The Fallen Sequence (109 page)

This was what her absence did to him. Yes, he wore the ball and chain of a prisoner—but the real jailer here was his own guilt.

He remembered it all now. And he remembered the visitation of his future self, and a frustrating, bitter interview. Paris. The Bastille. Where he’d been locked up by the Duc de Bourbon’s guards after Lys disappeared from the palace. There had been other jails, crueler living conditions, and worse food in Daniel’s existence, but the mercilessness of his own regret that year in the Bastille was one of the hardest trials he’d ever overcome.

Some, but not all of it, had to do with the injustice of being charged with her murder.

But—

If Daniel was already here, locked up in the Bastille, it meant that Lys was already dead. So Luce had already come … and gone.

His past self was right. He was too late.

“Wait,” he said to the prisoner in the darkness, drawing closer, but not so close that they risked touching. “How did you know what I’ve come back for?”

The scrape of the ball being dragged across the stone meant his past self had leaned back against the wall. “You’re not the only one who’s come through here looking for her.”

Daniel’s wings burned, sending heat licking down his shoulder blades. “Cam.”

“No, not Cam,” his past self responded. “Two kids.”

“Shelby?” Now Daniel pounded his fist into the stone floor. “And the other one … Miles. You’re not serious? Those Nephilim? They were here?”

“About a month ago, I think.” He pointed at the wall behind him, where some crooked tally marks were etched into the wall. “I tried to keep track of the day, but you know how it is. Time passes in funny ways. It gets away from you.”

“I remember.” Daniel shuddered. “But the Nephilim. You talked to them?” He racked his memory, and faint images came to mind from his imprisonment, images of a girl and boy. He’d always taken them for the phantoms of grief, just two more of the delusions that beset him when she’d gone and he was alone again.

“For a moment.” The prisoner’s voice sounded tired and far away. “They weren’t all that interested in me.”

“Good.”

“Once they found out she was dead, they were in a great hurry to move on.” His gray eyes were eerily penetrating. “Something you and I can understand.”

“Where did they go?”

“Don’t know.” The prisoner cracked a smile too big for his thin face. “I don’t think they did, either. You should have seen how long it took them to open an Announcer. Looked like couple of bumbling fools.”

Daniel felt himself almost begin to laugh.

“It isn’t funny,” his past self said. “They care for her.”

But Daniel felt no tenderness for the Nephilim. “They’re a threat to all of us. The destruction they could cause …” He closed his eyes. “They have no idea what they’re doing.”

“Why can’t you catch her, Daniel?” His past self laughed dryly. “We’ve seen each other before over the millennia—I remember you chasing her. And never catching her.”

“I—I don’t know.” The words stuck in Daniel’s throat, a long sob building behind them. Quivering, he stifled it. “I can’t reach her. Somehow I am eternally arriving a heartbeat too late, as though someone or something is working behind the scenes to keep her from me.”

“Your Announcers will always take you where you need to be.”

“I need to be with her.”

“Perhaps they know what you need better than you know yourself.”

“What?”

“Maybe she shouldn’t be stopped.” The prisoner rattled his chain listlessly. “That she is able to travel at all means something fundamental was changed. Maybe you can’t catch her until she works that change into the original curse.”

“But—” He didn’t know what to say. The sob rose in Daniel’s chest, drowning his heart in a torrent of shame
and sadness. “She needs me. Every second is a lost eternity. And if she makes a misstep, everything could be lost. She could change the past and … cease to exist.”

“But that’s the nature of risk, isn’t it? You gamble everything on the slenderest of hopes.” His past self began to reach out, almost touching Daniel’s arm. Both of them wanted to feel a connection. At the last instant, Daniel jerked away.

His past self sighed. “What if it’s
you
, Daniel? What if
you’re
the one who has to alter the past? What if you can’t catch her until you’ve rewritten the curse to include a loophole?”

“Impossible.” Daniel snorted. “Look at me. Look at you. We’re wretched without her. We’re nothing when we’re not with Lucinda. There is no reason why my soul wouldn’t want to find her as quickly as possible.”

Daniel wanted to fly away from here. But something was nagging at him.

“Why haven’t you offered to accompany me?” he asked finally. “I would refuse you, of course, but some of the others—when I encountered myself in another life, he wanted to join in. Why don’t you?”

A rat crawled along the prisoner’s leg, stopping to sniff at the bloody chains around his ankles.

“I escaped once,” he said slowly. “You remember?”

“Yes,” Daniel said, “when you—when
we
—escaped, early on. We went straight back to Savoy.” He looked up
at the false hope offered by the light outside the window. “Why did we go there? We should have known we were walking right into a trap.”

The prisoner leaned back and rattled his chains. “We had no other choice. It was the closest place to her.” He drew in a ragged breath. “It’s so hard when she’s in between. I never feel I can go on. I was glad when the duke anticipated my escape, figured out where I’d go. He was waiting in Savoy, waiting at my patron’s dinner table with his men. Waiting to drag me back here.”

Daniel remembered. “The punishment felt like something I’d earned.”

“Daniel.” The prisoner’s forlorn face looked like it had been given a jolt of electricity. He looked alive again, or at least, his eyes did. They glowed violet. “I think I’ve got it.” The words rushed carelessly out. “Take a lesson from the duke.”

Daniel licked his lips. “Excuse me?”

“All these lives you say that you’ve been trailing after her. Do as the duke did with us.
Anticipate
her. Don’t just catch up. Get there first. Wait her out.”

“But I don’t know where her Announcers will take her.”

“Of course you do,” his past self insisted. “You must have faint memories of where she’ll end up. Maybe not every step along the way, but eventually, it all has to end where it started.”

A silent understanding passed between them. Running his hands along the wall near the window, Daniel summoned a shadow. It was invisible to him in the darkness, but he could feel it moving toward him, and he deftly worked it into shape. This Announcer seemed as despondent as he felt. “You’re right,” he said, jerking open the portal. “There is one place she’s sure to go.”

“Yes.”

“And you. You should take your own advice and leave this place,” Daniel said grimly. “You’re rotting in here.”

“At least this body’s pain distracts me from the pain in my soul,” his past self said. “No. I wish you luck, but I won’t leave these walls now. Not until she’s settled in her next incarnation.”

Daniel’s wings bristled at his neck. He tried to sort out time and lives and memories in his head, but he kept circling around the same irksome thought. “She—she should be settled now. In conception. Can’t you feel it?”

“Oh,” his imprisoned past self said softly. He closed his eyes. “I don’t know that I can feel anything anymore.” The prisoner sighed heavily. “Life’s a nightmare.”

“No, it’s not. Not anymore. I’ll find her. I’ll redeem us both,” Daniel shouted, desperate to get out of there, desperately taking another leap of faith through time.

THIRTEEN

STAR-CROSSED

LONDON, ENGLAND • JUNE 29, 1613

S
omething crunched under Luce’s feet.

She raised the hem of her black gown: A layer of discarded walnut shells on the ground was so thick the stringy brown bits rose up over the buckles of her emerald-green high-heeled slippers.

She was at the rear of a noisy crowd of people. Almost everyone around her was dressed in muted browns or grays, the women in long gowns with ruched bodices and wide cuffs at the ends of their bell sleeves. The men wore tapered pants, broad mantles draping their shoulders,
and flat caps made of wool. She’d never stepped out of an Announcer into such a public place before, but here she was, in the middle of a packed amphitheater. It was startling—and riotously loud.

“Look out!” Bill grabbed the neck of her velvet capelet and yanked her backward, pinning her against the wooden rail of a staircase.

A heartbeat later, two grimy boys barreled past in a reckless game of tag that sent a trio of women in their path falling over one another. The women heaved themselves back up and shouted curses at the boys, who jeered back, barely slowing down.

“Next time,” Bill shouted in her ear, cupping his stone claws around his mouth, “could you try directing your little stepping-through exercises into a more—I don’t know
—serene
setting? How am I supposed to do your costuming in the middle of this mob?”

“Sure, Bill, I’ll work on that.” Luce edged back just as the boys playing tag zipped by again. “Where
are
we?”

“You’ve circled the globe to find yourself in the Globe, milady.” Bill sketched a little bow.

“The Globe
Theatre
?” Luce ducked as the woman in front of her discarded a gnawed-on turkey leg by tossing it over her shoulder. “You mean, like, Shakespeare?”

“Well, he
claims
to be retired. You know those artist types. So moody.” Bill swooped down near the ground, tugging at the hem of her dress and humming to himself.

“
Othello
happened here,” Luce said, taking a moment
to let it all sink in. “
The Tempest. Romeo and Juliet
. We’re practically standing in the center of all the greatest love stories ever written.”

“Actually, you’re standing in walnut shells.”

“Why do you have to be so glib about everything? This is amazing!”

“Sorry, I didn’t realize we’d need a moment of bardolatry.” His words came out lisped because of the needle clipped between his jagged teeth. “Now stand still.”

“Ouch!” Luce yelped as he jabbed sharply into her kneecap. “What are you doing?”

“Un-Anachronizing you. These folks’ll pay good money for a freak show, but they’re expecting it to stay
onstage.
” Bill worked quickly, discreetly tucking the long, draped fabric of her black gown from Versailles into a series of folds and crimps so that it was gathered along the sides. He knocked away her black wig and pulled her hair into a frizzy pouf. Then he eyed the velvet capelet around her shoulders. He whipped off the soft fabric. At last, he hocked a giant loogie into one hand, rubbed his palms together, and welded the capelet into a high Jacobean collar.

“That is seriously disgusting, Bill.”

“Be quiet,” he snapped. “Next time give me more space to work. You think I like ‘making do’? I don’t.” He jerked his head at the jeering throngs. “Luckily most of them are too drunk to notice the girl stepping out of the shadows at the back of the room.”

Bill was right: No one was looking at them. Everyone was squabbling as they pressed closer to the stage. It was just a platform, raised about five feet off the ground, and, standing at the back of the rowdy crowd, Luce had trouble seeing it clearly.

“Come on, now!” a boy shouted from the back. “Don’t make us wait all day!”

Above the crowd were three tiers of box seats, and then nothing: the O-shaped amphitheater opened on a midday sky the pale blue of a robin’s egg. Luce looked around for her past self. For Daniel.

“We’re at the opening of the Globe.” She thought back to Daniel’s words under the peach trees at Sword & Cross. “Daniel told me we were here.”

“Sure, you
were
here,” Bill said. “About fourteen years ago. Perched on your older brother’s shoulder. You came with your family to see
Julius Caesar
.”

Bill hovered in the air a foot in front of her. It was unappetizing, but the high collar around her neck actually seemed to hold its shape. She almost resembled the sumptuously dressed women in the higher boxes.

“And Daniel?” she asked.

“Daniel was a player—”

“Hey!”

“That’s what they call the
actors.
” Bill rolled his eyes. “He was just starting out then. To everyone else in the audience, his debut was utterly forgettable. But to little three-year-old Lucinda”—Bill shrugged—“it put
the fire in you. You’ve been quote-unquote dying to get onstage ever since. Tonight’s your night.”

“I’m an actor?”

No. Her friend Callie was the actor, not her. During Luce’s last semester at the Dover School, Callie had begged Luce to try out with her for
Our Town
. The two of them had rehearsed for weeks before the audition. Luce got one line, but Callie had brought the house down with her portrayal of Emily Webb. Luce had watched from the wings, proud of and awed by her friend. Callie would have sold off her life’s possessions to stand in the old Globe Theatre for one minute, let alone to get up on the stage.