Fallen(100)

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.