The Fallen Sequence (145 page)

“It’s called a Patina,” Daniel said. “It’s a way of bending reality around a unit of time and space—”

“It’s a rearrangement of reality in order to secret something away,” Roland added, flying to Daniel’s side and peering down as if he could still see the house.

“So while this street exists in a continuous line through one reality”—Annabelle waved at the town houses—“beneath it lays another, independent realm, where this road leads to our Foundation Library.”

“Patinas are the boundary between realities,” Arriane said, thumbs tucked into her overall suspenders. “A laser light show only
special
folks can see.”

“You guys seem to know a lot about these things,” Luce said.

“Yeah,” Arriane scoffed, looking as if she’d like to kick another cloud. “ ’Cept how to get through one.”

Daniel nodded. “Very few entities are powerful enough to create Patinas, and those that can guard them closely. The library is here. But Arriane’s right. We’ll need to figure out the way in.”

“I heard you need an Announcer to get through one,” Arriane said.

“Cosmic legend.” Annabelle shook her head. “Every Patina is different. Access is entirely up to the creator. They program the code.”

“I once heard Cam tell a story at a party about how he accessed a Patina,” Roland said. “Or was that a story about a party that he threw in a Patina?”

“Luce!” Daniel said suddenly, making all of them startle in midair. “It’s you. It was always you.”

Luce shrugged. “Always me what?”

“You’re the one who always rang the bell. You’re the one who had entry to the library. You just need to ring the bell.”

Luce looked at the empty street, the fog tinting everything around them brown. “What are you talking about? What bell?”

“Close your eyes,” Daniel said. “Remember it. Pass into the past and find the bellpull—”

Luce was already there, back at the library the last time she’d been in Vienna with Daniel. Her feet were firmly on the ground. It was raining and her hair splayed all across her face. Her crimson hair ribbons were soaked,
but she didn’t care. She was looking for something. There was a short path up the courtyard, then a dark alcove outside the library. It had been cold outside, and a fire blazed within. There, in the musty corner near the door, was a woven cord embroidered with white peonies hanging from a substantial silver bell.

She reached into the air and pulled.

The angels gasped. Luce opened her eyes.

There, in the center of the north side of the street, the row of contemporary town houses was interrupted at its midpoint by a single small brown house. A curl of smoke rose from its chimney. The only light—aside from the angels’ wings—was the dim yellow glow of a lamp on the sill of the house’s front window.

The angels landed softly on the empty street and Daniel’s grip around Luce softened. He kissed her hand. “You remembered. Well done.”

The brown house was only one story high, while the surrounding town houses had three levels, so you could see behind the house to parallel streets lined with more modern white stone town houses. The house was an anomaly: Luce studied its thatched roof, the gabled gate at the edge of a weed-ridden lawn, the arched wooden asymmetrical front door, all of which made the house look as if it belonged in the Middle Ages.

Luce took a step toward the house and found herself on a sidewalk. Her eyes fell on the large bronze placard
pressed into the packed-mud walls. It was a historical marker, which read in big carved letters
THE FOUNDATION LIBRARY, EST. 1233
.

Luce looked around at the otherwise mundane street. There were recycling bins filled with plastic water bottles, tiny European cars parallel parked so closely that their bumpers were touching, shallow potholes in the road. “So we’re on a real street in Vienna—”

“Exactly,” Daniel said. “If it were daytime, you would see the neighbors, but they wouldn’t see you.”

“Are Patinas common?” Luce asked. “Was there one over the cabin I slept in on the island back in Georgia?”

“They are highly uncommon. Precious, really.” Daniel shook his head. “That cabin was just the most secluded safe haven we could find on such short notice.”

“A poor man’s Patina,” Arriane said.

“I.e., Mr. Cole’s summerhouse,” Roland added. Mr. Cole was a teacher at Sword & Cross. He was mortal, but he’d been a friend to the angels since they’d arrived at the school, and was covering for Luce now that she’d left. It was thanks to Mr. Cole that her parents weren’t more worried than usual about her.

“How are they made?” Luce asked.

Daniel shook his head. “No one knows that except the Patina’s artist. And there are very few of those. You remember my friend Dr. Otto?”

She nodded. The doctor’s name had been on the tip of her tongue.

“He lived here for several hundred years—and even he didn’t know how this Patina got here.” Daniel studied the building. “I don’t know who the librarian is now.”

“Let’s go,” Roland said. “If the desideratum is here, we need to find it and get out of Vienna before the Scale regroup and track us down.”

He slid open the latch on the gate and held it aside for the others to pass. The pebble path leading to the brown house was overgrown with wild purple freesia and tangled white orchids filling the air with their sweet scent.

The group reached the heavy wooden door with its arched top and flat iron knocker, and Luce grabbed Daniel’s hand. Annabelle rapped on the door.

No answer.

Then Luce looked up and saw a bellpull, woven with the same stitches as the one she’d rung in the air. She glanced at Daniel. He nodded.

She pulled and the door creaked slowly open, as if the house itself had been expecting them. They peered into a candlelit hallway so long Luce couldn’t see where it ended. The interior was far bigger than its exterior suggested; its ceilings were low and curved, like a railroad tunnel through a mountain. Everything was made of a lovely soft-pink brick.

The other angels deferred to Daniel and Luce, the only two who had been there before. Daniel crossed the threshold into the hallway first, holding Luce’s hand.

“Hello?” he called out.

Candlelight flickered on the bricks as the other angels entered and Roland shut the door behind them. As they walked, Luce was conscious of how quiet the hallway was, of the echoing thumps their shoes made on the smooth stone floor.

She paused at the first open doorway on the left side of the hall as a memory flooded her mind. “Here,” she said, pointing inside the room. It was dark but for the yellow glow of a lamp on the windowsill, the same light they’d seen from the outside of the house. “Wasn’t this Dr. Otto’s office?”

It was too dark to see clearly, but Luce remembered a fire blazing cheerily in a hearth on the far side of the room. In her memory the fireplace had been bordered by a dozen bookshelves crammed with the leather spines of Dr. Otto’s library. Hadn’t her past self propped her wool-stockinged feet on the footrest near the fire and read Book IV of
Gulliver’s Travels
? And hadn’t the doctor’s freely flowing cider made the whole room smell like apples, cloves, and cinnamon?

“You’re right.” Daniel took a glowing candelabra from its brick alcove in the hallway and held it inside to give the room more light. But the grate over the fireplace
was shut, as was the antique wooden secretary in the corner, and even in the warm candlelight, the air seemed cold and stale. The shelves were sagging and distressed by the weight of the books, which were covered with a mist of dust. The window, which had once looked out on a busy residential street, had its dark green shades drawn, giving the room a bleak sense of abandonment.

“No wonder he hasn’t answered any of my letters,” Daniel said. “It looks as if the doctor has moved on.”

Luce moved toward the bookshelves and dragged her finger across a dusty spine. “Do you think one of these books might contain the desired thing we’re looking for?” Luce asked, pulling one from the shelf:
Canzoniere
by Petrarch, typeset in Gothic font. “I’m sure Dr. Otto wouldn’t mind us taking a look around if it could help us find the desi—”

She stopped speaking. She’d heard something—the soft croon of a woman’s voice.

The angels eyed one another as another sound reached them in the dark library. Now, in addition to the haunting song, came the clopping sound of shoes and the jangle of a cart being wheeled. Daniel moved to the open doorway and Luce followed, cautiously peering into the hallway.

A dark shadow stretched toward them. Candles flickered in the pink stone alcoves of the curved, tunnellike
hallway, distorting the shadow, making its arms look wraithlike and impossibly long.

The shadow’s owner, a thin woman in a gray pencil skirt, a mustard-colored cardigan, and very high black heels, walked toward them, pushing a fancy silver tea tray on wheels. Her fiery red hair was pulled up in a chignon. Elegant golden hoops glittered in her ears. Something about the way she walked, the way she carried herself, seemed familiar.

As the woman crooned her wordless melody, she lifted her head slightly, casting her profile in shadow against the wall. The curve of the nose, the upward swoop of the chin, the short jut of the brow bone—all gave Luce the feeling of déjà vu. She searched her past for other lives where she might have known this woman.

Suddenly, the blood drained from Luce’s face. All the hair dye in the world couldn’t fool her.

The woman pushing the tea cart was Miss Sophia Bliss.

Before she knew it, Luce had her hands around a cold brass fire poker resting in a stand by the library door. She raised it like a weapon, jaw clenched and heart hammering, and barreled into the hallway.

“Luce!” Daniel called.

“Dee?” Arriane shouted.

“Yes, dear?” the woman said, a second before she
noticed Luce charging at her. She jumped just as Daniel’s arm engulfed Luce, holding back her lunge.

“What are you doing?” Daniel whispered.

“She’s—she’s—” Luce struggled against Daniel, feeling his grasp burn her waist. This woman had murdered Penn. She’d tried to kill Luce. Why didn’t anyone else want to kill her?

Arriane and Annabelle ran to Miss Sophia and tackled her in a double hug.

Luce blinked.

Annabelle kissed the woman’s pale cheeks. “I haven’t seen you since the Peasants’ Revolt in Nottingham … when was that, the 1380s?”

“Surely it hasn’t been that long,” the woman said politely, her voice lilting in the same kindly-librarian way it had early on at Sword & Cross, when she had tricked Luce into liking her. “Lovely time.”

“I haven’t seen you in a while, either,” Luce said hotly. She jerked away from Daniel and raised the fire poker again, wishing it were something more deadly. “Not since you murdered my friend—”

“Oh dear.” The woman did not flinch. She watched Luce coming at her and tapped a slender finger to her lips. “There must be some confusion.”

Roland stepped forward, separating Luce from Miss Sophia. “It’s just that you look like someone else.” His calm hand on her shoulder made Luce pause.

“What do you mean?” the woman said.

“Oh, of course!” Daniel gave Luce a sad smile. “You thought she was—we should have told you that transeternals often look alike.”

“You mean she’s not Miss Sophia?”

“Sophia Bliss?” The woman looked as if she’d just bitten into something sour. “That bitch is still around? I was sure someone would have put her out of her misery by now.” She wrinkled her tiny nose and shrugged at Luce. “She is my sister, so I can only display a small percentage of the rage I have accumulated over the years toward that disgusting bag.”

Luce laughed nervously. The fire poker slipped from her hand and clattered to the floor. She studied the older woman, finding similarities to Miss Sophia—a face that seemed old and young at the same time—and differences. Compared to Sophia’s black eyes, this woman’s small eyes looked almost golden, emphasized by the matching yellow shade of her cardigan.

The scene with the fire poker had embarrassed Luce. She leaned back against the curved brick wall and sank to the ground, feeling empty, unsure whether she was relieved not to have to face Miss Sophia again. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t worry, dear,” the woman said brightly. “The day I encounter Sophia again, I’ll grab the nearest heavy object and bludgeon her myself.”

Arriane flung out a hand to help Luce up, pulling her so hard her feet shot off the ground. “Dee’s an old friend. And a first-class party animal, might I add. Got the metabolism of a donkey. She almost brought the Crusades to a grinding halt the night she seduced Saladin.”

“Oh, nonsense!” Dee said, flapping a hand dismissively.

“She’s the best storyteller, too,” Annabelle added. “Or she was before she dropped off the face of the earth. Where’ve you been hiding, woman?”

The woman drew a deep breath and her golden eyes dampened. “Actually, I fell in love.”

“Oh, Dee!” Annabelle crooned, clasping the woman’s hand. “How wonderful.”

“Otto Z. Otto.” The woman sniffed. “May he rest …”

“Dr. Otto,” Daniel said, stepping out of the doorway. “You knew Dr. Otto?”

“Backwards and forwards.” The mysterious lady sniffed.

“Oops, my manners!” Arriane said. “We must do introductions. Daniel, Roland, I don’t think you’ve ever officially met our friend Dee—”

“What a pleasure. I am Paulina Serenity Bisenger.” The woman smiled, dabbed her damp eyes with a lace handkerchief, and extended a hand first to Daniel, then to Roland.

“Ms. Bisenger,” Roland said, “may I ask why the girls call you Dee?”

“Just an old nickname, love,” the woman said, offering the kind of cryptic smile that was Roland’s specialty. When she turned to Luce, her golden eyes lit up.

“Ah, Lucinda.” Instead of holding out her hand, Dee opened her arms for a hug, but Luce felt funny about accepting it. “I apologize for the unfortunate resemblance that gave you such a fright. I must say that my sister looks like me; I do
not
look like
her
. But you and I have known each other so well over many lifetimes, so very many years, I forget that you might not remember. It was to me that you entrusted your darkest secrets—your love of Daniel, your fears for your future, your confusing feelings about Cam.” Luce flushed, but the woman didn’t notice. “And it was to you that I entrusted the very reasons for my existence, as well as the key to everything you seek. You were the one innocent I knew I could always rely upon to do what needed to be done.”