Fallen

Somewhere there was a key to Daniel's story. There had to be more to him than a halfway house in California. But thinking back to his reaction—that washed-out horror that Luce might take an interest in knowing anything about him—well, it made her feel like everything she and Pe

"What's the point of all of this?" Luce asked, suddenly a

"Why Miss Sophia would be collating all that information I can't figure out. Though Miss Sophia arrived at Sword & Cross the same day as Arriane, Daniel, and Molly…" Pe

She pointed toward the second note in Luce's hand.

Luce sighed. Part of her wanted to quit the search and stop feeling embarrassed about Daniel. The pushier part of her still yearned to get to know him better… which, strangely, was far easier to do when he wasn't technically present to give her new reasons to feel embarrassed.

She looked down at the note, a photocopy of an old-fashioned card from a library catalog.

Grigori, D. The Watchers: Myth in Medieval

Europe. Seraphim Press, Rome, 1755.

Call no: R999.318 GRI

"Sounds like one of Daniel's ancestors was a scholar," Pe

"This must have been what he meant," Luce said under her breath. She looked at Pe

"I thought he was an orphan—"

"Don't ask," Luce said, waving her off. "Touchy subject with him." She ran her finger over the book's title. "What's a watcher?"

"Only one way to find out," Pe

"You're good." Luce gri

"What do you think this means?" she asked Pe

Pe

"Hatred, agony, extreme paranoia, and disgust," Luce listed.

"Maybe it's like… okay, I used to be scared of cactus. Couldn't go near 'em—don't laugh, have you ever pricked yourself on one of those things? They stay in your skin for days. Anyway, one year, for my birthday, my dad bought me like eleven cactus plants. At first I wanted to chuck them at him. But then, you know, I got used to them. I stopped flipping out anytime I was near one. In the end, it totally worked."

"So you're saying Cam's gift," Luce said, "is actually really sweet."

"I guess," Pe

"He does not have the hots for me," Luce started to say, fingering the gold chain inside the box, imagining how it would look on her skin. She hadn't told Pe

"Ha." Pe

"As if anything is going on with either of them," Luce said glumly. "Do you think Cam read the notes?"

"If he did, and he still gave you that necklace," Pe

They stepped inside the library, and the heavy double doors thudded behind them. The sound echoed through the room. Miss Sophia looked up from the mounds of paper covering her lamplit desk.

"Oh, hello, girls," she said, beaming so broadly that Luce felt guilty all over again for zoning out during her lecture. "I hope you enjoyed my brief review session!" she practically sang.

"Very much." Luce nodded, though there had been nothing brief about it. "We came here to review a few more things before the exam."

"That's right," Pe

"How wonderful!" Miss Sophia rustled through her paperwork. "I've got a further reading list somewhere. I'd be happy to make you a copy."

"Great," Pe

Beyond Miss Sophia's desk, the library was quiet. Luce and Pe

The girls came to the usually crowded study section, where only one table lamp burned. Everyone else must have been at Gabbe's party. Everyone except for Todd. He had his feet kicked up on the chair across from him and seemed to be reading a coffee-table-sized world atlas. When the girls walked by him, he looked up with a wan expression that was either very lonely or slightly a

"You guys are here late," he said flatly.

"So are you," Pe

When they'd put a few shelves between them and Todd, Luce raised an eyebrow at Pe

"What?" Pe

"Are you in fourth grade?" Luce teased.

Pe

By then, they had reached the far back corner of the library, where all the 999 books were arranged along a single pewter-colored bookshelf. Pe

She watched, wide-eyed, as the shadow stretched out in a long, curling strand directly over Pe

Nervous, unsteady, Luce stretched her arm out like a baseball bat. She took a deep breath and swung forward. She bristled at the icy contact as she knocked the shadow away—and clocked Pe

Pe

Luce sank down next to her and smoothed the top of Pe

She could feel how utterly, utterly lame this excuse was and waited for her friend to tell her she was crazy—what would a bee be doing in a library? She waited for Pe

But Pe

It was like they were having a huge bonding moment—only they weren't, because Luce was wholly consumed by the shadows. If only there were a way to push them from her mind, to shrug the shadow thing off, without shrugging off Pe