Fallen

CHAPTER 17. AN OPEN BOOK

Luce collapsed on her bed, giving the weary springs a jolt. After she'd fled the cemetery—and Daniel—she'd practically sprinted up to her room. She hadn't even bothered to turn on a light, so she'd tripped over her desk chair and stubbed her toe hard. She'd curled into a ball and gripped her throbbing foot. At least the pain was something real that she could cope with, something sane and of this world. She was so glad to finally be alone.

There was a knock on her door.

She could not catch a break.

Luce ignored the knock. She didn't want to see anyone, and whoever it was would get the hint. Another knock. Heavy breathing and a phlegmy, allergy-ridden throat-clearing sound.

Penn.

She couldn't see Penn right now. She'd either sound crazy if she tried to explain all that had happened to her in the last twenty-four hours, or she'd go crazy trying to put on a normal face and keep it to herself.

Finally, Luce heard Penn's footsteps treading away down the hallway. She breathed a sigh of relief, which turned into a long, lonely whimper.

She wanted to blame Daniel for unleashing this out-of-control feeling inside her, and for a second, she tried to imagine her life without him. Except that was impossible. Like trying to remember your first impression of a house after you've lived in it for years. That was how much he had gotten to her. And now she had to figure out a way to wade through all the strange things he'd told her tonight.

But at the edge of her mind, she kept spiraling back to what he'd said about the times they'd spent together in the past. Maybe Luce couldn't exactly remember the moments he'd described or the places he mentioned, but in a strange way, his words weren't shocking at all. It was all somehow familiar.

For example, she had always inexplicably hated dates. Even the sight of them made her feel queasy. She'd started claiming she was allergic so her mom would stop trying to sneak them into things she baked. And she'd been begging her parents to take her to Brazil practically her whole life, though she never could explain exactly why she wanted to go. The white peonies. Daniel had given her a bouquet after the fire in the library. There had always been something so unusual about them, yet so familiar.

The sky outside her window was a deep charcoal, with just a few puffs of white cloud. Her room was dark, but the pale full blooms of the flowers on her windowsill stood out in the dimness. They'd sat in their vase for a week now, and not a single petal had withered.

Luce sat up and inhaled their sweetness.

She couldn't blame him. Yes, he sounded crazy, but he was also right—she was the one who had come to him again and again suggesting that they had some sort of history. And it wasn't only that. She was also the one who saw the shadows, the one who kept finding herself involved in the deaths of innocent people. She'd been trying not to think about Trevor and Todd when Daniel started talking about her own deaths—how he had watched her die so many times. If there had been any way to fathom such a thing, Luce would have wanted to ask whether Daniel ever felt responsible. For the loss of her. Whether his reality was anything like the secret, ugly, overriding guilt she faced every day.

She sank onto the desk chair, which had somehow made its way to the middle of the room. Ouch. When she reached underneath her, hand groping for whatever hard object she'd just plopped down on, she found a thick book.

Luce moved to the wall and flicked on her light switch, then squinted in the ugly fluorescent light. The book in her hands was one she'd never seen before. It was bound in the palest gray cloth, with frayed corners and brown glue crumbling at the bottom of the spine.

The Watchers: Myth in Medieval Europe.

Daniel's ancestor's book.

It was heavy and smelled faintly of smoke. She tugged out the note that was tucked inside the front cover.

Yes, I found a spare key and entered your room unlawfully. I'm sorry. But this is URGENT!!! And I couldn't find you anywhere. Where are you? You need to look at this, and then we need to have a powwow. I'll swing by in an hour. Proceed with caution, xoxo, Penn

Luce laid the note next to the flowers and took the book back to her bed. She sat down with her legs dangling over the edge. Just holding the book gave her a strange, warm buzzing sensation just below her skin. The book felt almost alive in her hands.

She cracked it open, expecting to have to decode some stiff academic table of contents or dig through an index at the back before she'd find anything even remotely related to Daniel.

She never got beyond the title page.

Pasted inside the front cover of the book was a sepia-toned photograph. It was a very old carte de visite-style picture, printed on yellowing albumen paper. Someone had scrawled in ink at the bottom: Helston, 1854.

Heat flashed across her skin. She yanked her black sweater over her head but still felt hot in her tank top.

The memory of Daniel's voice sounded hollow in her mind. I get to live forever, he'd said. You come along every seventeen years. You fall in love with me, and I with you. And it kills you.

Her head throbbed.

You're my love, Lucinda. For me, you're all there is.

She fingered the outline of the picture glued inside the book. Luce's dad, the aspiring photography guru, would have marveled over how well-preserved the image was, how valuable it must be.

Luce, on the other hand, was hung up on the people in the image. Because, unless every word out of Daniel's mouth had been true, it made no sense at all.

A young man, with light cropped hair and lighter eyes, posed elegantly in a trim black coat. His raised chin and well-defined cheekbones made his fine attire look even more distinguished, but it was his lips that gave Luce such a start. The exact shape of his smile, combined with the look in those eyes… it added up to an expression that Luce had seen in every one of her dreams these last few weeks. And, over the last couple of days, in person.

This man was the spitting image of Daniel. The Daniel who had just told her that he loved her—and that she had been reincarnated dozens of times. The Daniel who had said so many other things Luce didn't want to hear that she had run away. The Daniel whom she'd abandoned under the peach trees in the cemetery.

It could have been just a remarkable likeness. Some distant relative, the author of the book maybe, who'd funneled each one of his genes straight down the family tree right to Daniel.

Except that the young man in the picture was posed next to a young woman who also looked alarmingly familiar.

Luce held the book inches from her face and pored over the woman's image. She wore a ruffled black silk ball gown that hugged her body to her waist before billowing out in wide black tiers. Black lace-up wristlets encased her hands, leaving her white fingers bare. Her small teeth showed between her lips, which were parted in an easy smile. She had clear skin a few tones lighter than the man's. Deep-set eyes bordered by thick eyelashes. A black flood of hair that fell in thick waves to her waist.

It took a moment for Luce to remember how to breathe, and even then, she still couldn't tear her strained eyes away from the book. The woman in the photograph?

It was her.

Either Luce had been right, and her memory of Daniel had come from a forgotten trip to a Savannah mall, where they'd posed for cheesy dress-up shots at Ye Old Photo Booth that she also couldn't remember—or Daniel had been telling the truth.

Luce and Daniel did know one another.

From an altogether different time.

She could not catch her breath. Her whole life tossed in the roiling sea of her mind, everything came into question—the itchy dark shadows that haunted her, the gruesome death of Trevor, the dreams…

She had to find Penn. If anyone could come up with an explanation for such an impossible occurrence, it would be Penn. With the inscrutable old book tucked under her arm, Luce left her room and raced toward the library.

The library was warm and empty, but something about the high ceilings and endless rows of books made Luce nervous. She walked quickly past the new call desk, which still looked sterile and unlived in. She passed the formidable unused card catalog and the endless reference section until she had reached the long tables in the group study section.

Instead of Penn, Luce found Arriane, playing a game of chess with Roland. She had her feet up on the table and was wearing a striped conductor's cap. Her hair was tucked under the hat, and Luce noticed again, for the first time since the morning she'd cut Arriane's hair, the glossy, marbled scar along her neck.

Arriane was fixated on the game. A chocolate cigar bobbed between her lips as she contemplated her next move. Roland had twisted his dreads into two meaty knots on the crown of his head. He was giving Arriane the hawk eye, tapping one of his pawns with his pinky.

"Checkmate, bitch," Arriane said triumphantly, knocking over Roland's king, just as Luce thudded to a stop in front of their table. "Lululucinda," she sang, looking up. "You've been hiding from me."

"No."

"I've been hearing things about you," Arriane said, causing Roland to tilt his head attentively. "Nudge nudge, wink wink. That means sit down and spill. Right now."

Luce hugged the book to her chest. She didn't want to sit down. She wanted to scour the library for Penn. She couldn't make small talk with Arriane—especially not in front of Roland, who was clearing his things off the seat next to him.

"Join us," Roland said.

Luce lowered herself reluctantly onto the edge of the seat. She'd just stay a few minutes. It was true that she hadn't seen Arriane in a few days, and under normal circumstances, she would really have missed the girl's bizarre ways.

But these were far from normal circumstances, and Luce could think of nothing other than that photograph.

"Since I just wiped the chessboard with Roland's ass, let's play a new game. How about 'who saw an incriminating photo of Luce the other day?'" Arriane said, crossing her arms on the table.

"What?" Luce jumped back. She pressed her hand down firmly on the cover of the book, feeling certain that her tense expression was giving everything away. She should never have brought it here.

"I'll give you three guesses," Arriane said, rolling her eyes. "Molly snapped a picture of you ducking into a big black car yesterday after class."

"Oh." Luce sighed.

"She was going to turn you in to Randy," Arriane continued. "Until I gave her what for. Mmm-hmm." She snapped her fingers. "Now, to show your gratitude, tell me—are they sneaking you away to see an off-campus shrink?" She lowered her voice to a whisper and tapped her fingernails on the table. "Or have you taken a lover?"

Luce glanced at Roland, who was giving her a fixed stare.

"Neither," she said. "I just left for a little while to have a talk with Cam. It didn't go exactly—"

"Bam! Pay up, Arri," Roland said, grinning. "You owe me ten bucks."

Luce's jaw dropped.

Arriane patted her hand. "No big deal, we just made a little wager to keep things interesting. I assumed it was Daniel you'd gone off with. Roland here picked Cam. You're breaking my bank, Luce. I don't like it."

"I was with Daniel," Luce said, not really knowing why she felt the need to correct them. Didn't they have anything better to do with their lives than sit around wondering what she did on her own time?

"Oh," Roland said, sounding disappointed. "The plot thickens."

"Roland." Luce turned to him. "I need to ask you something."

"Talk to me." He pulled a notepad and a pen out of his black-and-white pinstriped blazer. He held the pen poised over the paper, like a waiter taking an order. "What do you want? Coffee? Booze? I only get the hard stuff on Fridays. Dirty magazines?"

"Thigars?" Arriane offered, lisping through the chocolate one in her mouth.

"No." Luce shook her head. "None of that."

"Okay, special order. I left the catalog up in the room." Roland shrugged. "You can come by later—"

"I don't need you to get me anything. I just want to know—" She swallowed dryly. "You're friends with Daniel, right?"

He shrugged. "I don't hate the guy."

"But do you trust him?" she asked. "I mean, if he told you something that sounded crazy, how likely would you be to believe him?"

Roland squinted at her, seeming momentarily stumped, but Arriane quickly hopped up on the table and swung her legs over to Luce's side. "What exactly are we talking about?"

Luce stood up. "Never mind." She should never have raised the subject. The whole mess of details came rushing back to her. She grabbed the book from the table. "I've got to go," she said. "I'm sorry."

She pushed her chair in and walked away. Her legs felt heavy and dull, her mind overloaded. A breath of wind lifted the hair at the back of her neck and her head darted around in search of shadows. Nothing. Just an open window high up near the library rafters. Just a tiny bird's nest tucked into the window's narrow open corner. Scanning the library again, Luce found it hard to believe her eyes. There really was no sign of them, no inky black tendrils or shuddering gray weather system roiling overhead—but Luce could feel their distinct closeness, could almost smell their salty sulfur in the air. Where were they, if not haunting her? She'd always thought of them as hers alone. She'd never considered that the shadows might go other places, do other things—torment other people. Did Daniel see them, too?

Rounding the corner toward the computer stations at the back of the library, where she thought she might find Penn, Luce ran smack into Miss Sophia. Both of them stumbled, and Miss Sophia caught Luce to steady herself. She was dressed in fashionable jeans and a long white blouse, with a beaded red cardigan tied around her shoulders. Her metallic green glasses hung from a multicolored bead chain around her neck. Luce was surprised at how firm her grip was.

"Excuse me," Luce mumbled.

"Why, Lucinda, what's the matter?" Miss Sophia pressed a palm to Luce's forehead. The baby powder smell of her hands filled Luce's nose. "You don't look well."

Luce swallowed, willing herself not to burst into tears just because the nice librarian was taking pity on her. "I'm not well."

"I knew it," Miss Sophia said. "You missed class today and you weren't at the Social last night. Do you need to see a doctor? If my first-aid kit hadn't been burned up in the fire, I'd take your temperature right here."

"No, well, I don't know." Luce held the book out in front of her and contemplated telling Miss Sophia everything, starting from the beginning… which was when?

Only, she didn't have to. Miss Sophia took one glance at the book, sighed, and gave Luce a knowing look. "You finally found it, didn't you? Come, let's have a talk."

Even the librarian knew more than Luce did about her life. Lives? She couldn't figure out what any of it meant, or how any of it was possible.

She followed Miss Sophia to a table at the back corner of the study section. She could still see Arriane and Roland from the corner of her eye, but they seemed at least to be out of earshot.

"How did you come across this?" Miss Sophia patted Luce's hand and slipped her glasses on. Her small black-pearl eyes twinkled behind the bifocals' frames. "Don't worry. You're not in trouble, dear."

"I don't know. Penn and I had been looking for it. It was stupid. We thought maybe the author was related to Daniel, but we didn't know for sure. Whenever we went to look for it, it seemed like it had just been checked out. Then, when I came home tonight, Penn had left it in my room—"

"So Pennyweather knows about its contents as well?"

"I don't know," Luce said, shaking her head. She could feel herself rambling, and yet she couldn't make herself shut up. Miss Sophia was like the cool, zany grandmother Luce had never had. Her own grandmother's idea of a big shopping trip was going to the grocery store. Besides, it felt so good just to talk to someone. "I haven't been able to find her yet, only because I was with Daniel, and usually he acts so weird, but last night he kissed me, and we stayed out until—"

"Excuse me, dear," Miss Sophia said, a little too loudly, "but did you just say Daniel Grigori kissed you?"

Luce covered her mouth with both hands. She could not believe she'd just spilled that to Miss Sophia. She must really be losing it. "I'm sorry, that's completely irrelevant. And embarrassing. I don't know why that slipped out." She fanned her burning cheeks.

Already it was too late. Across the study section, Arriane boomed at Luce, "Thanks for telling me!" Her face looked stunned.

But Miss Sophia snapped Luce's attention back when she shook the book from Luce's hands. "A kiss between you and Daniel is not only irrelevant, dear, it's usually impossible." She stroked her chin and looked up at the ceiling. "Which means… well, it couldn't mean…"

Miss Sophia's fingers started flying through the book, tracing down each page at a miraculously rapid pace.

"What do you mean, 'usually'?" Luce had never felt so left out of her own life.

"Forget the kiss." Miss Sophia waved her hand at Luce, taking her aback. "That's not half of it. The kiss doesn't mean anything unless…" She muttered under her breath and went back to flipping through the pages.

What did Miss Sophia know? Daniel's kiss meant everything. Luce watched Miss Sophia's flying fingers dubiously until something on one of the pages caught her eye.

"Go back," Luce said, laying her hand over Miss Sophia's to stop her.

Miss Sophia leaned slowly away as Luce turned back the thin, translucent pages. There. She pressed a hand to her heart. In the margin was a series of drawings sketched in blackest ink. Quickly done, but in an elegant, fine hand. By someone with a certain talent. Luce ran her fingers over the drawings, taking them in. The slope of a woman's shoulder, seen from the back, her hair knotted into a low bun. Soft bare knees crossed over each other, leading up to a shadowy waist. A long, thin wrist giving way to an open palm in which a large, full peony rested.

Luce's fingers started to tremble. A lump rose in her throat. She didn't know why this, out of everything she'd seen and heard today, was beautiful enough—tragic enough—to finally bring her to tears. The shoulder, the knees, the wrist… all were her own. And she knew—all of them had been drawn by Daniel's hand.

"Lucinda." Miss Sophia looked nervous, slowly inching her chair away from the table. "Are you—are you feeling quite all right?"

"Oh, Daniel," Luce whispered, desperate to be near him again. She wiped away a tear.

"He's damned, Lucinda," Miss Sophia said in a surprisingly cold voice. "You both are."

Damned, Daniel had spoken of being damned. That was his word for all of this. But he'd been referring to himself. Not her.

"Damned?" Luce repeated. Only, she didn't want to hear any more. All she wanted was to find him.

Miss Sophia snapped her fingers in front of Luce's face. Luce met her eyes, slowly, languidly, smiling dopily.

"You're still not awake," Miss Sophia murmured. She closed the book with a smack, catching Luce's attention, and laid her hands down on the table. "Has he told you anything? After the kiss, maybe?"

"He told me…," Luce started. "It sounds crazy."

"These things often do."

"He said the two of us… we're some kind of star-crossed lovers." Luce closed her eyes, remembering his long catalog of past lives. At first the idea had felt so foreign, but now that she was getting used to it, she thought it might just be the most romantic thing that had ever happened in the history of the world. "He talked about all the times we've fallen in love, in Rio, and Jerusalem, Tahiti—"

"That does sound rather crazy," Miss Sophia said. "So, of course, you don't believe him?"

"I didn't at first," Luce said, thinking back to their heated disagreement under the peach tree. "He started out by bringing up the Bible, which my instinct is to tune out—" She bit her tongue. "No offense. I mean, I think your class is really interesting."

"None taken. People often shy away from their religious upbringings around your age. You're nothing new, Lucinda."

"Oh." Luce cracked her knuckles. "But I didn't have a religious upbringing. My parents didn't believe in it, so—"

"Everyone believes in something. Surely you were baptized?"

"Not if you don't count the swimming pool built under the church pews over there," Luce said timidly, jerking her thumb toward Sword & Cross's gym.

Yeah, she celebrated Christmas, she'd been to church a handful of times, and even when her life made her and everyone around her miserable, she still had faith that there was someone or something up there worth believing in. That had always been enough for her.

Across the room, she heard a loud clatter. She looked up to see that Roland had fallen out of his chair. The last time she'd glanced at him, he'd been leaning back on two legs, and now it looked like gravity had finally won.

As he stumbled to his feet, Arriane went to help him. She glanced over and offered a hurried wave. "He's okay!" she called cheerily. "Get up!" she whispered loudly to Roland.

Miss Sophia was sitting very still, with her hands in her lap under the table. She cleared her throat a few times, flipped back to the front cover of the book and ran her fingers over the photograph, then said, "Did he reveal anything more? Do you know who Daniel is?"

Slowly, sitting up very straight in her chair, Luce asked, "Do you?"

The librarian stiffened. "I study these things. I'm an academic. I don't get tangled up in trivial matters of the heart."

Those were the words she used—but everything from the pulsing vein along her neck, to the almost un-noticeably light sheen of sweat dotting her brow told Luce that the answer to her question was yes.

Over their heads, the giant black antique clock struck eleven. The minute hand trembled with the effort of snapping into its place, and the whole contraption gonged for so long it interrupted their conversation. Luce had never noticed how loud the clock was. Now, each chime made her ache. She'd been away from Daniel for too long.

"Daniel thought…," Luce started to say. "Last night, when we first kissed, he thought I was going to die." Miss Sophia didn't look as surprised as Luce would have liked her to look. Luce cracked her knuckles. "But that's crazy, isn't it? I'm not going anywhere."

Miss Sophia took off her bifocals and rubbed her tiny eyes. "For now."

"Oh God," Luce whispered, feeling the same wash of fear that had made her leave Daniel in the cemetery. But why? There was something he still wasn't telling her—something she knew had the power to make her either much more or much less afraid. Something she knew already on her own but couldn't believe. Not until she saw his face again.

The book was still open to the photograph. Upside down, Daniel's smile looked worried, like he knew—as he said he always did—what was coming around the next corner. She couldn't imagine what he must be going through right now. To have opened up about the uncanny history they shared—only to have her dismiss him so completely. She had to find him.

She shut the book and tucked it back under her elbow. Then she stood up and pushed in her chair.

"Where are you going?" Miss Sophia asked nervously.

"To find Daniel."

"I'll go with you."

"No." Luce shook her head, imagining showing up to throw her arms around Daniel with the school librarian in tow. "You don't have to come. Really."

Miss Sophia was all business when she bent down to double-knot the laces of her sensible shoes. She stood up and laid a hand on Luce's shoulder.

"Trust me," she said, "I do. Sword & Cross has a reputation to uphold. You don't think we just let students run around willy-nilly in the night, do you?"

Luce resisted filling Miss Sophia in on her recent escapade outside the school gates. She groaned inwardly. Why not bring along the whole student body so everyone could enjoy the drama? Molly could take pictures, Cam could pick another fight. Why not start right here, and pick up Arriane and Roland—who, she realized with a start, had already disappeared.

Miss Sophia, book in hand, had already taken off for the front entrance. Luce had to jog to catch up to her, speeding past the card catalog, the singed Persian carpet at the front desk, and the glass cases full of Civil War relics in the east wing special collections, where she'd seen Daniel sketching the cemetery the very first night she was here.

They stepped outside into the humid night. A cloud passed over the moon and the campus fell into inky blackness. Then, as if a compass had been placed in her hand. Luce felt guided toward the shadows. She knew exactly where they were. Not at the library, but not far away, either.

She couldn't see them yet, but she could feel them, which was so much worse. An awful, consuming itch coated her skin, seeping into her bones and blood like acid. Pooling, clotting, making the cemetery^-and beyond—reek with their sulfur stink. They were so much bigger now. It seemed like all the air on campus was foul with their wretched stench of decay.

"Where is Daniel?" Miss Sophia asked. Luce realized that though the librarian might know quite a bit about the past, she seemed oblivious to the shadows. It made Luce feel terrified and alone, responsible for whatever was about to happen.

"I don't know," she said, feeling as if she couldn't get enough oxygen in the thick, swampy night air. She didn't want to say the words she knew would bring them closer—far too close—to everything that was making her so afraid. But she had to go to Daniel. "I left him in the cemetery."

They hurried across campus, dodging patches of mud left over from the downpour the other day. Only a few lights were on in the dormitory to their right. Through one of the barred windows, Luce saw a girl she barely knew poring over a book. They were in the same morning block of classes. She was a tough-looking girl with a pierced septum and the tiniest sneeze—but Luce had never heard her speak. She had no idea if she was miserable or if she enjoyed her life. Luce wondered at that moment: If she could trade places with this girl—who never had to worry about past lives, or apocalyptic shadows, or the deaths of two innocent boys on her hands—would she do it?

Daniel's face—the way it had been bathed in violet light when he'd carried her home this morning—appeared before her eyes. His gleaming golden hair. His tender, knowing eyes. The way one touch of his lips transported her far away from any darkness. For him, she'd suffer all of this, and more.

If only she knew how much more there was.

She and Miss Sophia jogged forward, past the creaking bleachers framing the commons, then past the soccer field. Miss Sophia really kept in shape. Luce would have worried about their pace if the woman hadn't been a few steps ahead of her.

Luce was dragging. Her fear of facing the shadows was like a hurricane-force headwind slowing her down. And yet she pressed on. An overwhelming nausea told her that she'd barely glimpsed what the dark things could accomplish.

At the cemetery gates, they stopped. Luce was trembling, hugging herself in a failed attempt to hide it. A girl was standing with her back to them, gazing into the graveyard below.

"Penn!" Luce called, so glad to see her friend.

When Penn turned to them, her face was ashen. She wore a black Windbreaker, despite the heat, and her glasses were fogging up from the humidity. She was trembling just as much as Luce was.

Luce gasped. "What happened?"

"I was coming to look for you," Penn said, "and then a bunch of the other kids ran this way. They went down there." She pointed toward the gates. "But I c-c-couldn't."

"What is it?" Luce asked. "What's down there?"

But even as she asked, she knew one thing that was down there, one thing that Penn would never be able to see. The curdling black shadow was coaxing Luce toward it, Luce alone.

Penn was blinking rapidly. She looked terrified. "Dunno," she said finally. "At first I thought fireworks. But nothing ever made it to the sky." She shuddered. "Something bad's about to happen. I don't know what."