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?