"You guys are here late," he said flatly.
"So are you," Penn retorted, sticking out her tongue dramatically.
When they'd put a few shelves between them and Todd, Luce raised an eyebrow at Penn. "What was that?"
"What?" Penn sulked. "He flirts with me." She crossed her arms over her chest and blew a brown curlicue of hair out of her eyes. "As if."
"Are you in fourth grade?" Luce teased.
Penn stuck her pointer finger up at Luce with an intensity that would have made Luce jump if she hadn't been giggling so much. "Do you know anyone else who would delve into Daniel Grigori's family history with you? Didn't think so. Leave me alone."
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. Penn crouched down and traced the books' spines with her finger. Luce felt a tremor, like someone was running a finger along her neck. She craned her head around and saw a wisp of gray. Not black, like the shadows usually were, but lighter, thinner. Just as unwelcome.
She watched, wide-eyed, as the shadow stretched out in a long, curling strand directly over Penn's head. It came down slowly, like a threaded needle, and Luce didn't want to think about what might happen if it touched her friend. The other day at the gym had been the first time the shadows had touched her—and she still felt violated, almost dirty from it. She didn't know what else they could do.
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 Penn upside the head.
Penn pressed her hands against her skull and looked back at Luce in shock. "What is wrong with you?"
Luce sank down next to her and smoothed the top of Penn's hair. "I'm so sorry. There was… I thought I saw a bee… land on your head. I panicked. I didn't want it to sting you."
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 Penn to walk out.
But Penn's round face softened. She took Luce's hand in both of hers and shook it. "Bees terrify me, too," she said. "I'm deathly allergic. You basically just saved my life."
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 Penn.
Luce had a strong, uneasy feeling about this light gray shadow. The uniformity of the shadows had never been comforting, but these latest variations were a new level of disconcerting. Did it mean more kinds of shadows were finding their way to her? Or was she just getting better at distinguishing them? And what about that weird moment during Miss Sophia's lecture, when she'd actually pinched a shadow back before it could enter her pocket? She'd done it without thinking, and had had no reason to expect that her two fingers would be any match for a shadow, but they had been—she glanced around the stacks—at least temporarily.
She wondered whether she had set some kind of precedent for interacting with the shadows. Except that to call what she'd done to the shadow hovering over Penn's head "interacting" — even Luce knew that was a euphemism. A cold, sick feeling grew in her gut when she realized that what she'd started doing to the shadows was more like… fighting them off.
"It's the strangest thing." Penn spoke up from the floor. "It should be right here between The Dictionary of Angels and this god-awful Billy Graham fire-and-brimstone thing." She looked up at Luce. "But it's gone."
"I thought you said—"
"I did. The computer had it listed as on the shelves when I looked this afternoon, but we can't get online this late to check again."
"Go ask Todd-o out there," Luce suggested. "Maybe he's using it as a cover for his Playboys."
"Gross." Penn whacked her on the thigh.
Luce knew she'd only made the joke to try to downplay her disappointment. It was just so frustrating. She couldn't find out anything about Daniel without running up against a wall. She didn't know what she'd find inside the pages of his great-great-whatever's book, but at least it would tell her something more about Daniel. Which had to be better than nothing.
"Stay here," Penn said, standing up. "I'm going to go ask Miss Sophia if anyone's checked it out today."
Luce watched her traipse back up the long aisle toward the front desk. She laughed when Penn sped up to pass the area where Todd was sitting.
Alone in the back corner, Luce fingered some of the other books on the shelves. She did a quick mental run-through of the student body at Sword & Cross, but she couldn't think of any likely candidates for checking out an old religious book. Maybe Miss Sophia had used it as reference for her review session earlier. Luce wondered what it must have been like for Daniel to sit there, listening to the librarian talk about things that had probably been dinner-table topics of conversation when he was growing up. Luce wanted to know what his childhood had been like. What had happened to his family? Had his upbringing at the orphanage been religious? Or was his childhood anything like hers, in which the only things pursued religiously were good grades and academic honors? She wanted to know whether Daniel had ever read this book by his ancestor and what he'd thought about it, and if he liked writing himself. She wanted to know what he was doing right now at Gabbe's party and when his birthday was and what size shoe he wore and whether he ever wasted a single second of his time wondering about her.
Luce shook her head. This train of thought was heading straight for Pity City, and she wanted to get off. She pulled the first book off the shelf—the very unfascinating cloth-covered Dictionary of Angels—and decided to distract herself by reading until Penn came back.
She'd gotten as far as the fallen angel Abbadon, who regretted siding with Satan and constantly bemoaned his bad decision—yawn—when a blaring noise rang out over her head. Luce looked up to see the red flash of the fire alarm.
"Alert. Alert," a monotone robotic voice announced over a loudspeaker. "The fire alarm has been activated. Evacuate the building."
Luce slid the book back on the shelf and pulled herself to her feet. They'd done this kind of thing at Dover all the time. After a while, it had reached the point where not even the teachers had heeded the monthly fire drills, so the fire department started really setting off the alarm just to get people to respond. Luce could totally see the administrators at Sword & Cross pulling a similar stunt. But when she started walking toward the exit, she was surprised to find herself coughing. There was actual smoke inside the library.
"Penn?" she called out, hearing her voice echo in her ears. She knew she'd be drowned out by the piercing shriek of the alarm.
The acrid smell of the smoke dropped her instantly back into the blaze that night with Trevor. Images and sounds flooded her mind, things she'd stuffed so deep inside her memory they might as well have been obliterated. Until now.
The shocking whites of Trevor's eyes against the orange glow. The individual tendrils of flame as the fire spread through each one of his fingers. The shrill, unending scream that rang in her head like a siren long after Trevor had given up. And the whole time, she'd stood there watching, she couldn't stop watching, frozen in that bath of heat. She hadn't been able to move. She hadn't been able to do a thing to help him. So he'd died.