Fallen(99)

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.