The Fallen Sequence (23 page)

Luce glanced down. She’d never been much for nail
polish herself, but Gabbe’s words reminded her of her mother, who was always suggesting they go for manicures whenever Luce had a bad day. As Gabbe’s slow hands worked over her fingers, Luce wondered whether all these years, she’d been missing out.

“Where are we?” she asked.

“Lullwater Hospital.”

Her first trip off campus and she ended up in a hospital five minutes from her parents’ house. The last time she’d been here was to get three stitches on her elbow when she’d fallen off her bike. Her father hadn’t left her side. Now he was nowhere to be seen.

“How long have I been here?” she asked.

Gabbe looked at a white clock on the wall and said, “They found you passed out from smoke inhalation last night around eleven. It’s standard operating procedure to call for EMTs when they find a reform kid unconcious, but don’t worry, Randy said they’re going to let you out of here pretty soon. As soon as your parents give the okay—”

“My parents are here?”

“And filled with concern for their daughter, right down to the split ends of your mama’s permed hair. They’re in the hallway, drowning in paperwork. I told them I’d keep an eye on you.”

Luce groaned and pressed her face into the pillow, calling up the deep pain at the back of her head again.

“If you don’t want to see them …”

But Luce wasn’t groaning about her parents. She was dying to see her parents. She was remembering the library, the fire, and the new breed of shadows that grew more terrifying every time they found her. They’d always been dark and unsightly, they’d always made her nervous, but last night, it had almost seemed as if the shadows
wanted
something from her. And then there was that other thing, the levitating force that had set her free.

“What’s that look?” Gabbe asked, cocking her head and waving her hand in the air in front of Luce’s face. “What are you thinking about?”

Luce didn’t know what to make of Gabbe’s sudden kindness toward her. Nurse’s assistant didn’t exactly seem like the kind of gig Gabbe would volunteer for, and it wasn’t like there were any guys around whose attention she could monopolize. Gabbe didn’t even seem to like Luce. She wouldn’t just show up here of her own accord, would she?

But even as nice as Gabbe was being, there was no way to explain what had happened last night. The grisly, unspeakable gathering in the hallway. The surreal sensation of being propelled forward through that blackness. The strange, compelling figure of light.

“Where’s Todd?” Luce asked, remembering the boy’s fearful eyes. She’d lost her grip on him, gone flying, and then …

The paper curtain was suddenly slung back, and there was Arriane, wearing in-line skates and a red-and-white candy striper uniform. Her short black hair was twisted up in a series of knots on top of her head. She rolled in, carrying a tray on which sat three coconut shells topped with neon-colored umbrella party straws.

“Now lemme get this straight,” she said in a throaty, nasal voice. “You put the lime in the coconut and drink ’em both up—
whoa
, long faces. What am I interrupting?”

Arriane wheeled to a stop at the foot of Luce’s bed. She extended a coconut with a bobbing pink umbrella.

Gabbe jumped up and seized the coconut first, giving its contents a sniff. “Arriane, she has just been through a
trauma,
” she scolded. “And for your information, what you interrupted was the topic of Todd.”

Arriane tossed her shoulders back. “Precisely why she needs something with a kick,” she argued, holding the tray possessively while she and Gabbe engaged in a stare-down.

“Fine,” Arriane said, looking away from Gabbe. “I’ll give her
your
boring old drink.” She gave Luce the coconut with the blue straw.

Luce must have been in some kind of post-traumatic daze. Where would they have gotten any of this stuff? Coconut shells? Drink umbrellas? It was like she’d been conked out at reform school and woken up at Club Med.

“Where did you guys get all this stuff?” she asked. “I mean, thank you, but—”

“We pool our resources when we need to,” Arriane said. “Roland helped.”

The three of them sat slurping the frosty, sweet drinks for a moment, until Luce couldn’t take it anymore. “So back to Todd …?”

“Todd,” Gabbe said, clearing her throat. “Thing is … he just inhaled a lot more of that smoke than you did, honey—”

“He did not,” Arriane spat. “He broke his neck.”

Luce gasped, and Gabbe hit Arriane with her drink umbrella.

“What?” Arriane said. “Luce can handle it. If she’s going to find out eventually, why sugarcoat it?”

“The evidence is still inconclusive,” Gabbe said, stressing the words.

Arriane shrugged. “Luce was there, she must have seen—”

“I didn’t see what happened to him,” Luce said. “We were together and then somehow we were thrown apart. I had a bad feeling, but I didn’t know,” she whispered. “So he’s …”

“Gone from this world,” Gabbe said softly.

Luce closed her eyes. A chill spread through her that had nothing to do with the drink. She remembered Todd’s frenzied banging on the walls, his sweaty hand
squeezing hers when the shadows roared down on them, the awful moment when the two of them had been split apart and she’d been too overcome to go to him.

He’d seen the shadows. Luce was certain of it now. And he’d died.

After Trevor died, not a week had gone by without a hate letter finding its way to Luce. Her parents started trying to vet the mail before she could read the poisonous stuff, but too much still reached her. Some letters were handwritten, some were typed, one had even been cut from magazine letters, ransom-note style.
Murderer. Witch
. They’d called her enough cruel names to fill a scrapbook, caused enough agony to keep her locked inside the house all summer.

She thought she’d done so much to move on from that nightmare: leaving her past behind when she came to Sword & Cross, focusing on her classes, making friends … oh God. She sucked in her breath. “What about Penn?” she asked, biting her lip.

“Penn’s fine,” Arriane said. “She’s all front-page-story, eyewitness-to-the-fire. She and Miss Sophia both got out, smelling like an East Georgia smoke pit, but no worse for the wear.”

Luce let out her breath. At least there was one piece of good news. But under the paper-thin infirmary sheets, she was trembling. Soon, surely the same types of people who’d come to her after Trevor’s death would come to
her again. Not just the ones who wrote the angry letters. Dr. Sanford. Her parole officer. The police.

Just like before, she’d be expected to have the whole story pieced together. To remember every single detail. But of course, just like before, she wouldn’t be able to. One minute, he’d been at her side, just the two of them. The next—

“Luce!” Penn barged into the room, holding a big brown helium balloon. It was shaped like a Band-Aid and said
Stick It Out
in blue cursive letters. “What is this?” she asked, looking at the other three girls critically. “Some sort of slumber party?”

Arriane had unlaced her skates and climbed onto the tiny bed next to Luce. She was double-fisting the coconut drinks and laying her head on Luce’s shoulder. Gabbe was painting clear nail polish on Luce’s coconut-free hand.

“Yeah,” Arriane cackled. “Join us, Pennyloafer. We were just about to play Truth or Dare. We’ll let you go first.”

Gabbe tried to cover up her laugh with a dainty fake sneeze.

Penn put her hands on her hips. Luce felt bad for her, and was also a little scared. Penn looked pretty fierce.

“One of our classmates
died
last night,” Penn carefully enunciated. “And Luce could have been really hurt.”
She shook her head. “How can you two play around at a time like this?” She sniffed. “Is that alcohol?”

“Ohhh,” Arriane said, looking at Penn, her face serious. “You
liked
him, didn’t you?”

Penn picked up a pillow from the chair behind her and chucked it at Arriane. The thing was, Penn was right. It
was
strange that Arriane and Gabbe were taking Todd’s death … almost lightly. Like they saw this kind of thing happen all the time. Like it didn’t affect them the way it affected Luce. But they couldn’t know what Luce knew about Todd’s last moments. They couldn’t know why she felt so sick right now. She patted the foot of the bed for Penn and handed her what was left in her frosty coconut.

“We went out the back exit, and then—” Luce couldn’t even say the words. “What happened to you and Miss Sophia?”

Penn glanced doubtfully at Arriane and Gabbe, but neither made a move to be obnoxious. Penn gave in and settled on the edge of the bed.

“I just went up there to ask her about—” She glanced at the other two girls again, then gave Luce a knowing look. “This question I had. She didn’t know the answer, but she wanted to show me another book.”

Luce had forgotten all about her and Penn’s quest last night. It seemed so far away, and so beside the point after what had happened.

“We took two steps away from Miss Sophia’s desk,” Penn continued, “and there was this massive burst of light out of the corner of my eye. I mean, I’ve read about spontaneous combustion, but this was …”

All three of the other girls were leaning forward by then. Penn’s story
was
front-page news.

“Something must have started it,” Luce said, trying to picture Miss Sophia’s desk in her mind. “But I didn’t think there was anyone else in the library.”

Penn shook her head. “There wasn’t. Miss Sophia said a wire must have shorted in a lamp. Whatever happened, that fire had a lot of fuel. All her documents went right up.” She snapped her fingers.

“But she’s okay?” Luce asked, fingering the papery hem of her hospital gown.

“Distraught, but okay,” Penn said. “The sprinklers came on eventually, but I guess she lost a whole lot of her things. When they told her what happened to Todd, it was almost like she was too numb to even understand.”

“Maybe we’re all too numb to understand,” Luce said. This time Gabbe and Arriane nodded on either side of her. “Do—do Todd’s parents know?” she asked, wondering how on earth she would explain to her own parents what had happened.

She imagined them filling out paperwork in the lobby. Would they even want to see her? Would they connect Todd’s death with Trevor’s … and trace both awful stories back to her?

“I overheard Randy on the phone with Todd’s parents,” Penn said. “I think they’re filing a lawsuit. His body is being sent back to Florida later today.”

That was it? Luce swallowed.

“Sword & Cross is having a memorial service for him on Thursday,” Gabbe said quietly. “Daniel and I are going to help organize it.”

“Daniel?” Luce repeated before she could control herself. She glanced at Gabbe, and even in her grief-stricken state, she couldn’t help reverting to her initial image of the girl: a pink-lipped, blond seductress.

“He was the one who found the two of you last night,” Gabbe said. “He carried you from the library to Randy’s office.”

Daniel had carried her? As in … his arms around her body? The dream rushed back and the sensation of flying—no, of
floating
—overwhelmed her. She felt too tethered down to her bed. She ached for that same sky, that rain, his mouth, his teeth, his tongue melding with hers again. Her face grew hot, first with desire, then with the agonizing impossibility of any of that ever happening while she was awake. Those glorious, blinding wings weren’t the only fantastical things about that dream. The real-life Daniel would only carry her to the nurse’s station. He would never want her, never take her in his arms, not like that.

“Uh, Luce, are you okay?” Penn asked. She was fanning Luce’s flushed cheeks with her drink umbrella.

“Fine,” Luce said. It was impossible to push those wings out of her mind. To forget the sensation of his face over hers. “Just still recovering, I guess.”

Gabbe patted her hand. “When we heard about what happened, we sweet-talked Randy into letting us come visit,” she said, rolling her eyes. “We didn’t want you to wake up alone.”

There was a knock at the door. Luce waited to see her parents’ nervous faces, but no one came in. Gabbe stood and looked at Arriane, who made no move to get up. “You guys stay here. I’ll handle this.”

Luce was still overcome by what they’d told her about Daniel. Even though it didn’t make any sense at all, she wanted it to be him outside that door.

“How is she?” a voice asked in a whisper. But Luce heard it. It was him. Gabbe murmured something back.

“What is all this congregating?” Randy growled from outside the room. Luce knew with a sinking heart that this meant visiting hours were over. “Whoever talked me into letting you hooligans tag along gets a detention. And no, Grigori, I will not accept flowers as bribes. All of you, get in the minivan.”

Hearing the attendant’s voice, Arriane and Penn cringed, then scrambled to stash the coconut shells under the bed. Penn stuffed the drink umbrellas inside her pencil case and Arriane spritzed the air with some serious vanilla musk perfume. She slipped Luce a piece of spearmint gum.

Penn gagged on a floating cloud of perfume, then leaned quickly into Luce and whispered, “As soon as you’re back on your feet, we’ll find the book. I think it’d be good for us both to stay busy, keep our minds off things.”

Luce squeezed Penn’s hand in thanks and smiled at Arriane, who looked too busy lacing up her roller skates to have heard.

That was when Randy barged through the door. “More congregating!” she cried. “Unbe
liev
able.”

“We were just—” Penn started to say.

“Leaving,” Randy finished for her. She had a bouquet of wild white peonies in her hand. Strange. They were Luce’s favorites. And it was so hard to find them in bloom around here.

Randy opened a cabinet under the sink and rooted around for a minute, then pulled out a small, dusty vase. She filled it with cloudy water from the tap, stuffed the peonies roughly inside, and set them on the table next to Luce. “These are from your friends,” she said, “who will all now make their departures.”