Looking straight up, she saw that there was a window in this cavernous chapel, a large stained-glass rosette like a skylight in the ceiling. It had a complicated geometric floral pattern, with red and purple roses against a navy-blue background. It would have been a whole lot prettier to Luce if it had offered a view of the outside.
"Let's see, where did I… ah yes!" Miss Sophia reached below the altar and returned with a thick length of rope. "Don't wiggle, now," she said, waving the knife in Luce's direction. Then she set about securing Luce to four holes drilled into the altar's surface. First each ankle, then each wrist. Luce tried not to writhe as she was tied down like some sort of sacrifice. "Perfect," Miss Sophia said, giving her intricate knots a firm tug.
"You planned all this," Luce realized, aghast.
Miss Sophia grinned as sweetly as she had the very first day Luce had stumbled into the library. "I would say it's nothing personal, Lucinda, but actually, it is," she cackled. "I've been waiting a long time for this moment alone with you."
"Why?" Luce asked. "What do you want from me?"
"You, I just want eliminated," Miss Sophia said. "It's Daniel I want freed up."
She left Luce on the altar and moved to a lectern near Luce's feet. She hoisted the Grigori book onto the lectern and began rapidly flipping through the pages. Luce thought back to the moment she'd opened it and seen her face next to Daniel's for the first time. How it had finally hit her that he was an angel. She'd known next to nothing then, and yet she'd felt certain that the photograph meant she and Daniel could be together.
Now that felt impossible.
"You're just sitting there swooning over him, aren't you?" Miss Sophia asked. She smacked the book closed and banged her fist on its cover. "This is precisely the problem."
"What's wrong with you?" Luce strained against the ropes binding her to the altar. "What do you care about what Daniel and I feel for each other, or who either one of us dates in the first place?" This psycho had nothing to do with them.
"I should like to have a word with whoever thought putting the fate of all of our eternal souls in the hands of one lovesick pair of infants was so brilliant an idea." She raised a shaking fist high in the air. "They want the balance to be tipped? I'll show them tipping the balance." The point of her dagger gleamed in the candlelight.
Luce drew her eyes away from the blade. "You're crazy."
"If wanting to bring to a final head the longest, greatest battle ever fought means I'm crazy" — Miss Sophia's tone implied that Luce was dense for not knowing all this already—"so be it."
The idea that Miss Sophia could have any say in ending the battle didn't add up in Luce's mind. Daniel was fighting the battle outside. What was going on in here couldn't compare to that. Regardless of whether Miss Sophia had crossed over to the other side.
"They said it would be Hell on earth," Luce whispered. "The end of days."
Miss Sophia started laughing. "It would seem that way to you now. Is it such a surprise that I'm one of the good guys, Lucinda?"
"If you're on the good side," Luce spat, "it doesn't sound like a war worth fighting."
Miss Sophia smiled, as if she'd expected Luce to say those very words. "Your death may be just the push Daniel needs. A little push in the right direction."
Luce squirmed on the altar. "You—you wouldn't hurt me."
Miss Sophia crossed back toward her, and brought her face close. The artificial baby-powder old lady scent filled Luce's nose, making her gag.
"Of course I would," Miss Sophia said, bobbing the wild silver frizz of her unkempt hair. "You're the human equivalent of a migraine."
"But I'll just come back. Daniel told me." Luce gulped. In seventeen years.
"Oh, no you won't. Not this time," Miss Sophia said. "That first day you walked into my library, I saw something in your eyes, but I couldn't put my finger on it." She smiled down at Luce. "I've met you many times before, Lucinda, and most of the time, you're a downright bore."
Luce stiffened, feeling exposed, as if she were naked on this altar. It was one thing for Daniel to have encountered her in other lives—but had others known her, too?
"This time," Miss Sophia continued, "you had something of an edge. A genuine spark. But it wasn't until tonight, that beautiful slipup about those agnostic parents of yours."
"What about my parents?" Luce hissed.
"Well, my dear, the reason you come back again and again is because all the other times you've been born, you were ushered into religious belief. This time, when your parents opted out of baptizing you, they effectively left your little soul up for grabs." She shrugged dramatically. "No ritual to welcome you into religion equals no reincarnation for Luce. A small but essential loophole in your cycle."