yearned to be with Daniel more than she ever wanted to be with Cam. But when Cam made her feel like an outsider, she was relieved. She didn't want to be any closer to him.

In fact, right now she felt too close.

She'd had enough. Gritting her teeth, she rose and stalked toward the gates, angry at herself for wasting even this much time.

But Cam caught up to her, swinging around in front of her and blocking her exit. He was still laughing at her, biting his lip, trying not to. "Don't go," he chuckled.

"Leave me alone."

"Not yet."

Before she could stop him, Cam caught her up in his arms and bent her backward into a sweeping dip so that her feet came off the ground. Luce cried out, struggling for a moment, but he smiled.

"Let go of me!"

"Grigori and I have fought a pretty fair fight so far, don't you think?"

She glared at him, her hands pushing against his chest. "Go to Hell."

"You're misunderstanding," he said, drawing her face closer to his. His green eyes bored down at her and she hated that a part of her still felt swept away in his gaze.

"Look, I know things have gotten crazy the past couple of days," he said in a hushed voice, "but I care for you, Luce. Deeply. Don't pick him before you let me have one kiss."

She felt his arms tighten around her, and suddenly, she was scared. They were out of sight of the school, and no one knew where she was.

"It won't change anything," she told him, trying to sound calm.

"Humor me? Pretend I'm a soldier and you're granting my dying wish. I promise, just one kiss."

Luce's mind went to Daniel. She pictured him waiting at the lake, keeping his hands busy skipping stones over the water, when he should have had her in his arms. She didn't want to kiss Cam, but what if he really wouldn't let her go? The kiss could be the smallest, most insignificant thing. The easiest way to break loose. And then she'd be free to get back to Daniel. Cam had promised.

"Just one kiss—" she started, but then his lips were on hers.

Her second kiss in as many days. Where Daniel's kiss had been hungry and almost desperate, Cam's kiss was gentle and too perfect, as if he had been practicing on a hundred girls before her.

And yet she felt something in her rise up, wanting her to respond, taking hold of the anger she'd felt only seconds before and blowing it away into nothing. Cam still had her tilted back in his arms, balancing all her weight on his knee. She felt safe in his strong, capable hands. And she needed to feel safe. It was such a change from, well, every moment when she wasn't kissing Cam. She knew that she was forgetting something, someone—who? she couldn't remember. There was only the kiss, and his lips, and—

Suddenly, she felt herself falling. She slammed into the ground so hard the wind was knocked out of her. Raising herself up on her arms, she watched as, a few inches away,

Cam's face came into contact with the ground. She winced despite herself.

The early-evening sun cast a dusty light on two figures in the graveyard.

"How many times must you ruin this girl?" Luce heard the sad southern drawl.

Gabbe? She looked up, blinking into the setting sun.

Gabbe and Daniel.

Gabbe rushed over to help her to her feet, but Daniel wouldn't even look her in the eye.

Luce cursed herself under her breath. She couldn't figure out what was worse—that Daniel had just seen her kissing Cam, or that—she was sure—Daniel was going to fight Cam again.

Cam stood up and faced them, ignoring Luce completely. "All right, which one of you is it going to be this time?" he snarled.

This time?

"Me," Gabbe said, stepping forward with her hands on her hips. "That first little love tap was all me, Cam honey. What you going to do about it?"

Luce shook her head. Gabbe had to be joking. Surely this was some kind of game. But Cam didn't seem to think anything was funny. He bared his teeth and rolled up his sleeves, raising his fists and moving forward.

"Again, Cam?" Luce scolded him. "You haven't gotten in enough fights already this week?" As if that weren't enough, he was actually going to hit a girl.

He shot her a sideways smile. "Third time's the charm," he said, his voice dripping malice. He turned back just as Gabbe came at him with a high kick to the jaw.

Luce scurried backward as Cam fell. His eyes were pinched shut and he was clutching his face. Standing over him, Gabbe looked as unfazed as if she'd just pulled a perfectly baked peach cobbler from the oven. She glanced down at her nails and sighed.

"Gonna be a shame to have to beat up on you just when I touched up my manicure. Oh well," she said, proceeding to kick Cam repeatedly in the stomach, relishing each kick like a kid winning at an arcade game.

He staggered up into a crouch. Luce couldn't see his face anymore—it was buried between his knees—but he was moaning in pain and choking on his own breath.

Luce stood and looked from Gabbe to Cam and back again, unable to make sense of what she was seeing. Cam was twice the size of her, but Gabbe seemed to have the upper hand. Just yesterday, Luce had seen Cam beat up that huge guy at the bar. And the other night, outside the library, Daniel and Cam had seemed evenly matched. Luce marveled at Gabbe, with her rainbow ribbon holding her hair back in a high ponytail. Now she had Cam pinned to the ground and was twisting his arm back. "Uncle?" she taunted. "Just say the magic word, sugar. I'll let you go."

"Never," Cam spat into the ground.

"I was hoping you'd say that," she said, and shoved his head down into the dirt, hard.

Daniel put his hand on Luce's neck. She relaxed against him and looked back, terrified to see his expression. He must hate her right now.

"I'm so sorry," she whispered. "Cam, he—"

"Why would you come here to meet him?" Daniel sounded hurt and incensed at the same time. He grabbed her chin to make her look at him. His fingers were freezing against her skin. His eyes were all violet, no gray.

Luce's lip quivered. "I thought I could take care of it. Be up-front with Cam so that you and I could just be together and not have to worry about anything else."

Daniel snorted, and Luce realized how stupid she sounded.

"That kiss…," she said, wringing her hands. She wanted to spit it from her mouth. "It was such a huge mistake."

Daniel closed his eyes and turned away. Twice he opened his mouth to say something, then thought better of it. He gripped his hair in his hands and swayed. Watching him, Luce feared he might cry. Finally, he took her in his arms.

"Are you mad at me?" She buried her face in his chest and breathed in the sweet smell of his skin.

"I'm just glad we got here in time."

The sound of Cam's whimpers made both of them glance over. Then grimace. Daniel took Luce's hand and tried to pull her away, but she couldn't take her eyes off Gabbe, who had Cam in a headlock and wasn't even winded. Cam looked battered and pathetic. It just didn't make any sense.

"What's going on, Daniel?" Luce whispered. "How can Gabbe kick the crap out of Cam? Why is he letting her?"

Daniel half sighed, half chuckled. "He's not letting her. What you're seeing is only a sample of what that girl can do."

She shook her head. "I don't understand. How—"

Daniel stroked her cheek. "Will you take a walk with me?" he asked. "I'm going to try to explain things, but I think you should probably sit down."

Luce had a few things of her own to come clean about to Daniel. Or, if not to come clean about, at least to throw out into the conversation, to see if he showed signs of thinking she was completely, verifiably deranged. That violet light, for one thing. And the dreams she couldn't—didn't want to—stop.

Daniel led her toward a part of the cemetery Luce had never seen before, a clear, flat space where two peach trees had grown together. Their trunks bowed toward each other, forming the outline of a heart in the air below them.

He led her under the strange, gnarled coupling of the branches and took her hands, tracing her fingers with his.

The evening was quiet except for the song of crickets. Luce imagined all the other students in the dining hall. Spooning mashed potatoes onto their trays, slurping thick room-temperature milk through a straw. It was as if, all of a sudden, she and Daniel were on a different plane of being from the rest of the school. Everything but his hand around hers, his hair shining in the light of the setting sun, his warm gray eyes—everything else felt so far away.

"I don't know where to start," he said, pressing harder as he massaged her fingers, like he could rub the answer out. "There's so much to tell you, and I have to get it right."

As much as she wanted Daniel's words to be a simple confession of love, Luce knew better. Daniel had something difficult to say, something that might explain a lot about him, but might also be hard for Luce to hear.

"Maybe do one of those I-have-good-news-and-bad-news kind of things?" she suggested.

"Good idea. Which do you want first?"

"Most people want the good news first."

"Maybe so," he said. "But you are worlds away from most people."

"Okay, I'll take the bad news first."

He bit his lip. "Then promise me you won't leave before I get to the good news?"

She had no plans to leave. Not now, now that he was no longer pushing her away. Not when he might be about to offer up some answers to the long list of questions she'd been obsessing over for the past few weeks.

He brought her hands to his chest and held them against his heart. "I'm going to tell you the truth," he said. "You won't believe me, but you deserve to know. Even if it kills you."

"Okay." A raw knot of pain took hold of Luce's in-sides, and she could feel her knees start to shake. She was glad when Daniel made her sit down.

He paced back and forth, then took a deep breath. "In the Bible…"

Luce groaned. She couldn't help it; she had a knee-jerk reaction to Sunday school talk. Besides, she wanted to discuss the two of them, not some moralistic parable. The Bible wasn't going to hold the answers to any of the questions she had about Daniel.

"Just listen," he said, shooting her a look. "In the Bible, you know how God makes a big deal about how everyone should love him with all their soul? How it has to be unconditional, and unrivaled?"

Luce shrugged. "I guess so."

"Well—" Daniel seemed to be searching for the right words. "That request doesn't only apply to people."

"What do you mean? Who else? Animals?"

"Sometimes, sure," Daniel said. "Like the serpent. He was damned after he tempted Eve. Cursed to slither on the ground forever."

Luce shivered, thinking back to Cam. The snake. Their picnic. That necklace. She rubbed at her clean, bare neck, glad to be rid of it.

He ran his fingers down her hair, along her jawline, and into the hollow of her neck. She sighed, in a state of bliss.

"I'm trying to say… I guess you could say I'm damned, too, Luce. I've been damned for a long, long time." He spoke as if the words tasted bitter. "I made a choice once, a choice that I believed in—that I still believe in, even though—"

"I don't understand," she said, shaking her head.

"Of course you don't," he said, dropping down onto the ground next to her. "And I don't have the best track record at explaining it to you." He scratched his head and lowered his voice, like he was speaking to himself. "But all I can do is try. Here goes nothing."

"Okay," she said. He was confusing her, and he'd barely even said anything yet. But she tried to act less lost than she felt.

"I fall in love," he explained, taking her hands and holding them tightly. "Over and over again. And each time, it ends catastrophically."

"Over and over again." The words made her ill. Luce closed her eyes and withdrew her hands. He'd already told her this. That day at the lake. He'd had breakups. He'd been burned. Why bring up those other girls now? It had hurt then and it hurt even more now, like a sharp pain in her ribs. He squeezed her fingers.

"Look at me," he pleaded. "Here's where it gets hard."

She opened her eyes.

"The person I fall in love with each time is you."

She'd been holding her breath, and meant to exhale, but it came out as a sharp, cutting laugh.

"Right, Daniel," she said, starting to stand up. "Wow, you really are damned. That sounds horrible."

"Listen." He pulled her back down with a force that made her shoulder throb. His eyes flashed violet and she could tell he was getting angry. Well, so was she.

Daniel looked up into the peach tree canopy, as if for help. "I'm begging you, let me explain." His voice quaked. "The problem isn't loving you."

She took a deep breath. "What is it?" She willed herself to listen, to be stronger and not to feel hurt. Daniel looked like he was broken up enough for both of them.

"I get to live forever," he said.

The trees rustled around them, and Luce noticed the faintest trickle of a shadow out of the corner of her eye. Not the sick, all-consuming swirl of blackness from the bar last night, but a warning. The shadow was keeping its distance, seething coldly around the corner, but it was waiting. For her. Luce felt a deep chill, down in her bones. She couldn't shake the sensation that something colossal, black as night, something final was on its way.

"I'm sorry," she said, dragging her eyes back to Daniel. "Could you, um, say that again?"

"I get to live forever," he repeated. Luce was still lost, but he kept talking, a stream of words pouring out of his mouth. "I get to live, and to watch babies being born, and grow up, and fall in love. I watch them have babies of their own and grow old. I watch them die. I am condemned, Luce, to watch it all over again and again. Everyone but you." His eyes were glassy. His voice dropped to a whisper. "You don't get to fall in love—"

"But…," she whispered back. "I've… fallen in love."

"You don't get to have babies and grow old, Luce."

"Why not?"

"You come along every seventeen years."

"Please—"

"We meet. We always meet, somehow we're always thrown together, no matter where I go, no matter how I try to distance myself from you. It never matters. You always find me."

He was staring down at his clenched fists now, looking like he wanted to hit something, unable to raise his eyes.

"And every time we meet, you fall for me—"

"Daniel—"

"I can resist you or flee from you or try my hardest not to respond to you, but it makes no difference. You fall in love with me, and I with you."

"Is that so terrible?"

"And it kills you."

"Stop it!" she cried. "What are you trying to do? Scare me away?"

"No." He snorted. "It wouldn't work, anyway."

"If you don't want to be with me…," she said, hoping that it was all an elaborate joke, a breakup speech to end all breakup speeches, and not the truth. It could not be the truth. "… there's probably a more believable story to tell."

"I know you can't believe me. This is why I couldn't tell you until now, when I have to tell you. Because I thought I understood the rules and… we kissed, and now I don't understand anything."

His words from the night before came back to her: I don't know how to stop it. I don't know what to do.

"Because you kissed me."

He nodded.

"You kissed me and when we were done, you were surprised."

He nodded again, having the grace to look a little sheepish.

"You kissed me," Luce continued, searching for a way to put it all together, "and you thought I wasn't going to survive it?"

"Based on previous experience," he said hoarsely. "Yes."

"That's just crazy," she said.

"It's not about the kiss this time, it's about what it means. In some lives we can kiss, but in most we can't." He stroked her cheek, and she wrestled with how good it felt. "I must say, I prefer the lives where we can kiss." He looked down. "Though it does make losing you that much harder."

She wanted to be mad at him. For making up such a bizarre story when they should have been locked in an embrace. But something was there, like an itch at the back of her mind, telling her not to run from Daniel now, but to stick around and listen as long as she could.

"When you lose me," she said, feeling out the shape of the word in her mouth. "How does it happen? Why?"

"It depends on you, on how much you can see about our past, on how well you've come to know me, who I am." He tossed his hands up in a shrug. "I know this sounds incredibly—"

"Crazy?"

He smiled. "I was going to say vague. But I'm trying not to hide anything from you. It's just a very, very delicate subject. Sometimes, in the past, just talking like this has…"

She watched for the shape of the words on his lips, but he wouldn't say anything.

"Killed me?"

"I was going to say 'broken my heart'."

He was in obvious pain, and Luce wanted to comfort him. She could feel herself drawn, something in her breast tugging her forward. But she couldn't. That was when she felt certain that Daniel knew about the glowing violet light. That he had everything to do with it.

"What are you?" she asked. "Some kind of—"

"I wander the earth always knowing at the back of my mind that you're coming. I used to look for you. But then, when I started hiding from you—from the heartbreak I knew was inevitable—you started seeking me out. It didn't take long to realize that you came around every seventeen years."

Luce's seventeenth birthday had been in late August, two weeks before she enrolled at Sword & Cross. It had been a sad celebration, just Luce, her parents, and a store-bought cake. There were no candles, just in case. And what about her family? Did they come back every seventeen years, too?

"It's not long enough for me to ever have gotten over the last time," he said. "Just long enough that I would let my guard down again."

"So you knew I was coming?" she asked dubiously. He looked serious, but she still couldn't believe him. She didn't want to.

Daniel shook his head. "Not the day you showed up. It's not like that. Don't you remember my reaction when I saw you?" He looked up, like he was thinking back on it himself. "For the first few seconds every time, I'm always so elated. I forget myself. Then I remember."

"Yes," she said slowly. "You smiled, and then… is that why you flipped me off?"

He frowned.

"But if this happens every seventeen years like you say," she said, "you still knew I was coming. In some sense, you knew."

"It's complicated, Luce."

"I saw you that day, before you saw me. You were laughing with Roland outside Augustine. You were laughing so hard I was jealous. If you know all this, Daniel, if you're so smart that you can predict when I'm going to come, and when I'm going to die, and how hard all of that is going to be for you, how could you laugh like that? I don't believe you," she said, feeling her voice tremble. "I don't believe any of this."

Daniel gently pressed his thumb to her eye to wipe away a tear. "It's such a beautiful question, Luce. I adore you for asking it, and I wish I could explain it better. All I can tell you is this: The only way to survive eternity is to be able to appreciate each moment. That's all I was doing."

"Eternity," Luce repeated. "Yet another thing I wouldn't understand."

"It doesn't matter. I can't laugh like that anymore. As soon as you show up, I'm overtaken."

"You're not making any sense," she said, wanting to leave before it got too dark. But Daniel's story was so much more than nonsensical. The whole time she'd been at Sword & Cross, she'd half believed she was crazy. Her madness paled in comparison to Daniel's.

"There's no manual for how to explain this… thing to the girl you love," he pleaded, brushing her hair with his fingers. "I'm doing the best I can. I want you to believe me, Luce. What do I need to do?"

"Tell a different story," she said bitterly. "Make up a saner excuse."

"You said yourself you felt as if you knew me. I tried to deny it as long as I could because I knew this would happen."

"I felt I knew you from somewhere, sure," she said. Now her voice was clotted with fear. "Like the mall or summer camp or something. Not some former life." She shook her head. "No… I can't."

She covered her ears. Daniel uncovered them.

"And yet you know in your heart it's true." He clasped her knees and looked her deeply in the eye. "You knew it when I followed you to the top of Corcovado in Rio, when you wanted to see the statue up close. You knew it when I carried you two sweaty miles to the River Jordan after you got sick outside Jerusalem. I told you not to eat all those dates. You knew it when you were my nurse in that Italian hospital during the first World War, and before that when I hid in your cellar during the tsar's purge of St. Petersburg. When I scaled the turret of your castle in Scotland during the Reformation, and danced you around and around at the king's coronation ball at Versailles. You were the only woman dressed in black. There was that artists' colony in Quintana Roo, and the protest march in Cape Town where we both spent the night in the pen. The opening of the Globe Theatre in London. We had the best seats in the house. And when my ship wrecked in Tahiti, you were there, as you were when I was a convict in Melbourne, and a pickpocket in eighteenth-century Nimes, and a monk in Tibet. You turn up everywhere, always, and sooner or later you sense all the things I've just told you. But you won't let yourself accept what you feel might be the truth."

Daniel stopped to catch his breath and looked past her, unseeing. Then he reached over, pressing his hand to her knee and sending that fire through her again.

She closed her eyes, and when she'd opened them, Daniel was holding the most perfect white peony. It practically glowed. She turned to see where he had plucked it from, how she hadn't noticed it before. There were only weeds and the rotting flesh of fallen fruit. They held the flower together.

"You knew it when you picked white peonies every day for a month that summer in Helston. Remember that?" he stared at her, like he was trying to see inside her. "No," he sighed after a moment. "Of course you don't. I envy you for that."

But even as he said it, Luce's skin began to feel warm, as if it were responding to the words her brain didn't know what to make of. Part of her wasn't sure of anything anymore.

"I do all of these things," Daniel said, leaning into her so that their foreheads touched, "because you're my love, Lucinda. For me, you're all there is."

Luce's lower lip was trembling. Her hands went slack in his. The flower's petals sifted through their fingers to the ground.

"Then why do you look so sad?"

It was all too much to even begin to think about. She leaned away from Daniel and stood up, wiping the leaves and grass from her jeans. Her head was spinning. She had lived before?

"Luce."

She waved him off. "I think I need to go somewhere, by myself, to lie down." She leaned her weight on the peach tree. She felt weak.

"You're not okay," he said, standing up and taking her hand.

"No."

"I'm so sorry." Daniel sighed. "I don't know what I expected to happen, telling you. I shouldn't have…"

She would never have thought a moment could come when she'd need a break from Daniel, but she had to get away. The way he was looking at her, she could tell he wanted her to say she would find him later, that they would talk about things more, but she was no longer sure that was a good idea. The more he said, the more she felt something waking up inside her—something she wasn't sure she was ready for. She didn't feel crazy anymore—and she wasn't sure Daniel was, either. To anyone else, his explanation would have made less and less sense as it went along. To Luce… she wasn't sure yet, but what if Daniel's words were answers that could make sense out of her whole life? She didn't know. She felt more afraid than she ever had before.

She shook his hand loose and started toward her dorm. A few strides away, she stopped and slowly turned.

Daniel hadn't moved. "What is it?" he asked, lifting his chin.

She stood where she was, at a distance from him. "I promised you I'd stick around long enough to hear the good news."