Fallen

CHAPTER 18. THE BURIED WAR

Luce took one look at the shuddering light at the base of the cemetery and started racing toward it. She hurtled down past the broken headstones, leaving Penn and Miss Sophia far behind. She didn't care that the sharp, twisting limbs of the live oak trees scratched her arms and face as she ran, or that clumps of thick-rooted weeds tripped up her feet.

She had to get down there.

The waning sliver of moon offered little light, but there was another source—coming from the bottom of the cemetery. Her destination. It looked like a monstrous, cloud-ridden lightning storm. Only it was happening on the ground.

The shadows had been warning her, she realized, for days. Now their dark show had turned into something even Penn could see. And the other students who'd run ahead must have noticed it, too. Luce didn't know what it could possibly mean. Only that if Daniel was down there with that sinister flickering… it was all her fault.

Her lungs burned, but she was driven forward by the image of him standing under the peach trees. She wouldn't stop until she found him—because she'd been coming to find him anyway, to shove the book under his nose and cry out that she believed him, that part of her had believed him all along, but she'd been too scared to accept their unfathomable history. She would tell him that she wasn't going to let fear drive her away, not this time, not anymore. Because she knew something, understood something that had taken her far too long to piece together. Something wild and strange that made their past experiences together both more and less believable. She knew who—no, what Daniel was. Part of her had come to this realization on her own—that she might have lived before and loved him before. Only, she hadn't understood what it meant, what it all added up to—the pull she felt toward him, her dreams—until now.

But none of that mattered if she couldn't get down there in time to find some way to fend off the shadows. None of it mattered if they got to Daniel before she could. She tore down the steep tiers of graves, but the basin at the center of the cemetery was still so far away.

Behind her, a thumping of footsteps. Then a shrill voice.

"Pennyweather!" It was Miss Sophia. She was gaining on Luce, calling back over her shoulder, where Luce could see Penn carefully working her way over a fallen tombstone. "You're slower than Christmas coming!"

"No!" Luce yelled. "Penn, Miss Sophia, don't come down here!" She wouldn't be responsible for putting anyone else in the shadows' path.

Miss Sophia froze on a toppled white tombstone and stared up at the sky like she hadn't heard Luce at all. She raised her thin arms up in the air, as if to shield herself. Luce squinted into the night and sucked in her breath. Something was moving toward them, blowing in with the chill wind.

At first she thought it was the shadows, but this was something different and scarier, like a jagged, irregular veil full of dark pockets, letting flecks of sky filter through. This shadow was made of a million tiny black pieces. A rioting, fluttering storm of darkness stretching out in all directions.

"Locusts?" Penn cried.

Luce shuddered. The thick swarm was still at a distance, but its deep percussion grew louder with every passing second. Like the beating of a thousand birds' wings. Like a hostile sweeping darkness scouring the earth. It was coming. It was going to lash out at her, maybe at all of them, tonight.

"This is not good!" Miss Sophia ranted at the sky. "There's supposed to be an order to things!"

Penn came to a panting stop next to Luce and the two of them exchanged a bewildered look. Sweat beaded Penn's upper lip, and her purple glasses kept slipping down in the moist heat.

"She's losing it," Penn whispered, jerking her thumb at Miss Sophia.

"No." Luce shook her head. "She knows things. And if Miss Sophia's scared, you shouldn't be here, Penn."

"Me?" Penn asked, bewildered, probably because ever since the first day of school, she had been the one guiding Luce. "I don't think either of us should be here."

Luce's chest stung with a pain similar to what she'd felt when she had to say goodbye to Callie. She looked away from Penn. There was a split between them now, a deep division cutting them apart, because of Luce's past. She hated to own up to it, to call Penn's attention to it, too, but she knew it would be better, safer, if they parted ways.

"I have to stay," she said, taking a deep breath. "I have to find Daniel. You should go back to the dorm, Penn. Please."

"But you and me," Penn said hoarsely. "We were the only ones—"

Before Luce could hear the end of the sentence, she took off toward the cemetery's center. Toward the mausoleum where she'd seen Daniel brooding on the evening of Parents' Day. She bounded over the last of the tombstones, then skidded down a slope of dank, rotting mulch until the ground finally evened out. She came to a stop in front of the giant oak in the basin at the cemetery's center.

Hot and frustrated and terrified all at once, she leaned against the tree trunk.

Then, through the branches of the tree, she saw him.

Daniel.

She let out all the air in her lungs and felt weak in the knees. One look at his distant, dark profile, so beautiful and majestic, told her that everything Daniel had hinted at— even the one big thing she'd figured out on her own—everything was true.

He was standing atop the mausoleum, arms crossed, looking up where the roiling cloud of locusts had just passed overhead. The thin moonlight threw his shadow in a crescent of darkness that dipped off the crypt's wide, flat roof. She ran toward him, weaving through the dangling Spanish moss and the tilted old statues.

"Luce!" He spied her as she neared the base of the mausoleum. "What are you doing here?" His voice showed no happiness to see her—more like shock and horror.

It's my fault, she wanted to cry as she approached the base of the mausoleum. And I believe it, I believe our story. Forgive me for ever leaving you, I never will again. There was one more thing she wanted to tell him. But he was far above her, and the shadows' horrible din was too loud, and the air was too soupy to try to make him hear her from where she stood below him.

The tomb was solid marble. But there was a big chip in one of the bas-relief sculptures of a peacock, and Luce used it as a toehold. The usually cool stone was warm to the touch. Her sweaty palms slipped a few times as she strained to reach the top. To reach Daniel, who had to forgive her.

She'd only scaled a few feet of the wall when someone tapped her shoulder. She spun around and gasped when she saw that it was Daniel, and lost her grip. He caught her, his arms circling her waist, before she could slide to the ground. But he'd just been a full story overhead a second earlier.

She buried her face in his shoulder. And while the truth still scared her, being in his arms made her feel like the sea finding its shore, like a traveler returning after a long, hard, distant trip—finally returning home.

"You picked a fine time to come back," he said. He smiled, but his smile was weighed down with worry. His eyes kept looking beyond her, into the sky.

"You see it, too?" she asked.

Daniel just looked at her, unable to respond. His lip quivered.

"Of course you do," she whispered, because everything was coming together. The shadows, his story, their past. A choking cry welled up inside her. "How can you love me?" she sobbed. "How can you even stand me?"

He took her face in his hand. "What are you talking about? How can you say that?"

Her heart burned from racing so fast.

"Because…" She swallowed. "You're an angel."

His arms went slack. "What did you say?"

"You're an angel, Daniel, I know it," she said, feeling floodgates open within her, wider and wider until it all just tumbled out. "Don't tell me I'm crazy. I have dreams about you, dreams that are too real to forget, dreams that made me love you before you ever said one nice thing to me." Daniel's eyes didn't change at all. "Dreams where you have wings and you hold me high up in a sky I don't recognize, and yet I know I've been there, just like that, in your arms a thousand times before." She touched her forehead to his. "It explains so much—how graceful you are when you move, and the book your ancestor wrote. Why no one came to visit you on Parents' Day. The way your body seems to float when you swim. And why, when you kiss me, I feel like I've gone to Heaven." She stopped to catch her breath. "And why you can live forever. The only thing it doesn't explain is what on earth you're doing with me. Because I'm just… me." She looked up at the sky again, feeling the black spell of the shadows. "And I'm guilty of so much."

The color was gone from his face. And Luce could draw only one conclusion. "You don't understand why, either," she said.

"I don't understand what you're still doing here."

She blinked and nodded miserably, then began to turn away.

"No!" He pulled her back. "Don't leave. It's just that you've never—we've never… gotten this far." He closed his eyes. "Will you say it again?" he asked, almost shyly. "Will you tell me… what I am?"

"You're an angel," she repeated slowly, surprised to see Daniel close his eyes and moan in pleasure, almost as if they were kissing. "I'm in love with an angel." Now she was the one who wanted to close her eyes and moan. She tilted her head. "But in my dreams, your wings—"

A hot, howling wind swept sideways over them, practically swatting Luce out of Daniel's arms. He shielded her body with his. The cloud of shadow-locusts had settled in the canopy of a tree beyond the cemetery and had been making sizzling noises in the branches. Now they rose up in one great mass.

"Oh God," Luce whispered. "I have to do something. I have to stop it—"

"Luce." Daniel stroked her cheek. "Look at me. You have done nothing wrong. And there's nothing you can do about" — he pointed—"that." He shook his head. "Why would you ever think you were guilty?"

"Because," she said, "my whole life, I've been seeing these shadows—"

"I should have done something when I realized that, last week at the lake. It's the first lifetime when you've seen them—and it scared me."

"How can you know it's not my fault?" she asked, thinking of Todd and of Trevor. The shadows always came to her just before something awful happened.

He kissed her hair. "The shadows you see are called Announcers. They look bad, but they can't hurt you. All they do is scope out a situation and report back to someone else. Gossips. The demonic version of a clique of high school girls."

"But what about those?" She pointed at the trees that lined the perimeter of the cemetery. Their branches were waving, weighed down by the thick, oozing blackness.

Daniel looked out with a calm stare. "Those are the shadows the Announcers have summoned. To battle."

Luce's arms and legs went cold with fear. "What… um… what kind of battle is that?"

"The big one," he said simply, raising his chin. "But they're just showing off right now. We still have time."

Behind them a tiny cough made Luce jump. Daniel bowed in greeting to Miss Sophia, who was standing in the shadow of the mausoleum. Her hair had come loose from its pins and looked wild and unruly, like her eyes. Then someone else stepped forward from behind Miss Sophia. Penn. Her hands were stuffed into the pockets of her jacket. Her face was still red, and her hairline was damp with sweat. She shrugged at Luce as if to say I don't know what the heck is going on, but I couldn't just abandon you. Despite herself, Luce smiled.

Miss Sophia stepped forward and raised the book. "Our Lucinda has been doing her research."

Daniel rubbed his jaw. "You've been reading that old thing? Never should have written it." He sounded almost bashful—but Luce slid one more piece of their puzzle into place.

"You wrote that," she said. "And sketched in the margins. And pasted in that photograph of us."

"You found the photograph," Daniel said, smiling, holding her closer as if the mention of the picture brought back a rush of memories. "Of course."

"It took me a while to understand, but when I saw how happy we were, something opened up inside me. And I knew."

She wrapped a hand around his neck and pulled his face to hers, not even caring that Miss Sophia and Penn were right there. When Daniel's lips touched hers, the whole dark, horrid cemetery disappeared—the worn graves, too, and the pockets of shadows rooting around in the trees; even the moon and the stars above.

The first time she'd seen the Helston picture, it had scared her. The idea of all those past versions of herself existing—it was just too much to take in. But now, in Daniel's arms, she could feel all of them somehow working together, a vast consortium of Luces who'd loved the same Daniel over and over and over again. So much love—it spilled out of her heart and her soul, pouring off her body and filling the space between them.

And she at last heard what he had said when they were looking at the shadows: that she had done nothing wrong. That there was no reason to feel guilty. Could it be true? Was she innocent of Trevor's death, of Todd's, as she'd always believed? The moment she asked herself, she knew that Daniel had told her the truth. And she felt like she was waking from a long bad dream. She no longer felt like the girl with the shorn hair and the baggy black clothes, no longer the eternal screw-up, afraid of the putrid cemetery, and stuck in reform school for good reason.

"Daniel," she said, gently pushing his shoulders back so she could look at him. "Why didn't you tell me sooner that you were an angel? Why all that talk about being damned?"

Daniel eyed her nervously.

"I'm not mad." She reassured him. "Only wondering."

"I couldn't tell you," he said. "It's all wrapped up together. Until now, I didn't even know that you could discover it on your own. If I told you too quickly or at the wrong time, you'd be gone again and I would have to wait. I've already had to wait so long."

"How long?" Luce asked.

"Not so long that I've forgotten that you're worth everything. Every sacrifice. Every pain." Daniel closed his eyes for a moment. Then he looked over at Penn and Miss Sophia.

Penn was seated with her back against a mossy black tombstone. Her knees were curled up to her chin and she was chewing avidly on her fingernails. Miss Sophia had her hands on her hips. She looked like she had something to say.

Daniel stepped back, and Luce felt a rush of cool air waft between them. "I'm still afraid that any minute you could—"

"Daniel—" Miss Sophia called reprovingly.

He waved her off. "Our being together, it's not as simple as you're going to want it to be."

"Of course not," Luce said. "I mean, you're an angel, but now that I know it—"

"Lucinda Price." This time it was Luce who was the object of Miss Sophia's anger. "What he has to tell you, you do not want to know," she warned. "And Daniel, you have no right. It will kill her—"

Luce shook her head, confused by Miss Sophia's request. "I think I could survive a little truth."

"It is not a little truth," Miss Sophia said, stepping forward to position herself between them. "And you will not survive it. As you have not survived it in the thousands of years since the Fall."

"Daniel, what is she talking about?" Luce reached around Miss Sophia for his wrist, but the librarian fended her off. "I can handle it," Luce said, feeling a dry pit of nerves in her stomach. "I don't want any more secrets. I love him."

It was the first time she had ever said the words aloud to anyone. Her only regret was that she'd directed the most important three words she knew at Miss Sophia instead of at Daniel. She turned to him. His eyes were shining. "I do," she said. "I love you."

Clap.

Clap. Clap.

Clap. Clap. Clap. Clap.

Slow, loud applause sounded from behind them in the trees. Daniel broke away and turned toward the woods, his posture stiffening, as Luce felt the old fear flood in, felt herself rooted by terror about what he was seeing in the shadows, frightened of what he saw before she did.

"Oh, bravo. Bravo! Really, I am touched to my very soul—and not much touches me there these days, sad to say."

Cam stepped into the clearing. His eyes were rimmed with a thick, shimmering gold shadow, and it shone on his face in the moonlight, making him look like a wildcat.

"That is so incredibly sweet," he said. "And he just loves you, too—don't you, lover boy? Don't you, Daniel?"

"Cam," Daniel warned. "Do not do this."

"Do what?" Cam asked, raising his left arm in the air. He snapped his fingers once and a small flame, the size of a lit match, ignited in the air over his hand. "You mean that?"

The echo of his finger snap seemed to linger, to reflect off the tombs in the cemetery, to grow louder and multiply as it bounced back and forth. At first Luce thought the sound was more applause, as if a demonic auditorium full of darkness were clapping derisively at Luce and Daniel's love, the way Cam had done. But then she remembered the thundering wingbeats she'd heard earlier. She held her breath as the sound took the form of those thousand bits of flitting darkness. The swarm of locust-shaped shadows that had vanished into the forest reared up overhead once again.

Their drumming was so loud, Luce had to cover her ears. On the ground, Penn was crouched with her head between her knees. But Daniel and Miss Sophia stoically watched the sky as the cacophony grew and changed. It began to sound more like very loud sprinklers going off… or like the hiss of a thousand snakes.

"Or this?" Cam asked, shrugging as the hideous, formless darkness settled around him.

The insects each began to grow and unfold, becoming larger than any insect could ever be, dripping like glue and growing into black segmented bodies. Then, as if they were learning how to use their shadow limbs as they formed, they slowly hoisted themselves onto their numerous legs and came forward, like mantises grown to human height.

Cam welcomed them as they swarmed around him. Soon they had formed a massive army of embodied night behind Cam.

"I'm sorry," he said, smacking his forehead with his palm. "Did you tell me not to do that?"

"Daniel," Luce whispered. "What's happening?"

"Why did you call an end to the truce?" he called to Cam.

"Oh. Well. You know what they say about desperate times." Cam sneered. "And watching you plaster her body with those perfectly angelic kisses of yours… it made me feel so desperate."

"Shut up, Cam!" Luce shouted, hating that she'd ever let him touch her.

"In good time." Cam's eyes rolled over to her. "Oh yes, we're going to brawl, baby. Over you. Again." He stroked his chin and narrowed his green eyes. "Bigger this time, I think. A few more casualties. Deal with it."

Daniel gathered Luce in his arms. "Tell me why, Cam. You owe me that much."

"You know why," Cam boomed, pointing at Luce. "She's still here. Won't be for long, though."

He put his hands on his hips, and a series of dense black shadows, now shaped like endless fat serpents, slithered up along his body, encircling his arms like bracelets. He petted the largest one's head dotingly.

"And this time, when your love blows into that tragic little puff of ash, it's going to be for good. See, everything's different this time." Cam beamed, and Luce thought she felt Daniel quake for just a second.

"Oh, except one thing is the same—and I do have a soft spot for your predictability, Grigori." Cam took a step forward. His shadow-legions inched up accordingly, making Luce and Daniel, and Penn and Miss Sophia, inch back. "You're afraid," he said, pointing dramatically at Daniel. "And I'm not."

"That's because you have nothing to lose," Daniel spat. "I would never trade places with you."

"Hmmm," Cam said, tapping his chin. "We'll see about that." He looked around, grinning. "Must I spell it out for you? Yes. I hear you may have something bigger to lose this time. Something that's going to make annihilating her so much more enjoyable."

"What are you talking about?" Daniel asked.

To Luce's left, Miss Sophia opened her mouth and let out a howling string of feral noises. She waved her hands wildly over her head in a jerking dancelike motion, her eyes almost transparent, as if she were in some sort of trance. Her lips twitched, and Luce realized with a shock that she was speaking in tongues.

Daniel took Miss Sophia's arm and shook her. "No, you are absolutely right: It doesn't make sense," he whispered, and Luce realized he could understand Miss Sophia's strange language.

"You know what she's saying?" Luce asked.

"Allow us to translate," a familiar voice shouted from the roof of the mausoleum. Arriane. Next to her was Gabbe. Both seemed to be lit from behind and were enshrouded in a strange silver glow. They hopped down from the crypt, landing next to Luce without a sound.

"Cam's right, Daniel," Gabbe said quickly. "Something's different this time… something about Luce. The cycle could be broken—and not the way we want it to. I mean… it could end."

"Someone tell me what you're talking about," Luce said, butting in. "What's different? Broken how? What's at stake with this whole battle, anyway?"

Daniel, Arriane, and Gabbe all stared at her for a moment as if trying to place her, as if they knew her from somewhere but she'd changed so completely in an instant that they no longer recognized her face.

Finally Arriane spoke up. "At stake?" She rubbed at the scar on her neck. "If they win—it's Hell on earth. The end of the world as anyone knows it."

The black shapes screeched around Cam, wrestling with and chewing on each other, in some sort of sick, devilish warm-up.

"And if we win?" Luce struggled to get out the words.

Gabbe swallowed, then said gravely, "We don't know yet."

Suddenly Daniel stumbled back, away from Luce, and pointed at her. "Sh-she hasn't been…," he stammered, covering his mouth. "The kiss," he said finally, stepping forward to grip Luce's arm. "The book. That's why you can—"

"Get to part B, Daniel," Arriane prompted. "Think fast. Patience is a virtue, and you know how Cam feels about those."

Daniel squeezed Luce's hand. "You have to go. You have to get out of here."

"What? Why?"

She looked at Arriane and Gabbe for help, then shrank away from them as a host of silver twinkles began to flow over the roof of the mausoleum. Like an endless stream of fireflies released from an enormous mason jar. They rained down on Arriane and Gabbe, making their eyes shine. It reminded Luce of fireworks—and of one Fourth of July, when the light had been just right and she'd looked into her mother's irises and seen the fireworks' reflection, a booming silvery flash of light, as if her mother's eyes were a mirror.

Only, these twinkles didn't peter into smoke like fireworks. When they hit the cemetery grass, they bloomed into graceful, shimmery iridescent beings. They weren't exactly human shapes, but they were vaguely recognizable. Gorgeous, glowing rays of light. Creatures so ravishing that Luce knew instantly they were an army of angelic power, equal in size and number to the great black force behind Cam. This was what true beauty and goodness looked like—a spectral, luminescent gathering of beings so pure it hurt to look directly at them, like the most glorious eclipse, or maybe Heaven itself. She should have felt comforted, standing on the side that had to prevail in this fight. But she was starting to feel sick.

Daniel pressed the back of his hand to her cheek. "She's feverish."

Gabbe patted Luce on the arm and beamed. "It's okay, sugar," she said, guiding Daniel's hand away. Her drawl was somehow reassuring. "We'll take it from here. But you have to go." She glanced over her shoulder at the horde of blackness behind Cam. "Now."

Daniel pulled Luce to him for one last embrace.

"I'll take her," Miss Sophia called loudly. The book was still tucked under her arm. "I know a safe place."

"Go," Daniel said. "I'll find you as soon as I can. Just promise me you'll run from here, and that you won't look back."

Luce had so many questions. "I don't want to leave you."

Arriane stepped between them and gave Luce a final, rough shove toward the gates. "Sorry, Luce," she said. "Time to leave this fight to us. We're kind of professionals."

Luce felt Penn's hand slide into hers, and soon they were running. Pounding up toward the gates of the cemetery as quickly as she'd bounded down on her way to find Daniel. Back up the slippery mulch slide. Back through the jagged live oak branches and the ramshackle stacks of broken headstones. They hurdled the stones and jogged up the slope, making for the distant ironwork arch of the gates. Hot wind blew her hair, and the swampy air still lay thick in her lungs. She couldn't find the moon to guide them, and the light in the cemetery's center was gone now. She didn't understand what was happening. At all. And she didn't like it at all that everyone else did.

A bolt of blackness struck the ground in front of her, cracking the earth and opening up a jagged gorge. Luce and Penn skidded to a halt just in time. The gash was as wide as Luce was tall, as deep as… well, she couldn't see down to the dark bottom. The edges of it sizzled and foamed.

Penn gasped. "Luce. I'm scared."

"Follow me, girls," Miss Sophia called.

She led them to the right, winding among the dark graves while blast after blast rang out behind them. "Just the sounds of battle," she huffed, like some sort of strange tour guide. "That will go on for some while, I fear."

Luce winced at every crash, but she kept pushing forward until her calves were burning, until behind her, Penn let out a wail. Luce turned and saw her friend stumble, her eyes rolling back in her head.

"Penn!" Luce screamed, reaching out to catch her just before she fell. Tenderly, Luce lowered her to the ground and rolled her over. She almost wished she hadn't. Penn's shoulder had been sliced through by something black and jagged. It had bit into her skin, leaving a charred line of flesh that smelled like burning meat.

"Is it bad?" Penn whispered hoarsely. She blinked rapidly, clearly frustrated at being unable to lift her head up to see for herself.

"No," Luce lied, shaking her head. "Just a cut." She gulped, trying to swallow the nausea rising in her as she tugged Penn's frayed black sleeve together. "Am I hurting you?"

"I don't know," Penn wheezed. "I can't feel anything."

"Girls, what is the holdup?" Miss Sophia had doubled back.

Luce looked up at Miss Sophia, willing her not to say how bad Penn's injury looked.

She didn't. She gave Luce a swift nod, then stretched her arms beneath Penn and lifted her up like a parent carrying a child to bed. "I've got you," she said. "It won't be long now."

"Hey." Luce followed Miss Sophia, who carried Penn's weight like she was a bag of feathers. "How did you—"

"No questions, not until we're far away from all of this," Miss Sophia said.

Faraway, Luce wanted nothing less than to be far away from Daniel. And then, after they'd crossed the threshold of the cemetery and were standing on the flat ground of the school commons, she couldn't help herself. She looked back. And instantly understood why Daniel had told her not to.

A twisting silver-gold pillar of fire burst forth from the dark center of the cemetery. It was as wide as the cemetery itself, a braid of light rising hundreds of feet up into the air and boiling away the clouds. The black shadows picked at the light, occasionally tearing tendrils free and carrying them off, shrieking, into the night. As the coiling strands shifted, now more silver, now more gold, a single chord of sound began to fill the air, full and unending, loud as a mighty waterfall. Low notes thundered in the night. High notes chimed to fill the space around them. It was the grandest, most perfectly balanced celestial harmony ever heard on earth. It was beautiful, and horrifying, and everything stank of sulfur.

Everyone for miles around must have believed the world was ending. Luce didn't know what to think. Her heart seized up.

Daniel had told her not to look back because he knew the sight of it would make her want to go to him.

"Oh, no you don't," Miss Sophia said, grabbing Luce by the scruff of the neck and dragging her across campus. When they reached the gymnasium, Luce realized that Miss Sophia had been carrying Penn the whole time, using only one arm.

"What are you?" Luce asked as Miss Sophia pushed her through the double doors.

The librarian pulled a long key from the pocket of her beaded red cardigan and slipped it into a part of the brick wall at the front of the foyer that didn't even look like a door. An entrance to a long stairway opened silently, and Miss Sophia gestured for Luce to precede her up the stairs.

Penn's eyes were closed. She was either unconscious or in too much pain to keep them open. Either way, she was staying remarkably quiet.

"Where are we going?" Luce asked. "We need to get out of here. Where's your car?" She didn't want to scare Penn, but they needed to get to a doctor. Fast.

"Quiet, if you know what's good for you." Miss Sophia glanced at Penn's wound and sighed. "We're going to the only chamber in this place that hasn't been desecrated with athletic equipment. Where we can be alone."

By then, Penn had begun groaning in Miss Sophia's arms. The blood from her wound was a thick, dark stream on the marble floor.

Luce eyed the steep staircase. She couldn't even see its end. "I think for Penn's sake we should stay down here. We're going to need to get help pretty soon."

Miss Sophia sighed and laid Penn down on the stone, quickly popping back up to lock the front door they'd just come through. Luce fell to her knees in front of Penn. Her friend looked so small and fragile. In the dim light coming from the delicate wrought iron chandelier overhead, Luce could at last see how badly she'd been injured.

Penn was the only friend Luce had at Sword & Cross she could really relate to, the only one she wasn't intimidated by. After Luce had seen what Arriane and Gabbe and Cam were capable of, few things made sense. But one did: Penn was the only kid at Sword & Cross like her.

Except Penn was stronger than Luce. Smarter and happier and more easygoing. She was the reason Luce had made it through these first few weeks of reform school at all. Without Penn, who knew where Luce would be?

"Oh, Penn." Luce sighed. "You're going to be okay. We're going to get you all fixed up."

Penn murmured something incomprehensible, which made Luce nervous. Luce turned back to Miss Sophia, who was closing all the windows in the foyer one by one.

"She's fading fast," Luce said. "We need to call a doctor."

"Yes, yes," Miss Sophia said, but something in her tone sounded preoccupied. She seemed consumed with closing up the building, as if the shadows from the cemetery were on their way here right now.

"Luce?" Penn whispered. "I'm scared."

"Don't be." Luce squeezed her hand. "You're so brave. This whole time you've been such a pillar of strength."

"Give me a break," Miss Sophia said from behind her, in a rough voice Luce had never heard her use. "She's a pillar of salt."

"What?" Luce asked, confused. "What does that mean?"

Miss Sophia's beady eyes had narrowed into thin black slits. Her face pinched into wrinkles and she bitterly shook her head. Then, very slowly, from the sleeve of her cardigan, she produced a long silver dagger. "The girl is only slowing us down."

Luce's eyes widened as she watched Miss Sophia raise the dagger over her head. Dazed, Penn didn't register what was happening, but Luce certainly did.

"No!" she screamed, reaching up to stop Miss Sophia's arm, to turn away the dagger. But Miss Sophia knew what she was doing and deftly blocked Luce's arm, pushing her aside with her free hand while she dragged the blade across Penn's throat.

Penn grunted and coughed, her breath turning ragged. Her eyes rolled backward in their sockets the way they did when she was thinking. Except she wasn't thinking, she was dying. At last her eyes met Luce's. Then they slowly dulled and Penn's breathing quieted.

"Messy but necessary," Miss Sophia said, wiping the blade clean on Penn's black sweater.