Fallen(93)

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.